Re: WBZ / WBZA

[Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com>]

As everyone knows by now, WBZ originally began at the Westinghouse plant on
Page Blvd. (The building is still standing, I am told, but it's in
disrepair...) Because the signal was weak in Boston, they opened up WBZA as
a booster facility at the Brunswick Hotel in late 1924.  But gradually,
after so many technical problems that it became a running joke in the radio
pages of Boston's newspapers (will WBZA be on tonight and will we be able to
hear it?), WBZA became more successful and easier to hire talent for.
Obviously, with most of the live performers finding it easier to get to
Boston than shlepping out to Springfield, gradually Westinghouse moved its
best announcers into Boston.  In March of 1931, the call letters were
reversed, with WBZ becoming the Boston call, and WBZA becoming the one for
Springfield, largely to maintain the tie to the parent company (Westinghouse
still had a major presence in Springfield back then).  Signal problems in
Boston persisted, and resulted, as has been documented in these very pages
and on the Boston Radio Archives, with moving the transmitter from its
Millis location to a better location in Hull in 1940.  I guess they did it
just for the Hull of it... <g>  But anyway, by the time the WBZA call was
finally retired in 1962, only the Springfield newspapers were upset about
it; I don't recall much complaint about it in Boston...

------------------------------