Babson College - Babsonian Yearbook (Wellesley, MA)

Page 168 text:

A Day In The Life Of: One Large Black Coffee, Please 10:00 A.M. and Ready for another Day Flew into Boston to pass the time Now, Vm Ready for Anything . . . Except classes . . . And back out to make the daily trip to the mailroom . . . Only to get a postcard from Larry. NOTICE Vo«r charge aoeotint at tiw Ba on College Booteatore is long overdu . Plaass eetid payroetit I of i p romptO Yo IMFORyAMTt SHCLOSE l 13113 SUP WITS YOUR f KmS , Thank you :; Laurence Sc Caxv Up to the Soccer Field For the Afternoon 144 snumnaKBONmi

Page 167 text:

iffe Strikes And that was the abrupt end of Duane. Charles told Duane ' s loyal listeners that he had been in a motorcycle crash and was being retooled at the National Recloning Institute in Butte, Montana. What a way to go, Charles says. No one can fill Duane ' s shoes. He never could get a break. The Strike At 4:30 Friday afternoon, February 16 — Black Friday as it would soon be known in the local radio world — an emotional- ly distraught man phoned The Real Paper from WBCN. He said a slaughter was under way there. The new owners of the station had just arrived and they ' re calling everybody in one by one and firing them. Right now Boston is losing its best radio siation. When it was over, nineteen of WBCN ' s staff of thirty-six had been dismissed. The next afternoon all the remaining employees went on strike in protest. They have been out on strike ever since. As Danny Schechter, Charles Laquidara, Jimmy Parry, Tracy Roach, Matt Seigel, and other announcers and staff circled with picket signs on the sidewalk below the Prudential Building, WBCN ' s new owner, Michael A. Weiner of New York, interrupted the music at intervals to broadcast an expla- nation. On Friday, February 16, Hemisphere Broadcasting completed the purchase of WBCN radio, Weiner announced. As experienced broadcaster, a complete evaluation of the air staff and office staff was made. As a result of this complete and detailed evaluation, it was determined that the high qual- ity of the WBCN air staff was, in the main, a professional and valuable asset to the stations commitment to serve the Boston community. It was also regretfully determined that other em- ployees were either not up to the high standard which the new management felt should be maintained, nor could the financial resources of the company support the number of people em- ployed at takeover .... Hemisphere Broadcasting has offered to maintain as a nucleus the professional on-the-air staff, your favorite on-the-air talents. We hope they will return to work. In any description of WBCN the word unique usually comes up, and so does the word historic . The station was born in March 1968 as one of the first radio exponents of the musical and social upheavals of the time. It was a leader of the original underground or free-form stations, as they were called then — the first stations to put the new rock music of ' the counterculture on the air, stations with real people for announcers who felt part of the antiwar, antidraft, and other political movements. Previously the FM band had been a largely ignored repository for highbrow music; with WBCN on the air, buying an FM radio became as much a cultural state- ment as wearing a peace button. Their sound was imitated by similar new stations nationwide. Eventually commercial broadcasters realized there was territory to be claimed on the FM band. FM radios became commonplace and lost their cultural symbolism. Like most else born in the Sixties, WBCN did not age gracefully. The passing of the counterculture left it high and dry, hemmed in by competitors and searching for a definable audience as its ratings slid. In just the last year or so, however, the station seemed to find itself again. It seemed like it had a conscious turnaround in attitude, says David Bieber, creative services director until he was fired Friday. A lot of things happened — Charles Laquidara coming back, Oedipus coming on and his develop- ment at the station — everybody was excited. We were going places again. Ratings nearly doubled from spring to fall of last year and advertising revenues reached an all time high. By Monday the picket lines were up. Shifts of a couple of dozen people at a time are circling with signs on the Boylston Street sidewalk below the Pru every day from nine to six. Support for the strike seems unanimous among the staff of every department despit e suggestions by Weiner to the con- trary. They have vowed to stay out until Hemisphere Broad- casting recognizes the union and a contract resolving all the disputed issues is agreed upon by both sides. Weiner refuses to take the first step of recognizing the union. But he may soon be forced to. The union filed an unfair labor practice charge about the firings with the National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday. Weiner may be forced to negotiate even before the Labor Board comes back with its ruling. The strike has already been extremely effective. As of Thursday, the staff had contacted all of WBCN ' s advertisers, both local and national, and claimed to have convinced approximately 90 percent of them to pull their ads off WBCN. It ' s a matter of personal rela- tionships, says Bieber. Many of the salespeople are friends with their clients. It ' s truly calamitous for Michael Weiner not to be able to sell commercials. He totally misjudged the situa- tion. The strikers are gaining support everywhere else they turn as well. As of Thrusday facilities for benefit concerts and movies were being donated around Boston and Cambridge. Staff were making announcements and winning support in all the rock and new wave clubs in the city, approaching the Clamshell Alliance and other political groups the station has aided in the past, organizing a Duane Glasscock Motorcade to Save WBCN through Boston, and calling on friends at other stations in other cities. Because of ' BCN ' s stature in the indus- try a lot of people coast to coast are very aware of us, says Susan Sprecher, fired producer and cohost of the Boston Sun- day Review and union shop steward. And they are very upset about what ' s happening. NBC News and The New York Times were said to be interested in doing stories on the latest turn of events at the pioneer station of FM rock. We ' re incredibly strong and they don ' t understand that, says Sprecher. They think they can appeal to some of us stars, divide us and get them back, but that ' s so wrong. Weiner has this idea there are just a few ringleaders and the rest of us want to go back. He just doesn ' t understand. 143

Page 169 text:

Another Win and Another Long Trim Line Made it through the first ten minutes of the Evening Lecture . . . Back to the dorm just in time for the pizza man Rumor has it this building is to Store out of date Business Literature . . . And then off to the Pub I tell ya! These days can tire a guy!