Radio Stations

Three local sports talk show hosts -- Stan "The Fan" Charles, Jerry Coleman and Rob Long -- will be without a home at radio station WVIE (1370 AM) as of Friday morning when the station starts moving to a mainly network news/talk format. The official move by V-1370 to news/talk won't come until July 4th when it goes to 12-hours-a-day Monday-through-Friday programming from America's Radio News, a news service based out of Alexandria, Va., that is carried on more than 100 stations nationally.

Most of us look to our local radio stations as reliable sources for news and music. We tune into them at home, at work, in the car, and pretty much anywhere we go with a radio or device that allows us to stream our favorite stations. As a business owner, I also view local radio stations as an important resource for growth since they offer affordable advertising that helps me reach potential customers. Even though local radio stations are important resources to the communities they serve, the recording industry is pushing for a new tax that would drive some of them out of business and ultimately force others to cut staff and budgets for community-oriented activities such as charity events and disaster relief.

Amid a string of negative news reports, two high-level firings and a move in Congress to end its federal funding, National Public Radio was an organization in turmoil this week. But as grim as it seems for NPR, it is not the large public radio network headquartered in Washington that could suffer the most from the political fallout. Instead, small niche public radio stations like Towson's WTMD and Morgan State University's WEAA in Northeast Baltimore would be the hardest hit. And the cutbacks could start in a matter of weeks, station managers say. "We have a very limited relationship with NPR — we carry only one half-hour of programming from there a week," says LaFontaine E. Oliver, general manager of WEAA (88.9-FM)

Scott Donahoo, a former car salesman known for his boisterous television commercials, told a local radio station that he is giving "serious consideration" to a run for mayor next year, joining an already crowded field of potential candidates. Scott Donahoo told Jimmy Mathis of WBAL radio that as mayor, he would drastically cut property taxes and increase the city's police presence. "We have lost a tremendous amount of the police department due to the failed policies of previous administrations and current administration," Donahoo said during the interview.

BILL DRAKE, 71 Popularized music-centered radio format Bill Drake, who set the tone at hundreds of pop stations with a radio format that placed music - rather than disc jockeys - at the center of the broadcast, died of cancer Saturday at West Hills Hospital in the San Fernando Valley of California, his domestic partner, Carole Scott, said. At the height of his career as a radio programming consultant in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mr. Drake championed a streamlined format that came to be known as "Boss Radio," which made announcers' personalities secondary to the Top 40 hits they were spinning.

Nicholas Bernard Mangione, a self-made real estate developer who owned country clubs, nursing homes and a radio station, died Sunday at Greater Baltimore Medical Center of complications from a stroke. The Hunt Valley resident was 83. The owner of Turf Valley Resort and Hayfields Country Club, Mr. Mangione was the patriarch of a family whose businesses also include the Lorien nursing homes and radio station WCBM-AM. "He was a guy I admired greatly. He stood up and supported what he believed in," said former U.S. Rep. Helen Delich Bentley.

Baltimore's public radio and television stations are seeing little drop-off in their fundraising efforts, suggesting that their audiences' hunger for news and information during this election year is making up for the country's uncertain economic climate. Officials at both WYPR-FM (88.1) and WEAA-FM (88.9), which carried out fall pledge drives during the past week, reported totals that were roughly in line with last year's pledge drives, if not slightly over. The total raised at WYPR, where the February firing of talk-show host Marc Steiner raised a firestorm of protest and threats from many listeners to stop contributing to the station, was up about $5,000, or about 2 percent.

WASHINGTON - Federal regulators appeared poised yesterday to give final approval to the merger of the nation's only two satellite radio operators, which would bring together the struggling companies after a 17-month quest. Deborah Taylor Tate, a Republican who held the swing vote on the five-member Federal Communications Commission, reportedly was ready to vote in favor of the $3.9 billion merger if Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. and XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. agreed to new conditions.

Radio stations open in county As Harford County increased in population, the need for dissemination of local news and business advertising gave rise to three radio stations within the county. The first was WASA-AM with 5,000 watts of power and was managed by the Chesapeake Broadcasting Corporation near Havre de Grace. The second station, WASA-FM with 3,000 watts of power under the same management, went on the air June 19, 1960. The Bel Air Broadcasting Corporation, launched the third station, WVOB, on June 11, 1965 with 250 watts of power.

LaFontaine Oliver swears he started to tweak the programming at WEAA-FM (88.9) months before Marc Steiner got fired. It was, he says, part of his long-term mission to increase news and public affairs programming at Morgan State University's radio station. Still, if disaffected WYPR-FM (88.1) listeners want to sample his station's offerings -- if they want to follow Steiner across town to what will be, beginning tomorrow, his new radio home -- Oliver's not going to complain. "It wasn't so much a conscious effort to woo those folks, as much as the stars sort of aligned," says Oliver, WEAA's general manager for the past 15 months.