1.150 Now "Officially"(?) WTTT & Stunting w/"Danny Boy"s

[Eli Polonsky]

> From: "Dan Strassberg" <dan.strassberg@att.net>
> Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 08:09:12 -0500
> To: "Kevin Vahey" <kvahey@tmail.com>, "Boston Radio Interest"
> <boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>
> Subject: Re: 1.150 Now "Officially"(?) WTTT & Stunting w/"Danny Boy"s
>
> Also, with 1150's almost unprecendented record of format failures, a
> prediction of yet another failure doesn't seem unwarranted. If I'm not
> mistaken, the only format the has succeeded on 1150 in the last three
> decades was sort of an accident--the station was in receivership and the
> trustee put on a satellite-delivered urban gold format. For the first time
> in decades, and with the benefit of ZERO promotion, the station made a
> respectable showing in the ratings. Of course, the new owners weren't
> perceptive enough draw any lessons from that experience.

I've heard that the success of then-WNFT 1150 briefly running
"The Touch" Urban Gold satellite format was an influencing
factor in WILD flipping from Urban Contemporary to their
present "Classic Soul & R&B" format (while acquiring 97.7 to
put the contemporary hip-hop there). I heard that, with
absolutely no promotion, "The Touch" on 1150 then equaled or
may have exceeded WILD's ratings at the time.

I think that was during a period when 1150 was being bounced
from one owner to another like a hot potato. Nobody really
wanted it and cast it off when they had a chance at a better
(FM) signal. Greater Media had sold it to American Radio
Systems which was then bought by CBS, who was then forced by
anti-trust regs to let all of those stations go but one, and
so they kept WBMX. The other former ARS stations were sold to
Entercom, who apparently weren't interested in 1150, and CBS
eventually sold it to Spanish network Mega. I don't know if
it was ARS or CBS who began running "The Touch" Urban Gold
format on it, but apparently no one who mattered made any
regard of it's success during the ownership shuffle.

1150 also got fairly decent ratings for an AM of it's signal
strength briefly in 1985 when Greater Media signed it on as
WMEX, Boston's only Oldies station at the time, fully live
with known oldies talent such as Quentin Migliori, Scott
Roberts, Little Walter, and others. It pulled around a 2.5
share anyway at first, but the subsequent "letting go" of
their best DJ's to replace them with a boring oldies "bird"
(Transtar's "Oldies Channel") drove it down to below a .1
within a couple of years with no other Oldies station on
in town at the time!

I don't know where the Oldies listeners went, perhaps
"goldish" AC's or Classic Rock, but they weren't listening
to "The Oldies Channel" on 1150. After WMRQ became WODS
"Oldies 103.3" in 1987, another attempt to go live local
oldies on WMEX the following year only resulted in a one
share at it's best, and in 1989 a new program director's
tighter playlist (duplicating 103's on a smaller signal)
turned off that "cult" following for more unusual oldies
they had been playing, and drove it down to a .2 by when
it flipped to a short-lived business news format that fall.

I still remember one of their promos: "You've just eaten
your Power Breakfast, and you just put on your Power Tie!
Now get the Business News you need to Power your morning,
Business Radio 1150..."

Eli Polonsky