Re: Bring Back "Heritage" Calls

[Aaron Read <aread@speakeasy.net>]

At 02:49 PM 6/1/2003, Donna Halper wrote:

>>Steve wrote--
>>
>>Southern slurs aside, I see nothing that would be gained by restoring the 
>>WCOP calls to 1150...even in the unlikely event that country music 
>>returns to that frequency.  WMCA gave WABC a good fight "back in the 
>>day"....WCOP never really had a day.  Are you suggesting we return 
>>107.9's calls to WWEL too?
>
>I think our friend Laurence from Methuen's point was not that we should 
>worship all the old calls-- that wasn't my point either-- but rather, 
>there is a tendency to take stations whose history in a market was very 
>long and very respected and just throw that all away when the station's 
>ownership changes.  I applauded the management at WBZ which may have 
>changed its own name from Westinghouse to CBS/Infinity/Viacom/whatever but 
>which left the WBZ calls intact.


I'm sure Donna will back me up here, but it's also a marketing thing.  WBZ 
has invested a lot of time and money associating the calls "WBZ" with 
"news" in the minds of everyone.   However, if WXKS-FM changed their calls, 
who would notice?  They NEVER say them except for a quick legal ID at the 
top of the hour...otherwise it's ALWAYS just "Kiss" or "Kiss 108".   To 
give them credit, at least they don't try and hide their legal in music 
when they do it; at least it's well-integrated into their production cuts 
for the legals.  At least it was last time I listened to them (about a year 
ago).

This actually touches on something that's perplexed me...for the longest 
time WBUR has had the phone number 800-909-9287, which spells "90.9 WBUR" 
and for a long time they always said on the air "800-909-WBUR".   Then WRNI 
was created and, since they were sharing a lot of facilities and 
programming, they stopped saying "WBUR" and just said "9287".   Okay, I can 
buy that.   But now WRNI has largely its own programming and 
facilities...but WBUr hosts still say "9287".   I don't get it...the "WBUR" 
part of the 800 number is a valuable marketing tool, why not use it?   Any 
speculation?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aaron "Bishop" Read             aread@speakeasy.net
FriedBagels Consulting          AOL-IM: readaaron
http://www.friedbagels.com      Boston, MA