Re: WCVB News Messes Up Boston Radio Call Letters and Welcomes Harvey Leonard

[Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com>]

>Joe wrote--
>Strictly speaking, it isn't.  The Boston station began as WBZA.  The 
>original WBZ in Springfield,
>later known as WBZA, was discontinued in 1962.

Yes but we were discussing stations with original call letters and original 
staff.  One of WBZ's earliest slogans was "WBZ, New England", since the 
station thought of itself as being much more than just a Springfield 
station (not that there's anything wrong with Springfield!).  The original 
plan was to just have WBZ plus a Boston repeater (or whatever they called 
such a thing in 1924) but the Department of Commerce took a dim view of 
that plan, plus when the station tried to simulcast, it produced a loud hum 
that was ridiculed by the newspapers.  This encouraged Westinghouse to find 
a permanent Boston studio and broadcast some separate programs from there. 
The new studios in Boston were assigned a call letter of their own to 
distinguish the programs originating in Springfield from the ones 
originating in Boston.  However, based on what I have read, there was 
originally no plan to move the entire operation to Boston.  But as it 
became obvious that radio performers had no desire to shlep to Springfield, 
the Boston operation was expanded. By 1927, more programming was on the air 
from the Boston location than the Springfield one, even though the call 
letters didn't officially flip-flop till the spring of 1931, when WBZ 
officially became the call of the Boston studios.