WBZ radio was also an NBC affiliate—from 1931 to 1956. (NBC managed the Westinghouse-owned station from 1932 till 1940.)
'BZ-AM is still a dual CBS+ABC affiliate at picking up national news reports, and they also still cross-source 'BZ-TV audio clip repeats as backfill local reporting (though the live in-studio chats with the TV folk has obviously been cut way back since the split). Which might, given the ultra-long history involved here, actually be a relic of ABC Radio once being the "NBC Blue Network" until the FCC broke up NBC's monopoly during WWII. So there's never really been a sharp set of affiliations there.
I just don't know how they manage to function at all with the staffing levels they're left with, especially with this not being iFart's last round of debt cuts. The local reporter ranks are chopped nearly in half, it's one anchor holding down 4-hour blocs solo now instead of the alternating anchors...meaning on-duty anchors have zero prep time for interviews anymore. No nighttime programming whatsoever anymore except Dan "Promo Code!" Rea, which is choked with such insufferable adspam because it's pretty much downsized to stealth pay-to-play program. And the weekend slate is either pay-to-play financial guru filler or the corpse of Morgan White awaiting his next-ups at an iHeart pinkslip.
I still listen at my morning alarm because it's a quick/efficient headline digest + weather + Traffic-on-the-3's before I jump in the shower, and after 15 mins. when I hear the first re-recap it's built-in cue for me to stop stalling and get the fuck up out of bed. And it's fairly self-insulated from any seeping editorial bias because of the newsread format being so rigid. But that's literally it. I don't know how you can fill 19 hours of daily content that way without a *little* mixing/matching of the story roster by hour and a shortie anchor interview here and there...stuff they used to use until recently to good effect to differentiate themselves from the longer-form NPR stations, but now no longer have any staff to do. Shit, I don't know if Karl Stevens is reduced to semi-retirement work hours now or what, but you're even lucky to even hear one of his whimsical people profile pieces per week these days.
Theoretically at least with iHeart pushing the web presence they'd have an avenue for exposure and bit revenue in ramping up the podcasting presence. But they just eliminated all staff who either
were doing podcasting or were the last layer below the last airtime-firewall newsreaders and pay-to-players who had any bandwidth for starting a podcasting presence...so who the fuck knows what the endgame is here. They're being boxed into a corner that doesn't even jibe with where iHeart is making a token name for itself these days. Seems like they're just being packaged to push over the ledge in a subsequent debt dump for sake of that magnificently strong signal strength and will just be "WAAF-'ed" to the highest bidder someday as a repeater station for some automaton Christian broadcasting network or whatever that you'll be able to hear clear as a bell Ottawa, Cape Hatteras, and on unmanned oil rigs across the Atlantic after 8:00pm each day.
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