WKBR now WGAM

[Eli Polonsky]

A heritage set of call letters has left southern New Hampshire after more than half a century.

WKBR Manchester is now WGAM "The Game". (900 in Nashua is now WGHM).

I know this means nothing to anyone but a few aging radio geeks, but it's kind of sad. WKBR in the mid-'60s was to Manchester what the original WMEX was to Boston - THE local personality-driven fun Top 40 station.

I grew up in the Boston west suburbs in those days, but I heard WKBR when my family traveled to NH or north of Route 128. I could even faintly hear it at home, just barely, in the daytime, if I positioned my radio to null out 1260 from Boston.

I ended up being one of the last jocks on WKBR in their last months as a full-time live music station in 1990, playing oldies part-time (as pseudonym Eric Parker) complete with vintage WKBR jingles from back in the day. I lost the job when the station owners pulled the plug at the end of 1990 and a potential buyer fell through, leaving the station to go dark for a number of weeks in January, 1991.

Live, local (non-automated, non-satellite) music stations were pretty much a dead concept on AM by the '90s, and it was obviously impractical for any potential owner to try it again on WKBR.

That was the death of the live, local WKBR that a couple of generations grew up with almost seventeen years ago, but through a number of different owners and (mostly) simulcast or automated or satellite formats in the '90s including Christian, Easy Listening, Country, Oldies again (birdfed), eventually going to talk and sports in the 2000's, it still hung onto those venerable call letters, until now.

As the last memory of WKBR fades into the ether, there's always the WKBR Tribute Site for us graying folks who remember.

 

[JIBGUY]

Sad, how sad. Hope some NH station now ready to change format grabs those calls, with the intention of giving them back to AM 1250 in the future when 1250 wants them back...

 

[jlehmann]

Strange that they waited a year, or however long it's been since they became The Game, to change the calls. Obviously nobody that has any say in the decisions there has any knowledge of the long history of those calls. If they're going to call it the game anyway, why not just keep on saying WKBR Manchester once at the top of each hour?

 

[raccoonradio]

I saw that nice tribute site. One pic had Dick Lutsk. I remember him doing sports on WRKO weeknights
6-8 pm or so after Jerry W.

 

[Time Traveler]

I remember WKBR well too...Living in central Mass in the 60s and early 70s, WKBR-AM 1250 was nulled in that direction, but WKBR-FM 95.7 blasted in like a local. I can recall in 1967, channel surfing between WKBR-FM and WRKO-FM regularly, which at the time seemed so unusual to have Top 40 stations on the FM band.
WKBR-FM abruptly disappeared in July, 1971 to be replaced by elevator music station WZID. Just days later,
WKOX-FM became WVBF...

 

[Oldbones]

Sad, how sad. Hope some NH station now ready to change format grabs those calls, with the intention of giving them back to AM 1250 in the future when 1250 wants them back...

What's sad is how over the past 20 years any heritage associated with those calls has been squandered. Returning the WKBR calls to 1250 won't accomplish any more than putting the WMEX calls back on 1510.

 

[nhradiochild]

I think I can relate to a degree...

It was recently mentioned in the latest NERW that Bob Vinikoor replaced the old calls for WCNL back on 1010, with a much heftier signal than in former years. But unless they were to trade Americana for Classic Hits (which longtimer Dave Morgan could probably do with relative ease, since he's been with that station since WCNL changed over to WNTK in the first place), and somehow bring back a relic of the past along with it, it just wouldn't be the same.

Bob's lust for heritage calls is admirable, but falls short of restoring the station to its original stature. WCFR-AM if I recall was, at the time, simulcast with WCFR-FM which was A/C, but is now oldies. Admittedly, oldies is a good format for WCFR-AM I think, and would do well for WCNL as well, as CNL's original format borders on the same thing, but I'm not sure they can bring it home in their current digs in New London. If Bob really wanted to restore the station, he'd set up shop back in Newport. But I don't think there's any interest to do that.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

What's sad is how over the past 20 years any heritage associated with those calls has been squandered. Returning the WKBR calls to 1250 won't accomplish any more than putting the WMEX calls back on 1510.

Times changed... and unfortunately, the kinds of formats that once built the heritage for stations like WKBR and WMEX in a different era became no longer viable on AM radio. Paying a full staff of live DJ's plus local news and community service personnel was no longer feasible once the audience migrated to FM music stations, and the revenue for live, local AM music stations to operate that way was simply no longer there.

It was a different time in a different radio landscape. WKBR hung in there, on a money-losing shoestring, with live and local music and news/public affairs programming through 1990, later than many other music based AM's elsewhere. In Boston, the original WMEX went out as a Top 40 music station in the mid-'70s, and WRKO, which quickly built a Top 40 heritage in the late '60s to mid-'70s, went talk only a few years later. The oldies reincarnation attempt of WMEX on 1150 in the mid-'80s went out in 1989, a year before WKBR, which was also by then playing oldies to recall it's heritage heydays, went out in an ownership pullout.

Those AM oldies stations in the late '80s couldn't survive FM competition from stations such as WODS in Boston (which also comes in like a local in Manchester), and then Manchester got it's own FM oldies soon after with WQLL (now classic rock WMLL). It wasn't financially possible for WKBR to have continued it's "heritage" format into the 1990s, or to do anything but canned (mostly satellite, automated, etc...) programming. It was a shame, but it was the hard reality of the times.

 

[Time Traveler]

In Boston, the original WMEX went out as a Top 40 music station in the mid-'70s, and WRKO, which quickly built a Top 40 heritage in the late '60s to mid-'70s, went talk only a few years later.
[/quote]

To be more specific WMEX went out in March, 1975, WRKO hung in until September, 1981, I believe and WBZ caved in early 1968...

 

[Oldbones]

Times changed... and unfortunately, the kinds of formats that once built the heritage for stations like WKBR and WMEX in a different era became no longer viable on AM radio. Paying a full staff of live DJ's plus local news and community service personnel was no longer feasible once the audience migrated to FM music stations, and the revenue for live, local AM music stations to operate that way was simply no longer there.

No argument there, but my point was that WKBR was equally the victim of a string of clueless owners playing format du jour. How many (failed) formats have been on 1250 in the last 10-15 years? Is there anything besides hip-hop and classical that HASN'T been tried? I don't think one of them lasted a year. Both WFEA and WGIR are still players in the market today, having evolved into viable AM formats (mostly if not totally automated, but still reasonably successful, at least ratings-wise). My whole point (and reply to an earlier poster) was that returning the WKBR calls to either the market or specifically to 1250 would be pointless. The new owners had nothing to lose by losing those calls.

 

[JIBGUY]

The new owners had nothing to lose by losing those calls.

----------------------------------------------------
And nothing to gain either. So why change?
As a former owner of WKBR for a rather short time (1995-97), I regret not doing a rock oldies format there. True there were one, two or three(depending upon where in the market one would be listening) comptetitors (WODS, the Henniker FM, and later WQLL). But my oldies programming would have been with deeper cuts than the other highly-selective stations. While they may have only done top-10 songs, I would have reached down to top-25 or so. That would have opened up almost a triple-sized playlist. I know rthat "top-10" works well, but with an FM competitor, a good point or two could have been had with the deeper cuts included.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

As a former owner of WKBR for a rather short time (1995-97), I regret not doing a rock oldies format there. True there were one, two or three(depending upon where in the market one would be listening) comptetitors (WODS, the Henniker FM, and later WQLL). But my oldies programming would have been with deeper cuts than the other highly-selective stations. While they may have only done top-10 songs, I would have reached down to top-25 or so. That would have opened up almost a triple-sized playlist. I know rthat "top-10" works well, but with an FM competitor, a good point or two could have been had with the deeper cuts included.

We were doing exactly that on WKBR in it's last live, local years as an oldies station, until the plug was pulled at the end of 1990. We were mixing the hits with many "deeper" oldies that the competition wasn't playing. Songs that were hits in their day by well-known artists, but weren't being played on the FM oldies stations.

You may have been able to have made a go of it, if it was automated with minimal overhead and expenses. Playing "deeper" oldies didn't help us significantly to maintain enough of an audience that would bring in enough revenue to keep a staffed, live, local AM oldies station alive. People in the market mainly wanted the hits, and turned to FM to hear them in stereo. The amount of deeper oldies aficionados in the area was a small demographic.

I actually managed to at least get some phones ringing at WKBR by duplicating a WODS feature. At that time, WODS was doing a nightly romantic mellow oldies request and dedication hour called "Backseat Music", and I noticed they were getting a lot of calls from southern NH. The PD was trying to program WKBR to be different from WODS and didn't want to do a similar feature, but out of desperation he let me talk him into it. I just called it "Manchester's Romantic Oldies Hour" for obvious local identification, and it became the only time that their request lines were ringing. Some people were happy that they didn't have to call down to Boston to get their oldies dedications out. It was certainly too little too late to do much for the station, but at least I felt like I wasn't broadcasting into a complete void.