I came on board at 'BZ in the summer of 1992, during a transitional time in the station's history. The music was already gone, but some elements of the full-service format were still there, and the all-news format hadn't quite come together.
Here's how I recall it at the time I arrived: mornings were already being branded as "WBZ Morning News," with Gary taking up most of the first 15 minutes of each half-hour, followed by Gil on sports. The rest of the half-hour was in flux - Peter Meade (who'd taken over from Dave Maynard, IIRC) was just on his way out at that point, and my very first writing assignments there were for some of the anchors who were trying out for what would become the Deb Lawler role, filling the rest of each half-hour with news and a short interview. I remember Pat Carroll, who'd later go on to WCBS, getting a tryout. I think Jacquie Goddard did as well.
Tom Bergeron was still doing a daytime talk shift - two of them, in fact, 10-noon and 1-3 PM, interrupted by the "WBZ Noon News" with Deb Lawler and Jacquie Goddard. During that hour, Tom was eating a quick lunch and hosting "People are Talking" on WBZ-TV down the hall. I can't imagine how exhausting THAT must have been.
The afternoon news block, ironically, was the first to go all-news, having expanded from the old "60 to 6" and "90 to 6" news blocks into a full 4 hours by then, with Anthony Silva and Diane Stern already well-established in the anchor chairs and Tom Cuddy doing sports.
Don Batting and Carl Stevens were out on the streets reporting, with Carl having just recently arrived. At 7, Darrell Gould took over as news anchor during the Brudnoy show.
Most of the rest of the staff filled out pretty quickly during the summer and fall of 1992 as WEEI went sports and WBZ geared up for all-news. A whole bunch of people came over almost all at once from WEEI - Bill Lawrence, Bob McMahon, Bill Watson, Rod Fritz (briefly), plus some behind-the-scenes people such as Paul Connearney, who became morning news editor and is now news director. A few more familiar names came along not much later - Jay McQuaide returned to Massachusetts after a stint at WDBO in Orlando, and Ed Donahue came over from WKOX in Framingham, initially as a writer/editor and only later going on the air.
I'm pretty sure the midday all-news block launched right after Labor Day in 1992, replacing the old noon news and the Bergeron show. There were also new weekend all-news blocks around that time, too. The rotation of McMahon/Watson/Lawrence/McQuaide handled both middays and weekends.
By the fall of 1992, things were pretty much the way they still are 15 years later, give or take a few anchors along the way.
Hope that helps....
