RE: Lost 45's #2 (was Re: ** A Brand New Boston Radio Show!)

["elipolo@earthlink.net" <elipolo@earthlink.net>]

>Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2002 03:57:04 -0400
>From: "R Palino" <rpalino@mailandnews.com>
>Subject: Re: Lost 45's  #2 (was Re: ** A Brand New Boston Radio Show!)
>
<<<<...the incoming new PD (who sunk 1150 WMEX over the next year, though
>>that may have been Greater Media's plan anyway)....<<
>
>This is a recurring theme I see from time to time that bothers me.
>(Nothing personal against you Eli.)
>
>Why would a company spend millions of dollars on a property to then sabotage
>it...and drive it's value into the ground...?

I worked at Greater Media's WMEX from 1986 to 1988, and I couldn't see any 
other possible reasons besides intending the station to fail for the internal 
sabotage that kept recurring, besides perhaps simple short-sightedness and
blind egotism. It appeared that whenever that station began to show any 
ratings, they'd fire the on-air personalities who achieved them (for "cost-
cutting" of salaries), or change a somewhat successful playlist to something
that bombed.

1150 WMEX came on the air as Boston's only oldies station at the time in 1985 
with a professional, veteran on-air crew including Quentin Migliori, Ron 
Scott, Jack Nash, Scott Roberts, and (soon) Little Walter, among others. It 
was getting about a 2+ share, not bad for a 5000 watt directional AM that 
didn't cover some suburbs well in the day and didn't go north or west of 128 
at night at all.

By late 1986, management (above the PD) started ordering layoffs of all the 
DJ's one by one, until by late 1987 WMEX was only live in AM drive with PD 
Gary James, and Little Walter on Saturday nights. The rest was the Transtar 
"Oldies Channel", an extremely generic and boring satellite service. (I was hired as a board-op for it).

Even before WMRQ became WODS, "The Oldies Channel" had brought WMEX's ratings 
down from averaging above a 2 to unrateable, below 0.1. I don't know what the 
oldies fans were listening to, perhaps AC, classic rock, or news/talk, but 
practically no one was listening to "The Oldies Channel" on WMEX.

When WODS came on in late 1987, WMEX PD Gary James somehow apparently had talked management into trying to regain listeners for WMEX by dropping "The
Oldies Channel", rehiring a couple of professional DJ's and allowing the
satellite board-ops (such as myself) who had previous on-air experience to do
airshifts (for the same low board-op pay, but we were happy to be on the air).

Against WODS's tight, narrow formatting we went with a wide selection of at
least 2000 oldies, no playlist, lots of requests and spontaniety. With WODS
competing, we managed to go from zero to 0.9 in summer 1988. Not much, but 
something.

When Gary left in late 1988, GM overlooked qualified in-house and local people 
for the PD job, and hired a PD from one of their Detroit area stations who 
did not seem to know the Boston market or to want to listen to anybody.

This new PD formatted WMEX with a playlist that sounded just like a junior 
WODS, and eliminated all the request shows. I suggested that we should try to 
continue to build on the following we have, who were listening because we were 
different, and that trying to imitate a 50,000 watt FM station with a 5,000 
watt AM in the same city won't work.

I was "let go" the next day, and I watched over the next year as WMEX's rigid
imitation of WODS sunk the ratings to nothing again, and once the PD's year
contract was up, the oldies format was discontinued. I know that, in general,
locally produced live music radio on AM is practically dead these days, but it
seemed to me that in 1150 WMEX's case, TPTB at GM were doing everything they
could to help prematurely steer it toward that fate for it's last few years. 
Exactly why, I don't know.

Eli Polonsky



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