ALL YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT B101

[and.u.r?]

Someone really worked hard on documenting this stuff.It pretty much covers it all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWBB

 

[wkrpfm]

Covers it all? It's pretty subjective if you ask me...anyone can log onto this site and put pretty much write whatever they want about a DJ...some which may be true, untrue or just too personal and shouldn't be posted...but that's just my opinion on wikepedia

 

[jeffryan]

Someone really worked hard on documenting this stuff.It pretty much covers it all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWBB

I added some stuff about a month ago and it looks like other contributions have been added since (like old airstaff names). Everything on there looks accurate, except for the number of songs in rotation. It's probably low, but 300 doesn't sound right.

 

[Jacko]

When is someone going to write this in-depth about HJY? Or PRO-FM?

Jacko

 

[AKLes]

I added some stuff about a month ago and it looks like other contributions have been added since (like old airstaff names). Everything on there looks accurate, except for the number of songs in rotation. It's probably low, but 300 doesn't sound right.

Pretty thorough job and, if only concerned with the present call, likely adequate. It does get into the WLKW-FM era but that's not the whole story.

Before becoming WLKW-FM, the station was WXCN, a "Concert Network" station with modest studios on Weybosset Street, Providence, kind of diagonally across from the old Outlet Company building (where WJAR radio and TV were on the upper floors and where Outlet's "Broadcast House" was later built). Transmitter was up on the hill with WPRO-FM using rented real estate and rented tower space. The station was not a financial success, FM not having achieved any real popularity at the time it went on sale. That would have been around 1968. If memory serves, the license and equipment was sold for around $60,000. The equipment was pretty much worn out so the value was in the license. At the time I was at WXTR and tried to convince the Hysko family to buy it and put wall-to-wall rock on the frequency. Not so much that it would make money; rather that it would fragment the ratings of the then music-dominant WPRO and WICE. Nobody could see the point in buying a money loser. WLKW (AM) was still under the original ownership as a daytimer and somebody there saw the purchase as giving them a nighttime signal of sorts for cheap. Remember, WLKW was after an up-scale audience who were buying up-scale cars with AM/FM radios and home stereo systems with AM/FM tuners. The mass audience was still buying cheap transistor radios (AM only were the most common) and cars with AM only radios. When the original owners of WLKW sold out enough years had elapsed that it was the FM that brought in the bucks.

Just when WXCN first was put on the air is a bit of a mystery. I haven't been able to find any station listings for the years 1951 through 1957. There is no station on 101.5 listed for Rhode Island in the 1950 list but WXCN does appear in the 1958 list.

At first I thought it might have had roots in the WLOV (Cranston) debacle but the 1958 list proves me wrong:

WLOV Cranston 99.9
WPFM Providence 95.5
WPJB Providence 105.1
WPRO-FM Providence 92.3
WXCN Providence 101.5
WWON-FM Woonsocket 106.3

I did find a list from 1946 suggesting 101.5 might have been allocated as WHIM-FM but nothing to even hint that it was ever built. Back then 95.5 was WJAR-FM which Outlet felt had no future so they donated it to Providence/Barrington Bible College and it became WPFM.

 

[AKLes]

I tried to add a little more Providence FM history to the above but the allotted time for modification elapsed just as I attempted to post it. Therefore, this small addendum:

........I did find a list from 1946 suggesting 101.5 might have been allocated as WHIM-FM but nothing to even hint that it was ever built. Back then 95.5 was WJAR-FM which Outlet felt had no future so they donated it to Providence/Barrington Bible College and it became WPFM.

And WPFM was sold....but you can trace that one easily.

Going back further:

There was, in 1948, WPTL on 91.5 but it sems to have come and gone rather quickly. WPRO-FM seems to be among the oldest and has gone through very few changes of hands when compared to the others.

A couple of sad "might have been" cases were over in Fall River where WSAR had an early FM on 103.7 and The Sisson Brothers (George and J. Roger) once had WFRM on the air for a short time before being granted an AM license (WALE, 1400, 250-Watts) and abandoning the FM. What might the allocations have been worth today???

New Bedford seems to have been a leader in FM development. E. Anthony and Sons, owners of WNBH (AM) put an FM on the air at least a little before anybody in Providence seems to have gotten around to it. Also, WBSM started out as an FM around the same time and added an AM when The Providence Journal bought out Shepard's WEAN and silenced the former WPJB-AM (1420), freeing up the frequency which was quickly snapped up in N.B. Though both Fall River FMs disappeared, New Bedford kept both and they're still on the air under different call letters today.

 

[wkrpfm]

when I made a comment about my dislike of wikipedia, it doesn't have to do with specifically B101's page...if you know wikipedia, and you surf area local radio stations, you will notice that most of the pages about jocks are written by random people...hence a few on the Fun 107 site...although they will make you laugh, some of them are inaccurate...it's all in good fun, but I hope that when others read it, they are taking it in with a grain of salt