Rock Radio Dead in Boston. Satellite Radio in Limbo. What's Next?

Part One: "So Long, Rangoon!" The slow, painful death of "The Rock Of Boston".

When the news dropped in July that CBS had axed WBCN from the FM dial, Greater Bostonians over the age of 30 felt a collective twinge in their chests. In truth, the longtime "Rock Of Boston" had been ailing for at least ten years. Long gone were the days of Charles Laquidara's Big Mattress, "Captain" Ken Shelton's Mighty Lunch Hour and Marc Parenteau's Morons, Psychopaths and Mental Defectives . No more Mishegas. No more rides on The Elevator From Hell.

In its heyday, 104.1 WBCN offered a unique blend of music, humor and news that was unparalleled even by college radio. The programming could appeal to just about anyone. They played everything from Bob Marley to Nirvana. The comedy bits often crossed the line ("Down at Revere beach sittin' on the wall..."), but were always done lovingly and rarely maliciously. And people of all political affiliations could hold hands and share a good chuckle when Marc Parenteau and then-City Councillor Dapper O'Neil would duke it out over the phone on the air.

"I was actually a listener as well as an on-air guy", said Longtime DJ Charles Laquidara in a recent interview with Boston Globe reporter Emily Sweeny. "I loved the audience. We had a mutual thing going back and forth that will probably never happen again. WBCN will probably go down in history as one of the greatest rock stations that ever existed."

So what went wrong?

Many assert that the undoing of WBCN and many other FM stations of its ilk came with the total deregulation of radio that occurred with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This law allowed large media companies to now own more than one station within a single market. Infinity Broadcasting had owned WBCN since 1979 and soon purchased its largely successful sister station, WZLX (100.7-FM). In an effort to maximize ratings at both stations, Infinity implemented a plan to lower the age group of WBCN's target audience. Most of the DJs were replaced and the station's music format was changed to almost exclusively feature alternative rock. Local music was no longer promoted as heavily. Howard Stern was picked up in syndication for the morning drive time slot and the station soon became dominated by syndicated talk show programs and sports broadcasts.

The plan backfired over the next few years as management watched the station's ratings deteriorate.

"They definitely brought it on themselves," said Oedipus, longtime WBCN Music Director, in a recent interview with TV's Greater Boston. "It was woefully mismanaged. They took the creativity out of the programming and let the suits program the station. That's the death of any radio station."

"All the corporate people," Laquidara adds, "they're famous for destroying radio stations. They buy them and then they destroy them. I guess that's not even a secret amongst the industry. Everybody knows that. Because their bottom line has always been the bottom line."

By the time Howard Stern left FM radio for good in 2005, WBCN's rating sank to lows from which they were unable to recover. CBS Radio, the successors to Infinity Broadcasting, decided to replace WBCN completely with WBMX, an adult contemporary station in July 2009.

"BCN just kind of rusted away", Oedipus added. "They got away from being part of the Boston Institution. BCN was a Boston Institution, like the Red Sox, like The Boston Globe. You had to listen to WBCN to know what was going on in music and also what was happening in terms of lifestyle."

(Part two of this feature will look at radio deregulation and appear on October 6.)