It's Official: John Bassett Retires As GM Of WCCM

[Laurence Glavin]

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Roland Yackum" 
>To: boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org
>Subject: Re: It's Official: John Bassett Retires As GM Of WCCM
>Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2008 08:40:48 -0500

>Never forget that he ran one of the great local stations the region has ever
>seen, maybe even the last AM/FM in the country where a 1kw daytimer
>clobbered its sister full-powered FM in influence and revenue (kindly spare
>us scholarly tomes on the meaning of full-powered. Thank you.) Even after
>the sale to Costa/Eagle and a couple of frequency shifts, they were still
>fighting to hold the local commitment, even when finances dictated
>ever-increasing ethnic and brokered time hours and left WCCM without a news
>staff, ironic given the number of very talented people who passed through
>that facility over the years.
>Bassett could have retired years ago had he not entrusted his retirement
>stake to Curt's son's investment acumen.
>Now for today's trivia question: What do the call letters stand for? I've
>never seen it on any of the lists that circulate from time to time.

It's a creative  right-to-left Roman Numeral for 800.  Sometimes you can
develop a Roman Numeral  by ADDING letters to right.  So '6' is 'V' (5) + I (1),
VI.  Channel 56 (analog) did it by adding 'VI' to the Roman Numeral for
50, 'L', thus WLVI.  (It's quite a coincidence that their DTV assignment.
channel 41, is also  a 3-letter Roman Numeral: XLI;  I wonder if they'll take the
call letters WXLI next year.)  Using ADDED letters, the conventional method
of writing 800 wuld be DCCC.   However, you can generate a Roman Numeral by 
SUBTRACTION, by placing the subtractor to the left.  Thus '9' is 'I', one,
placed to the left of 'X' 10: 'IX'.  Using this method. you place two 'C's, representing
200, to the left of 'M, 1,000: voila 800!  At its current frequency, 1110,
and using "be read as One-thousand, one-hundred and ten (hey, this is like
doing an imitation of fellow-Wikipedia editor Kaimbridge Goldchild!)
Thus 'M', one thousand;  'C', one-hundred; and 'X', ten. (Eleven-ten 
could be read as 'XIX', but that's actually 19, and is used by WXIX-TV in
Cincinnati.)



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