Posted on 02/17/2006 12:11:27 AM PST by raccoonradio
Growing up in Peabody, Nancy Zarella couldn't brush her teeth or comb her hair in the morning without listening to WESX.
"We were brought up on it," said Zarella, who is now 70 and lives in Salem. "It was part of our lives."
The small AM radio station in Salem and later Marblehead has spent the last 67 years telling listeners who won the elections, scored the touchdowns and robbed the banks in their communities. But the WESX that generations have come to know and love will soon cease to exist.
The station, along with its sister station in Quincy, was recently sold for $4.5 million to a Connecticut businessman who plans to take down WESX's 180-foot antenna in Marblehead, move the studio to Chelsea and maybe even change its call letters.
The sale still must be approved by the Federal Communications Commission, but the station's final day will probably come sometime in May.
"I can't believe it's not going to be around anymore," said Salem police Chief Robert St. Pierre, who grew up in Salem listening to WESX. "It's just part of the fabric of the North Shore. Mornings are not going to be the same."
The 1,000-watt radio station has its loyal listeners, but apparently not enough of them to survive in the modern media marketplace. Owner Jay Asher, whose father bought WESX in 1952, said it has become increasingly difficult for a small, independent radio station to survive.
The station depends on advertising for revenue, he said, and in this age of mergers and national chains, fewer local businesses choose to advertise on a local radio station.
"Not long ago, there might've been 15 local banks, but they've consolidated," Asher said. "Auto dealers have consolidated. There are plenty of Wal-Marts, but they don't advertise the same way as (former store) Clark & Friend in downtown Salem would advertise, week in and week out."
'Our kind of music'
WESX 1230 first went on the air in 1939, broadcasting from what is now the district courthouse building on Washington Street in downtown Salem. By the time Norm Durkee joined the station in 1948 as an engineer fresh out of MIT, the station had seven studios occupying three floors. One of the studios had seating for 180 people, and a live band would perform every Saturday night.
Rosalind Brown of Salem remembers when she and her friends would go to the WESX studios after high school and dance outside the broadcast booth as the DJ played their favorite songs on the air.
"It was our kind of music," said Brown, now 68. "None of that rock or rap."
James Asher bought the station from original owner Charlie Phelan in 1952 and moved it to Marblehead, next to the station's transmitter on Naugus Head. When the on-air personality didn't show up one day, Durkee was put behind the mike and stayed there for the next 40 years.
Durkee, who grew up in Danvers, became a local institution, as did his successor, Manchester native Al Needham, who worked at the station from 1966 to 1999. No news was too small. They would read off the school lunches, the high school sports scores, even the honor rolls.
"It was a very homey show," said Durkee, who is now 83 and lives in Wenham. "I talked about my wife, my kids, the crossing guards, the policemen, the firemen."
Both men relied on a network of listeners, newspaper reporters and police to keep them informed of breaking news.
"I knew everybody on a first-name basis," Needham said.
Sports was a big part of WESX's identity. Durkee said they'd sometimes broadcast five high school football games on a weekend. They'd do hockey and basketball games in the winter and Little League baseball games in the summer.
"Anyone who lived in Salem their whole life like me came to know WESX at the breakfast table," St. Pierre said. "Folks had to turn it on to see if there was no school. They gave a lot of notoriety to police officers who made arrests. They made heroes out of a lot of us."
Moving to Chelsea
Otto Miller, the Connecticut businessman who is buying WESX, along with Quincy station WJDA, plans to combine them into a station in Chelsea that will do "multicultural Christian broadcasting."
Miller said the station will lease air time to preachers or doctors or acupuncturists -- anyone who "likes to get on the air and help people."
"Our whole basic premise is that every man, woman and child has a special talent to offer," Miller said. "We need to know about it, we need to share it."
Miller said the antenna tower on the WESX site in Marblehead will be moved to "swampland" in Lynn in order to improve the station's signal, although he wouldn't say where in Lynn. He said he will sell the 31/2-acre waterfront site in Marblehead where the WESX studio now sits. He expects the property will sell for between $1 million and $1.5 million.
Miller said he's not sure what will happen to WESX's five employees.
Asher, the current owner, said he knows some listeners are angry at him for selling the station, and he acknowledged having "mixed emotions."
"But industries are changing," he said. "There are many, many more stations in the marketplace now. Younger people are less likely to search the AM band. There are other (local) stations that will probably pick up from us."
Durkee said it would be difficult for a radio station to survive with the same kind of intensely local programming that he once provided. WESX used to be the only station to broadcast local school closings during a storm, he said. Now they're on the Internet as well as the Boston radio and TV stations.
Society is also more mobile, he said, meaning people are less connected to their communities.
"People are so transient today," he said. "You used to know practically everybody in town."
Bob Litwin wonders what's going to happen to his show, "The Litwin Polka Variety." His father, Frank, started broadcasting the show on WESX from his auto repair garage in Peabody in 1967. When he died in 1981, Bob took over. The show airs every Sunday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
"One guy in Revere tapes my show every Sunday and goes to a nursing home and plays it for them," Litwin said. "I think people are going to be hurt."
ESX= ESseX County
Out "local" radio station plays syndicated programming 24/7. I don't think there's even a human on duty at the station. When Hurricane Rita came through, they didn't miss a beat--same "hot new country," and national network news at the top of the hour. It sounded like the world was coming to an end outside, but you'd never know it listening to that station. Broadcasting in the public interest? I think not.
Meanwhile the over-the-air programmers have the nerve to lobby against Sirius and XM being allowed to provide local content, when THEY don't have any local content themselves any more.
Yes. There's an AM station down the road from me that pretty much is all syndicated talk during the week (Laura
Ingraham, Michael Reagan, G. Gordon Liddy, Jerry Doyle) but the owner at least allows local programming on weekends
(Italian music, local rock, a local conservative talk
host, etc.). The studios are in a barn on his property!
But thanks to computers and/or satellites, it's possible
to have an automated station, be it music or talk.
http://www.wnsh.com
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