WEZE 1965 was Re: WKLB Frequency Change?

[Kevin Vahey]

I remember Roy Leonard telling me just before he died that WEZE offered him
a generous contract to leave WNAC but they couldn't match the
additional money he earned by being a boot announcer at Channel 7.

However, he laughed and said if I had moved I wouldn't have been laid off
except for doing booth announcing at RKO General when AM became WRKO and
wouldn't have taken the summer relief job at WGN that was supposed to be
for 15 weeks and lasted 30 years.

I remember my Dad switched to WEZE because Jess Cain talked too much.

The amazing thing is 50 plus years ago nobody saw FM as a threat to AM.
Detroit automakers were not mandated to put FM in cars. Mac Richmond said
his biggest mistake was not buying WBOS-FM when it was available for cheap
money. Westinghouse was clueless with WBZ-FM and CBS tried to make WEEI-FM
work but nothing stuck.

If you look back in the history of fulltime AM stations in Boston they all
had their time at the top except for WCOP and WBOS/WUNR. But even 1600 had
Ken Mayer who had a substantial cult following between Midnight and 2 AM
every Monday. WCOP had a slight run with Top 40 but their night signal was
worse than WMEX. Ken Carter hosted a very successful dance show on
Saturday's in Cambridge but otherwise not much except national NBC sports
events like the World Series.

WCOP did have a sports director in the late 60's who could do everything
and then moved to New York - Dom Valentino  I remember Dom doing a soccer
game from Lynn on 1150 and he could not hear the station at the Manning
Bowl.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/sports/the-faded-voice-of-sports-calls-past.html?pagewanted=all



On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 12:38 PM Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com> wrote:

> On 7/10/2018 6:26 AM, Kevin Vahey wrote:
> > WEZE was in a good spot circa 1965 as 'The Wonderful World of Music' was
> > consistent and their major competitor was WHDH that tried to juggle
> music,
> > news and sports. NBC even dropped WEZE in favor of WCOP to get Monitor
> > cleared in Boston.  WBZ and WMEX fought for the younger audience with
> 1030 doing well in the
> > burbs and 1510 well in the city and the North Shore.
>
> And many of us who worked in Boston still remember walking past the WEZE
> studios (street-level, Statler Office Building, in Park Square), and
> watching the announcers on the air.
>
> Kevin wrote--
> > Donna - Have you ever looked into Kaiser/Globe's odd decision to have 3
> > separate offices and studios for TV, FM and AM?
>
> Bob Bitner might know something more about that.  It's been a while
> since I did any research on Kaiser-Globe.  But as I recall, the company
> made other puzzling decisions too. Kaiser was an Oakland CA based firm,
> weren't they? And I do recall (vaguely) WKBG-TV going on the air in late
> 1966.  It seems the company's execs weren't always sure how to handle
> the various media properties they owned in Boston, and evidently, they
> did not want to give the impression that they were trying to consolidate
> them all into one unit-- this was, of course, the era before media
> consolidation became popular. They also owned individual properties on
> the west coast, including a TV station in Los Angeles, and KFOG Radio in
> San Francisco.  Anyway, I'm fairly certain they had separate GMs and
> even separate sales staff at their various Boston properties. But I
> don't recall much more than that.
>
> --
> Donna L. Halper, PhD
> Associate Professor of Communication & Media Studies
> Lesley University, Cambridge MA
>
>