Word: station
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...mixed city like Boston, an urban radio has less potential to become a home for black community but more potential to serve as a sounding board for black concerns to suburban white listeners. A successful FM urban radio station in Boston could become a significant community institution, a meeting place for the two sides of the racial divide...
WILD (AM-1090), a small sunrise-to-sunset station, was able to fill this role in the '60s, as the late J. Anthony Lukas '55, a former Crimson executive, chronicles in his classic book on Boston, Common Ground. In particular, Lukas notes that in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King's death, WILD suspended its usual rhythm-and-blues format and devoted its hours to news and commentary on the assassination. While numerous black callers pelted the radio station with calls for an end to integration, Lukas' attention is drawn to a white woman from Lexington who called...
...today's climate, it takes money to create community. At the minimum, for a radio station to be an effective community outlet, it has to sponsor festivals, concerts, job fairs and block parties, events which will get people out of their narrow routines and into contact with one another...
...Boston, WILD tries to fill the role of community station, but it is too small and too poor to do it. Jam'n has the resources, but, if anything, is anti-community. Its main selling point is its "Jam-Scams," essentially a grown-up version of a middle school prank, in which Baltazar torments his victims by telling them (falsely) that their cars will be impounded or that their houses will be foreclosed upon. The scammed person invariably gets angrier and angrier, leading to bleeped-out expletives, giggles from the 'Zar, and finally a promise from the scammed...
...programming director, "Cadillac" Jack McCartney (the nickname says it all) would, I'm sure, not take the moral high ground in defending his station but simply point to its ranking as one of the most listened to stations in Boston for young listeners...