Baseball radio in the Northeast

[Kevin Vahey]

Campbell owned WPLM and also wound up with the Bruins. For Bruins coverage in Boston he used 1330 as a backup. 

The Soxm then blundered with TV in the 90's leaving WSBK for WABU and then WLVI before just keeping things in house with NESN.

-----Original Message-----
From: "Paul Hopfgarten" <paul@derrynh.net>
Sender: boston-radio-interest-bounces@tsornin.BostonRadio.orgDate: Wed, 13 Jul 2011 07:04:56 
To: Martin Waters<martinjwaters@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: Paul Hopfgarten <paul@derrynh.net>
Cc: <bri@bostonradio.org>
Subject: Re: Baseball radio in the Northeast

I’d say YES, it was dysfunctional until the John Henry group took over. Baseball is first and foremost a business (if you want to own a team) and it has to be approached as such. I think IIRC that “Campbell Communications” had won the right to the Sox (not even a station per se?) and subbed out to WPLM, though I could be wrong and maybe Campbell OWNED WPLM at the time...

It was a pretty stupid move, none the less...

-Paul Hopfgarten
Concord NH

From: Martin Waters 
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 5:36 AM
To: paul@derrynh.net 
Cc: bri@bostonradio.org 
Subject: Re: Baseball radio in the Northeast

      --- On Tue, 7/12/11, Paul Hopfgarten wrote:
      Not to be picky, but it was 99.1 WPLM (I don't believe the Sox ever flagged 
      OR even broadcast on 99.5....though they did do night games only on 107.9 
      WWEL in 1978, guess Disco and Sox didn't mix, so they did not continue when 
      WXKS (KISS) started in 1979...)  . . . 

          OK,so I was already in Nutmeg Land -- listening to the Red Sox year after year on WTIC (AM),which has carried the games since at least the 1950's --and missed out on all this goofball business with the RedSox looking like they subcontrACTED putting their games on a really bad signal, then switching to a worse signla, then selecting as their "flagship"station an FM not even really in themarket, etc., What the heck was that all about, anyhow? Just another aspect of the increasignly dysfunctional ownership?