Radio Free Boston: The Rise and Fall of WBCN

I (Don't) Want My MTV

The coolest people in the know, the hippest of the hip, the taste makers, and the trendsetters watched the pitched battle between WBCN and WCOZ unfold with great interest, perhaps even laying the occasional wager on the outcome. But as the boxing match continued through 1981 and into the following year, the attention of these cognoscenti soon dissipated almost entirely. Why bother? To them, the whole radio struggle had suddenly become irrelevant. MTV’s debut in New York City on 1 August 1981 represented the opening shot of a brave new world in broadcast media. Even though only a few viewers possessed the cable hardware necessary to receive the twenty-four-hour music-video channel, the prophets anointed the medium as the logical successor to radio, at least the kind of musicoriented radio in which WBCN and WCOZ specialized. In an obvious nod to that premise, MTV debuted with a video clip for the 1979 hit “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the English duo the Buggles. Recalling an earlier era in I (DON’T) WANT MY MTV It was a playground, rather than this place you had to go where everything was the same every day, like “Groundhog Day.” It was fun . . . we had permission to play. billy west i (don’t) want my mtv 165 which the advent of television sidelined radio as the primary medium for mass communication, the song transposed smartly into its new setting. As the cries of “I want my MTV” echoed across more and more subscribers ’ living rooms, anxieties in the radio business grew. A worry emerged that the whole armature of support for something even as legendary as WBCN would cease to exist, running down like a dying battery, its advertising base vanishing as listeners abandoned the radio dial for their TV remote. It would be realized in following years that the reports of radio’s death were greatly exaggerated; it weathered the introduction of its new competition just fine. In fact, MTV became music radio’s great ally because the visual medium more effectively exposed new acts and their sounds to the masses. The songs became three- or four-minute video commercials, introducing not only a tune but also an artist’s appearance and manner—the whole package. This made it easier for radio stations to “break” these latest singles on the air and parlay them into hits. As a result, rock music underwent a vast diversification of style as the multihued colors of a new wave scene mingled with the library of tunes from classic bands and artists (at least the ones astute enough to shoot videos). The advent of this sweeping promotional tool helped bolster a sagging U.S. record business, which had hit a recession by the end of the decade. Seasoned warriors like the Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart now advertised their sharp stage moves on the small screen, and a series of creative videos finally pushed the enduring J. Geils Band to number 1 in February 1982 with Freeze-Frame. Regional arena-rockers REO Speedwagon, Styx, and Journey all broke nationally with multimillion sellers, while hard rock blasted a path to platinum with AC/DC and Van Halen. Then there were new arrivals like the Go-Go’s and their album Beauty and the Beat, which was number 1 for six weeks in ’82; Joan Jett’s chartbusting single “I Love Rock and Roll”; and Rod Stewart soundalike Kim Carnes with her hit “Betty Davis Eyes.” Artists of all kinds found their careers jump-started by MTV and then aided and abetted by radio, which steadfastly refused to go away. A huge part of WBCN’s mission, from the first drop of Joe Rogers’s needle on “I Feel Free” to 1981’s “Turning Japanese” by the Vapors, remained its commitment to the broad palette of rock music. Diversity was a tricky thing to present, but with the turning of the tide against ’COZ, it became evident that Oedipus had gotten a handle on how to do it. He told Radio 166 radio free boston and Records in May ’82, “We allowed ourselves to get too far ahead of our audience and we were losing them. We put together a musical structure; I hesitate to call it a format, because the jocks still have freedom of musical choice. But there are boundaries. It’s like a painting where the artist works within the boundaries...