Radio Free Boston (48 page)

“When Howard left and went to Sirius,” Steve Strick said, “we lost one of the most compelling reasons for people to tune in
WBCN
. Those listeners were gone.” That story played out on
CBS
affiliates coast to coast, all of whom would experience a loss of ratings and revenue as Stern's estimated twelve million daily listeners either struggled to find new morning entertainment or shelled out $12.95 per month to follow him to satellite radio.

CBS
weighed its options during Stern's protracted fourteen-month goodbye, and one of them led to former Van Halen lead singer David Lee Roth. With his performing career, at the time, in the rearview mirror, Roth entertained the idea of being a syndicated radio host. He had the rapid-fire wit and reputation necessary, so serious talks with
CBS
advanced rapidly. The potential radio hire was slotted in to do an on-air audition, which happened at sister station
WZLX
in March 2005 during a week of morning shows. Chachi Loprete, now promotions director for both
WBCN
and
WZLX
, struggled with Roth during the weeklong audition:

I found him very hard to work with, and that's being kind! I got requests from his assistant: “David Lee wants the studio decked out like he's at the beach [with] palm trees, real ones.” He wanted a red carpet going into the studio with satin stanchions, like the ones at the movie theaters. He wanted a table set up outside the studio with all kinds of breakfast food on it. I said, “Okay, what does he want to eat?”

“No, no. It's not to eat,” the guy says. “It gets him in the mindset of breakfast and mornings. He wants Pop-Tarts®, he wants eggs, frozen waffles, McDonald's breakfast; put them all on the table.” So the food sat out there, and nobody could touch it. One morning after his show, he was supposed to meet all the sales people in the conference room; they were all waiting in there. He came to my office and said, “I'm not going down to the conference room. I'm leaving.”

“Uh, okay . . .”

“I don't go into conference rooms; I'm not meeting anybody.” Then he turned and walked out. He did do an event at the Paradise Theater for us where he came out and met people, but then he wouldn't sign anything; not even a guitar for charity.

Mark Hannon later told Joanna Weiss at the
Boston Globe
that the
WZLX
tryout “was raw Dave. It was no guidance, no direction, no producers, no
guests, no music. Everyone who listened to that said, ‘Imagine this guy in a setting where he's going to be surrounded by great radio people.'” But the consensus among the
WZLX
DJS
, including myself, was that David Lee Roth was a born loner, surrounded by acres of ego; he would never succeed as a morning show host unless he learned how to operate as part of a team. Nevertheless,
CBS
Radio announced that on 3 January 2006, Van Halen's former singer would begin broadcasting from New York as the new morning show host for
WBCN
, along with six other stations. Roth told the
Boston Globe
, “ ‘I'm like a tomahawk missile right in the Cheerios.” When the big day arrived, Juanita had set her alarm clock: “I loved
DLR
; I wanted to hear that historic moment. I listened to the first break and it was . . . crazy! It went on and on and on; what was he talking about? ‘This is going somewhere, right?' I knew right then that it wasn't going to go well.”

“It's a tough job [being a morning show host],” said Hardy. “It's a craft; you can't just walk in.” Five weeks after Roth's debut, the
Boston Herald
confirmed that the program was in trouble: “David Lee Roth's radio days are numbered. Critics pan him. His ratings are horrendous. He's difficult to work with and on air he's dared his
CBS
bosses to fire him.” The story also revealed that
WBCN'S
morning ratings had plummeted from first place to twelfth.

Rumors began swirling that
CBS
was in secret talks with Opie and Anthony, the tarnished white knights, to replace the failing morning show. It turned out to be true: the company canned David Lee Roth, paying out the remainder of a reported $4 million deal to unload the rock star, and announced a unique arrangement with O & A, who were happily working at premium salary levels for
XM
Satellite radio.
XM
would license a three-hour segment of the duo's show to
CBS
, which would simulcast it on terrestrial radio and edit out any offensive sections. When O & A returned to the airwaves of
CBS
Radio in April '06, one of the duo's first guests was the chairman of
CBS
Radio Joel Hollander, who underscored the company's priorities by mandating simply, ‘Get me ratings. That's it.'”

“There were decisions made, like David Lee Roth, that were so monumentally catastrophic that any chance the station had of surviving was killed,” Steve Strick said. By that time, the veteran
BCN
jock, newsman, and programmer had already exited, leaving the station for a post at
Radio and Records
magazine in Los Angeles. Wellington promoted overnight jock Dan O'Brien from sister station W
BMX
to replace Strick as music director.
Then, in June '06, Wellington brought in a new afternoon tag team that Tony Berardini (in his new role as talent head hunter) had located: Fred Toucher and Rich Shertenlieb, whose show emulated O & A's in its coarse style and subject matter.

“After Howard left, the Roth experiment, and the change in the mornings to O & A, consistency was the problem,” Hardy observed. “Everybody used to know that Charles was on six to ten in the morning or that Chuck Nowlin was on
WZLX
in the afternoon. You knew they were on at the same time, at the same station, for years. That consistency breeds the familiarity, and familiarity breeds the partiality, and that gives you your ratings. At '
BCN
[in its final years], there was never anything in place for long enough to give out a real sense of what the station was supposed to be.”

“I disliked how rigid and bland it was getting,” added Mark Hamilton. “The creative brushstrokes attempted were not the first times anybody else had done them; there just wasn't a lot of risk taking.”

“[Dave Wellington] took a machete to the music library and cut it in half,” moaned Adam 12, “plus the music became sooooo . . . vanilla.” By the late summer of '07, Shred had had enough; the '
BCN
veteran exited after twenty years on the air and managing thirteen Rock 'n' Roll Rumbles. On his way out the door, Shred gave Wellington a parting shot: “I sent an e-mail on a Sunday and basically told him to ‘f' himself. It was an open letter; I cc'd everybody. I torched it, no doubt about that! But then, Wellington was let go, not six months later.”

Wellington, however, was not without his successes. Juanita pointed out, “He was the one that brought Toucher and Rich to '
BCN
and that show was a huge success.” Adam 12 had to agree: “They were responsible for '
BCN
lasting another two years. I think corporate would have axed the station if they hadn't shown up.” Despite the building ratings of the new afternoon team, the sales reports told a grimmer tale. Radio revenue, in general, had taken a huge hit in the post-9/11 advertising world; even so, '
BCN
was the number 3 earner in town, taking in $26.5 million in 2005, the last year of Howard Stern's tenure. But twelve months later, with the shock-jock's departure, that figure had plummeted to $18 million, dropping the station into seventh place. In 2007, despite all attempts by management to correct its course,
WBCN'S
annual take fell nearly another half-million dollars. That number sealed Wellington's fate as he departed amicably in June 2008.

Just ten days later, the keys to
WBCN
were handed to Mike Thomas,
program director at
WZLX
, who now had the duty of helming both stations suddenly thrust upon him. That month, the River Rave returned after a four-year absence, and the Christmas Rave would make a comeback as well. These attempts at a local reconnection continued when Opie and Anthony's syndicated show was dropped at '
BCN
in December. Toucher and Rich moved into morning drive, Hardy occupied the afternoons, and Dan O'Brien filled a 7:00 p.m. to midnight slot with music. Amidst the changes and cost reductions,
WBCN'S
2008 revenue numbers came in, but the news was still not promising and not without consequence. With a nearly $2.5 million dollar drop from its previous year, total earnings at the once-mighty
WBCN
were now being surpassed by
WZLX
, which had always earned less.

WBCN
drive time is all talk: Opie and Anthony meet Toucher and Rich. (From left to right) Rich, Opie, Anthony, Toucher (with sidekick Crash on the right). Photo by Janet King.

“A great thing that Wellington did do before he left was inviting Charles Laquidara to come back in March 2008 for '
BCN'S
fortieth birthday,” Adam 12 recounted. “I didn't know Charles at all, and having him on was incredible; I was so flattered. He got to pick his own songs, and he sent the last one out to me; it was ‘The Last
DJ
,' by Tom Petty.” Laquidara had most of the songs he wanted to play stored in his computer and plugged the laptop into the control room board. “It was funny how it ended,” Adam continued, “because he completely forgot he was playing Petty. He unplugged his
computer and the song just stopped, right in the middle of ‘The Last
DJ
.' Silence. Was it a foreshadowing of things to come? I guess so.”

Figure 16.5 Hardy (on the right) backstage at the Boston Garden with Lars Ulrich of Metallica, 18 January 2009. Photo by Rich Shertenlieb.

“The rumors had been around since Howard Stern was getting ready to leave,” Hardy said.

“Even so,” added Juanita, “we were still shocked when it actually happened.”

“Suddenly, one day, some workers came around and took the
WBCN
letters, stenciled on all the windows and doors, off the glass,” Hardy said. “They replaced them with ‘
CBS
Radio.'”

In July 2009,
CBS
announced that the company would be closing down
WBCN
on 13 August. Depending on whom you talked to,
WBCN'S
“American Revolution” had ended for them in a hundred different possible places during the previous four decades, but now it was officially being laid to rest. “It was almost a mercy killing,” Nik Carter observed. “There was def-nitely a sense of, you tuned in and you didn't know what you were going to get. As much as that might sound inviting, people are creatures of habit and they go for certain things for certain reasons. Unless you have a really well-defined reason for being there, what's the point?”

“It was really like your local library closing,” Neal Robert said. “If you asked people when the last time they listened to
WBCN
was, most would say, ‘Well, I don't listen to it.'

‘But are you sad it's closing?'

‘What!? They're closing '
BCN
?' It had gone from being a necessity to being an afterthought.”

In a somewhat complicated arrangement, '
BCN
would give up its frequency of 104.1 to
WBMX-FM
, the
CBS
station at 98.5, giving “
MIX
” a much better signal in the Boston area. Launching from the same studios as the defunct
WBCN
would be a brand-new sports talk station dubbed “The Sports Hub,” at W
BMX'S
old frequency of 98.5. Designed as an
FM
competitor to long-standing Boston sports station
WEEI-AM
, “The Sports Hub” (official call letters
WBZ-FM
) built on the benefits of
WBCN'S
long association with the three-time Super Bowl–winning Patriots. Toucher and Rich, already a proven success, would continue their run in morning drive with an added emphasis on sports commentary and humor.