[BC] In the AM radio wars of the '60s, they talked big and talked back

[Rich Wood]

------ At 03:16 PM 10/6/2009, Glen Kippel wrote: -------

>I am sure you are correct in that assessment.  I once worked for a station
>owner that thought FM stood for "Fine Music."  But, many station owners
>thought FM was worthless (and I worked for an FM that bought their license
>for $1.00) and let some long-haired people do their thing.  Couldn't hurt --
>nobody listens to FM, right?  So, there was a fresh new sound, few if any
>commercials, and listeners discovered FM.

We just lost one of those in Boston. When I lived there WBCN had a 
cult following. They played almost anything and mixed genres with 
wild abandon. They were one of many Classical stations in the city. 
You needed shots (both medicinal and and firewater) before entering 
the pit. The jocks were good and knew the music. News was sort of 
serious done by Danny Schecter(sp?), the News Dissector. It was owned 
by Mitch Hastings who also owned WNCN, New York, WHCN, Hartford and 
WXCN (I believe) in Providence.

WBCN was destroyed by corporate control when sold and Wall 
Street.  It lost its "underground" image.

Think back at all the FM stations that were sold for a song or 
donated to schools because the owners had no sense of the future 
(Just like today). Those owners still alive surely must regret not 
being part of a true radio revolution. I'll bet Mistress Vicky has 
clients made up mostly of dumb radio people.

>So, are we seeing the same story with IBOC?  Nope.  It's the same formulaic
>programming (except for Rich's station!) and the extra channels are, for the
>most part, glorified i-Pods.  Why buy a new radio to hear that?  Sorry, I
>don't see IBOC getting off the ground.

It isn't getting off the ground anywhere but within the industry. I 
still hear owners complain about Docket 80-90 that dumped an amazing 
number of stations in markets already glutted. Now we're proposing to 
eat our children by adding as many as two additional channels per 
dumb station in markets where there's no additional advertising money 
(all of them) if they were actually programmed as radio stations. 
It's a chicken and egg situation where the stations are chicken.

Rich



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