Boston and ABC Radio

[A. Joseph Ross]

On 16 May 2010 at 20:33, Dan.Strassberg wrote:

> I'm pretty sure that the 1260 studios did not move to the street-level
> location in Park Sq until after Diehm sold the station to Air Trails
> and the calls had changed from WVDA to WEZE. By then, as WEZE, the
> station was no longer an affiliate of any of the (by then) four ABC
> radio networks; it had become an NBC Radio affiliate. 

The change from WVDA to WEZE, and its NBC affiliation was in the late 
1950s.  The split of ABC into four networks was in 1968.

> And IIRC, it did not remain an NBC affiliate for terribly long. No
> Boston-market radio station carried NBC Radio's full lineup, but at
> one point, most of the NBC Radio programming that made it onto the
> air in Boston appeared on WNAC 680. That was part of the early
> stages of the rapid decline of what had been America's premiere
> radio network. NBC was probably glad that the market's second-best
> signal was clearing some of its programs, but I doubt whether one
> person in 100 interviewed at random on the streets of Boston or
> Cambridge could have identitied the station that was carrying the
> largest amount of NBC Radio programming. In fact, anyone who had
> thought about it would have been likely to have answered, "NBC
> Radio--is there really still an NBC Radio?" 

I'm not sure how long WEZE was a full NBC affiliate, but I seem to 
remember when they dropped most NBC programming other than news.  
They continued with news for a number of years after dropping other 
NBC programs.

WNAC, on the other hand, became an NBC affiliate, in addition to 
their mutual affiliation, when WBZ dropped NBC affiliation, sometime 
in the mid-1950s.  That didn't last more than a few years before NBC 
moved to WEZE.

For Awhile in the early 1970s WCOP was the NBC affiliate in Boston.
 
The problem was that in the 1950s local stations liked network news 
but increasingly didn't want anything else from the networks.  This 
was partly because the networks had changed affiliate compensation so 
that it was less profitable to carry network programming than to go 
with local DJs.

-- 
A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                           617.367.0468
 92 State Street, Suite 700                   Fax 617.507.7856
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