WCOP

[Donna Halper]

On 7/23/2011 10:10 AM, Dan.Strassberg wrote:
> 1956 certainly sounds reasonable for when Plough acquired WCOP, though
> I think it could have been a couple of years earlier. IIRC, Plough (or
> at least Plough Broadcasting--maybe not the entire pharmaceutical
> company) was headquartered in Atlanta, where the O&O was WPLO (AM 590,
> IIRC). Another Plough station was WMPS 680 Menphis. There were more
> than three stations but I am drawing a blank on the others.

Among the stations Plough owned were WPLO in Atlanta, WCAO in Baltimore, 
WJJD in Chicago, the aforementioned WMPS in Memphis and WCOP  in 
Boston.  In the mid-1940s, all the magazines (I'm looking at two 1946 
issues of  Billboard right now) said WCOP was owned by Cowles 
Broadcasting.  Then, several of the Cowles guys then formed their own 
group in 1951, and according to Billboard, sought to buy WCOP 
themselves.  The three guys in question already operated a station in 
Nashville.  But WCOP was not owned by Plough yet.  The most visible 
executive at WCOP in the late 1940s and early 50s was Craig Lawrence, 
and when the media quoted him, they always said he worked for Cowles.  
Cowles was a Des Moines IA based company, as I mentioned in a previous 
posting, and they owned newspapers. They bought WCOP officially in June 
1944, paying Bullova and La Fount $225,000 according to Billboard.  
Cowles, which also owned Look magazine, purchased WHOM in New Jersey 
around the same time.  And as I said in my earlier posting, when the 
now-defunct Boston Post bought the station briefly in late March 1954, 
all the newspapers and magazines noted that it was owned by the three 
guys from Cowles.  I truly cannot find any newspaper or magazine that 
places Plough as owners of WCOP in the late 40s or early 50s.  The 
earliest I find is in fact 1956.

And while I was taking my own little trip down memory lane to research 
some of this stuff, do any of you recall a Boston disc jockey of the 
early to mid 1950s named Larry Welch-- he worked at WCOP and WORL and 
used the name "Voice of the Turtle," if I recall (I was really young 
when this was happening).