Storied local call letters leave the airwaves

the last few unlistenable years.

WBCN fell victim to the consolidation of the radio industry. It was started as a classical music station (BCN = "Boston's Concert Network; he also had WHCN in Hartford, WNCN in New York, and WXCN in Providence) by T. Mitchell Hastings. When his Concert Network fell on hard times, he sold or lost every station but WBCN, which he flipped to progressive rock in 1968. The rock format was a success, and Hastings sold the station to Hemiphere Broadcasting in 1979. It was eventually acquired by Infinity Broadcasting and then CBS Radio. By that time, "album-oriented rock" no longer made sense; the baby-boomers who had grown up listing to WBCN had different musical tastes than their kids. Since CBS also owned WZLX, they created an older-skewing "classic rock" format for that station and a younger-skewing "modern rock" format for WBCN, replacing Charles Laquidara's morning show with Howard Stern and adding Patriots football games.

What ended up killing WBCN was CBS's desire to put an all-sports format on one of their Boston FM's. They chose 98.5, which had been running a female-skewing "hot adult contemporary" music format as WBMX. The WBMX format was bringing in more money than WBCN, so CBS moved WBMX to 104.1 and killed WBCN. The WBCN call letters are now on a conservative talk AM in North Carolina, unless I misremember. CBS moved them there to keep anyone else in Boston from using them.

WMEX's story is very different; as a top-of-band AM, it had coverage problems. WSRO on 650, near the bottom of the band, gets better Boston-area coverage with just 1,500 watts than WMEX gets with 50,000 watts. As music listeners began moving to FM in the 1970's, WMEX's owners began to see the handwriting on the wall. The station changed to WITS ("information, talk, and sports", but the joke in the local radio community was that WITS really stood for "what is this s**t?"), became the flagship of the Boston Red Sox netwotk, and moved its studios to Fenway Park. Then the Red Sox became unhappy with the nighttime signal, which was only 5,000 watts. So, Mariner Communications, the owner of WITS, moved its transmitter site to Waverly Oaks Road in Waltham, where they built a four-tower array that could run 50,000 watts day and night. But the ground conductivity in Waltham is not what it was at he old site in the salt marsh in Quincy, and most of the new signal went out to sea or up the coast; it puts a fabulous signal into Nova Scotia at night but is unlistenable in Framingham. Needless to say, the Red Sox weren't satisfied, and they dumped WITS.

That was really the last time anyone in the industry took WMEX seriously; since then, it's gone through a succession of owners, formats, and call signs. No one has been able to make it profitable. The station doesn't own its transmitter site in Waltham; the rent is exorbitant, and so is the power bill for 50,000 watts 24 hours a day. Its position at the high end of the dial puts it at a competitive disadvantage, and Boston is a top ten market that stretches from Plymouth County up into southern New Hampshire and west to Worcester County. The station's directional pattern doesn't allow it to cover the market effectively.

I have heard, however, that the station is being sold to a new owner and will be returning to the air.