WBZ cuts Leveille, Cuddy, Dyett, poss. Desmarais

[SteveOrdinetz]

  Kevin Vahey wrote:

>If this list had existed in my college days there would have been
>fierce debate over the future of FM over AM. Now I wonder if AM wil
>even exist a decade from now.

Purely hypothetical of course, but what if on-line discussion boards 
& lists had existed, say 40 years ago?  What would have been the tone 
of discussion?
Certainly the rise of tightly-formatted Drake radio would have led to 
much weeping and gnashing of teeth about how radio was being 
"ruined".  Indeed, it took WRKO only 6 months to force major changes 
at WBZ, and drove them out of the Top 40 format in less than a 
year.  "Personality radio is dead", "they're just robots reading 
liner cards", "the same 40 songs over and over", etc. etc. etc.
But Al Gore was still in high school and the internet was decades 
away so life went on.  WBZ found success with a mix of MOR music & 
talk, WMEX ditched the whole, dated "goodguys radio" thing and held 
on for a number of years playin' the hits.  With instant 
communication fueled by a small number of people who are afraid the 
sky will fall if an old institution needs to re-invent itself is it 
any wonder there's so much gloom & doom?



>I think the biggest problem today is the lack of creativity on media.
>When there were only 3-4 TV stations and a handful of AM signals you
>HAD to be good. That is becoming less of a factor today.

Not quite sure I get what you're trying to say.  It seems to me the 
opposite would be true...with only a handful of media outlets you had 
a pretty captive audience.  You could afford to be all over the place 
formatically because where else would your audience go?  These days 
with so many more choices you have to define an audience and 
super-serve it.  What do you think would happen to Kiss 108's 
audience if they added a news/talk block from 6-8pm like WBZ had in the 60s?