WATD(AM) now WBMS

[Donna Halper]

On 3/6/2019 9:42 AM, Rob Landry wrote:
>
> Oh, wow. I never knew there was a WHEE in Boston. In the late 1980's 
> and 1990's did some work for WILD, mostly as a stand-in for Grady 
> Moates when he was out of town, and mostly at the old Medford 
> transmitter site on Corporation Way (which road no longer exists). 
> There was an ancient FM antenna on the old tower tuned to 104.1, left 
> over from an abortive attempt at a WBMS-FM. This FM was, I was told, 
> on the air only briefly before it was shut down as unprofitable and 
> the license surrendered.


You are correct, Mr Landry!  WBMS did indeed start a short-lived FM at 
104.1, in 1947, but it went dark in 1949.  That happened to a lot of the 
first wave of FM stations in the late 1940s-- most Americans were more 
interested in buying a television, rather than buying an FM receiver, 
and few of the early FMs were able to find enough of an audience to 
survive.


-- 
Donna L. Halper, PhD
Associate Professor of Communication & Media Studies
Lesley University, Cambridge MA