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Finally, a chance to hear Bloomberg business news in stereo and classic rock on the AM band
By adamg on Tue, 08/20/2024 - 4:26pm
RadioInsight reports that the Beasley Media Group is for some no doubt very important reasons, swapping its current Bloomberg business talk at 1330 AM with its classic-rock WBOS at 92.9 FM, so you'll get the latest market updates in stereo and Metallica sounding like it's coming to you via a Radio Shack Flavoradio.
Adam 12 has to break it all down for you, so you won't have to miss a moment of Dave and Chuck the Freak come the switchover midday on Sept. 3 (and he breaks the news he won't be making the move to the new frequencies, which includes one of those sub-channel things at 106.1).
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Comments
Joe Mathieu
will be back on FM in Boston....
I guess
Bloomberg is probably willing to pay Beasley more to rent the station than they've been making from being roughly 15th in the Boston market. Dave and Chuck the Freak is just a simulcast from Detroit. Looks like there won't be a live human on-air presence on that station anymore.
Heck, you could buy Beasley for significantly less than the price of a new women's soccer stadium -- the company's market cap is $20 million.
I like Bloomberg’s classic
I like Bloomberg’s classic hard news feel, but I really don’t like patronizing ClearChannel. I listen to Bloomberg, “‘BUR” and “‘GBH” for news, but the latter two are so dumbed-down and patronizing, save for BBC and some gems. Who needs more than one airing of ‘Wait! Wait!’ and as a quasi-atheist I considered 90.9’s Saturday worship to be the most valuable, moral and intellectual broadcast hour. I don’t stream. How can you connect with a live broadcast from Marsh Chapel when delayed and compressed through a computer?
P.s., is it me, or has every broadcast channel started sporadic buffering? Has the FCC permitted a technology change?
P.p.s., I turn the channel when I see an ad on the station identifier. Gah!!!!!
You have to be Magoo’s latest troll
Need a new schtick
Sounds like a well-intentioned bot
Maybe Frelmont is a real person, or perhaps they're an AI bot, but they seem to be more intelligent than the others we've had here.
(No offense, Frelmont, if you are 100% human.)
I thought bots were screened,
I thought bots were screened, or is calling me a bot meant to be othering and convey a pejorative? I’m a liberal and have only voted Democratic, but I’m not deaf to conservative arguments and rebel at echo chambers.
No worries
I believe 100% you are a human being, and if I accused you of being a bot, I sincerely apologize.
I am what I am.
I am what I am.
I’m too new to have figered
I’m too new to have figered Magoo out. Are they a bellwether?
Two things
1) They're owned by Beasley, not Clear Channel.
1A) It's iHeart (blech), not Clear Channel.
2) You don't support a radio company by listening, you support a radio company by purchasing goods and services from their sponsors. You likely already do.
I got they aren’t CC. Thx.
I got they aren’t CC. Thx.
I heard once that iHeart(X) was Clear Channel rebranded. Is it not? If not, does it matter substantively?
I don’t subscribe to podcasts, so I’m not consuming that product. If I’m listening to bespoke commercial for an “underwriter” on NPR/Public Radio, or a proper commercial on Bloomberg I’m exposed to the ad, but I don’t feel influenced by them. I do feel influenced by the products, and veritable “promoted content” (by virtue of editorial and programming discretion and the push and cajoling of publicists and heavy-hitters) intercalated within the news and interviews. And, then there are the internet ads in AppleNews and every other site.
iHeart is Clear Channel
Sort of.
They changed the name a decade ago, so the Clear Channel radio stations are all iHeart stations now (at least, any they didn't sell off or shut down). But they also sold off the outdoor advertising business a few years ago as Clear Channel, so "Clear Channel" and iHeart are separate companies now.
If it's any consolation, iHeart isn't doing much better financially than Beasley.
No buffering on AM or FM
Don't like buffering? Get a real radio.
One of my biggest complaints about NPR is that they do not offer market exclusivity. In commercial radio, if you subscribe to a program, you get exclusive rights to air it and no one else in your market can have it. But NPR will happily let any competitor air the exact same NPR programs you air, even at the same time! They also offer them directly to listeners through their own Web site, in a spectacular "f**k you!" to their affiliates, who, by the way, pay through the nose for those programs.
Boston has *four* public radio stations: WBUR and WGBH, with virtually identical news formats; WCRB, with a classical music format; and WUMB, with an adult album alternative format. WUMB is not an NPR affiliate but is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It's also Boston's only true public radio station, being owned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Marsh Chapel? Bah. WHRB carries live services from The Memorial Church in Harvard Yard on Sundays, and the choral singing is quite spectacular.
I listen through my car’s
I listen through my car’s radio and maybe the pauses and breaks that I have started hearing recently is a production artefact or, new industry standard, or something other than buffering.
I’m a drive-time listener mainly and stray from WBUR, WGBH and Bloomberg to catch jazz and classical, and great music selections and news updates on WUMB. Glad to hear about The Memorial Church. Thanks.
I’d think by local agreement we wouldn’t have to suffer simultaneous ATC.
Music on an AM station
Seriously? Might as well just close up WBOS and call it a day. No one will tune in for that. Not when there's FM stations that carry similar music.
♪ FM-mmmmmm no static at all ♪
Fun Factoid: When Steely Dan came out with the song FM. AM stations were still playing music and refused to air the song thinking it was basically an advertisement for FM radio. In fact some AM station went as far to play a modified version of the song.. where it said instead "AM-mmmm no static at all" LOL (Click here to hear a remake of the modified "FM" song)
I remember WRKO doing that lyric switch
They modified a few other songs to slip in their call letters as well.
(Ah, memories of when 68 RKO played music - yes I mostly was listening to FM stations by 1981 when they switched to talk but a small part of me still died when it happened.)
WBZ 1030
I still can't believe WBZ 1030 used to play music as well.
Its been newstalk for as long as I can remember
590 (WEEI) was the all news
590 (WEEI) was the all news station.850 (WHDH) was maybe talk radio with Jerry Williams. Although 680 (WRKO) maybe flipped from music to talk at some point.
WEEI was owned by CBS
The call letters, however, refer to the Edison Electric Illuminating Company, a previous owner.
This is the station on 590 AM that is now WEZE, a religious station owned by Salem Communications. CBS ran it as an all-news station for many years, but sold it to the family that owned Papa Gino's. After some years, they sold it to the Celtics, who flipped it to a sports-talk format.
590 is only a 5,000-watt station. When the Celtics sold the station, the next owner moved the call letters and sports-talk format to the 50,000-watt station at 850 that had been a long time ratings leader as WHDH. The last sounds heard on WHDH as it switched to WEEI were the bugle call "Taps" and the sound of a flushing toilet.
The sports-talk format is now on 93.7 as WEEI-FM.
Ironically, when CBS owned WEEI, "WEEI-FM" was 103.3, billing itself as "Soft Rock" and using slogans like "Joni - Without the Baloney" and "The Eagles - Without the Turkeys".
Today's WEEI-FM, by contrast, is best described as "The Baloney - without Joni"; "The Turkeys - Without The Eagles"; and "The Fla(c)k - Without Roberta".
In the 1960s, most cars only had AM radios
AM was the first broadcasting technology, and owned the lion's share of radio listening up until about 1972.
When I was at WBOS in the early '80s, the station had an album rock format that included songs from the 1960s, '70s, and '80s. You could easily tell which songs had been produced with AM radio in mind; they had much more prominent midranges compared to songs produced with FM in mind, which emphasized their bass and high end.
Pure AM Sound
When I think of a song that has that "AM Gold" sound.. it's definitely 1966's "Cherish" by The Association
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWQgT2YeV1k
The song was engineered for AM radio but can be played in Stereo or Mono and you'd still get the same sound without any loss of sound or depth.
I remember WRKO when it played music
When I was very young. It was a huge part of getting up in the morning for many of us who lived in Burlington and had WRKO transmitted through hung-up telephones and toasters. I had friends who lived within a quarter mile of the towers and whenever the phones were hung up, WRKO played as if it was someone else was on the line (it didn't interfere much with live calls), I knew people who couldn't put phones in their bedrooms because the faint chattering coming over the receiver when it's on the phone's cradle is surprisingly loud in a quiet house. We lived across town from the Great Meadow where the towers are located, so it didn't affect us much, but on occasion, you could hear it faintly over the telephone. The only time I really noticed it at home was when I was given a crystal radio set for Christmas, and it was by far the strongest station that it picked up (WBZ came in second) Anyhow, my mother was a huge fan of Dave Maynard and Larry Glick, so our loyalties were with WBZ, and the kitchen radio was set to AM 1030 (with a little dab of nail polish on the station indicator bar so my she would know the best place to line up the pin). Besides, our neighbor a few houses up the street was Bob Raleigh, the overnight host on WBZ, so I guess we had to keep up appearances too.
WRKO is still in Burlington
Its three towers are right next to the Burlington Mall.
The call letters reflect the station's former owner, RKO General, Inc. The initials "RKO" stood for "Radio-Keith-Orpheum", which was a partnership among RCA ("Radio Corporation of America") and the Keith and Orpheum theater chains. It was later sold to General Tire and Rubber, who added "General" to the name.
In Boston, RKO General owned WRKO 680 AM, WROR 98.5 FM, and WNAC-TV Channel 7. In 1980, the FCC ruled that RKO General "lacked the requisite character" to be the licensee of WNAC-TV (and, by implication, all of its other radio and TV stations). Channel 7 lost its license, the first time a VHF TV station had ever been stripped of its license.
RKO General quickly lost all of its licenses but one. It persuaded Congress to order the FCC to renew the license of WOR-TV Channel 9 in New York, promising to move it to New Jersey, the only state that didn't have a VHF TV station. RKO did so and then sold the station, exiting the broadcasting business.
There were custom versions of some songs
Remember Meat Loaf's "Paradise By the Dashboard Light", with its prominent baseball play-by-play by Phil Rizzuto?
Rizzuto was, of course, the radio voice of the New York Yankees ("holy cow!"), and that didn't go over so well in Boston. At least one Boston station had a version featuring Dick Stockton, who did the Red Sox radio broadcasts at the time.
WBOS is moving to 106.1 FM
Yes, it will also be on 1330 AM, but that's because 106.1 is a "translator", that is, a station that's only allowed to duplicate the programming of another station. But you can be sure it will be promoted as WBOS 106.1 FM, and the only people listening to 1330 will be hobbyists in Sweden.
Beaseley could switch 1330 to digital broadcasting, which would give it stereo sound at least as good as FM. Listeners would need "HD Radio" receivers, but many recent cars have them.
KFRC 610 in San Francisco was playing music as late as 1985
One of their slogans was "FM causes brain damage".
Music on AM worked there because San Franciso's hills caused a lot of multipath distortion that made FM hard to listen to.
Mount Sutro
It also doesn't help that many FM and TV stations are broadcast from Mount Sutro, which is in San Francisco proper. That broadcast transmitter is very powerful and overpowers much in the bay area. Cable TV service near Mt Sutro doesn't work well because of the overpowering signal.
Most of them used to be on Mt. San Bruno
... at least they were back in the 80s, when I was on the west coast.
There are basically three choices: Mount San Bruno, Mt. Beacon (in Sausalito), and Twin Peaks (Sutro Tower). None of them cover the whole market, and none offer a solution to the multipath distortion problem in the city.
The San Francisco market is spectacularly difficult to serve effectively with FM.
"HD Radio", an add-on that provides a purely digital signal to radios equipped to receive it, solves the problem, but most people have never heard of "HD Radio" or think it's the same as Sirius/XM satellite radio (which is also purely digital).
If you have an "HD Radio" receiver, you probably bought it with your car without knowing it.
There is also an AM version of "HD Radio" that comes in two flavors: MA-1, which adds digital to the existing AM signal; and MA-3, which replaces the AM signal with a purely digital one. MA-3 sounds very impressive; MA-1, not so much. But you can't get an MA-3 station at all without an "HD Radio"-capable receiver.
Bloomberg
The Flavor radio sounds better than 1330 AM. Reception for that station is a disaster. The Bloomberg listening audience is much wealthier and probably will increase for 92.9 once it realizes they will be able to hear the station with a regular radio.
Nobody listens to Bloomberg radio
Bloomberg radio is essentially a 24/7 commercial for Bloomberg's financial services. It barely shows in the ratings, and that isn't likely to change, I think.
Bloomberg must be paying through the nose for access to 92.9 FM; God only knows why.
I do!
I do!
I’m not in finance, or anything, but I like the analytical, feel and the apparent objectivity and it informs on how the world is going around.
Just to clarify
After Sep 3, if I want to listen to 92.9 I need to go to 1330 AM? I clicked through to the Adam 12 explanation but honestly could not decode it. I'm probably tired but if someone could just give me a yes or no on this question, I'd appreciate it.
Yes
From what I gather, Bloomberg Radio will be on the mainstream 92.9 FM slot, while WBOS can be received at 106.1 FM (might be overpowered by WMJX 106.7) or the AM simulcast on WRCA 1330AM.
I don't know if you're old enough to remember the "big switch" of 1995, when WBZ (channel 4) went to CBS and WHDH (channel 7) went to NBC. Almost the same function.
Thank you
May your pillow be always on the cool side.
92.9 HD2
Adam also notes that if you have an HD radio, you can get it on the HD2 sub-channel of 92.9 FM.
My car is too old for such things
I just learned that 17 years old is a very old car in the modern age. Nissan doesn't even make the owner's manual available via PDF anymore. I had to go to YouTube to find out where the fuse was for the car horn (because the old-new fangled cars have 2 fuse boxes).
I am happy to have satellite radio in the car, in addition to AM/FM. That is how I listen to Bloomberg radio.
WKRP
That is almost literally the plot of the first episode of WKRP in Cincinnati and the basis for entire show. Life is art.
What year is this?
Is terrestrial radio even still a thing? All this talk about AM and FM sounds so anachronistic.
Awwww, aren't you cute....
..
how else
Am I going to hear Hotel California, I ask you
The free airwaves.
The free airwaves.
This is more reminiscent to
This is more reminiscent to me of when Infinity took the "Pirate Radio" hard rock/ metal format- which had a short heyday in the early 90's-ended up placing it on an AM station in New York- even with the involvement of members of the Howard Stern show
Retired white guy driving one
Retired white guy driving one of his classic expensive cars listening to the music of his wild teen years and checking his hedge fund and stock market at the same time. Made more money from his plumbing business than a lawyer or doctor He'll love this radio station.
1330 AM was once WCRB, classical radio
WCRB started there, later adding an FM station but continuing to simulcast it on 1330 AM for years.
Later I remember it becoming WDLW, Boston's first country music station.
1330 was the original WCRB
"CRB" stood for Charles River Broadcasting. The station signed on in 1948, but didn't go classical until 1950-51.
Dave Tucker, long time afternoon drive host and program director, was an original WCRB employee from 1948, and was still on the air in the 1990s.
What was their original format, before classical?
In later years before the purchase by WGBH, they re-interpreted their call letters as
We're Classical Radio Boston
WCRB started as a garden variety local radio station
...playing popular music, airing high school football games, and taking network radio shows.
They were a 500-watt daytime-only station on 1330. Eventually, they got nighttime operating authority and a power increase to 5,000 watts.
In 1950, the station on 1090 that afterwards became WILD was a classical station called WBMS, They also had an FM on 104.1, but no listeners for it, as almost no one had FM radios in 1950.
WBMS decided to dump the classical format and shut down the FM, laying off, among others, one Richard L. Kaye. WCRB's owner Ted Jones connected with Richard and decided to switch WCRB to classical, a process that took about a year. He hired Richard as program director. In 1954, WCRB applied for an FM license on 102.5, and Richard began airing Boston Symphony concerts in stereo, with left channel on the AM and right channel on the FM. Stereo FM didn't exist back then, so this was a novelty.
Richard retired as chairman of the board in 1995, four years after Ted Jones died. Ted's son Chris owns WCRI 95.9 on Block Island, also a classical station.
WCRB flipped the 1330 station to an adult standards format in 1975, and sold it afterwards to a man whose name I've forgotten; it became WDLW with a country music format. WCRB FM 102.5 was sold to Greater Media in 2006, and the call letters and classical format moved to Nassau Broadcasting's 99.5 station, which WGBH bought in 2009.
104.1
was later the frequency for WBCN, which again started as a classical station for its first decade before becoming the legendary rock station that most people now remember it as.