by Carter Alan
Not only did the new association with WZLX mean that the sales strategies at both stations could be allied and results maximized, but Oedipus now had the opportunity to collaborate with his former adversary, program director Buzz Knight, in working out a two-station approach that minimized the considerable musical overlap of their respective formats. This appeared to be the answer to WBCN’S programming dilemma of addressing the tastes of two steadily diverging radio audiences. “This is what happens when you have a radio station whose life is so prolonged; you outgrow your audience,” Oedipus pointed out. WBCN could either grow old with those longtime (twenty-five- to fifty-four-year-old] fans, becoming essentially a classic rock radio station, or embrace the younger listeners who were moving into the station’s demographic target. With WZLX in the mix, the decision essentially became moot. “We elected to stay younger; WBCN had to. We focused on the eighteen- to thirty-four-year-olds.” Making that transition would occupy a year or so, but the first adjustment, proposed almost immediately, became the station’s third seismic shakeup in 1993.
Along with conducting the necessary music and image modifications to focus on the younger eighteen- to thirty-four-year-old segment of its audience, the managers at WBCN now turned to reassess the soundness of their air talent. “WBCN had been as important to Boston as the Globe and the Red Sox; we were an institution,” Oedipus observed. “But now, nineteen- and twenty-year-olds could no longer relate; they wanted something else.” The program director referred ominously to the sacrosanct “Big Three,” intact and in place on ’BCN’S weekday air since 1980. At the moment, Laquidara and Parenteau were winning their respective battles, even with the younger listeners, but a shadow of scrutiny had now fallen on Shelton’s shift. “Oedipus called me one day and said, ‘I need to talk to you after your show,’ the midday man recounted. “He said, ‘You’ve been great and we love you. It’s been such a perfect fit, gliding from Charles’s insanity to Parenteau’s wildness, the calm between the storms. But the company just bought WZLX, and there’s a big master plan; there’s going to be lots of changes.’” Shelton suspected what was coming next: that “master plan” probably included moving some or all of the ’BCN old-timers over to the classic rock station. “Oedipus said, ‘You’re the highest-paid midday guy in America. Your contract is up in a year; you’re welcome to stay and keep doing what you’re doing. [But] Mel loves you; he thinks you could be a [good] morning man. How about doing mornings at ’ZLX, with more money?’”
Shelton maintains that his relationship with Oedipus and Tony Berardini had curdled by that point over a union matter concerning insurance coverage: “They hated me and I hated them.” Oedipus, however, saw it as strictly business: “It happened to Shelton: for an eighteen-, nineteen-, or twenty-year-old [listener], he was now their dad’s DJ.”
“They would have fired me right away if I didn’t have the guardian angel, Mel Karmazin, sitting on my shoulder,” Shelton countered. The jock walked away from his long-standing midday home in July of ’93 to assume morning drive-time duties at Infinity’s new classic rock acquisition. Despite the bad blood that had spread between the players in this episode, the move was strategically sound and mutually beneficial. The older WBCN listeners who loved “Captain Ken” for all those years would now follow him over to WZLX, where he played the legendary songs they enjoyed, while Oedipus was now free to replace him with someone he saw as a better and younger fit for the station’s changing image (currently under construction). The ironic element was that Shelton now competed for listeners in the same time slot as his buddy Laquidara, the radio maniac he had clowned around with during “Mishegas” crossovers for well over a decade.
With Shelton’s departure/ouster, Bradley Jay, a veteran of various shifts at WBCN since 1982, moved into the midday slot. Although now a twelve-year veteran of the station, the DJ possessed the hunger and image of a much younger and savvy new-music-oriented jock. With his unquestioned enthusiasm, Jay had proved to be resilient in whatever role Oedipus asked him to perform, from famously clowning around backstage with David Bowie and hosting Lunchtime Concerts in the eighties to playing a controversial figure in a salacious evening show before Howard Stern replaced him. Jay had moved into the night shift in ’92 with the challenge of trying to head of the slide of listeners, not only from ’BCN, but also from radio in general, which occurred right after drive time. “Oedipus said to me, ‘I want you to go for it, do things to make people notice,’” the jock remembered. In the quest for ratings, perhaps inspired by the success of Stern’s show in other markets, WBCN went where it had never gone before: into R-rated territory. “We called the show ‘The Sex Palace’; it was the Howard Stern show, but Howard wasn’t there yet. We had strippers dancing in the window on Boylston Street, stopping trafc!” The lascivious spectacle, described on the air in every detail, drew a large crowd of listeners and pedestrians, who might have been stunned at the tawdriness of the moment yet remained to gawk at all the undulation, where, just eleven years earlier, Tony Berar-dini and Marc Miller had solemnly addressed hundreds of John Lennon mourners.
Bradley Jay and Tami Heide get close for the camera. Photo by Roger Gordy.
“ ‘The Sex Palace,’ was a little ‘out there,’” Oedipus admitted. “It worked for a while, but Bradley just couldn’t make the show broad enough, intriguing and risqué enough, to draw in a large audience like Howard Stern. [He] couldn’t quite pull it in.” When the program director and Tony Berardini took the monumental step of importing the actual master of that game, Jay was left without his full-time shift. “I didn’t freak out, I didn’t get bitter, I didn’t burn bridges.” He left for Los Angeles but only stayed away for a few weeks before returning to do more part-time shifts. But during that brief period away, the jock redefined his radio approach. “I read this book on marketing that said if you have a product, like mouthwash, and there’s already a Listerine on the market, don’t make another product that ‘kills germs’; make it different. There was already a Howard Stern, so it was pointless to be a shock-jock; I did the exact opposite and went minimal.” As the buffer between the up-tempo mischief of morning and afternoon drive times, the music orientation of the 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. shift had always been the correct recipe for success at ’BCN, and Jay poured himself willingly into the mold. “That seemed to be attractive [to Oedipus] because that is how I pretty much eased into the midday.”
The next step was the music itself. Never a stranger to presenting the latest records and new bands, WBCN by default had always featured an ample variety of new music. By mid-1992, the station regularly played the music set free by Nirvana’s hydrogen-bomb-like arrival: Seattle “grunge rock” and its major purveyors, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden. The later, more commercial “postgrunge” bands such as Stone Temple Pilots and Bush found a home at WBCN, as did the “Brit pop” groups like Oasis and Blur. These exciting new sounds were featured freely next to mainstream acts like the Rolling Stones, The Who, and Pink Floyd. “We were playing the stuf we loved,” Bill Abbate mentioned, “Pearl Jam instead of the latest from Huey Lewis and the News. It was new, it was fresh, and it was fun.” In 1997, the industry tip sheet, MQB —Modern Quarterback, quoted Oedipus about the change: “’BCN had been defending its upper demos from ‘ZLX by leaning hard on its classic rock library. ‘It was time to let the classic rock station succeed on its own terms; there was no reason to fight them anymore.’” Steve Strick (who had become assistant music director by this time) agreed: “We already had a classic rock station in town; why go against them and split an audience that was not growing, but perhaps, dwindling in size? Everybody in the room was leaning toward the younger, more modern route. It was a more exciting direction to go, and even Tony went along with it, because he saw it as a way for the station to evolve and grow. We decided to do it gradually: playing the new music and starting to weed out the artists who were incompatible.” Strick smiled and added, “So every week [in the music meeting], there was this fun
little exercise of eliminating another artist. One of the first to go was Jethro Tull. Everybody was jumping up and down, ‘Great! Snot dripping down his nose—get that of!’ We stuck with a few, but it took about six months to rid the station of the older stuf.”
Steve Miller in the studio with Mark Parenteau, also producer Jef Myerow. Changing times and a younger-oriented format soon leaves artists like Miller behind at WBCN. Photo by Mim Michelove.
A WBCN playlist from June 1993 included new music artists—Stone Temple Pilots, Porno for Pyros, Radiohead, Frank Black, Alice in Chains, and Soul Asylum—but was dominated by the latest singles from classic names like Rod Stewart, the Steve Miller Band, Pat Benatar, Donald Fagan, Pete Townshend, Van Morrison, and Neil Young. Nearly two years later, in April 1995, another sample playlist revealed that ’BCN’S transition had been completed: artists such as Green Day, Live, Offspring, Morphine, Filter, Oasis, Pearl Jam, Belly, and Matthew Sweet completely commanded the roster, the sole classic entrant being Tom Petty and his song “It’s Good to Be King.” This development prompted Jim Sullivan in a May 1995 Boston Globe article entitled “Reinventing the Rock of Boston” to declare, “AOR is dead. Or dying. Or mutating. Oedipus wants nothing to do with those three now-dirty letters. ‘WBCN,’ he says, ‘is a “modern rock” station.’” Sullivan also pointed out that this shift to play alternative sounds was a national trend, with several of the approximately 175 album-oriented rock (AOR) radio stations making the switch to play alternative music and join the 64 or so modern rock stations on the other side. “ ‘We’re redefining the center,’ says Oedipus. ‘The center will not hold; it’s very askew.’”
In Sullivan’s article, Oedipus admitted that the transition from full-on AOR to a modern rock entity took well over a year to complete, but the experience of attending Woodstock ’94 “gave it a big kick.” That festival, a twenty-ffth-anniversary tribute to the original three days of peace, love, and music that helped mightily to transform a generation, was held 12–14 August 1994 in Saugerties, New York. Santana, Joe Cocker, CSN, and John Sebastian returned to encore their now-mythical performances from the first concert, joining other classic rockers like Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers Band, Trafc, and Aerosmith. The cream of the modern rock movement also mounted the two main stages at Woodstock: Nine Inch Nails, Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Cranberries, and many more.
As a player during the original festival and still in business to enjoy the vibes a quarter century later, WBCN’S presence in upstate New York was a must. “’BCN had the foresight to rent this house, a kind of cheesy ranch house which, for some reason, smelled horribly like fish,” Bradley Jay remembered. “You could hear the bands in the distance, and you could walk there.” The place ended up being called “The Love Shack,” and the crew from WBCN used the house as a base for its broadcast operations during the rainy weekend. “I was there early, but the day the show started, people started to roll in. Oedipus had decided that we were a station of the people, and he made sure we broadcast that everyone should stop by ‘The Love Shack’ on their way to the festival. So they came all the time, even in the middle of the night, like zombies! They’d be knocking at the door, [saying] ‘We heard on the radio we could stay here.’”
“We got inundated with people,” Albert O agreed. “Parenteau suddenly showed up, John Garabedian was in there, J.J. Jackson, this woman Kat who worked at ‘FNX at the time.”
“It truly was ‘The Love Shack,’” Jay commented. “At one point I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and it was like a Monty Python skit: every room, every bunk, everything, and everywhere: sex was going on.” Vegas rules applied: what happened at “The Love Shack” stayed at “The Love Shack.” Jay added, “It was good times there, till the people from MTV came in to use the bathroom and clogged it up!”
Never buoyed by an explosive political undercurrent, nor a joining of voices against an unjust war, nor a historic gathering of “freaks,” the Woodstock ’94 festival nevertheless contained some terrific musical performances and assembled a massive number (over three hundred thousand) of WBCN’S revised target demographic: eighteen- to thirty-four-year-olds. For Oedipus, the experience proved to be as vital as it was enjoyable, serving as a research project in a gargantuan test market. Thousands stood in what became a muddy mess as the skies constantly hemorrhaged, but the overwhelming preference of the crowd for this new music confirmed to the program director that the fresh direction of the station was the correct one to take. Oedipus marched back from Woodstock all fired up. He was waiting for Steve Strick and me when we got into ’BCN to begin our workweek. Breathlessly, he described his experience and then began discussing whether we should accelerate the process of removing classic artists and adding modern ones to the playlist. We decided to experiment by going 100 percent modern rock on the weekends, a gutsy move considering that there were no focus groups, no strategic studies, and no call-out research to add to our gut instincts. But, within weeks, the ratings on those Saturdays and Sundays had improved so much, so fast, that we had to look at each and admit, “What were we waiting for?”
“We are definitely the New Woodstock station,” Oedipus told Jim Sullivan in his ’95 Boston Globe piece. “WZLX is the Old Woodstock station.” The article went on to acknowledge that in a half year of programming modern rock, WBCN had lost ground to WZLX in the 25–54 audience, but (as intended) “in the younger 18–34 male category, [WBCN] significantly increased listenership over WZLX and WAAF.”
With Ken Shelton gone, Bradley Jay in the midday seat, Howard Stern on at night, and modern rock the format, ’BCN headed into 1995 as a rein-vigorated fighting machine. But the new music, as refreshing as it might be to the air staff, came to the station with a price. Because it was key to create hits out of these new songs, anchoring the format with the most powerful and coveted tracks, WBCN began playing its strongest music in a rotation of five to six “spins” a day. With that, the opportunities for the DJS to add their own optional songs (a tradition of varying freedom over the years) had ended completely. Now, the only musical freedom that could be exercised by an individual member of the air staff was if he or she attended the music meeting and voiced an opinion. “It was a slow evolving of complete freedom to gradual acceptance, and by ’95 it was really tight,” acknowledged Mark Parenteau. “I had started out way back making no money with 100 percent freedom; now I was making a quarter-million dollars [a year] and I had no freedom. But, it was a trade-of I gladly gave them.” Most of the jocks, though not making anything near Parenteau’s pay scale, had to agree that it was much more fun playing the music they enjoyed the most, even if the ability to choose individual tracks during their shifts had been curtailed. “Lots of people, from U2 to the new artists, were turning out great records,” Steve Strick said. “It was a no-brainer to tap into that youthful energy.” It also resonated with WBCN’S past, which had always embraced the new and revolutionary, the up-and-coming, and the future trendsetters. “A roster once clogged with Classic Rock bands (Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd) now churns out a steady diet of new-rock acts such as Belly, Liz Phair, Oasis and Bush,” Dean Johnson wrote in the Boston Herald in May ’95. He concluded, “There was a hole in the Boston market for a new-rock/alternative music station with a major FM signal. There is no hole anymore—and WBCN will reap the rewards.”
It was Mel who pointed out, “Guys, it’s only twenty days out of 365. And, by the way, it’s on Sundays. What do your ratings look like on Sundays? They suck! It can’t hurt.” TONY BERARDINI
ANY GIVEN
SUNDAY,
ANY GIVEN
WEEKDAY
The WBCN press release dated 17 November 1994 announced the startling news, but the local media was already buzzing excitedly about it: WBCN and the New England Patriots had signed a three-year deal for the radio broadcast rights beginning in the 1995–1996 season, ending the football team’s previous relationship with WBZ-AM. The release stated, “Infinity’s latest additio
n will mark the first time a major league sports team will be broadcast on an FM station in stereo in the Boston market.” The news broke on “The Big Mattress” as Robert Kraft, who had recently become owner, president, and chief executive of the Patriots, and WBCN general manager/ vice president Tony Berardini shared the announcement over the air.
The Kraft family, which had made a fortune in the paper and packaging materials business, had purchased the team early in 1994, and it was an association with Robert’s son, Jonathan, that eventually led to his family’s involvement with WBCN. Tank remembered, “On Fridays I would broadcast my sports reports from outside the station on the sidewalk. We had clients involved, restaurants coming down, caterers, bicycle tune-ups; I knew Jonathan because he’d come down too. Once day, I introduced him to Berardini and suggested (ha, ha) that they talk about getting the Patriots on ’BCN, not that that was ever going to happen, of course!”
“Jonathan used to come in and sit in on Charles’s show all the time,” Be-rardini recalled. “He loved ’BCN. One day Tank introduced us and we talked. We went out to dinner, and Jonathan made it very clear to me that they wanted the Patriots to be a success. They had been season ticketholders since Jonathan was a little kid, all those years when the Patriots couldn’t even get fifteen thousand fans in the stands—sitting on those metal benches. And you have to remember that after ’86, the Patriots just sucked; they were bad after they got blown out by Chicago [in the Super Bowl].”
With the ink barely dry on the new owner’s contract to purchase the team, Berardini initiated a meeting with Mel Karmazin, Jonathan, and his father Robert Kraft. Berardini explained,
We had it in Robert’s office, and I was shaking like a leaf, totally excited, but nervous. It was supposed to be an hour meeting, and Jonathan and I actually said very little the whole time. Mel and Robert started talking, and it got into, “Hey, do you know this guy?” They were talking about different investment bankers, because by this time the Krafts had a huge business, so Mel and Robert knew a lot of the same people. I was looking at my watch; we were forty-five minutes into this, and they were still playing “What banker do you know?” But then Robert started asking Mel about the radio business. It wasn’t negotiating or anything; he just wanted to know about the business. Mel started telling him about how you make money in radio, the performance of Infinity over the years, that we were a growth company, the expectations, this and that. All of a sudden, Robert told us, “I want you to meet somebody.” He picked up the phone and said, “Hey, can you come up here?” He introduced us to this guy who was in charge of investing funds for the Kraft group, and then told him, “This is Mel Karmazin, the CEO of Infinity. I want you to buy stock in his company.” Mel looked at Robert and said, “I came here to do a deal for the radio rights to the Patriots, not to sell stock!” But it struck me that this was Robert’s way of saying, “I like your business, and I like the way you do business.”