Boston radio, 1992

[Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com>]

Just rummaging through my endless piles of memorabilia and stuff, and found 
an old issue of Friday Morning Quarterback from 31 January 1992.  It had 
the Fall 1991 ratings in it, and WBZ was #1 in persons 12+ with a 7.5; WRKO 
was #2 with a 6.4; Kiss108 was #3 with a 5.5; and WBCN was in a tie 4th 
with Magic and what was then WZOU-- all had a 5.3.

But it's in the ownership and management that we really see how things have 
changed since January of 1992:  Kiss108 was owned by Pyramid, WBCN by 
Infinity, WAAF by Zapis (remember them?), WZOU by Ardman, WZLX by Cook 
Inlet, and WBOS by Granum, just to name a few...and of course, there still 
was a company called Westinghouse.  As for some names from early 1992, Bill 
Smith was doing AM drive for WBOS, Sunny Joe White was doing a stint as PD 
of WZOU (Steve Rivers was the PD at Kiss 108), Paul Lemieux was the MD at 
WZLX (Carter Alan was MD at WBCN)... and WBZ had just begun its official 
move towards all News several weeks earlier (WBZ had been phasing out music 
since the late 80s, expanding their newsblocks in drive-time, and by 1991, 
they barely played any music at all, if I recall correctly).  The fact that 
WBZ has remained at the top of the ratings in Boston for such a long time 
is commendable-- given the many changes in broadcasting in the Boston 
market, there has been remarkable stability at WBZ.