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WNEB-AM Worcester Sold

L

Laurence Glavin

Guest
All Access is reporting that WNEB-AM 1230 in Worcester is being sold by Blount Masscom to an outfit called Emmanuel Communications. The latter is paying HALF-A-MILLION-DOLLARS for this perennial loser!
 
Laurence Glavin said:
All Access is reporting that WNEB-AM 1230 in Worcester is being sold by Blount Masscom to an outfit called Emmanuel Communications. The latter is paying HALF-A-MILLION-DOLLARS for this perennial loser!
Click to expand...

I wonder whether WNEB will simulcast WQOM. WQOMs new daytime pattern will not deliver a decent signal to Worcester. The 1060 station will be audible there during the daytime only on very sensitive radios. At night, the signal never did reach Worcester and the new owners are not trying to modify the super-critical night pattern.
 
Emmanul Communications is made up of 3 people, each having 1/3rd ownership: Raymond Lauring, Mark Lauring and Michael Grimes. None of those guys have interest(ownership) in any other stations. Apparently, the station price does not include the xmtr-site land, as there is a lease for such.
 
The Spanish programming has ended on WNEB but the station has been off the air for several days now. Someone updated their Wikipedia article on January 24th to reflect the expected format switch to Catholic programming. Not sure if the former owner (Blount) turned off the station and officially closed on the deal with Emmanuel at that time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNEB
 
Sometimes when a station deal closes, the station goes off because a lease has not yet been finalized with a land-owner where the tower is. I don't know if the land is owned with the station or not (it wasn't when I owned WNEB). It's always best not to use the facility if lease is not signed yet, as it gves the upper hand to the land-owner if station is using it to broadcast. And if there's a total format-change, or if there are no listeners, there's no disadvantage to turning it off for several days.
 
DavidZ said:
The Spanish programming has ended on WNEB but the station has been off the air for several days now. Someone updated their Wikipedia article on January 24th to reflect the expected format switch to Catholic programming. Not sure if the former owner (Blount) turned off the station and officially closed on the deal with Emmanuel at that time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNEB
Click to expand...

WNEB was broadcasting in Spanish? I thought it was running some kind of right-wing talk format under Blount? Or was that a few formats back?
 
I can think of a number of different format changes that WNEB had over the years.
I can remember back in the 70s when they were a Country Station.
I think it was Christmas Day 1980 that The Music Of Your Life format started until WNEB went dark in 1991.
WJIB came along in 1996 with their music.
From 1997-2003, Mix 1230 with Christian music came into play.
Somewhere along the way, The Patriot arrived.
After The Patriot, came Spanish.
The only other Spanish station is WORC 1310.
Whatever happen to the day when AM Radio had at least a little bit of variety?
 
Back in the 80's when it was owned by Harold Segal, NEB was a scrappy little station and despite a poor evening signal actually made money. Paul Larsen did mornings , Gary Walsh did afternoons and they were local and live except for overnights. They had a Less Nessman type of guy doing news. NEB had a full sales staff that went up against WFTQ, WTAG, WSAR and XLO. I don't remember what ORC was doing at the time.

I worked for company that produced Holy Cross sports that were carried on NEB and the staff were a great group of people to work with.
 
vmorrison said:
NEB had a full sales staff that went up against WFTQ, WTAG, WSAR and XLO. I don't remember what ORC was doing at the time.
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Don't you mean WSRS, not WSAR? You also might mean WSRO, which was in Marlborough, but probably put a good enough signal into Worcester to sell a little time there. However, I can't imagine that the 1 kW DA-D signal on 1470 from the Curtis Ave site on the east side of Marlborough was really competitive in Worcester.
 
The guy who did the news at WNEB was Jack Fisk.
I can also remember Todd Campbell who was later station manager, Don Spencer who was first heard on Sunday afternoons than later middays. I know there was alot other on air voices.
WORC had Country from 1984-1989, Oldies from 1989-1994, Classic Rock & Outragious Talk from 1994-1995, Talk from 1995-2004, & Spanish to this day.
WORC also moved their studios alot in those days.
 
Blount did buy the former Disney station in Hartford. It came back on the air last month, the fourth religious broadcaster in the market. It is now known as WSDK AM 1550.
 
WORC had Country from 1984-1989, Oldies from 1989-1994...


And those formats were in AM stereo!/quote]

During the Country years, they broadcast in true AM stereo. But after
being sold to Davis Advertising and changing the format to Oldies, and after
one of those many moves referred to in an earlier post, I'm told the tight-fisted
owners messed with the stereo sound. If I'm not mistaken, I heard they replaced
the two high quality phone lines from the studio to the transmitter with a
single line to save money. They then used some sort of stereo synthesizer
(I think the brand name was Orban), to simulate a stereo sound.

By the way, when Davis bought WORC in 1989, the studios were located on upper Pleasant
Street in downtown Worcester. If the studios had remained there all through the
years, it would have been a disaster. The building they were in was completely destroyed
by a fire a few years ago.
Click to expand...
 
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