1510 Formats and Call Letters

[MarcB]

MarcB:  What were in those beers you had the other night?   

Bub, you never heard of the ghost of WINTY the cat? Suggest you talk to Charlie Profit about it.

[UncleAL]

You guys woke me up.

I was at "the famous 1510" from 1968 thu 1972. Mac Richmond died and things changed. I was with him the night he died (no I didn't kill him) (he died after leaving the station that night). His ghost haunted the station at night..we saw him.

I jocked middays and later took over the talk show after Steve Fredricks went to WEEI. We had pretty good numbers and MEX always made money.

Lots of great Mac stories....i.e. : he came back from florida after a vacation..
while there he discovered the Super X drug stores.....when he returned we bacame Super X for awhile.

Hi Jerry, This woke me up too.

I was jocking at WMEX 6PM to 10 PM Monay through Saturday (just ahead of Randy Boone) when Mac died. It was Mac's companion that named me Al Carter (John H added the "uncle" part soon after). The station had a great momentum until Mac passed away. I too have some great stories from that era. Particularly from my perspective as a tech/engineer at WRKO full time (and weekend on-air at WFEA) when I was hired by John H at WMEX to replace Bud Ballou who was leaving for FM.

WRKO couldn't keep pace with the quick changing tactics of WMEX.  I remember the chaos that went on when each station tried to be get to news and back to music before the other.  WRKO had to jump through several hoops to make changes to their format clock.  WMEX just did it.  Then one day WMEX just stopped doing the news for a few days and 'RKO was really surprised .  It was a fun time in radio back then. A healthy competitive environment that was good for the listeners. Unlike the less competitive situation with multi-station ownerships of today. 

I fondly recall when I discovered Arnie Woo Woo as a youngster and dreaming about "doing that" at WMEX....

I also remember listening to WMEX the "Big X" and "Color Radio".

Uncle AL

[JEREMIAH]

Uncle Al:

Good to hear from you.

In my earlier post I neglected to mention that Mac (despite his reputation)
gave us a lot of freedom on the air. Sometimes he would call the newsman to go into the studio with a suggestion of a topic for us to talk about. One day the newsman came in and said Mac told him to "tell him(me) to talk abut football."'.
I turned to the newsman and said "tell HIM I don't know anything about football"
Mac's response was "oh".

If Mac liked a particular bit you did, he wouldn't tell you directly he'd tell someone else..""heh heh..did you hear what Jerry Gordon said"

If I had time I'd write a book.

Jerry Gordon


 

[Oldbones]

WRKO couldn't keep pace with the quick changing tactics of WMEX.  I remember the chaos that went on when each station tried to be get to news and back to music before the other.  WRKO had to jump through several hoops to make changes to their format clock.  WMEX just did it.  Then one day WMEX just stopped doing the news for a few days and 'RKO was really surprised .  It was a fun time in radio back then. A healthy competitive environment that was good for the listeners. Unlike the less competitive situation with multi-station ownerships of today. 

Of course, the downside of this is when stations got so into one-upping each other sometimes they lost sight of the fact that the public, not the PD & jocks across town was the audience.  One example of that is in the early 70s (I think you were at WMEX then) when WMEX and WRKO kept trying to "out-AOR" each other, the result being that many, myself included found neither station very appealing.  Too many obscure album cuts at the expense of the hits.

I agree, it was a fun time to be in radio, and I'm glad I was a part of it but I honestly wonder if the programming from back then would work today, but instead be seen as a giant trainwreck.

[JEREMIAH]

Old bones is right.

We did play a lot of AOR mixed with the hits(which was weird) from roughly '69 thru '70. Dick Summer was PD and he wanted to be with the times. But even with that our numbers were good. We were progressive politically as well. Very anti war on the air. We even emcced and broadcast live from a huge war protest on the Boston Common in front of 80 thousand college students. Senator George McGovern was the featured speaker.

After a while Mac yearned for the days of his 40 shares, fired Summer and we went back to just hits.

Mac had a unique way of firing people...because we all had contracts he couldn't just fire people so he would put them on from 4-6 AM. They would quit within a month.

It was a strange and very exciting time.

Jerry Gordon KNUU Las Vegas