A look back to 1991

[Scott Fybush]

At 05:45 PM 7/12/2004 -0400, you wrote:
>On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 16:34:19 +0000, Kevin Vahey wrote:
> > Was reading old Globes from 1991 when the Boston Celtics decided to flip
> > WEEI from all news to sports.
> >
> > The move was made to save money and the station expected billings to
> > drop 50%. WBZ  didn't want to touch its happy talk and at the time it
> > was thought WBUR would be the big winner.
> >
> > What we didn't know at the time was it would mean the end of WHDH.
>
>Ah, but WBZ did touch its happy talk. Almost immediately they dropped talk 
>in PM
>drive and had an expanded news block, with the exception of Upton Bell's
>mid-morning show.

IIRC, Upton was already gone from BZ by then. When I signed on in the 
spring of 1992, the schedule looked like this:

5-10 AM WBZ Morning News - Gary LaPierre/Peter Meade/Gil Santos
10-noon Tom Bergeron
noon-1 WBZ Noon News - Jacquie Goddard/Deb Lawler (I think)
1-3 Tom Bergeron (who'd been doing People Are Talking from 12:30-1 on 
WBZ-TV in the meantime)
3-7 WBZ Afternoon News - Anthony Silva/Diane Stern/Tom Cuddy sports
7-midnight David Brudnoy (Darrell Gould on news)
midnight-5 AM Bob Raleigh

Street reporters back then were Don Batting in the morning, Jacquie Goddard 
middays and Carl Stevens in the afternoon.

I came on board in June, and by July or August Peter was gone from 
mornings, with a series of newspeople being auditioned in his slot, which 
Deb eventually got (that was my first writing gig there, in fact). That 
took mornings to all-news.

Later in 1992, with the help of several ex-WEEIers who came on board (Bob 
McMahon, Bob Ames and Bill Lawrence, most notably), Bergeron's talk show 
was replaced by the Midday News (I was the first writer for that, too, when 
it launched.)

Others who came over from WEEI when it folded were Paul Connearney (now the 
assistant news director, then the morning news editor), Jill Madigan 
(afternoon news editor) and Carol Lanigan (now an assignment editor at WFXT).

Jay McQuaide came back from Orlando and WDBO in the fall of '92 or spring 
of '93 to join the midday news. That's about the time that Ed Donahue came 
over from WKOX to be a newswriter; he'd eventually become an editor, a 
weekend anchor and then depart for AP Network News, where he's now heard 
constantly.

Don Huff joined the fold in '94 after WHDH folded. Rod Fritz came over for 
a while, too, but he moved on to other things and ultimately became WRKO's 
news director circa 1997. It seems to me that there may have been some talk 
of bringing Listo Fisher back as well, but nothing came of it and he 
eventually ended up at WRKO with Rod.

Bob Ames moved over to WBUR around '94 or '95 and ended up down at WRNI in 
Providence for a while.

Flo Jonic joined us in '95 when Don Batting retired. I don't remember where 
she had been working before WBZ, but she's certainly become an institution now.

I think Flo was the last new hire before I left in January 1997; lots of 
voices have come and a few have gone since then, but I'll leave that to 
those who were around for it.

s