Station: 103.3 WEEI-FMBoston (Wikipedia) (Website)
Format: CHR
Branded: “103 FM“, “HitRadio”
Ownership: (Then) – CBS (Now) – Entercom
Featured Air Personality: Rod West
Contributor: Steve West
Airchexx #1610
That’s what the guys in the snowplows are sayin’, I think we’re gonna make it!
I had hoped wished and dreamed this was going to be the next stop on Mike Joseph’s tour through the CBS CHR’s. I always wondered how Hot Hits would have done in Boston. It would have been the most recorded station in radio history (by me). Oh well. Meanwhile I liked the soon to be WHTT, except for that first jingle package.
Steve, I thought that WZOU WAS going to be the next “Hot Hits” ™ station. In fact, during the “Z-94” phase before Sconnix gave up and they went Urban, that station was indeed using the “Hot Hits” branding for a while. Somewhere, there’s a WZOU jingle package out there where Hot Hits is shouted before the sung WZOU.
The first “Hit Radio” jingle package for 103.3 as WEEI-FM was used all over the place. I’ll go check out JAM demos in a little bit but I think it was Chicago? perhaps? I know from having heard an aircheck from them that 55 KTSA San Antonio used that package around 1984-85. I happened to like those jingles before they cut the call letters out of them. Wasn’t crazy about the first set of WHTT jingles either, but those got better the second go-round.
Hit Radio 103 sure made Kiss-108 tighten up in a big way, AND… I think it was this time frame, from 1983-1985 that finally pushed Kiss from Urban oriented squarely into CHR with Rock cuts and all – but Kiss always leaned in an Urban direction, sometimes more, sometimes less, with 103.3 and 94.5 slugging it out.
The jingle package is called The Fyre and was created for Adult Contemporary station WFYR in Chicago. The package was used mostly on AC stations. WHTT would go with TM’s Airpower which was created for sister station WBBM-FM aka B96.
Right! That’s the package. I didn’t like it used everywhere but I was kind of fond of the TOH WEEI-FM used from this package. No, it didn’t have quite the excitement of a real CHR package – and if I were running the show, planning ahead for a full launch later in the year under new call letters, I’d probably have gone with an AC package. Remember, this was the transition period from “Soft Rock” to “Hit Radio”, so it makes sense if this was a thought out execution.
This is what I would term a bootleg Mike Joseph format. Rod sounds great here. CBS didn’t want to pay the freight for the real
thing.