Pete Sheppard On WCAP

[Mark Watson]

According to postings elsewhere and from Pete Sheppard himself via his Twitter account, starting tomorrow his show will be on WCAP weekdays from 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM. Pete most recently was co-hosting an afternoon show on WUFC (1510) and is best known for his years at WEEI. Currently in the 11:00 hour at WCAP Jack Baldwin was on Mon-Wed, with locally hosted and most likely brokered financial talk Thrus & Fri. I wonder how long Pete will last at 'CAP?

I bumped into a former WCAP staffer at Dracut Old Home Day yesterday. In a short conversation he mentioned hearing rumblings about Pete Sheppard coming to 'CAP. Doing some on-line searching led to confirming this. He also mentioned the recent sad state of technical and programming affairs there. He worked for the Cohens for many years, and while Ike was alive he kept up with transmitter site, transmitter plant and equipment maintainance. After Ike passed Maurice may not have kept up with it as much, but they never had as much downtime as they've had recently (twice in the last 4 months being off the air for 3 or 4 days). And the programming issues he alluded to are the addition of more brokered shows and over the last couple of months, half hour informercials, such as "The Brain Health Show" and other similar shows weekdays at 12:30 PM, displacing a half hour of local programming. He feels such shows drives away what audience they may have, even though they may bring in some cash for the station. The last few years Maurice Cohen had the station he sold time to Spanish programmers, but only the 10 PM-12 Midnight slot, which didn't disrupt any daytime programming.

Mark Watson