Airchexx.com

Hellooooo, Maine! We’re probably talking to more moose (or is it Meeces?) than people but hey you guys had some great radio too!

Harry Nelson. A guy with more frequent flier miles than most flying back and forth…. lets see, programming WRKO, then out west to KFRC, then back east to Portland, to turn 98 JBQ into a memorable monster! Here’s Harry shortly after he took over from former PD Brian Phoenix, who left for a programming gig in Clearwater, Florida.

You’ll love the west coast style presentation and Harry Nelson’s one liners – aww he’s got a million of em… It’s tight, all the elements are there, and so’s the variety (not diversity) of hit music – JBQ plays all the hits, literally.

Our contributor, Paul Connors, says this was from a cheap cassette machine. Maybe… but mono, scoped and (lightly) processed, buttered & salted, this makes for one 5 minute beauty!

Recorded just before the ‘original’ WROR at 98.5 flipped to WBMX, Paul Connors is featured here filling in for Joe Cortez. Connors emailed it to us with these comments:

Hi Steve,

Here’s another aircheck for your posting pleasure. It’s me on WROR, Boston on October 13, 1990. That’s the original WROR… at 98.5. I was part-time there for a year or so… originally working for PD Harry Nelson and leaving just after the format flip to Mix 98.5 WBMX in the spring of 1991. The studios were across the street from Fenway Park at the time, along with those of sister station WRKO. I had regular weekend shifts but also filled in a lot on the 10PM-2AM weekday shift. Harry had a nice, tight up tempo AC format going there, and I had a lot of fun executing it. The only negative was negotiating Kenmore Square traffic after a Sox game!

Thanks, Paul!

By the way, for our visitors, the audio quality of this aircheck is so good, we’re providing it for you in two forms: One for people with a luxurious high-speed connection, and one for the rest of us stuck on dialup. Yes its scoped, but it’s in stereo so crank up your speakers and show your co-workers what one of Boston’s best radio stations of all time sounded like – was it really 15 years ago? Wow!

* Dialup connections click HERE to listen!
* High-speed connections click HERE to listen!

Thanks to Paul Connors, we have yet another great clip of him, this time holding down morning drive on HitRadio 103 WHTT!

Paul commented that when he took over mornings, WHTT was in a three-way CHR war with WKXS-FM “Kiss 108″ and 98.5 WROR, which had taken a CHR direction earlier in 1983. By the time of this aircheck, WROR had returned to the AC fold, and 94.5 was still AC WCOZ… a few short months from morphing into “Boston’s Zoo” – WZOU!

WHTT really cooks here! One thing we Bostonians remember were the HitRadio jingles, and honest-to-goodness variety (not diversity) in music. Sadly, it all came to an end in 1986 when CBS blew it up and flipped, first to AAA as WMRQ (those calls eventually went to Hartford) as “Boston’s Quality Rock”, then, 9 months later, to the now legendary Oldies format as WODS “Oldies 103″.

Paul Connors is our newest contributor – so it’s certainly fitting that we take an aircheck straight from the source!

WEEI-FM was a mainstay in the FM ‘Soft Rock’ arena, having been developed by CBS out on the west coast at Los Angeles’ KNX-FM in the 70s. While WEEI-FM in Boston had decent ratings and was highly regarded by audiophiles, CBS brass decided it was time for a change, and in January of 1982, that change was to the newest, hippest version of Top 40 – CHR. Initially, the plan was to slowly transition to CHR out of Soft Rock using many of the old format jocks but as time went on it became evident that new voices needed to be brought in. Paul Connors was one of these new voices.

Heard here, Connors is doing weekends on WEEI-FM, but later, Connors would do the morning show on 103.3 FM. Also, shortly after this aircheck was recorded, CBS would change the call letters from WEEI-FM to WHTT (see WHTT Buffalo, NY) – and a much harder form of CHR would ensue… or, to paraphrase some comments Connor made at our Yahoo! Classicairchecks Group, it SEEMED like the format was harder but it was just the music at that point in time. At any rate, HitRadio 103 has a unique and under-rated position in the history of Boston FM radio.

Total Time: 5:29 | Format: Real Audio G2 | Monaural