Dick Summer reveals the REAL father of classic rock radio inBoston

[A. Joseph Ross]

On 1 Aug 2006 at 7:17, Dan Strassberg wrote:

> What triggered the affiliation shift was WTRY being sold to a group
> from Providence RI headed by a guy named Mowry Lowe. 

I always wondered about that.

> Anyhow, WTRY, as a CBS affiliate, had had several local programs that
> were top-rated in the market. One was Paul Flanagan's Tri-City
> Ballroom, a call-in request show (no calls on air) heard Saturday
> nights from 10:00 PM to 1:00 AM. 

And within the next year, Flanagan moved to WPTR.  

> Back in the mid-50s, most people regarded the decline of the daytime
> radio soap operas and the departure to TV of headlined nighttime fare,
> such as Fred Allen, Jack Benny, and Gunsmoke, as signs of the end of
> radio's Golden Age. 

I remember hearing a promo in which Jack Benny said that his show 
would soon be on WROW.  That places the time of the affiliate shift 
as sometime after February 1955. I first listened to Jack Benny for 
his birthday show that month, after my mother told me that it was his 
birthday and that he kept saying he was 39.  I thought the show might 
be about his birthday, and it was.  I now have a tape of that show.  
And I listened to it on WTRY.  I'm guessing that the affiliation 
shift may have taken place sometime that spring, since the Jack Benny 
radio show ended in May 1955, though it continued in reruns for 
another couple of years.

-- 
A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                           617.367.0468
 15 Court Square, Suite 210                 Fax 617.742.7581
Boston, MA 02108-2503           	         http://www.attorneyross.com