Since 1968 there’s been a low power AM radio station broadcasting from a tiny studio next to the Newton dump on Rumford Ave. The tiny WNTN building always reminded me of our version of the radio station in the movie Brother Where Art Thou.
Over its many years the station, at one time or another, has had nearly every type of radio format you ever heard of: “adult contemporary”, “talk radio”, “oldies”. In the 1970’s it was even the first Boston station to jump aboard the Disco train.
The station was sold this year and moved its studio to Needham this past March. The sale did not include the studio and land its on. The iconic little studio building will soon be demolished
Hopefully the transmission tower is going down!
Loved the disco era with ‘Disco’ Vinnie.
I visited there once in high school. It always reminded me of the scene near the end of ‘American Graffiti’ in which Richard Dreyfus reaches a small radio station in middle of nowhere and unknowingly meets his idol, Wolfman Jack. Every time I drove by WNTN it had that same bygone-era vibe to it.
In the immediate vicinity, that signal sure was strong though. I swear I could hear their transmissions through our vacuum cleaner sometimes.
If memory serves me correctly, radio shock-jock Howard Stern got his start at WNTN.
Chris Steele, Maureen Reilly-Meagher and I were interviewed on WNTN when the Waban Area Council was first formed. The inside of the little shack was definitely from the set of “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou” but the microphone was a bit more contemporary. We were taped…not live broadcast, and i think i still have the podcast for posterity (or the incinerator). No other radio, TV or cable station ever reached out to us! WNTN knew what was important!
Jerry, perhaps the title of this post should be, “WNTN – One of Newton’s funny little radio stations closes.” After all, there’s WUNR, which has its transmitter in Oak Hill Park (although its studio is at Downtown Crossing in Boston).
@Bruce Henderson – yes, though if we’re just going to talk about the transmitters, Upper Falls is ground zero for radio waves.
Each of the four big towers around Upper Falls have dozens of transmitters each, up and down the radio spectrum – many of them at extremely high power.
It’s may be the reason that explains many of us Upper Falls folks’ eccentricities. I.e It’s not me, it’s the radio waves talking.
Mr. Striar is correct. Stern worked at WNTN in the second half of 1975 – his first professional gig after getting his FCC license. He previously worked and performed at BU’s campus station WTBU when he was a student.
I was interviewed on WNTN by Paul Roberts in January, 2016 at the beginning of my national talk radio show tour. They did a nice job of keeping up with items and people of local interest.
We used to live on The Island down the street from WNTN (in the early 1990s). Our landline phones (even with suppressors installed) always had a soundtrack of upbeat Spanish music in the background. We just got used to it. I haven’t thought about that in years!
The new owner is actually Ted Demetriades, son of Orestes Demetriades who owned the station until selling to longtime Operations Manager Rob Rudnick in 1998. They signed off from Rumford Ave back in March. Their signature show Grecian Echoes now runs 7 Days a Week. Rob Rudnick still does Play-by-play Northeastern Huskies hockey.
Might as well mention Paul Roberts (1550 Today) is still on WNTN hosting that show (Along with an Irish music show Friday and a Disco music show on Saturday afternoons. Ted hosts Grecian Echoes. Vwa Lakay (Their longtime Hatian show) is still on in the afternoons. Their engineer Leo Sullivan is also doing engineering at the new location. They’re on WJIB’s tower in Cambridge (Which is owned by a WNTN alum, Bob Bittner) and WNTN will be increasing power from there soon. It’s in great hands, sold by and bought by people who care. Otherwise it probably would have gone off the air like WMEX.
AM radio stations aren’t worth much these days. FM is far more popular. Daytime stations (off the air or very low power from sunset to sunrise) are worth even less. WNTN’s land was just sold for about $5 million, so by moving to Cambridge (changing the city of license as well as the transmitter location), they’ve turned the old Rumford Ave. site, no longer next to a working dump, into a bigger pile of money than the station itself is worth. Clever.
It was about two years in the making. Pretty much everybody in regards to the staff were there for decades. They put a lot into that little station on Rumford Ave using a lot of older broadcast equipment not usually found inside radio stations anymore. If you ever listened (or for that matter listen to this day) it gives it sort of a homegrown old fashioned AM radio feel on some of the programs.
Most of what was in that building moved to Needham too. The control boards, microphones, phones, tape and CD decks, etc were brought over to the new building.
Pretty sad at the station’s move and format. I worked at Automec on Calvary St in Waltham during 1981-1982. Used to listen to The Oldies on WNTN every afternoon. Great music. Made the day at work go by quicker. AM radio is on life support but at least it gave us great memories.
There was a guy on WNTN on weekend nights in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s. He used to describe some of the bar/restaurants that sponsored his show as “boy-meets-girler”. Does anyone know who I’m talking about?