2008 has turned out to be a huge year for 40th birthdays. FMQBcelebrated our 40th anniversary in the business with a gala event at the Loews in Philadelphia. WMMR chalked up 40 years as the home of rock n roll in Philly, and the Rock Of Boston, WBCN, now stands tall as a forty something and shows no signs of a middle age crisis.
We recently caught up with WBCN PD Dave Wellington about the station’s 40th anniversary plans and where it currently stands in one of the most crowded Rock radio markets in the country.
e-QB presents excerpts from the May FMQB magazine Modern Rock Up Close with WBCN/Boston PD Dave Wellington
Some of the recent changes the station has undergone…Certainly, evaluating everything on-air and trying to make the best staff adjustments was priority number one. Initially when I first came in, everything was up for review: the music, the personalities, and the promotions. With a heritage station, you’ve got to take a look back and… What have they done to get them up to this point? What was successful? What things missed their mark? What was the past competition like? Currently how fiercely competitive is the market? What does the audience want the most? So, it was come in, establish that, and then start to move and make some of those changes.
Musically… We tightened up the music quite a bit and focused it, and brought it a little upper end; closer to a 31-32-year-old…Then music was a little broad, so we tightened the currents and brought back some of what made us WBCN… I took a look at what made ’BCN: The Ramones, U2, The Clash and some of the earlier stuff, as well as peppering in a dash of the Led Zeppelin, Hendrixand Pink Floyd– a little goes a long way… WBCN station started as a Progressive Rock station, but played Rock, and all of that stuff got pushed away prior to my arrival. We brought some of that back as spice and some flavor to the radio station and re-branded WBCN as “The Rock of Boston”…
On personalities… Bostonians already knew and loved Opie & Anthony. And Toucher & Richwere new to the market, but had a very good Northeast kind of mentality. The market took to them very quickly, and they’ve had great success. It’s fun to have a big personality show in the afternoon, so I kind of equate that to they way the station was originally launched. If you talk to people in the market, they grew up here and what did they love about ’BCN? Charles Laquidara and his Morning Mattress, JJ Jackson, Oedipus, Tami Heide… People remember the names and the big personalities, and that’s really what set ’BCN apart. The music would always kind of ebb and flow depending upon what was popular at the time. But what resonated above and beyond was thebigger than life personalities.
On the station’s 40th Anniversary… We just recently had our first morning man, Charles Laquidara, come in and co-host lunch which jammed our e-mail boxes and rang the phones off the hook. Each month we’re doing different guest lunches with our midday personality Adam 12… We played back a bunch of old production pieces, bits and stuff that you haven’t heard in a long time. People came out of the woodwork. We will be rolling out some surprises soon as we bring back and feature previous WBCN on air personalities… We have live concerts from so many artists like U2,Jimi Hendrix and REM playing in small Boston clubs. These broadcasts are exclusive content that we have so we’re going to take the best from the last 40 years and do something special with them… It’s a pretty daunting task to celebrate your 40th. This year we decided to bring back the River Rave, and bring it back BIG! River Rave is June 1st at the Tweeter Center, featuring Stone Temple Pilots, Filter, Ten Years, Pennywise, Everlast, Street Dogs and Girls, Guns & Glory –the winners from our 30th Anniversary Rock & Roll Rumble.
Some of the main reasons behind ’BCN’s success?
We’ve been really lucky to have ownership and management at every level, that really understands what the ’BCN brand means to New England. CBS Corporate has been very supportive and to be able to have Mark Hannon, Greg Strassell, Kevin Weatherly and Dave Numme’s perspective, expertise and leadership is truly great.
** QB Content by Mike Bacon **
