User:Nathan Obral/sandbox/WAAF (FM)
Entercom and operated by the Educational Media Foundation under a local marketing agreement, WBZU does not broadcast any local programming, functioning as the Greater Boston network affiliate for K-Love, despite being located in the adjacent Worcester market. The station's studios are located in Boston's Allston district, while its transmitter is on Stiles Hill in Boylston, with a backup in Paxton. In addition to a standard analog transmission, WBZU broadcasts over two HD Radio digital subchannels , and is available online.
Historically, this station is perhaps best known as WAAF, which carried a of WBZU is a temporary one in light of the pending ownership transfer.HistoryEarly yearsOn October 5, 1960, WAAB-AM-FM was sold to WAAB, Inc., in 1968 for $675,000. WAAB, Inc., was owned by Ahmet Ertegun and his brother Nesuhi Ertegun, as well as record executive Jerry Wexler; all had just recently sold Atlantic Records to Warner Bros.-Seven Arts.[5] The FM station took on new WAAF call letters on May 28, 1968;[3] the call letters had previously been in use in Chicago on 950 AM for 45 years. In later years, WAAF ownership would claim a longer history than that of its own license, stretching back to experimental FM station W1XOJ in the late 1930s.[6] W1XOJ—later given the normal call letters WGTR—was part of the first FM network, put together by the Yankee Network and its principal, John Shepard, who at the time also owned WAAB. However, there is no connection, as the WGTR license was deleted at the request of General Teleradio on July 24, 1953.[7] Freeform eraWAAF ended its automated freeform station known as "WAAF, The Rock of New England", where the air talent was given total control over what music to play. The station was sold in 1971 to Southern Massachusetts Broadcasters, owned by George Gray, in an $800,000 acquisition.[10]
On November 7, 1971, WAAF was in the middle of an all-Beatles weekend when its transmitting building was damaged by a homemade pipe bomb, knocking it off the air temporarily and causing $4,000 in damage.[11] A group demanding the end of capital punishment and "parole law" in Massachusetts claimed it had orchestrated the bombing.[12] The station was forced to temporarily operate on a limited schedule from the transmitter site, as the blast put its studio-transmitter link out of service.[13] Gray sold his Worcester stations to the Robert L. Williams Broadcasting Company of Massachusetts in 1976 for $1.465 million; he had previously sold his other radio stations in New Bedford and Binghamton, New York, the year before.[14] Robert L. Williams also owned WEZN radio in Bridgeport, Connecticut.[15] Album rocker
Steve Stockman, then-WAAF program director, November 1980[16] By the mid-1970s, WAAF had settled in as an album-oriented rock outlet. The station was one of the first clients of the "Superstars" format, developed by consultants Lee Abrams and Kent Burkhart;[16] WAAF would continue to use their services until January 1984.[17] Promotional slogans of the period played off the call letters, including "The WAAF Air Force" and a giraffe mascot known as the "WAAF GirAAF".[18] WAAF had completed the first of several technical improvements to reach listeners in Boston in 1972 when it increased its effective radiated power to 16,500 watts; it had operated with less than 2,000 ever since signing on. WAAF encountered ratings success in the Worcester market to start the 1980s; despite newfound competition from WCOZ (94.5 FM) in Boston, the station attributed its success to extensive marketing, promotion and contests.[23] WAAF appeared in ratings surveys not only in Worcester and Boston but in Providence and Springfield; WAAF listening was even measured as far away as Peterborough, New Hampshire.[24] Remaining a "Superstars" client, WAAF relied on Abrams' playlist input and received criticism for not taking chances to play other music genres; Abrams notably told WAAF's program director in 1980 that new wave "isn't the coming thing."[16] Artists heard on the station tended to lean toward a harder rock focus from artists like Led Zeppelin, Ted Nugent, Van Halen and Pat Benatar.[23]
Steve Marx, then-WAAF general manager, over the station's 1981 Rolling Stones ticket giveaway It was during this time, in September 1981, that The Rolling Stones played a warmup show for a group of WAAF listeners at Sir Morgans Cove, a Worcester nightclub. WAAF connected with the band while they rehearsed at Long View Farm in North Brookfield and gave away all 300 tickets for the free show as a reward for locals respecting their privacy; demand exceeded 4,000 in what Radio & Records termed "an unprecedented radio concert promotion coup".[25] All day, station staffers drove around Worcester in unmarked cars handing out tickets to locals who had station stickers or T-shirts. While WAAF refused to announce the name of the location, WBCN obtained the information from a Worcester police officer, causing a large crowd of 4,000 to form outside of the 300-seat venue; 10 people were arrested.[26] WAAF promotion director Steve Stockman blamed WBCN for announcing the venue on-air, declaring his competitor's actions "reckless and irresponsible".[25] A few months later, Bob and Doug McKenzie (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas) teamed up with WAAF for a contest to promote their The Great White North comedy album, where the winner received an afternoon trip for two to Tewksbury, while the runner-up won a weekend trip for two to the Lowell suburb.[27] WAAF staffers came up with the contest idea after noticing a sign in Tewksbury that reminded them of toque knit hats referred to in the album. The station had also asked the town's fire chief to give the winner keys to the city, he declined, believing the initial offer to be a prank phone call.[28] Bell System divestiture, and charted at #70 on the Billboard Hot 100.[29] Rivers also performed "Just a Big Ego" ("Just a Gigolo" by David Lee Roth) which debuted as Roth announced his departure from Van Halen,[30] and was included in The Rhino Brothers Present the World's Worst Records.[31] Rivers and Zipfel attracted attention on the day of the 1984 United States presidential election by instructing their listeners who planned to vote for Ronald Reagan to simultaneously flush their toilets at 7:00 a.m., and listeners voting for Walter Mondale to flush their toilets at 7:30 a.m.; the station then contacted the various regional water authorities and based their exit poll off of the drops in water pressure.[32] Rivers left WAAF to take over as morning-drive host at WIYY in Baltimore;[33] Drew Lane replaced him and was later teamed up with Zipfel.[34][35]
WAAF attempted another unusual promotion where the station was to have dropped 100,000 one-dollar bills from a helicopter onto downtown Lowell on November 26, 1988 at 1:07 p.m. This event was abruptly cancelled at the last minute by Lowell city officials concerned about the safety of people who would have participated, while station management had intended for it to promote Lowell's revitalization.[36] "Untamed Radio"
John Gorman, on consulting WAAF's 1989 switch to "Rock 40", an antecedent of their future active rock format On March 10, 1989, New City Broadcasting traded WAAF and WFTQ to Zapis Communications in exchange for WEKS-FM (104.1) in Atlanta in what was a tax-free asset swap; each half of the transaction was valued at $15 million.[37] Zapis Communications was headed by Xenophon Zapis and son Lee Zapis, who also owned WZAK in Cleveland.[38][39] New City already owned WYAY (106.7 FM), and agreed to keep it in the Gainesville, Georgia market as a condition of the asset swap.[40] When Zapis took over operations in the summer, John Sutherland took over as general manager, promotions director Ron Valeri was promoted to operations manager, Nance Grimes was promoted to acting program director (Grimes left that October, with Valeri assuming the programming role outright)[41] and John Gorman—a Boston native best known for programming WMMS in Cleveland from 1973 to 1986—was hired as a consultant.[42] As a sign of things to come, Aerosmith was in-studio to play their upcoming album Pump two weeks in advance of the album's release.[43] Owing in part to Gorman's consultancy, WAAF hired Ruby Cheeks for morning drive that October.[44] Cheeks was formerly a part of WMMS's morning show and had also hosted evenings and afternoons, and had left the station in a contract dispute.[45] WAAF's musical direction was shifted to what was called "Rock 40", featuring harder songs by core artists, while increasing the amount of new and current music played; Gorman publicly called it a "fine-tuning" of the playlist instead of a format shift, while the move was also made to improve WAAF's ratings in Boston as opposed to Worcester.[42] With the relaunch, the station was re-branded as "Untamed Radio", a slogan also used on WRQK-FM in Canton, another station Gorman oversaw.[46] Greg Hill, who had joined the station's promotions department in 1986,[47] was promoted to overnights in June,[48] then named as Ruby Cheeks's co-host that November. While John Gorman's consultancy over WAAF eventually ended after he took over as program director for WMJI in Cleveland[49] and subsequently returned to WMMS and WHK (1420 AM) in 1994,[50] Gorman held high praise for Valeri's work as programmer for WAAF, telling Hitmakers magazine, "could you imagine what (Ron) would do with a full Boston Metro signal?"[51] Starting on January 9, 1991, WAAF's programming was simulcast over WFTQ due to what John Sutherland called "substantial losses" for the AM station's prior format;[52] among the people dismissed was Steve LeVeille.[53] This simulcast ended on September 8 when Zapis Communications entered into an agreement with the Boston Celtics, then the owners of WEEI (590 AM), to simulcast the newly-converted sports radio outlet under the WVEI call sign.[54] Alternative and "raunchy" lean
As the station continued to evolve under the "Untamed Radio" brand, John Osterlind took over as evening host.[58]
Much of the station's change to an aggressive presentation came with WAAF's further orientation to the Boston market, having opened a sales office in Pornograffitti and single "More Than Words", hosting a softball duel between the band and station staffers at Lampson Field in Billerica.[60]
Every November, starting in 1993, WAAF held a popular annual charity event "Walk and Rock for Change", raising money for food banks in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Liz Wilde would leave WAAF for the evening slot on WLUP-FM (97.9) in Chicago on March 1995.[66] It was her replacements in the afternoon time slot, however, that would garner the station ample amounts of attention and infamy. Opie and Anthony In early 1995, Gregg "Opie" Hughes and Anthony Cumia were a newly-established duo hosting a late-night program over WBAB in Babylon, New York.[67] WAAF program director Ron Valeri tuned into WBAB while visiting family in Long Island, and called Hughes to offer them a job.[68] General manager Bruce Mittman later recounted he "almost drove off the road laughing" from listening to an aircheck assembled by Hughes,[69] and after a competing offer from a Dallas station, Hughes and Cumia were hired by WAAF in afternoon drive on March 1995, officially replacing Liz Wilde.[70] Shortly after the debut of Opie and Anthony, Valeri left the station and was replaced by Dave Douglas; Cumia ignored directives from Douglas and dropped most of the music from their program. Despite this, Douglas cited their show as part of a high-profile airstaff where every daypart could easily be a well-performing morning show on another station.[71]
The duo had several publicity stunts throughout their tenure at WAAF, the most infamous one being "100 Grand" where after weeks of on-air promotions implying otherwise, the winning caller to a contest giveaway won a 100 Grand Bar instead of $100,000.[72] In May 1997, Hughes and Cumia started one of their most notorious promotions: "Whip 'em Out Wednesday", where women engaged in "flashing" to any oncoming drivers that had a "WOW" sticker on their car.[73] The show was suspended for two weeks after a confidential memo from management was read aloud by the duo, while Bruce Mittman cancelled the promotion after nine weeks when police contacted station management; Mittman denied the suspension was related.[74] A compilation album of their material from WAAF, Demented World, was released on October 1997.[75][76]
Gregg Hughes, on any possible regrets with his Opie and Anthony routines[75] Hughes and Cumia further accelerated the rivalry between WAAF and WBCN, especially after Nik Carter replaced Mark Parenteau against their show on WBCN.[77] Carter, who was African-American, was targeted not only by Hughes and Cumia, but by nighttime host "Rocko" for his ethnicity; a rant on Opie and Anthony in November 17, 1997 also contained what were construed as threats of physical violence towards Carter, labeled with the pejorative "Disco Boy" by the duo.[78] Carter responded in kind by calling WAAF "the hate station in Worcester" and "We Are All Fonies", in addition to in-kind pejoratives against Hughes, Cumia and Rocko, both on-air and on the station's website.[78] Hughes responded by telling the Boston Globe, "Eventually it's gonna come down to talent and, not to sound cocky, (Carter's) not in our league... (WBCN is) trying to create talk for their guy, a Howard Stern wannabe with no talent to back what he does."[75] WAAF would become the subject of unwanted national and international attention in April 1998 after an April Fools' Day prank by Hughes and Cumia claimed that Boston mayor Thomas Menino was killed in a car accident in Florida, accompanied by a Haitian prostitute.[67] This included staged phone-in reports from two people claiming to be a policeman and news reporter, respectively.[79] Menino was in reality on a flight as the prank unfolded; when notified, he joked about "being back from the dead" but filed a compliant with the FCC over the hoax, saying WAAF "blatantly disregarded the personal and public turmoil they were causing my family and the city" after Hughes and Cumia jokingly offered on-air to allow themselves to be stockaded at Boston City Hall Plaza and pied by Menino.[80] While the FCC took no action,[79] the negative reaction caused American Radio Systems (which had purchased the station, along with its AM counterpart, for $24.8 million on August 1, 1996)[81] to fire the duo and suspend Mittman for one month and Douglas for a week.[80] Mittman later claimed he had no advance knowledge of the prank, having taken the day off to celebrate his 20th wedding anniversary.[69] Both Hughes and Cumia signed a deal to host afternoons at WNEW-FM in New York City several weeks after the firing.[79] As part of the deal, Hughes and Cumia frequently appeared on Nik Carter's afternoon program through phone-in appearances on co-owned WBCN,[82] WBCN later simulcast their WNEW-FM program beginning in August 2001.[69] The Boston rock radio war
Tom Taylor, industry analyst[82] WAAF's rivalry with WBCN continued to escalate throughout the late 1990s. In February 1997, both stations engaged in a war of words over who had an advance copy of the Aerosmith album Nine Lives first; WAAF offered to play it over the phone to anyone who would call in, while during a listening party for the CD, WBCN announcer Mark Parenteau ripped WAAF as "juvenile" and "trailer park trash bottom feeders".[83] WZLX, co-owned with WBCN, wound up playing the album first over the air and received a cease and desist order.[84] That May, WAAF and WFNX management both accused WBCN and program director Oedipus of directing local bands away from functions hosted by either station. In a Radio & Records op-ed, WAAF program director Dave Douglas saw the booking of Primus, a band WBCN had played more than any other station in the Boston market, as insulting, along with a concert performed by Tonic not sponsored by any station but co-opted by WBCN.[85] The rivalry was justified. WBCN reported to industry trades as both an active rock and alternative hybrid at this period; WAAF shared as much of 59% of its audience with WBCN in the local ratings, while WBCN shared 32% of its audience with WAAF.[86] The overlap between the two stations became so pronounced that a Boston Globe story in 2000 pointed out directly how much WAAF and WBCN "sounded alike", with nearly identical music playlists and equally provocative air personalities, in what industry analyst Tom Taylor called "the rock wars in Boston." The competitiveness was especially notable as WBCN had several distinct advantages over WAAF: a signal centered in Greater Boston, the local rights to The Howard Stern Show, and the flagship station designation for the New England Patriots Radio Network.[82] Another unseen factor took place on September 20, 1997, when WAAF owner American Radio Systems was purchased by WBCN owner Entercom purchased WAAF and WWTM, along with WEEI (850 AM), WRKO and WEGQ from the combined entity for $140 million on August 14, 1998.[88] After the sale, WAAF moved its studios from Worcester to Boston at a combined facility with the other Entercom acquisitions; the city of license remained Worcester.[89] Prior to the merger and divestiture, WAAF was briefly simulcast on the AM dial again, this time over WNFT (1150 AM) starting on June 1997, replacing a previous simulcast of WKLB (96.9 FM) as a placeholder until ARS could determine a new format for WNFT.[90]
WAAF took credit for being the first radio station to play Godsmack in 1999, giving the band extensive airplay before landing a music deal.[91][92] In fact, WAAF had booked the band as a warm-up act for a Days of the New concert in December 1997, where they reportedly "stole the show" in a Globe concert review.[93] On June 13, 1999, the station also hosted on an impromptu concert headlined by Limp Bizkit on a parking garage rooftop across the street from Fenway Park; the start time was moved up by an hour after WBCN announced the location on-air 15 minutes before WAAF did, and the performance only lasted for 25 minutes before police ordered it to end.[94] During the production of a WAAF compilation CD, an audio track by evening host Mistress Carrie that gave out a phone number to someone named "Mike" was inserted as an inside joke, the phone number given was the inside studio line to WBCN, forcing WBCN to change their hotline.[95] Signal adjustmentsWhile it had been teased as early as 1999 when their studio was moved to downtown Boston,[89] WAAF was finally able to commence testing at a new transmission site at the WUNI-TV tower on Stiles Hill in Boylston between October 31 and November 22, 2005, on program test authority from the FCC. While the station's signal strength dramatically decreased in most parts of Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont and Western Massachusetts, the move was an attempt to concentrate the signal into Greater Boston. WAAF resumed broadcasting at the Paxton site to address alleged multipath issues, which were blamed on a faulty T1 line between their Brighton studios and the transmitter site.[96] These issues were resolved by the the spring and summer of 2006, when WAAF resumed operations at the Boylston site.[97] The original program test authority lasted until May 26, 2011, when the FCC officially issued a license for the site.[98]
Simulcast with WKAFWKAF on August 30, 2006.[103] The addition of WKAF was seen by industry analyst Scott Fybush as a way for WAAF to finally achieve signal parity with WBCN; Fybush considered the combination of WAAF's new Boylston signal and WKAF's signal as "the biggest FM coverage of any single Boston facility."[104]
In 2007, the station was nominated for the WKAF broke away from the WAAF simulcast on January 5, 2017, when Entercom debuted a separate iHeartMedia, Inc.[112]
Departure of Greg HillThe final Hill-man Morning Show aired over WAAF on July 19, 2019.[113] Greg Hill and co-host Danielle Murr were transferred from WAAF to the morning-drive timeslot on WEEI-FM (and by extension, WVEI) in the wake of Gerry Callahan's dismissal from WEEI-FM over declining ratings.[114] Callahan's co-host, Mike Mutnansky, was reassigned to middays on WEEI-FM,[115] while Hill's other co-host Lyndon Byers and producer Mike Hsu were moved to afternoon drive on WAAF.[115] Byers left the radio station shortly thereafter, leaving Hsu and Mistress Carrie as the lone remaining air personalities on the station, along with The Mens Room in evenings,[116] despite a "national search" for Hill's replacement announced by WAAF management when he left.[117] In November 2019, the station announced a 50th anniversary concert for early April 2020 headlined by Godsmack, a band WAAF had championed 20 years earlier.[118] Intended as part of a year-long celebration, no other events were ever announced or scheduled.[2] Sale to EMF
Mistress Carrie, on a possible re-launch of WAAF aborted by the sale to EMF[119] On February 18, 2020, Entercom announced that WAAF would be sold to the Radio.com platform.[2] While still a Worcester-market station, the sale also effectively marked EMF's entry into the Boston market,[2] which had previously received K-Love programming via a lease of Methuen-licensed WUBG (1570 AM),[120] along with two FM translators in Boston's northern suburbs[121] and reception in the southern end of the market of the network's Providence, Rhode Island station, WLVO (95.5 FM).[120] EMF vice president of signal development Joe Miller said that Boston was "one of the last major markets we haven’t been able to get a major signal into until now."[122]
The final day of WAAF's rock format consisted of a 14-hour farewell program co-hosted by program director Joe Calgaro, Mistress Carrie and Mike Hsu. Among the in-studio guests was Aerosmith bass player Tom Hamilton, who personally reminisced about the first time he heard Dream On played anywhere on radio while driving in his car, listening to WAAF.[123] Other guests on the program included Bob Rivers, Peter Zipfel, Greg Hill, Gregg "Opie" Hughes, Anthony Cumia, and John Osterlind.[124] During the final hour, all three hosts stated on-air that internal plans had been in place to "relaunch the station" on March 2. These plans were to have included re-hiring station veteran Mike Brangiforte as the new morning show host, cancelling The Mens Room for a local night host, teaming up Hsu with Calgaro, and a revamped music playlist curated by Mistress Carrie. All of these purported plans were aborted once the sale to EMF was announced, with the ensuing "WAAF"-branded rock programming operating without any air personalities.[119] The last song played on WAAF prior to joining the K-Love network was "Black Sabbath", from Black Sabbath's self-titled debut album.[125][126] Upon the takeover, Entercom "parked" the WAAF call sign on a station in Scranton, Pennsylvania;[119] that station's previous WBZU calls were transferred to WAAF in a temporary move until the sale is closed, effective February 26, 2020.[127] The WBZU call letters had themselves been parked in Scranton 15 years earlier, when an Entercom-owned station in Madison, Wisconsin, changed formats and call letters.[128] Current programmingWBZU does not air local programming; all content is transmitted via satellite by the Educational Media Foundation's K-Love network. References
External links
|