There are only two personalities on the station, Scott Shannon and Robby Bridges. The national True Oldies Channel that (TOC) has been around since 2002. It sounds great but the 60s/70s format will never make money. Scott is on an incredible 9 hours weekdays from 6am to 3pm, then Robby. Scott is also on Saturday mornings. He does do daily updates as he mentioned the upcoming Knicks game. This is the first time the station has been consistent sounding 24/7, since it has been back on the air. The overall ratings are still 0.3, 4 months running, and a cume audience of only 14,000 people, in spite of the many changes. Only heard one new sponsor, Royal Caribbean. All the staff is gone so money savings there, but paying for the ratings. Is TOC barter? The top of the hour ID for weeks has incorrectly identifies the translator as W266DQ Quincy, it should be Weymouth. Apparently, the station is still owned by L&J Media so the debt continues. Bankruptcy soon?
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
WMEX
- Thread starter Motown
- Start date
The station is no longer owned by L&J Media (if you're looking at Wikipedia, it's not updated).
The FCC file for the station (and Radio-Locator) has the new owner "Local Media Boston, LLC", which appears use a national programming service called "Local Radio Networks", the current distributor of the "True Oldies Channel" and about twenty other national music formats.
I don't know whether there's a business or ownership affiliation between "Local Media Boston" and "Local Radio Networks", or what it is if so, but I would guess that the station (WMEX, "Local Media Boston") is not paying outright for the "True Oldies Channel". Maybe barter, or maybe some sort of co-ownership, local subsidiary, or franchise.
At least much of Shannon's airshifts are voicetracked. Records the announcing breaks all at once, the computer schedules them to play at the correct times, before and after the correct songs, etc... He's not doing nine hour live shifts every weekday, I heard a claim that maybe he does the morning drive portion live.
Ironic that a national company that nationally programs (their claim of) "over 1000 stations nationwide", and a local station owner that has no local airstaff on the air and airs only national programming, calls themselves "Local" anything.
Last edited:
"Local Media Boston" is just L&J without Larry Justice in the ownership group and a new majority partner.
There's no common ownership between Local Radio Networks and Local Media Boston, WMEX is just an affiliate, much in the same as WDEV and WTIC are of the Red Sox or WBZ is of ABC.
Local Media Boston filed a withdrawl of the assignment of license on March 16 and it was granted.
True oldies channel is distributed by Local Radio Networks using technology that has the music and jock content sitting locally in the WMEX Studio, its not satellite.
And to the best of my knowledge, all of the LRN offerings are offered on barter for the most basic operations. LRN's own format have jocks that can localize, but you have to pay for that.
True oldies channel is distributed by Local Radio Networks using technology that has the music and jock content sitting locally in the WMEX Studio, its not satellite.
And to the best of my knowledge, all of the LRN offerings are offered on barter for the most basic operations. LRN's own format have jocks that can localize, but you have to pay for that.
Please explain this "technology that has the music and jock content sitting locally in the WMEX Studio".
Scott Shannon is not sitting locally in the WMEX studio, no matter what the AI picture they posted shows...
a computer with all the music true oldies channel plays sits on a computer in the WMEX studio. scott and robby record voice tracks and they get pushed directly to the local computer. that’s how much of the local radio networks formats work… no more satellite for many of them
So does that mean WMEX still has a board opp running/programing things on the local end, even part time or preprogramed for overnights? I'm guessing updates are sent via broadband internet? That also means they have loads of hard drive space full of songs, the voice tracks, the local commercials, promos,ids,etc...
nope.. automation plays it all out. no need for a board op
That doesn't mean something didn't happen behind the scenes, it just means the transfer of control didn't happen. Didn't need to. They could have changed the configuration of the company without a majority shareholder change. The FCC treats minor and majority shareholders much different.
Something definitely happened behind the scenes, besides the on air changes. Larry Justice on Facebook gives off vibes that something not in his favor happened.
Tony and Larry both owned 50 percent of L & J Media
Cornell law: A change from 50 percent or more ownership to less than 50 percent ownership shall always be considered a transfer of control. In all other situations
And L and J had the new guy owning 55 percent and tony owning 45
If the sale to L & J didnt close, then it goes back to the previous known ownership amount.
But.. looking through the LMS filings, L & J meduia changed their name to local media boston
yeh, but who's programing the automation and on which end?
the network is, on the network end
Any idea how many stations they have using the True oldies service?
and for that matter, where are they getting the announcers for weather and traffic?
no idea, but prob. a few dozen stations.
Traffic probably comes from the total traffic network or whatever it is that iheart owns. they offer it to owner stations.
weather probably comes from a service like the weather channel or weatherology or something
It sounds to me like the weather “announcer” may be an AI bot voice using a program that turns weather data into speech formatted for a radio weather report.
Maybe the traffic one too, haven’t listened closely enough to it.
Sad to see what's become of this station, but it probably couldn't have been avoided. Combine the exodus of advertisers from radio with the reluctance of the remaining advertisers to target older listeners -- especially in an agency-dominated market -- then throw in the signal issues, even with a translator, and you've got a money pit. I hope someone can be found to buy WMEX, even it is a Jesus huckster, just so current ownership can recover some of its losses.
Don’t know, but I first heard it in this area about twenty years ago on WCRN 830 AM in Worcester. It was all Scott Shannon at that time too.
WCRN used it full-time for a couple of years as an oldies station with no local hosts from 2004-2006 when it then switched to a talk format that it still has today.
WCRN still runs oldies/classic hits overnights but I think that’s now on local automation, not a network.
They probably traded cruise cabins for the Royal Caribbean sponsorship. I hope the cruise is before it goes BK
