Subject: Re: demise of WHDH (AM)

[Mark Laurence]

On Jan 5, 2009, at 12:59 AM, A. Joseph Ross wrote:

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

But that's not quite the story either.  The Record American had a  
"Sunrise edition" with red pictures of the sun across the top, which  
came out in the morning, and a "Home edition" the night before with a  
green stripe across the top.  It had all the features and carried the  
date of the next morning's paper, but it hit the street in time for  
the evening commute.  I think there were a couple of evening editions  
for closing stocks and maybe some racing results.  So by dateline and  
masthead it was a morning paper, but in reality it was an all-day paper.

The Herald Traveler and Record American; and Record American and  
Herald Traveler continued that publication schedule but not for  
long.  The switching of the masthead names ended along with the  
evening edition, then it became the Herald American as the paper got  
a badly needed facelift.  Whoever had thought it was a good idea to  
replace the region's largest daily circulation paper with the design  
of the city's smallest paper, was not thinking too clearly.