Re: Changes at WODS

[Nostatic <nostatic@attbi.com>]

Rivers originally came to Boston in the late 80's to program WZOU.  It 
wasn't too long before Kiss 108 was getting some serious competition 
from 94.5.  Then owner Richie Balsbaugh lured Rivers  to Kiss a year or 
two later when Sunny Joe was canned.  Eventually Rivers and Kiss put 
away WZOU for good and WZOU wound up flipping to a CHR/Rhythmic format. 
 Once the duopoly rules were enacted in the early 90's , Balsbaugh 
bought 94.5, which by then had changed calls to WJMN.  I think that 
Cadillac Jack was in place as PD at JMN when Balsbaugh aquired it, but 
that Rivers wound up being the OM, or in one form or another was the 
major decisionmaker for both stations.  He set up most of the "synergy" 
between the stations in regards to music and promotions, with Kiss 
skewing older and JMN going for the teen and minority audiences, which 
still exists today.  

Rivers left Kiss in 1993 to take a national PD/consultant gig within 
Pyramid, and he brought in John Ivey to take his place at Kiss 108.  I t 
was Ivey that let JJ go,  not Rivers.    At the time, it was thought 
that JJ's ratings lagged behind the rest of the station, and that was 
the reason  his contract was not renewed.   Who knows what the real 
reason was.  I would guess that with Rivers' friendship with JJ, along 
with his tendency to use older, well established personalities on his 
stations, it was inevitable that JJ would be part of the mix at WODS.  


Roy Lawrence wrote:

>Did Steve Rivers also program or consult for WZOU in
>the later 80's? I seemed to recall that was about the
>time Sunny Joe White was out of Kiss. Not sure of the
>exact time line. Perhaps someone here might remember?
>