WRCH-HD2 Hartford, which had been carrying The Sports Hub, is now carrying WEEI-FM, despite WRCH's still being a yet-to-be-divested CBS Radio station.
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Wasn't aware that WRCH is supposed to be divested.
Nor was I, but isn't CBS exiting the radio biz completely?
CBS Radio merged with Entercom a few weeks ago. WEEI-FM is Entercom, and so is WRCH-FM. Seems to make perfect sense.
You're right. I was thrown off when I saw a little CBS "eye" still on the WRCH homepage, but the fine print on the bottom of the page now says Entercom.
I think they're allowed to use the "eye" for a year.
Looks like the only HD change in Boston so far is 98.5 HD3 carrying WBZ (AM) disappearing. The others are still the same, for now.
98.5 HD2 is still "WBCN, The Rock of Boston", an automated extension of the modern alternative rock format that 104.1 WBCN had in its last years in the 2000's (not to be confused with the former "WBCN Free-Form Rock" channel that had some live DJ's and spanned 1960's through the present that used to be on 100.7 HD3).
98.5 HD2 is still "WBCN, The Rock of Boston", an automated extension of the modern alternative rock format that 104.1 WBCN had in its last years in the 2000's (not to be confused with the former "WBCN Free-Form Rock" channel that had some live DJ's and spanned 1960's through the present that used to be on 100.7 HD3).
That's a rarity, so far. Had the rules been different back when so many radio and TV combos were broken up in the 70s, I suspect there would be more now - but back then, either the radio or TV side had to change calls, unlike today's rules. So there weren't that many AM/FM/TV combos sharing calls to begin with once the current rules came into effect in the 1980s, and most of those ended up at least changing FM calls somewhere along the way (like the NBC and ABC O&Os did, for instance.)
I haven't run the numbers, but I don't think there are more than 30 or so sets of calls that are shared among AM, FM and TV nowadays. WBZ and WTIC were the only two in New England. Expand that out to the entire northeast and you add only WCBS, KDKA, WSYR in Syracuse and WENY in Elmira, commercially, and WXXI here in Rochester as a very rare noncommercial three-fer.
iHeart requests other apps drops its stations so all of its stations are exclusively on iHeartRadio. Those in trust remain on Radio.com and TuneIn and have not been added to iHeartRadio yet. That will change once iHeart officially gets the keys.
Not sure about WBZ-FM, but I expect it will join iRadioNow and iHeartRadio while remaining on TuneIn after Beasley takes over. As I mentioned in another thread, the stations Entercom acquired from iHeart in Chattanooga and Richmond have been added to Radio.com while remaining on iHeartRadio for the time being. They'll most likely eventually be on Radio.com and TuneIn only. WMJX, as of last week, was on all three of the major streaming apps.
There are several reasons for this. Not just the obvious one of exclusivity. iHeart also negotiates a royalty rate for music with some labels that is lower than other platforms. So if an iHeart radio station is being streamed on another platform, the company would be paying two rates for the same music. This way, they're paying one rate at one time.
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