After weeks of speculation, Clear Channel stations WKOX (1200AM) and WXKS (1430AM) will switch from "Boston's Progressive Talk" to "La Nueva Rumba," both simulcasting a "tropical" format of primarily Spanish-language announcers and music, ranging from salsa, merengue, and bachata to the contemporary sound of reggaeton. The move will come Thursday at noon.
WKOX plans to boost its power to 50,000 watts by August. (The station currently operates at around 10,000 watts during the day.) After the upgrade, the two stations will separate , with WXKS getting its own, as yet undetermined format. Station management may look at returning the progressive talk format to WXKS when the power upgrade goes into effect, if no other station has picked it up.
Management hopes that the two stations will fare better than the similar-sounding "Mega" stations, WAMG-AM (890) and WLLH-AM (1400) which gave up on the "tropical" format and were sold.
The two stations began airing the progressive talk format, consisting of Ed Schultz and shows from Air America Radio, on October 4, 2004.
As mentioned in comments for this post, former listeners of the two simulcast stations have started a Yahoo! Group, and one supporter has reserved a domain name, Bostonprogressivetalk.net, which will be active within a few days.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
"Boston's Progressive Talk" flips to "Rumba" on Thursday
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Eureka, CA 
4 comments:
One crucial element to any talk station is local hosts. CC didn't
hire anyone other than Jeff Santos,
for ONE Sunday slot, and even that was late in the game. So guess what CC is doing with rumba? "Bucking a company trend", they will hire local DJs...
Those of us who long listened to Boston's progressive talk are discussing options at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Save_progressive_radio_boston/
and this pointer domain will be active in a few days
http://www.bostonprogressivetalk.net
for now you can also still reach the WKOX messageboard by going to
here. While the main WKOX page has the Rumba logo, some of the other old pages are still up via that link
I have the Yahoo! Group linked under "Grassroots". Look on the right-hand column.
Oh, and I joined as well. :)
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