Radio Free Boston: The Rise and Fall of WBCN

From Boylston Street to Wall Street

By the mideighties, the Fenway Park–facing, rear garage-door entrance to WBCN had seen thousands of arrivals and departures, carefully timed to avoid the unsportsmanlike panic of Red Sox Nation traffic. Access from the dank garage and up the dangerously pitched stairs to the offices and studios above took one past the graffiti wall, where employees and stars were encouraged to spray paint their names and messages to posterity. “That graffiti said a lot about what ’BCN was,” weekender Lisa Traxler mentioned. “Everybody added to that.” The freedom of expression, whether directed toward a small quadrant of cement-block wall with aerosol paint can in hand or aimed heavenward through a microphone and turntable (or the newfangled compact disc player that had just shown up), were one in the same. “I liked Oedipus’s analogy,” Tami Heide remembered: “All the jocks at ’BCN have the same brushes, the same paint, and they’re given the same canvas. But they all have their own brushstrokes; it’s just how they put it FROM BOYLSTON STREET TO WALL STREET “You never knew [who] you were going to run into in the hallways: Jerry Seinfeld, Aerosmith, chefs, a new group, or the old band. When David Lee Roth came to the station, there were people hiding under cars in the garage trying to get upstairs for an autograph! “metal mike” ColUCCi 222 radio free boston together.” Protected in their studio, the DJs labored over their portraits, even as forces arrived that threatened to limit whatever freedom had been carefully earned during two decades of survival. Challenges loomed from inside the rapidly expanding Infinity empire, as well as outside from a cloud of seasoned competitors and new players in the market. Infinity Broadcasting had binged on acquiring stations, leaving the company cash poor by 1986. Subsequently, Michael Wiener, Gerald Carrus, and Mel Karmazin took the company public, offering up its common stock to shareholders and raising millions in capital. They used the money primarily to reduce Infinity’s long-term debt, which had been accrued when borrowing to buy stations, and to provide funds for accumulating additional properties. Within a year of the public offering, Karmazin went on to purchase six more stations: KROQ-FM in Los Angeles, WJFK-FM in Washington, D.C., and two AM/FM combos in Tampa and Dallas. Even with the sale of Infinity’s Jacksonville property and a pair of San Diego stations in December 1986, it was a dizzying expansion. By the time of the company’s annual report to its shareholders in spring ’87, the number crunchers could claim that “Infinity is the nation’s largest, publicly traded, radio-only owner and operator of stations.” The report further revealed that Infinity had taken in “$1.4 billion in radio advertising revenues (approximately 20% of the total $7 billion spent for radio advertising in the United States).” Although just one part of a massive and highly valuable corporate entity now stretched coast to coast, WBCN was certainly not a diminished commodity; in June 1988, the Boston Phoenix disclosed, “The station that Infinity picked up for $3.5 million in ’79 is valued today at an estimated $75 million to $80 million.” “I really didn’t understand the finance part of it and what it meant to be [a publicly traded company],” Tony Berardini recalled. “What it meant on a day-to-day basis at WBCN was that there was a lot more pressure for us to make our numbers; things became more intense. Being a public company that now reported its earnings quarterly, Mel had to stand up in front of the stockholders and answer questions, and God help you if Mel had to defend your sorry ass.” Bob Mendelsohn remembered, “There were these quick outbursts [from Mel], not necessarily from anger: ‘Here’s what I need and I’m not getting it! How are we going to keep our stock price up? How are going to keep to our acquisition plan without generating revenue?’ It was always a highwire act.” from boylston street to wall street 223 Berardini added, “We were in a meeting one time with a general sales manager who wasn’t making his budget, and he was saying, ‘Well the ratings are this and the business cycle is bad . . .’ Mel says, ‘Hey, listen! Don’t sell spots, then. Go stand on the front steps with some pencils. Sell the pencils...