If you’re from Boston or went to school in the area, more than likely WBCN was in some way a part of the soundtrack of your youth. Carter Alan, former 19-year ‘BCN vet and current music director/midday host at sister station WZLX, has captured all of the glory in the excellent Radio Free Boston. Sure, Alan’s better known as a deejay than as an historian, but his book is wonderfully comprehensive, spanning the experimental free-form launch in the late 1960’s until the air went dead on August 12, 2009. Forty-one years of many styles of rock n’ roll as well as news, politics, comedy, sports and general mania, all of it is covered here, and quite colorfully. Dial up 104.1 FM now and you can expect bland adult contemporary and a poor excuse for a “morning zoo.” If you think Carson & Kennedy doing scripted crank calls passes for good comedy, you may have missed the genius that was the inspired Big Mattress. Just saying, not judging. (Note: I am absolutely judging.)
Entertainment aside, this book is a cautionary study in how things fall apart. In its heyday, WBCN owned the 18-to-34 year-old listening audience and charged obscenely high rates to those clamoring for ad space on its airwaves. Yet it wasn’t always that way. In the Vietnam era, a handwritten note hung by morning host Charles Laquidara stated Dow Chemical (among others) couldn’t advertise on the station because of the napalm it made for the US Army. In those days, an influential deejay could make such declarations and have them honored. Much to its agency’s chagrin, Coca-Cola couldn’t teach the world to sing (in perfect harmony) on the station because the soft drink giant’s jingle “clashed hideously with ‘BCN’s radical musical views and countercultural slant.” But that level of idealism faded in the 80’s as WBCN became the highly profitable crown jewel of the then-fledgling Infinity Broadcasting Corp. network, such that it often kept the heavily leveraged parent company afloat. The sales department had to keep feeding the beast. To the listener, it was all fun and games; on the inside,something was bound to give.
By most accounts, the beginning of the end occurred when the trigger was pulled to run Howard Stern’s syndicated show for the morning drive. The rationale spoke to defense – if we don’t sign him, a competitor will – but this was really about chasing short-term profits. Thus began the inevitable erosion of the brand, and ‘BCN became less about being a cool entity in “the crime-free Fenway” and more about cheap tricks. Of course, Stern was such a huge success that the inside joke became how many Met-Rx spots could be sold at ever-skyrocketing rates, what with his huge audience of meatheads in constant need of the bodybuilding supplement. But alas, what the station soon lost was the all-day listener who enjoyed the jovial transition from Laquidara to Captain Ken Shelton to Mark Parenteau. The audience was bifurcated and ‘BCN’s identity got hazy. As small-business people, what lesson can we take out of all this? Maybe it’s that slow and steady wins the race and what appears on the surface as the panacea may in the end just be a cash grab. If you’re a miner for truth, heed the underlying message in Radio Free Boston and stick with what works over the long haul. Even Crackhead Bob would have to agree with that.