Subject: Re: demise of WHDH (AM)

[Bill Smith]

Messrs. Vahey and  Fybush and Brother Ross raise interesting points about
WHDH and the Herald Traveler.  I have a different sort of take.

I think it's hard to imagine that the Boston newspaper scene would have been
all that different had Herald-Traveler Corp. won a permanent license for
Channel 5.  The only reason the Herald-Traveler was kept alive (other than
some Choate divorce issues) was to be able ro raise a scare tactic issue in
Washington, warning of the newspaper's demise if the company's temporary
authority to operate on Ch. 5 were to be terminated in favor of a permanent
license awarded to a competing applicant.  If H-T Corp. won the license, it
would then have been irrational for it to do anything other than kill or
sell the newspaper that was poisoning the corporate bottom line.  Don't
forget, the reason the Herald was sold, rather than abandoned, after the
license battle  was that Hearst was a willing buyer -- while the wealthier
Globe does not seem to have been a serious bidder.  The Herald at the time
had a facility that was relatively state of the art for a hot-type
operation, while Hearst had an aging plant in Winthrop Square that was
struggling to put out te all-day tabloid that was the city's circulation
leader  (although a good number of the papers were bought to get the day's
"street number" or  the special 'scorecard' edition sold outside Fenway
Park, so the circulation  figures weren't fooling Jordan Marsh & Co., Wm.
Filene's Sons, Gilchrist's, Raymond's,  or any of the other downtown
retailers that exercised, through the Boston Retail Trade Association, so
much influence that, as the late David Farrell pointed out, it never snowed
on Summer Street.)

Hearst had two interests in the Herald -- the plant, which it desperately
needed, and the name plate and respectibility of the Herald, with which it
could lift its existing property out of the mud. The Traveler  had long
touted itself and its Blue Streak Edition as "the paper that comes home," a
not so subtle rip at the Evening Record (Record-American following the 1960
consolidation) whose blood and guts orientation was simply not suitable for
family reading and which would be left on the train or subway, lest the wife
and kiddies see graphic tales of love-nest shooting sprees.  Hence, whatever
the results of the FCC proceedings for Ch. 5, the H-T and its  plant would
have been up for sale, and Hearst had much more need to acquire it than did
the Globe, which had opened a new Morrissey Blvd. plant in the late 50s,
and  which at the time was investing its profits in broadcasting and
magazine publishing (remember Affiliated Publications? Kaiser-Globe?  WHYN?
Billboard?).  So Hearst bought the Herald and tried to remain an AM/PM
combination, as the "Boston Herald Traveler and Record American" in the
morning and "Record American and Boston Herald Traveler" in the evening.
 The names were ridiculed to an early death and Boston Herald American
 became the nameplate, surviving  through the transformation into a tabloid
in the early 1980s until the reversion to just Boston Herald when News Corp.
bought the paper  a few hours after Hearst suspended publication in the mid
80s.

Ultimately, the renamed WHDH Corp. shareholders decided to cash out with the
sale of its radio properties to Blair. Had a TV been part of the mix it
might well have meant a sale to a major broadcasting group, although the
networks were maxed out under 7/7/7.  No matter. It seems clear that the
Herald was doomed even during the Ch 5 proceedings, that Hearst was the
likely purchaser, if only to acquire the plant.  I submit that the whole
WHDH-TV  license proceedings influence over the newspaper landscape in
Boston is vastly overstated.

Finally, the right-wing nonsense about the Kennedys rigging the Ch. 5
proceedings have long ago been debunked and need no further discussion.