🔷 Open Thread

The FCC requires stations to identify their call letters and COL hourly. Call signs are not used to measure audience levels in PPM markets, however. Thus, stations market their brand nowadays (e.g., "92.5 The River," "Rock 92.9," "Magic 106.7," and suchlike). As a result, many young listeners are indifferent to or altogether unaware of a station's legal ID.

Certain heritage calls still carry some weight. Consider, for example, WBZ, whose call letters designate a trichotomy of separately owned stations: AM (iHeart), FM (Beasley), and TV (ViacomCBS). "WBZ" figures prominently in the branding of NewsRadio 1030 and Channel 4. (Recall the disastrous attempt a few years ago to brand WBZ-TV as "CBS 4.") That said, "WBZ" is far less conspicuous in "98.5 The Sports Hub."

To me, "WGBH" represented a venerable, nationally recognized brand. The W-less triplet, on the other hand, seems to be an arrogant, forced attempt to forge an identity à la NPR and PBS. How much audience-supported funding was wasted on this rebranding?
 
Norval Elliot said:
The FCC requires stations to identify their call letters and COL hourly. Call signs are not used to measure audience levels in PPM markets, however. Thus, stations market their brand nowadays (e.g., "92.5 The River," "Rock 92.9," "Magic 106.7," and suchlike). As a result, many young listeners are indifferent to or altogether unaware of a station's legal ID.

Certain heritage calls still carry some weight. Consider, for example, WBZ, whose call letters designate a trichotomy of separately owned stations: AM (iHeart), FM (Beasley), and TV (ViacomCBS). "WBZ" figures prominently in the branding of NewsRadio 1030 and Channel 4. (Recall the disastrous attempt a few years ago to brand WBZ-TV as "CBS 4.") That said, "WBZ" is far less conspicuous in "98.5 The Sports Hub."

To me, "WGBH" represented a venerable, nationally recognized brand. The W-less triplet, on the other hand, seems to be an arrogant, forced attempt to forge an identity à la NPR and PBS. How much audience-supported funding was wasted on this rebranding?
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I understand that it’s not used to determine Nielsen PPM. It’s also not going to have an impact on GBH’s audience.

My mother listens to GBH and calls it “GBH.” She calls WBZ “BZ.” The older generation is more upset about the rebranding. It’s a “nothing burger“ as the kids say. Women 25-54 won’t base their listening habits of the rebranding of WGBH or “GBH.”
 
They are still calling it WGBH when they do their hourly call-sign. All else is GBH.
 
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I am trying to practice gratitude every day, but kinda like new year's resolutions, Thanksgiving seems a good time to start a practice of gratitude that one (me) might hope would continue every day.

So here you go: I am publicly grateful for the people of ArchBoston.

It used to be that if you were into "cities" you had to either (a) take an urban planning degree or (b) hang with the Urban Land Institute or (c) actually go to public hearings and strike up conversations or (d) take a job in government. All of which are very cool, as far as they go, but they kind of squeezed out other things.

Like I said: I'm grateful we're here. I'm grateful I'm here. I'm grateful you're here.
 
Sorry to drastically change topic after such a nice post, but I just saw this ad for a new movie on Disney+. It bothers me more than it should that they photoshopped the Custom House to be right by the Arlington Street Church!

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I stared at it for a while trying to figure out why it felt so wrong. 😅
 
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HAHAHA that's a nice mistake!

Hey remember when Massachusetts was setting itself up to be the Hollywood of the east? That died quietly.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
Hey remember when Massachusetts was setting itself up to be the Hollywood of the east? That died quietly.
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Did it, though? Massachusetts certainly isn't "Hollywood," but my understanding is that the film industry here has become pretty well established. It used to be the case that a film shooting in Massachusetts was a novelty. Now there are pretty much always a handful of major studio films and TV series shooting in Massachusetts on any given day.
 
The whole site seems very dead lately. Anybody else noticing this? Seems as if we don't have regular picture updates from folks, no one really gets engaged.
 
Suffolk 83 said:
The whole site seems very dead lately. Anybody else noticing this? Seems as if we don't have regular picture updates from folks, no one really gets engaged.
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"Dead" is relative. Things are WAY healthier here than they were 2 years ago when Admin was AWOL, new user regs were months backed-up, repeat-offender trolls were the most prolific voices in the room with their constant thread defacement, and the natives were debating whether we had to abandon ship because of long-term prognosis of chaos and community disintegration.

2 weeks of holiday vacations (plus MLK Day in a few days) making for the usual post-Xmas letdown, first sustained weeklong cold weather snap keeping the gloves on and camera shots fewer, Dec. ground freeze putting the seasonal end to a swath of heavy construction jobs like any other year...and then the COVID Holiday re-spike keeping people more miserly with their outdoor time and a 'change'/pass-the-torch election year getting all unprecedentedly coupy and uncertain all of a sudden. That's about the long and short of it in terms of where discussion is running hot vs. cold at the moment. Nothing that isn't normally midwinter time-specific in any given year amplified by our continuing unique-for-any-era COVID restrictions and reality-distorting political environment.

If anything the transpo, political, and non-Dev broad-topic threads have upticked in activity correspondingly from the lighter lull on the Dev forum. Which would also be wholly predictable by the time of year and the specificity of our current COVID/change-of-gov't through the looking glass moment. Let's never forget aB is still hands-fucking-down a healthier overall community than it was 2 years ago at this time.
 
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