Re: Boston Network Radio Affiliations: 1950's and 1960's.

[Dan Strassberg <dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net>]

At 10:19 PM 6/15/99 -0400, you wrote:
>
>According to Variety, WCOP switched to a top 40 format in October of 1956,
>and began printing its first surveys... does anyone recall when exactly
>they dropped top 40? 
>
A nationally publicized incident, which occurred before I arrived in Boston,
that is, before June 1956, suggests that WCOP was top 40 before then.

The incident allegedly involved Bill Marlowe (apparently before he got
"religion" and started hyping M-U-S-I-C not N-O-I-S-E). From everything I
heard, Marlowe was working at WCOP at the time (1955?). The station held a
record hop (or something) at MIT's Rockwell Cage (west side of Mass Ave--a
bit north of the main MIT buildings). Marlowe had exhorted his largely high
school audience to turn out en masse for the event and to "wear a tie; look
collegiate. A nasty rumble broke out between the locals and the MIT students
and an MIT student was seriously injured and later died.

Adding to the idea that WCOP was top 40 before 1956 is that, while I was
still an undergraduate at RPI (that is, sometime before June 1956) while
visiting my parents in New York, I visited a former classmate, Ed Greene,
who had dropped out of RPI and was working in a recording studio in the
basement of the Brill Building in the heart of New York's Tin Pan Alley.
>From the control room, I observed serveral recording sessions, one of which
was for the jingles that later appreared on WCOP while it was owned by
Plough Inc. At the session I observed, jingles were cut for another Plough
station, WMPS Memphis. But I'm pretty sure that all of the Plough stations
ran the same top-40 format, and that Plough acquired WCOP while I was still
at RPI.

Now, as I recall the Plough version of the top-40 format, the jocks were not
personalities; they probably all had "house" air names. They had a generic
sound and were all but anonymous. Also, in the fall of '56, Marlowe was
working at WBZ as one of the original "live five". So I suspect that the
Variety article really announced the WCOP had flipped from a personality
oriented top-40 format to the more generic flavor that characterized the
Plough stations.

Also, in a recent post, somebody supposedly listed the names of the original
live five, and got at least one name wrong. One of the original live five
was Leo Egan who, I think, was on from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM. I remember his
theme song, which began with "Here comes that Irish fella." Egan's name was
missing from the posted list. I think that John Bassett, whose name appeared
on the list, and probably was on WBZ at the time (hosting Program PM),
wasn't one of the original live five. I think that Bassett became a member
of that group a bit later, when Marlowe left for WNAC to host the evening
easy-listening program "Music from Studio X." RKO General had started Studio
X at WOR (I can't recall who hosted the program there), and not long
afterward ported the concept to WNAC.

- -------------------------------
Dan Strassberg (Note: Address is CASE SENSITIVE!)
ALL _LOWER_ CASE!!!--> dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net
(617) 558-4205; Fax (617) 928-4205

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End of boston-radio-interest-digest V3 #415
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