Radio Free Boston (36 page)

The Great Woods' local crew and some bands themselves often utilized the laundry room/broadcast studio, located just a few yards behind the stage. This led to some surprises, as when Van Halen marched into Mansfield for a show in 1993. When the '
BCN
technical crew arrived, they discovered that their broadcast area had been commandeered and transformed into a huge pyrotechnics supply depot. “No, no, no! You absolutely cannot be in there,” the band's stage manager yelled. Protests were lodged with Tom Bates, Don Law's captain on the ground, and
WBCN
struck a deal with the reluctant visitors. Only under the watchful eyes of Van Halen's crew, who would have shared the ride to the hereafter if a mishap occurred, was the '
BCN
team permitted to check in live, amidst a potentially lethal amount of flash pot ammunition and explosive charges piled high in boxes all around them. Needless to say, neither Sammy Hagar nor Eddie Van Halen could be enticed to do an interview from the powder keg.

It didn't get any bigger than Foxboro Stadium, the home of the New England Patriots, and
WBCN
broadcast live from the venue on Aerosmith's 1986 “Back in the Saddle” tour; for U2 the following year; from 1988's “Monsters of Rock” show; for a pair of Who reunion shows in '89; on three wintery nights that same year with the Rolling Stones on the “Steel Wheels” tour; and at Paul McCartney's return to the stage in 1990. John Mullaney, hired as a broadcast specialist for dozens of remotes, mentioned, “At Foxboro, we put a transmitter in a golf cart and sent the signal up to the press box where we placed the equipment to hook into the phone lines back to the city.” No longer tethered exclusively to backstage phone lines,
WBCN'S
jocks now roved freely through the parking lots at Great Woods and Foxboro in full view of its tailgating audience. As soon as concertgoers realized that the vehicle closing in on them did not contain security personnel or police but instead sported a
WBCN
logo and
conspicuous antennae array, a sea of people would surge forth to greet the radio envoys. “Once the people got in front of you, you were kind of done, 'cause you couldn't run them over!” Mullaney laughed. Like a political candidate wading into a forest of campaign supporters, they found themselves completely inundated. “Hey '
BCN
! Can we go on the aaaaair?” “Want a hamburger?” Broadcast producer Jefferson Ryder remembered, “Golf carts were never designed for this; three radio guys, two hours, and one objective: get real fan interviews and get out alive!” Ryder dubbed one particular section of the Foxboro parking lots “The Gauntlet,” because of its triangular shape and difficult traverse. The cars parked there had to be arranged in rows that rapidly pinched closer and closer, constraining forward progress. “You couldn't go zooming through there, so people would just crush in around you,” Mullaney added. “Plus I think they parked those folks in there first, so they were a lot more inebriated than the rest of the audience!”

Broadcasting live from “Monsters of Rock,” Foxboro Stadium, 1988. The
WBCN
remote crew hangs with Van Halen. Notice how each member of the band has to have a radio lady next to them (it's in the rider). Courtesy of
WBCN
.

Although none of the merrymakers at
WBCN
knew it, this was their last chance to drink up, metaphorically speaking, because other partygoers were about to crash the open bar. The first significant and dangerous challenge came from
WZLX-FM
, a station that signed on the air in October 1985 with a brand-new format playing “Classic Hits.” Their rationale was that a large number of listeners had grown up on the rock songs of the sixties and seventies, and were unhappy with the recent
MTV
-spawned Top 40 dance fare, like Duran Duran, or the blight of “hair band” metal. This proved to be an inspired guess, and
WZLX
experienced immediate acceptance and rapid growth.
Billboard
magazine reported that in January through March 1986, which would have been the first complete ratings period with the new format, the station had blasted off from a number of 3.1. to an impressive 5.0 share in all listeners over the age of twelve. In men eighteen years and older,
WZLX
raised eyebrows by jumping from a 3.9 share to a striking 6.9. In only five months, the groundbreaking “Classic Hits” station stood second in rank to
WBCN
in the important “men 25–54” demo.
Billboard
continued, “WZLX program director Bill Smith says his station's Arbitron gains have been achieved at
WBCN'S
expense. ‘We're delighted with the results,' he says. ‘We have so many people calling the station who admit they switched from
WBCN
.'” At first, there was little reaction at “The Rock of Boston,” although Oedipus did experiment with the term “vintage” in labeling '
BCN'S
own heritage music selections. That didn't resonate with the station's listeners, though, so the imaging term was soon dropped.

To general sales manager Bob Mendelsohn, the arrival of
WZLX
meant a daily competition for ad dollars. “I was very concerned when Oedipus made the conscious decision that
WZLX'S
presence wasn't going to change anything. It's true that in the mideighties we had true market dominance, which would take care of most ills, but we maintained that same posture when suddenly there was a main competitor that was hungry for the business.” As a radio professional hired to
WBCN
by Mel Karmazin himself, Mendelsohn already had problems with the way the station was run: “When it came to the business there, anybody in a senior position thought that just because the station was cool, people should be flocking to it—which was a serious and fundamental lack of insight. Any client doesn't really care about how cool the company is. That may get their attention, but then you have to perform the service for them that they paid you a lot of
money to do. This is one of the reasons that Oedipus and I, particularly, never saw eye to eye on anything.”

Another challenger emerged in the later eighties to joust with
WBCN
. Located fifty miles west in Worcester with a signal that barely penetrated into downtown Boston,
WAAF-FM
competed aggressively for the large Metro West population living between the two cities. With a mainstream approach not unlike
WCOZ
from just a few years earlier, 'AAF played harder-edged album-oriented rock (
AOR
), avoiding the pop music sounds by artists whom
WBCN
regularly embraced (and even helped to break), like Cindy Lauper, Icehouse, the Bangles, or Simple Minds. However, 'AAF's unrelenting diet of Van Halen,
AC/DC
, Loverboy, and so forth, achieved a focus that
WBCN
, for better or for worse, comparatively lacked, and the station's approach began to bear fruit. In the winter 1986 ratings for Boston, the station found favor with a younger male audience, slipping under '
BCN'S
radar to actually claim first place in “men 18–24 years old.” True, the station appealed to a less affluent, less desirable demographic, but its managers could now claim a sizable gain in a significant niche by concentrating on a narrow selection of elementary “meat and potatoes” rock.
Billboard
reported in May 1986, “According to
WAAF
program director Cynde Slater, the Katz Broadcasting facility ‘made a commitment to go after the Boston market two years ago.' She says the only competitor the station targets is
WBCN
.” During these early days of a rivalry that would extend for over twenty years, 'AAF showed a “whatever it takes” mentality and single-minded concentration on undermining the '
BCN
brand.
Billboard
continued, “At
WAAF
promotions are aimed directly at the
WBCN
listener. A recent television commercial included the following dialog: ‘
BCN'S
a great station; I just want to rock. Enough talk!' Later in the spot, a
WBCN
bumper sticker is covered over by a
WAAF
bumper sticker.” Although
WZLX
represented the much more immediate and dangerous threat, certainly to '
BCN'S
older listeners,
WAAF'S
attack on the younger audience would be impossible to ignore.

Then, a third opponent emerged, a radio station far less menacing than either 'ZLX or 'AAF, but you'd never know it by the amount of press that the place received. “
WFNX-FM
, based in Lynn, is the new kid on the block, a David to
WBCN'S
Goliath,” wrote Jim Sullivan in the
Boston Globe
in January '86. “Formerly
WLYN
, the station was bought by
Boston Phoenix
publisher Stephen Mindich in 1983.
WFNX
is a 3,000-watt station that has made a small dent in the Boston market, but arguably, a larger dent in its mindset.”
Sullivan pointed out that
WFNX'S
ratings were less than a ninth of
WBCN'S
but postulated that the Lynn station's choice of music carried a far bigger stick. Playing edgy new sounds in a genre that would eventually become known as “alternative,”
WFNX
eroded '
BCN'S
reputation as the station to turn to for the latest music . . . at least to the people who cared little for mainstream and who could actually pull in
WFNX'S
limited signal. The community of Boston's writers and critics, inclined to praise advances in the arts and solidly ambivalent to the status quo, lavished attention on their new “David.” So, while
WFNX
could not challenge '
BCN
on a business level, it certainly added torment to a station now locked into protecting its other flanks against more commercial competitors.

The
WBCN
slogan, “Classic to Cutting Edge,” aptly described the station's musical mission since 1968, but it also neatly defined the flanks of the radio war raging twenty years later. On the right,
WZLX
played classic
AOR
fare, while
WAAF
concentrated on their basic thud rock; plus,
WODS-FM
featured a sugary-sweet mix of pop oldies delivered by a team of ever-cheerful, over-the-top, hyperactive announcers. These stations kept up the mainstream pressure while
WFNX
fought for at least an ideological left. Was it possible for '
BCN
to remain standing on its original base of the Beatles, the Stones, and The Who while covering the younger trailer park, roadhouse styles of Lynyrd Skynyrd,
AC/DC
, Def Leppard, and Ted Nugent? And if succeeding at that, how could '
BCN
include the leading alternative edge with bands like R.E.M., the Cure, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and
XTC
(many of which '
BCN
broke in the States)?

In 1989, Jeff McLaughlin assembled an article in the
Boston Globe
about the ever-increasing level of competition and changing tastes in the market. He wrote, “
WBCN
is ‘The Rock of Boston,' positioning itself as the station that defined rock culture in the metropolitan area. But as its core audience grew older, it became stretched thin, its position harder to hold. The quirky pop favored by today's 18-year-olds doesn't find much favor with 40-year-olds in business suits, and, conversely, young people interested in the cutting edge of pop music can only tolerate a small amount of music from what they call ‘the dinosaur era' of rock history.” Although the station's famous assortment of veteran personalities and a strong promotional presence had been compelling enough to retain an impressive audience within
WBCN'S
orbit for years, now the strategy of its music mission was in question. Could the station continue on its all-encompassing course and
maintain the ratings success to which it had become accustomed? John Gehron, the general manager of
WODS
, didn't think so. In the
Boston Globe
article, he told McLaughlin, “You can take two approaches. You can grow older with your audience, or let the succeeding generational waves flow through you. You can't do both.”

But
WBCN
tried, toeing the mainstream line while embracing the “cutting edge.” In 1987, Oedipus established “Boston Emissions,” a Sunday-night radio show devoted wholly to local music, as a means to further concentrate on the Boston music scene. Following his beloved “Nocturnal Emissions” program, during which Oedipus featured the alternative music he had always been most fond of, the new local music show furthered '
BCN'S
commitment begun so many years before in the Rock 'n' Roll Rumble. “Everywhere in Boston, people were dressed in black and carrying guitars,” Lisa Traxler commented. The interesting thing was that even though
WBCN'S
bread and butter came from the big ticket mainstream bands, its
DJS
were mostly interested in the music emerging from the street and college radio, not surprising since most of them came from there. During this period, the air staff prided itself in helping to establishing careers for new groups like the Alarm, Smithereens, Living Colour, Black Crowes, Georgia Satellites, and the Cult, while also comfortably programming Don Henley, Stevie Nicks, and Pink Floyd.
Virtually Alternative
reported in its thirty-year station retrospective in '98, “
WBCN
was still on the edge when compared to the national
AORS
, championing bands like the Godfathers and An Emotional Fish to go with Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith. Their bread and butter, however, was the same classic rock that fed the rest of the
AOR
world. Beneath the surface, the new musical movement was brewing. When it finally arrived in 1991, it was championed not by the historically progressive
WBCN
, but by the little station on the North Shore with its collegiate attitude and small signal—
WFNX
.”