1510 Formats and Call Letters

How many can you name and think of?

1-Talk America Radio Network ('94?)

2-WNRB (Christian Music with paid ministry programming) (95'-'97)

3-The Sports Zone syndicated Network. (97' to when?)

4-Brokered programming. (present)

Well, the longest-running and most famous moniker for 1510 was WMEX.

They were WMEX for 41 years (from their start in 1934 to 1975 when they changed to WITS).

WMEX was a popular teen-oriented Top 40 station from 1957 to 1975, 18 years in the format.

HHH said:

Well, the longest-running and most famous moniker for 1510 was WMEX.

They were WMEX for 41 years (from their start in 1934 to 1975 when they changed to WITS).

WMEX was a popular teen-oriented Top 40 station from 1957 to 1975, 18 years in the format.

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Even the late talk-master Jerry Williams once said (on the night they shutdown WITS) that the day they changed the call-letters to WITS (in 1978) was the first of MANY mistakes the management of 1510 (and there were many in that job) did over the years. Why change a well known set of call-letters that lasted over 40 years and have been successful with those call-letters all along? When I think of the WITS call-letters, I thought.... "yeah, Witless Radio". The new Waltham transmitter site was more trouble than it was worth. The cost of rent alone would stagger the imagination, tens of thousands of dollars a month. At least they owned the Quincy site. The electric bill was a real drain as well. It's no wonder that 1510 from Waltham has never worked right ever since it was built. Here is a station, once a gem of the market, and now just a has-been. The Richmond brothers should have gotten an FM counterpart early for WMEX, during the time the FCC was literally giving them away. Having no FM counterpart, 1510 could not be competitive by itself. I honestly don't know how it still survives today.

Actually, there is an urban legend that Mac Richmond was preparing to buy an FM companion to WMEX just before he died in the early 70s.
One source claims that he made overtures to T. Mitchell Hastings to acquire WBCN.

Man, that would have altered history!

Retro said:

How many can you name and think of?

1-Talk America Radio Network ('94?)

2-WNRB (Christian Music with paid ministry programming) (95'-'97)

3-The Sports Zone syndicated Network. (97' to when?)

4-Brokered programming. (present)

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#3. Whatever prog talk calls itself on weekdays(Revolution Boston?), on weekends they're still branding themselves as the Zone, Boston's Sports Station. They run BU hockey and a bunch of sports brokered-time shows. And, SNR during unsold hours.

1997-2001/One-On-One Sports
2001-2009/Sporting News Radio

Thanks!

Here are all of the call letters that I can think of for the "Famous 1510".....

1. WMEX Top 40
2. WITS News/Talk
3. WMRE Nostalgia
4. WSSH A/C simulcast of 99.5 FM
5. WKKU Country
6. WNRB Religion
7. WWZN

I believe that covers it....

Some history may be found at http://bostonradio.org/stations/12789

They still had the WMRE calls in the mid 80s and went with talk incl. Marcia Masters, Bob
Katzen, Morgan White Jr., Doug Stephan, etc. Maybe even Paul Benzaquin. I have a tape of
Morgan White's last Talking Trivia show from 1/87. Morgan's sidekick "The Flicker" used to do
an early Sunday morning show called The Fun Show with cartoon themes, etc.
"Stay on Top--1510 WMRE"

I also remember attending a bit of a farewell party for them at The Breakfast Club, corner of
Boylston and Brookline (you could order breakfast food anytime, have a drink, etc.) Bob Katzen
used to have a guy on his show who did some kind of "fox" character named Finkel or
something and the guy brought a puppet of it. Thought I spotted Christopher Lydon there at
one point. WMRE used to run the audio of the Joan Rivers show because Ch 25 wouldn't run it...

>>"yeah, Witless Radio"

They had a duo, Larry Claflin and Clif Keane, "Cliff and Claf" (I think Larry Claflin Jr works for Salem News now?) and I recall a cartoon, perhaps in the sports section of the Globe, depicting them as
"The WITleSs Wonders"

Under how many of these formats has Brother Stair been doing the overnights?

DJbobo said:

1997-2001/One-On-One Sports
2001-2009/Sporting News Radio

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That doesn't count. One-On-One became Sporting News Radio after the two groups got married

raccoonradio said:

>>"yeah, Witless Radio"

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I used to hear "nit-WITS!"

DToTheJ said:

Under how many of these formats has Brother Stair been doing the overnights?

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Isn't that a fairly recent development? I also believe that 1530 out of Cincinnnati, which is audible in Boston airs that as well...although I can't imagine that anyone is actually listening to this....

HHH said:

Actually, there is an urban legend that Mac Richmond was preparing to buy an FM companion to WMEX just before he died in the early 70s.
One source claims that he made overtures to T. Mitchell Hastings to acquire WBCN.

Man, that would have altered history!

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That would have been really interesting!!!! 1971 was also the year that Top 40 105.7-WKOX-FM became WVBF and immediately raided some of WMEX's air talent too....

I believe that 1510 is a close second to 1150 for the most call letters and formats on a Boston frequency.

1510 also has the unique distinction of being the only Boston AM that ran both kinds of incompatible analog AM stereo broadcasting at different times in the '80s and '90s, as far as I remember.

They ran the Kahn-Hazeltine AM stereo system as WSSH-AM, and later the Motorola C-Quam system as WNRB. At one time there were almost a dozen C-Quam AM stereo stations in the Boston market if you counted rimshots and suburbans, there are now none left, but I don't know of any other than ran Kahn-Hazeltine in Boston (though the old WQRC in NYC did).

Plus, if I am not mistaken, 1510 Boston was one of the (at the time) rare 5KW stations (as WMEX) which required protection from a 50K (WLAC Nashville) which is nulled toward Boston at night.

Dan S. would probably be able to explain this somewhat unique situation better than I.

Of course, WMEX later went to 50K day / 5K night, and a bit later, to 50K day and night.

I recall that WMEX moved to 70 Brookline Avenue around 1940, and stayed there until the late 60s, when they moved to 115 Broadway.
Later, they moved back to 70 Brookline Avenue.

Today, I think NESN is at 70 Brookline, which makes the facility probably one of the oldest facilities in Boston dedicated to some kind of broadcasting.

They had a duo, Larry Claflin and Clif Keane, "Cliff and Claf" (I think Larry Claflin Jr works for Salem News now?)

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So did they rip off Tom and Ray Magliozzi of "Car Talk" (Click and Clack) or did Tom & Ray rip them off? Neither would surprise me. ;D

Retro said:

How many can you name and think of?

1-Talk America Radio Network ('94?)

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WOW! There's a blast from the past. Stan Major overnights. Joe Mazza weekend overnights. Based out of Canton, Mass.

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't 1510 at one point broadcast Stanford University football for a number of years? Legend has it some Stanford Cardinal Alumni from the Boston area used to buy the time on the station to get the games.

HHH said:

Plus, if I am not mistaken, 1510 Boston was one of the (at the time) rare 5KW stations (as WMEX) which required protection from a 50K (WLAC Nashville) which is nulled toward Boston at night.

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Nulled or not, I can recall that WLAC clearly made it into the Boston area, when WMEX would sign off for maintenance on Sunday nights, which they were doing back in 1973. WMEX also used to receive a lot of interference, at least on the north shore at night, from the former CJRS, Sherbrooke, Quebec.....

HHH said:

Plus, if I am not mistaken, 1510 Boston was one of the (at the time) rare 5KW stations (as WMEX) which required protection from a 50K (WLAC Nashville) which is nulled toward Boston at night.

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True. WMEX was on 1470 (the pre-NARBA 1510) before WLAC. So even though the Boston station is of a lower class than the Nashville station, Nashville protects Boston at night. Boston protects Nashville even more, however. There aren't too many examples and I don't know all of them, but 710 has two. KIRO protects KSPN and WOR protects the now dark CKVM. In fact, when WOR moved its transmitter site only a couple of kilometers a few years ago, it could not simply "walk" its existing array to the new site, it had to increase protection to the already dark CKVM. Talk about ridiculous!

Peter Q. George (K1XRB) said:

The new Waltham transmitter site was more trouble than it was worth. The cost of rent alone would stagger the imagination, tens of thousands of dollars a month. At least they owned the Quincy site. The electric bill was a real drain as well. It's no wonder that 1510 from Waltham has never worked right ever since it was built. Here is a station, once a gem of the market, and now just a has-been.

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I'm not sure I'd refer to WMEX as a "gem of the market", even in it's heyday. They always had a pretty bad signal, especially at night...came in better in Nova Scotia than in any suburb west of Rt. 128. The 50kW upgrade in the late 60s didn't help either...all the signal still went NE.

Weren't there some serious problems at the old Quincy (?) site that forced them to move? Nearby development that made it impossible to maintain their pattern ISTR. Not many places left where you can put a multi-tower array.