and with WCRN just sold, who knows what will happen with them...
and they call their overnight music "Northstar Music"...
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WMEX
- Thread starter Motown
- Start date
and they call their overnight music "Northstar Music"...
bet you donuts to dollars its going all hardcore right wing talk based upon the guy who bought it, the owner of WABC 770
theres a thread 70 comments deep on FB about how so many people don't like the new WMEX and etc.. I chuckle because its clear no on understands business... how many commercials did WMEX ever have? they think because they and 50 people like it its such a great idea.. none of them get its really a commercially viable signal.. or format
Can you link us to it?
If WMEX was going to be viable, I think it would be with Oldies or something similar. The other logical choice for a Class D AM, brokered programming, is currently failing at Multicultural's 1360 and 1470.
Which may leave us with WMEX hitting the end of the road soon.
yeah maybe 70s and 80s but the people would
complain it’s not the 60s.
and i heard WMEX was quite haphazardly musically under Justice
The problem with WMEX trying ‘70s and ‘80s in Boston is that classic hits from those decades are already covered in this area by successful 105.7 FM WROR which always comes up in the top five in the 6+ ratings, and has occasionally recently been #1. WROR plays ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s hits, no ‘60s.
No one would tune away from full Class B (50kW equivalent) FM HD stereo WROR to hear the same songs on AM mono 10kW day/100w nights WMEX, and its FM translator only covers the upper coastal MA south shore and can’t be heard in Boston proper or in suburbs in other directions.
"Cousin Brucie's Saturday Night Rock 'n' Roll Party" & "Bulova's Sinatra Showcase with Joe Piscopo" are on WABC 770 on Satruday Nights 6pm to Midnight, so perhaps they'll air them on WCRN
1360 and 1470 are ironicly still playing after 18 months 60's and 70's sustaning - each playing different playlists.
and the problem with the 60s stuff.. its too old. i cant imagine WMEX has ever made much money
So either do something profitable, even if its a copy of someone else and offer stuff and be insanely local to the area between quncy and the south shore or sell.
Theres enough population numbers that if they tried some semi full stuff stuff... it has the slight.. slight potential to work. News, community interviews... take a little bit of WATD's formula, plus a bit of the old WESX and WJDA formula when they were locally owned.
When they had a "full" local staff they werent doing anything unique except an ego project with a disasterous playlist.
I'd love to see the profit and loss sheet on the station
WJDA did that for years. It faded away, just as most purely local stations did as the new millennium approached. Listeners in suburbs of major cities frequently have no or few ties to their individual towns, especially after their kids (if they have any) go off on their own. Discussing local politics, interviewing local personalities ... that's not going to appeal to Quincy residents who work in Boston, go to Boston for live entertainment and sports, and never vote in local elections.
It's different in smaller, more rural states like Vermont and parts of New Hampshire. stations like WDEV, WCNL and WCVR survive because they serve isolated (for New England) towns with many longtime residents whose families have been in those towns for generations. Waterbury and Randolph, VT, and Newport, NH, have no major cities nearby. What works there isn't going to work in suburban Boston, no matter how you program the station, because "local" just doesn't matter as much in bedroom communities as it does in the sticks.
Thats why i said slight potential. this is one station that probably shouldve stayed dead
If you go on the localmediaboston.com website it says they are “home to great Boston radio stations with live-and-local personalities”. Further it says “our live and local on-air personalities live and breathe everything Boston, delivering a more local on-air presence “. Under the stations tab, only WMEX appears. They claim they “reach 1.2 million Boston listeners per week”.
Slight exaggeration??
I can't imagine 1360 and 1470 are even breaking even with zero advertising, and they tried airing some brokered Spanish and Haitian programming only on 1470 again for just a few weeks last fall while the '60s/'70s music stayed on 1360, but whatever that deal was didn't last long.
Even with no local studios or staff, they must be taking some loss on rent for the Lexington transmitter site for 1470 (don't know whether they own the Lynn site for 1360), and transmitter electric bills for both stations.
But 1360 and 1470 are owned by a small national company Multicultural in NYC that seems to be able to "float" them, while WMEX is locally independently owned (and still is as far as I know).
Don't know what Multicultural's long term goals for 1360 and 1470 are. 18 months (except for a few weeks sold on just 1470 last fall) is a long time to air just canned oldies feeds from NYC with no local content and no other network content except the music, besides the required automated top-of-hour ID's.
Exactly.
Let’s not overthink this. And it’s sad to see bankruptcy after bankruptcy think somehow “I’ll make it work”.
You don’t try to build a mansion or even a small home on quicksand.
AM mono 10kWday/100 night….why would this work in 2026 with any music format? Seriously. This is a discussion that ended nearly 4 decades ago.
If you bring me psychic hits of the 2060s through 2080s..maybe..out of curiosity lol…
If they had a bigger fm signal and slightly better am night signal... that.. might help, along with a tightened up playlist. listeners dont wanna hear so much variety like they think they do. and he general public outside some afficinados dont wanna hear someones ego project reliving the old days
I remember they had gotten a CP for the AM go directional at night with 1800 watts (up from 100w ND nights) a few years ago, but never built it out and it expired. I heard that they didn't have the money to build it.
The day power was supposed to have been raised from 10kW to 25Kw ND (w/25kW directional "critical hours") but none if it happened.
The FM translator is 250w, the max for a translator, but it's highly directional only beaming east-southeast from Quincy toward the south shore (and into the ocean water) to protect several co-channel and adjacent channel stations in all other directions. It can be heard clearly in one Boston neighborhood, nearby Dorchester (adjacent to Quincy). Don't know what they could do about that except maybe try to restart the FM application from scratch if/when a window for another frequency opens.
The oldies playlist is now determined by what comes over the "True Oldies Channel", a much tighter oldies all-hits selection than locally played before, but with no local announcer content (besides canned, possibly AI voiced weather and traffic reports).
Yes, unfortunately the only people for whom the nostalgia for the original WMEX of its late '50s, '60s, and early '70s heyday mattered was a handful of seniors (like me) who have been in the area all our lives. Despite his enormous local popularity 60 years ago, no one younger would even know who Arnie Ginsburg was, or remember Larry's years on the original mid-'60s WMEX. Though I love that era, I accept that only nostalgia and memories for that time can't float a commercial radio station in 2026.
Some younger people have discovered the hits from those years and love them, but that's the music only. Nostalgia for the stations and DJ's of that time mean nothing to people who weren't born yet.
i appreciate you saying that because thats exactly what a ton of people dont understand
Clearly they don't want to go dark or give the licneces back to the FCC...I got a freind who knows the former board op for both for over 20 years and he was told Multicultural is still paying rent on the studio space at $5000 a month - and that is just the studio - locked up and all the equipment still there.