And from Cape Cod.....

[Dan Strassberg]

It probably had something to do with the fact that the station was very
poorly financed and had colossal operating costs. Mariner Communications,
the Cincinnati-based owner that applied for and at least started to build
the very expensive Waltham facility went belly up (I think before the
Waltham plant was completed) and the high rent on the Waltham land has made
it pretty much impossible for any owner to show positive cash flow since the
Waltham move.

The short version of the story of why the station has to be at the Waltham
site is that there was no other site from which it could cover Boston at
night and not cause objectionable interference to some other station or
stations. That story has been rehashed here many, many times. If you are
interested, you can probably find more than a dozen threads in the archives.

I believe that before the station went dark (IIRC, the calls were WITS at
the time, but I could be wrong), one of the air personalities, Dana Hersey,
was considering buying it out of bankruptcy. He may personally have had the
dough, but he (wisely) was going to do it with other people's money. The way
I heard the story, he ran out of other people.

--
Dan Strassberg, dan.strassberg@att.net
eFax 707-215-6367

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Drown" <revdoug1@verizon.net>
To: "Dan Strassberg" <dan.strassberg@att.net>; "Don A."
<Donald_Astelle@yahoo.com>; "Paul B. Currier" <paulcurrier@adelphia.net>;
"A. Joseph Ross" <joe@attorneyross.com>;
<boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>; "Aaron Read"
<readaaron@friedbagels.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 4:13 PM
Subject: Re: And from Cape Cod.....


> We don't get WBUR up here in Maine, of course (except perhaps through the
> Web --- I haven't checked).
> But the discussion about competition between news/talk stations raises a
> question I thought about the other day: Why was WITS (the late '70s
> reincarnation of WMEX as a news/talk outlet) a failure?  This was at a
time
> when such formats, offered 24/7, were something of an innovation.
>
> -Doug
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dan Strassberg" <dan.strassberg@att.net>
> To: "Don A." <Donald_Astelle@yahoo.com>; "Paul B. Currier"
> <paulcurrier@adelphia.net>; "A. Joseph Ross" <joe@attorneyross.com>;
> <boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>; "Aaron Read"
> <readaaron@friedbagels.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 3:06 PM
> Subject: Re: And from Cape Cod.....
>
>
> > >From what I hear of the ratings, although "some" people may not think
of
> > WBUR as "real," the number of such people must be minuscule. As I
> understand
> > it, WBUR, though a news/talk as opposed to an all news station (as is
WBZ
> > during the day), is neck and neck with WBZ in listenership--at least in
> the
> > dayparts when both stations broadcast news. That may be less true when
> WBUR
> > is broadcasting BBC news than when WBUR broadcasts Morning Edition or
all
> > Things Considered with local cut-ins. Also, when WBUR sells underwriting
> > credits, the fact that its listeners are willing to pay to have the
> station
> > on the air must be a powerful tool when the advertiser must decide how
to
> > allocate its budget between commercial and public stations.
> >
> > --
> > Dan Strassberg, dan.strassberg@att.net
> > eFax 707-215-6367
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Don A." <Donald_Astelle@yahoo.com>
> > To: "Paul B. Currier" <paulcurrier@adelphia.net>; "A. Joseph Ross"
> > <joe@attorneyross.com>; <boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>; "Aaron
> > Read" <readaaron@friedbagels.com>
> > Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 1:27 PM
> > Subject: Re: And from Cape Cod.....
> >
> >
> > >
> > > > > I spent several hours at Deb Goldberg's election night party, but
> > > > > both before and after, I was listening to WBUR.  They definitely
> were
> > > > > carrying the election results and doing a good job of it, too.
> > >
> > > I think we are coming up against the idea that many people (not me!)
> don't
> > > think of WBUR as a 'real' radio station.
> > >
> > > Some people (even talkradio and news junkies) would never think to go
to
> > > WBUR.
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
>