Re: John Garabedian

[SteveOrdinetz <steveord@xtdl.com>]

At 08:41 AM 5/25/97 -0400, you wrote:
>In a message dated 97-05-24 22:48:53 EDT, you write:
>
><<  He was also PD of WMEX in the early 70s.  >>
>
>As a young student of radio broadcasting, it seemed to me that Garabedian's
>tenure at WMEX was sort of legendary.  Whether it's true or not I don't know,
>but he spoke to my radio class at Grahm about how the station was beating
>'RKO at the time he was PD.  He talked a lot about the comparitively poor
>signal 'MEX had as compared to 'RKO, and stated that the signal "problem" was
>not a major consideration, that if you give people something they really want
>to hear, they'll turn their radio or whatever to hear it.  That simple theory
>may still stand today.
>
>



Somewhere I have an article from an early '72 edition of Rolling Stone (a
truly unimpeachable source!) on John Garabedian's tenure as PD at WMEX.
Interesting, if a bit biased.  As Paul Harvey would say...here's the
rrrrrrest of the story.

True, WMEX had a very good book with respect to WRKO in the summer of '71, a
feat not often accomplished at 'MEX.  I don't have the particulars, but
apparently they did beat RKO in some demos.  This was at a time when
progressive rock was beginning to get substantial airplay on FM, and
Garabedian thought the time was ripe to play selected album cuts on Top 40
WMEX.  At the beginning of that summer WRKO let itself get arrogant and
complacent (being used to killer books), tightened up their playlist and
removed the hitlines.  

RKO was still consulted by Drake at the time, Paul Drew and Bill Drake were
no dummies....when the summer book came out, they adopted some of John's
better ideas, and with GT&R's deep pockets started marketing the station
again.  Meanwhile, John H kind of let his success go to his head, and
started going a bit overboard playing too many deep album cuts and not
enough hits, and by that fall, 'MEX was clearly beginning to sound like the
follower, not the leader.  I was living in Woburn at the time and was able
to hear both stations during the radio war.  Sort of ironic that John's
innovations made the competition a better station.  WRKO hung on with the
"album Top 40" for a couple years, but by the summer of '73 they'd reverted
to straight Top 40, without the album cuts.  Apparently, the people who
wanted to hear the semi-progressive stuff were kind of prejudiced against
AM, and those who didn't mind listening to an AM station preferred hearing
the hits over the 9 minute Yes songs.

As for a David whupping a Goliath today, my guess is highly unlikely.
Compare WFNX to WBCN...only the real die-hard alternative rock fans put up
with FNX's crappy signal.  I'm constantly amazed how many legendary stations
of the 60s were dinky little 1000W stations with weird directional patterns,
but beat the 50kW competition by better programming.  People seem to be less
tolerant of a noisy signal today.

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