WEEI at Fenway Park

Suffice it to say... WEEI-AM has a special relationship with Fenway Park, much in the way that the City of Boston has a special relationship with Fenway Park. WEEI goes way back in Boston. They signed on as WEEIin 1924 under the ownership of Edison Electric. The 850 Mhz frequency was actually WHDH until 1994 WEEI sat on 50 Mhz. American Radio Systems purchased the WEEI "intellectual property" but not their license. So they just moved the branding and programming to 850.

They became a talk station in the 1960s far ahead of other AM talkers. They claim to have been New England's first talk radio station. The station began carrying the Celtics in 1987 then were bought by Boston Celtics Communications in 1990, and when the CBS Radio Network's shifted its Boston affiliation to WRKO, they switched to ABC. Then they began adding to their sports line up. WEEI became the flagship station of the Boston Bruins that same year. By late 1991 they became an all-sports station.

After 91 years it seems almost natural for their call letters to be two stories tall over a Red Sox game.

DJs can be felons

It's a fact, our hiring standards can be lax. Radio work does not require a masters degree, a college diploma -not even a GED. We don't do a lot of background checks. Hell, I think most of us have met one or two that were borderline illiterate. So in that mix we do turn up the occasional felon. So today I'd like to revisit a few highlights.
680 WRKO-AM
Thomas Finneran has been doing "Finneran's Forum" for years. The former House speaker quit to become a high-paid lobbyist. In 2007 the well connected Finneran took over the morning drive spot on WRKO. More here. Despite crappy ratings, Entercom extended his contract into 2009. He was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. He pled out, they dropped perjury he was disbarred, lost his pension, paid a fine and got 18 months probation. More here.

93.3 KMXV
Gregory D. Sage, was busted in 2007 on 5 counts of child pornography. Oooh that hurts the brand. More here. He did afternoons DJ'ing at KMXV starting in 2002 and was promoted to promotions manager in 2006. Sage also worked at KCKC doing a little traffic and promotions.

600 KOGO-AM
Roger Hedgecock had to resign as mayor of San Diego in 1985 over 13 convictions for perjury relating to his failure to failure to report over $360,000 in campaign contributions. He paid a fine and it was reduced to a misdemeanor. He spent a year in custody and was disbarred. He went on to host the Roger Hedgecock Show on KOGO and KSDO-AM in California. He's been on air for 20 years and is nationally syndicated. More here, and here.

770 WABC-AM
Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing pundit has been repeatedly caught with illegal prescription drugs. In 2003 he used his maid toscore 4,350 Oxycontin in one 47-day period. (Normally that many would get you a charge of intent to sell) In 2006 it was Viagra without a prescription in his bag at Palm Beach Airport. Then he was accused of doctor shopping to stock up on Oxycontin, Lorcet, Xanax, and Clonodine. Under Florida State law that's also a felony. For the Oxy he was booked and and had to make a $30,000 payment to the State of Florida. All other charges evaporated. More here.

N6FRV
This is a little more academic... should a felony conviction count against an amateur license? Robert Landis of Atascadero, California, was convicted in 1991 on two felony counts of lewd behavior with a minor. As a result,15 years later while he is still in prison... in August of 2006 the FCC initiated a hearing, in November he got revoked. More here.

97.1 KLSP
You can't beat KLSP, the radio station is in Angola prison, every one of it's air staff are felons. many are multiple felons. Operating since 1986 it operates at 100 watts and reaches about 6,000 people. I don't think any of them are former members of congress. More here.

----------UPDATE 02/25/09-----------

...To drive the point home, there was another conviction just yesterday.
98.1 WTKE & 1400 WTKE-AM
In 2005 "the Ticket" added Charles "Scott" McKinney to their morning show The Morning Wrap. McKinney was sentenced to five years in prison on a conviction for 11 counts of fraud and grand theft. He had been soliciting investments in a front company claiming to be syndicating his program. More here.

Chop, chop, Snip, snip

Radio station edit songs. Sometimes this is tasteful and graceful; sometimes not. It's a practice most laypeople are blissfully oblivious to, but most radio people are aware is commonplace. But it really didn't move into common practice until the mid 1970s.

If you're from the biz and over the age of 30 the above block and razor pic probably looks somewhat familiar. The block is made of hardened aircraft strength aluminum. It's precision machined, and will hold down the tape while cutting and taping. The cut slots are standard at 45 and a 90 degree angles. It was used with splicing tape, which came (at least in my day) more popularly in pre-cut sticky tabs. I've used this bastard. It works. But digital is better. Anyone else ever sped the time to edit out every "um" from a bad interview?

Top-forty radio, back in those pre-niche days, relied on having a variety of music on its playlists.If you don't like [whatever is playing now], don't worry because [whatever the next song is] will be something completely different. But of course that worked much better when "the next song" was only two or three minutes away. The eight-minute album cuts from 1970s AOR got in the way of that angle. Various radio stations handled the situation in different ways.

At WRKO there was "the RKO edict" No song over 3 minutes got on air. It was then PD Paul Drew's solution in 1974. Reputedly it was broken twice within its first three weeks when much-longer-than-three-minute songs by John Denver and Elton John were added to his stations playlists.

Elsewhere these decisions were usually made on a song-by-song basis. Unusually in the format, 99.5 WEFM in Chicago prided themselves on playing the full length versions. But then, WEFM was a unsuccessful Top 40 radio station. They eventually dropped the format in 1980 after only 4 years of watching it succeed almost everywhere else. Some Chicago radio history here.

Particularly problematic was the single "Stairway To Heaven" which came out in in 1975. Stations like WLS did cut out all the instrumental bridges, leaving only the vocal segments trying desperately to make it down to the 3 minute goal line. Incidentally, it sounds like crap when you hack out that much of a song. Massive awkward edits like that are blatant to the listener and have a negative impact.

Today record labels, in an effort to avoid hatchet-jobs like this, issue studio-made radio edits of various lengths. ...and it benefits us all. The radio station plays the song they want, the artist gets to record the song they want, and you get to purchase the version you want. And thankfully no one has to listen to bad versions that no one wants.