WMEX Call Letters Available Again

[HHH]

With the current WMEX in New Hampshire going religious and changing call letters, wouldn't this be a great opportunity for
1510 in Boston to secure the WMEX call letters again? WWZN are sucky calls that nobody can remember anyway.

Regardless of the format (sports or otherwise) the WMEX calls on 1510 at least could tie the station back to some history and success, especially with 45+.

They never changed the WRKO call letters when the station went talk (a good move) and I am sure that the stable calls helped the station
stay prominent in the public's minds all through the 80s and 90s. It also allowed for WRKO reunion weekends and such.

Maybe I am just nostalgic or a radio freak or both, but for the price of an application, 1510 could at least have a respectable name.
Now, if they could just work on the programming.....

 

[jacobr]

Heard a spanish station was going after them.......
............WeMEXico is thier tag!

 

[dumber than a box of hair]

With the current WMEX in New Hampshire going religious and changing call letters, wouldn't this be a great opportunity for
1510 in Boston to secure the WMEX call letters again? WWZN are sucky calls that nobody can remember anyway.

Regardless of the format (sports or otherwise) the WMEX calls on 1510 at least could tie the station back to some history and success, especially with 45+.

They never changed the WRKO call letters when the station went talk (a good move) and I am sure that the stable calls helped the station
stay prominent in the public's minds all through the 80s and 90s. It also allowed for WRKO reunion weekends and such.

Maybe I am just nostalgic or a radio freak or both, but for the price of an application, 1510 could at least have a respectable name.
Now, if they could just work on the programming.....

Putting the WMEX call sign back on 1510 would be meaningful only to the over-50 set that remembers what WMEX was (and what it will never be again). To the demos advertisers covet, that call sign is meaningless...and it's doubly-meaningless when placed on a sports station. It's been gone for too long now to help whatever format is on 1510.

 

[WLYNWAZNgm]

big bucks to change to WMEX Call Letters

Too many costs involved to change call letters, at this point.
All of the directory listings, promotional materials, logos, signage,
stationery, etc.

 

[choicevoicepro.com]

WLYNGM is right. I worked for a station in DC that changed not the call letters but the moniker... the GM there at the time told me that the change was good for about $60,000 in expenses. And speaking of heritage calls... I remember WLYN when Bill Marlowe did the morning show. Yikes! :

 

[Eli Polonsky]

I believe that the WMEX call letters may have been available on the AM band for some years now.

I don't think that call letters being in use on one band precludes their use on the other band in another market, pending obtaining permission by the owner of the station on the other band before applying to the FCC. If 1510 had asked Dennis Jackson for use of the WMEX call letters and he had agreed, 1510 could have been WMEX some years ago. I believe the last use of WMEX on the AM band was briefly about eight years ago on 1060 before it became WBIX.

But, "dumber" is correct. Obtaining the WMEX calls would do absolutely nothing for 1510 in the year 2008, and it would be a useless burden of expenses for the station to do so.

It's one thing if a station has never changed it's letters for many decades, then there's at least some thread of continuous familiarity from past generations down all the age groups through todays listeners. But, when you're talking about calls that were significant forty years ago and then dropped, those calls are just nostalgia to a small percentage of people (including myself) in the over-50 set.

In the long run, people listen for the programming anyway, not the call letters. Even for those who remember discontinued heritage calls when stations have brought them back, it's really just a short-lived novelty. Ultimately the station's success will stand on whether people are listening to it's current programming, not it's call letters.

 

[pbf1]

Gee

While we're at it, put WNAC back on 680! (KIDDING.......)

 

[BoredModerator]

WZOU, great calls

 

[BRNout]

It's all true. Take a look at Chicago, where WLS was a legendary top 40 station well into the 1980s. When ABC/Citadel-owned WZZN went to the "True Oldies" format, they could have easily opted to identify with those calls as they are essentially the FM iteration of WLS. However, they did not rebrand as WLS-FM - choosing for the simple moniker of 94.7 Chicago's True Oldies. ABC just didn't feel that there was enough value in the rebranding to spend money on changing the calls.

Mind you, that is with the extremely well established branding of "WLS" in the company stable. Granted they initially went pretty low budget with 94.7 - which is now pretty successful - but it still would not have been difficult to do.

So, by the same token, trying to revive the WMEX calls - which are less well known in this market than the above example - is just not worth the trouble or expense.

 

[TSBench]

So, by the same token, trying to revive the WMEX calls - which are less well known in this market than the above example - is just not worth the trouble or expense.

Exactly. Especially when you consider that WMEX's days in the sun were so long ago that they may as well have been on a different planet. That station, the famous one, is remembered by aging baby boomers (like me) who remember the 'homework wars' when "MEX and 'BZ, and talent like Arnie and Bruce Bradley, were slugging it out for the high school crowd.

They've had a couple of iterations since they were originally dropped 30 years ago, and they haven't worked their magic for anyone, although GM, playing the nostalgia angle (WMEX is BACK!!!), gave it a pretty good shot until they were buried when 'MRQ flipped.

Right now, I think Boston only has a couple of calls which would be worth the expense associated with acquiring them if they became available. WBZ for sure. WXKS and WBCN probably. WODS could obviously be valuable if you were going to an oldies format, But, that being said, you could put the WBZ calls at 1510 and, with the current programming and signal, it still would be essentially a no-show.

Heard a spanish station was going after them.......
............WeMEXico is thier tag!

Deja vu, all over again. It's been done. After the calls were dropped locally in favor of WITS, they were picked up by an Ohio station programming Latino to a base including a substantial number of Mexican migrants who were working the local groves, fields and orchards. That owner was the one who sold them to Greater Media in the mid 80s.

Regards,
TSB