Old South Church Meeting

[Dan.Strassberg]

The change in call sign and format was accompanied by one of the most
ingeneous promotional campaigns in the history of Boston radio. IIRC,
the format flip occurred at sign on on a Monday morning. On the
preceding Saturday and Sunday, some of the major Boston stations,
including, IIRC, WBZ, WNAC, and WHDH, carried saturation spots
announcing--in a _very_ sultry female voice (whispering) "Every one in
old Boston is going wildwildwildwildwildwildwildwildwildwild." There
was no sponsor ID, no mention of a frequency, and no mention that WILD
was to be a radio station. Of course, if there had been such a
mention, the stations that ran the spots would not have accepted them.
The new owners, Bartell Media, which owned successful Top 40 stations
in several other markets including Milwaukee and San Diego, had
obviously purchased the spots under an assumed name. I don't know the
name of the woman who voiced the spots but she did then appear on
WILD, doing weather and traffic, I believe. The Top 40 format died
rather quickly and the station was sold or LMAed to someone named
Nelson Noble, who brought in Bill Marlowe, who played jazz/big-band
music in AM drive, Stan Richards (ex-WORL personality), who did a
fairly standard MOR show in middays, and Joe Smith (ex-WVDA
personality, and later a major record-industry mogul), who did Top-40
in PM drive. In the summer, when the station was on as late as 8:15PM,
I believe that Ken Malden did early evenings and played much the same
kind of music as Marlowe played in AM drive. The station sounded
great, but a 1-kW daytimer that did three kinds of pop music in
different dayparts had a lot going against it (even if it was right
between WBZ and WCOP on the AM dial). After not too long, Noble
declared bankruptcy and ISTR reading something about his attempting
suicide--but I could be wrong about that. I think WILD went dark for a
while, but I don't recall who bought it out of bankruptcy or what
format it had when it returned to the air.

-----
Dan Strassberg (dan.strassberg@att.net)
eFax 1-707-215-6367

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "A. Joseph Ross" <Joe@attorneyross.com>
To: "Dan.Strassberg" <dan.strassberg@att.net>;
<boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org>; "Laurence Glavin"
<lglavin@mail.com>; "Donna Halper" <dlh@donnahalper.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2010 3:22 PM
Subject: Re: Old South Church Meeting


>
> When my family moved back to the Boston area in 1957, I began to
> survey the (AM) radio dial to see what was there and heard WBMS.
> Not
> long after, I got to the same dial position and found WILD.  I was
> confused.  I had never heard of time-sharing, but that was one
> possibility that I thought about.  Eventually I figured out that the
> station had changed call letters.