Subject: Re: demise of WHDH (AM)

[A. Joseph Ross]

On 4 Jan 2009 at 4:57, Bill Smith wrote:

> Don't forget, the reason the Herald was sold, rather than
> abandoned, after the license battle  was that Hearst was a willing
> buyer 

But all they actually sold were the plant and the intellectual 
property.  The paper itself folded.  I believe the HT tried to find a 
buyer who would keep the paper going, but there were no takers.

> 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.  

Actually, it was the evening American before the consolidation.  IIRC 
the nominally Morning Record actually came out late in the evening, 
dated the next morning.

> 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. 

Not quite.  Neither paper had an evening edition by then.  The 
Traveler ceased publication in the fall of 1966, and the morning and 
Sunday Herald became the Herald-Traveler.  I believe the 
consolidation of the Record and the American also resulted in only a 
morning paper.  When Hearst bought the HT, the result was the Herald 
Traveler Record American mornings and the Sunday Herald Traveler and 
Sunday Advertiser on Sunday.  No evening paper.

>  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. 

Yes, but I think the Sunday paper used the name "Herald Advertiser" 
for awhile, too.
 
> Finally, the right-wing nonsense about the Kennedys rigging the Ch. 5
> proceedings have long ago been debunked and need no further
> discussion.

I don't know, but I long ago noticed that, from the original license 
grant, every administrative action in favor of the Herald Traveler 
took place under the Eisenhower administration, while every action 
against them took place under the Kennedy and Johnson 
administrations.  The final shutoff was in the courts, which were 
legally bound to respect the descretion of administrative agencies, 
so long as the decision was within the agency's legal authority and 
supported by substantial evicence.  And, if the courts were inclined 
to be partisan, most Federal judges by 1972 still had been appointed 
by Democratic Presidents, including a number of Roosevelt and Truman 
appointees who were still on the bench.

-- 
A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                           617.367.0468
 92 State Street, Suite 700                   Fax 617.507.7856
Boston, MA 02109-2004           	         http://www.attorneyross.com