Re: "QUAD" Broadcasts......

["'A. Joseph Ross'" <lawyer@world.std.com>]

On Wed, 4 Jun 1997, Dan Strassberg wrote:

> For many years, the national radio networks, of which there were then only
> four (CBS, NBC, ABC, and Mutual) would not hear of affiliating with
> daytimers, or FMs (or Class IV AMs in larger markets). At some point, the
> networks (probably starting with Mutual for several reasons) realized that
> this policy was self defeating and they began to pick up daytimers in
> markets where they couldn't secure affiliations with fulltime stations. What
> year are you referring to? When was WTAO the ABC affiliate in Boston? I
> remember that when I first visited Boston, in the summer of 1947, Boston's
> ABC station was WCOP 1150, but Boston was also served by WLAW 680 in
> Lawrence even better than by WCOP.

When I got back to the Boston area in 1957, WVDA was the ABC affiliate.
Shortly after that (maybe late 1957, maybe 1958), WNAC dropped its NBC
affiliation, and WVDA/WEZE became the NBC station.  It was sometime after
that, maybe around 1960, that WTAO became the ABC affiliate.  I once
called the station and asked what they did about ABC nighttime programs.
By that time, "prime time" network programs had become largely
nonexistent, but they replied that they sometimes carried nighttime ABC
programs on their FM station, WXHR.  Which still doesn't answer how they
managed to handle ABC's experiment with AM-FM-TV stereo. Since Channel 5,
WHDH-TV was the ABC-TV station at the time, perhaps they used WHDH radio.
Or perhaps not.

So far as I can recall, WTAO was still the ABC station in Boston by the
time I went off to college in 1963.  I assume that affiliation was dropped
by the time WTAO became WXHR (AM)  around 1965 or so. 

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  A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                                          617/367-0468
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