Fw: WCOP

[Dan.Strassberg]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dan.Strassberg" <dan.strassberg@att.net>
To: "Donna Halper" <dlh@donnahalper.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2011 3:46 PM
Subject: Re: WCOP


>I sure do remember Lawrence Raymond Welch--but mostly from WMEX. 
>Can't
> recall when he was there or for how long, but he was there. I 
> believe
> his next stop was WORL. He was a very talented guy and he had been 
> in
> Boston before WMEX--although I had not heard him then and don't know
> at which Boston station(s?) he worked. Although he was, from all
> reports, a kind and decent family man (he often brought his kids to
> work and had them on the air), he had a serious drinking problem and
> had left the market to work at what was then--I think--WKBS in 
> Oyster
> Bay LI. I guess Mac Richmond rescued him from that 250W daytimer
> (which I believe subsequently became religious WTHE Mineola--and
> that's what I believe it still is). WKBS/WTHE was/is plagued by 
> WWKB's
> killer skywave, which wipes out reception almost entirely during AM
> drive and PM drive. Must not have been a lot of fun doing AM drive 
> on
> a station whose signal at that time of day probably didn't quite 
> reach
> the end of the ground radials. For a time, the Long Island station 
> had
> a powerful 10 kW directional signal, but at some point, the station
> reduced power, though not all the way back to 250W; it's currently 1
> kW-D/348W-CH. That downgrade made possible the construction of
> first-adjacent WDJZ 1530 Bridgeport CT and co-channel WIZZ 1520
> Greenfield MA. Anyhow, Welch left Boston again after WORL--this time
> for Florida--and I heard that he had died not long afterward in a 
> fire
> that resulted from his smoking in bed. That was a shame--a big 
> talent
> and a good guy who, because of a personal problem, never really
> achieved what he was capable of and died an awful death.
>
> -----
> Dan Strassberg (dan.strassberg@att.net)
> eFax 1-707-215-6367
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Donna Halper" <dlh@donnahalper.com>
> To: "Dan.Strassberg" <dan.strassberg@att.net>
> Cc: "Boston Radio Interest"
> <boston-radio-interest@rolinin.BostonRadio.org>; "Thomas Heathwood"
> <HeritageRadio@msn.com>
> Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2011 12:23 PM
> Subject: Re: WCOP
>
>
>> 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).
>