The radio dial is not as crowded as it used to be around here, and that’s a shame.
As we reported a couple weeks ago, three Delaware County radio stations owned by Townsquare Media Group have been taken off the air. Two more haven’t officially “gone dark,” as broadcasters say, but they’re not broadcasting.
According to a report on RadioInsight.com, Townsquare Media Group, which owns stations in Norwich, Oneonta and Delaware County, as well as many others, filed a Special Temporary Authority filing with the Federal Communications Commission to turn off 97.5 WTBD-FM Delhi, and the simulcast of “The Eagle” 94.7 WIYN Deposit/100.3 WDHI Delhi/Oneonta.
WDLA and WDLA-FM in Walton have also gone silent, though we can’t find that Townsquare has filed paperwork to allow that to happen.
This is personal to me. I used to work at all but one of those stations, as well as a couple others that are now under the Townsquare umbrella.
While my entry into the media world was as a teenage stringer for a community newspaper in 1978, I became a teenage radio announcer a year later. The next 18 years of my career, through college and beyond, was in radio.
According to the filing, Townsquare Media Group said the reason for taking the stations off the air was, “Due to economic conditions in the market, the licensee was forced to take the station off the air temporarily. The licensee respectfully requests special temporary authority for the station to remain silent. The licensee will promptly notify the Commission when it is able to resume station operations.”
We don’t know if that’s why the Walton stations are nowhere to be found. An email to the person listed as the “market president” on the WDLA website didn’t return our message.
Local radio stations — like local newspapers — are part of the fabric of a community. They are a shared experience, something people have in common.
WDLA was Delaware County’s first radio station, launched in May 1951. WDLA-FM was added in the 1970s. WIYN in Deposit and WDHI in Delhi — also owned by the Delaware County Broadcasting Corporation — came along in the 1990s. WTBD was added by a successor company sometime later.
The stations were deeply ingrained in the community, a real hub for learning about local news and events. Remote broadcasts at big events were common. The on-air personalities were well-known neighbors of those who listened. One could listen to live broadcasts of high school football games each Saturday in the fall and basketball games a couple times each week during that season. When a local team made a run in the sectional and state playoffs, the radio team was there. I was part of crews that traveled to Binghamton, Syracuse or Glens Falls to cover the action so listeners could follow from home.
And we had news departments. It was only two guys, but their full-time job was covering news. That was the bulk of my career — first as the reporter attending the meetings and events we covered and later as the news director anchoring morning newscasts and assigning the other journalist to cover stories.
What little news there is on the few remaining Townsquare stations these days is mostly poorly rewritten from stories that appear in this newspaper.
It’s hard to say if Townsquare’s Delaware County stations will return to the air, or if the company’s Oneonta stations will follow them into the abyss.
In letters of response dated Jan. 25, the FCC accepted the company’s request to temporarily turn off the Delhi and Deposit stations. The company has until Jan. 6, 2025 to turn them back on or lose its licenses to operate them. The WDLA website still exists, despite the absence of a radio signal at 1270 AM or 92.1 FM.
It’s also a bit concerning that the building where the company has its studios at 34-36 Chestnut Street in Oneonta is listed for sale.
I should note here that independent stations WCDO and WCDO-FM in Sidney and WIOX in Roxbury are still serving Delaware County, and doing it well, but from its fringes.
While we compete with radio stations for attention and advertising dollars, we understand that local media in many forms are important parts of communities. I hope local radio does not disappear from the region.