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Comment by don-code | Hacker News Reader

The Boston radio dial feels like it's been bled dry of culture in the last decade. To name a few of the old stations, WFNX and WBCN had a marked impact on the city's music scene, beginning in the 60s and sadly coming to an end around 2010. They carried local artists, broke some big names (WFNX introduced Nirvana to mainstream media, for instance), and often sponsored local music events.

The radio dial now is now mostly content that can be syndicated across the country - classic rock, Top N Hits, NPR, and so forth. The occasional local morning show dots the programming.

There are some holdouts. I find that Emerson College's WERS carries much of the original WFNX spirit. I'll give an honorable mention to WXRV up in Andover as well.

Some interesting documentaries about the Boston radio scene, for those interested:

* https://theamericanrevolution.fm/

* https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/295945558/we-want-the-a... (the original site seems gone)

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Yep... it is so hard to believe WBCN, WFNX, and WAAF are all gone.

Radio in Boston is atrocious these days. It is really hard to believe there is actual demand for what Clear Channel has jammed the dial with. I think the only reason some of the stations are there is because Clear Channel owns everything and it's cheap for them to air it.

Yeah, music radio is very nearly completely dead and it was killed by the likes of Clear Channel, Cumulus, etc.

If they don't use the channel enough, somebody else might be able to get a license to transmit in the area.

So having stations spread around the dial is a moat. It makes it harder for others to enter the market.

College stations are usually the hold outs for non-mainstreamed music, in my experience. I was also a college DJ, so +1 for college radio, even if your tower can't reach past the parking lot. ;)

WITR Henrietta / Rochester here - we had a 705-watt transmitter on top of the dorms that was good for about 15 or 20 miles.

KNWD - Natchitoches, LA.

This was long, long ago, but I believe we had something like a 10 watt tower.

REACHING THE BEACHES...kinda, STORMING THE DORMS, sorta. ;)

Agree.

It's almost like there should be a station in every metropolitan area that is reserved for public access — divide the week up into 30-minute spots and let the public sign up for those slots to DJ.

AM radio is kinda like that now.

Air time on AM is cheap, like super cheap, so often people rent their own airtime and do shows. Nothing amazing, but it does happen quite often.

Many cities already have essentially this. Community radio. Usually on the left end of the dial near NPR and the christian music stations.

FM stations up to 91.9 are allocated for non-commerical use. This is where you typically find college radio, NPR, and so forth.

WMBR at MIT is still awesome. Some of the DJs have been there since the 80s. I listen in the car and sometimes the 2 week archive if I miss a show:

https://wmbr.org/cgi-bin/arch

The other thing that makes up for the dearth of quality commercial radio in Boston is the ability to stream stations from all over the world. I stream to WMHT classical from Albany and the BBC Radio new music channels even though I don't live in the broadcast areas.

Same here in the SF Bay Area. All the awesome FM stations like KFOG, KSJO (The all Led Zeppelin station) and KOME (The wet spot on your dial) are gone.

> The wet spot on your dial

See, that's the kind of culture I miss.

One of WFNX's greatest-of-all-time bumpers was, "WFNX... It's 'WBCN sucks!', spelled backwards."

KOME had the "shock jock" Dennis Erectus. I miss him in particular.

Probably inspired by Happy Harry Hardon https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100436/

Probably the other way around. Erectus was on KOME in the early 80's.

WBCN, Charles Laquidara, Billy West and "the Big Mattress" show. All sorely missed.

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