The Infinite Dial

Radio stations that announce format changes usually haven't been their best selves for a while. But until Tuesday's announcement that WBCN Boston was giving up its frequency to sister Hot AC WBMX, which would in turn become Boston's new "Sports Hub," there was always the possibility of a comeback.

WBCN reinvented itself repeatedly throughout its 41-year-history as a Rock station. It wobbled for a while in 1979 following the twin blows of a strike by its airstaff and an attack by John Sebastian's WCOZ. WBCN tightened up -- a little -- but it never became formula early '80s AOR. WBCN went through several more phases. It veered towrads Classic Rock in the late '80s/early '90s, before rival WZLX became its sister station. It reinvented itself as Alternative in the mid '90s. And both formats fit with WBCN's heritage.

Boston won't want for Rock radio. WAAF will finally be the heritage rocker -- something it would have been in any other market long ago. WBOS, for so long just one of the other rock stations in the market has gotten traction playing WBCN's greatest hits of a decade ago. Its sister station, WROR, is channeling a PPM-friendly version of WBCN's original legacy, which is to say a Classic Hits station that also includes KC & the Sunshine Band, a band which WBCN played in 1975. And "true alternative" WFNX will have more of an open lane. (And we haven't even mentioned Classic Rock WZLX, Triple-A WXRV, or Classic Hits/Hot AC WMKK.)

Meanwhile, yesterday's announcement that CBS will launch Sports Talk on FM in Boston and (less surprisingly) Washington, D.C., is yet another signal that the land rush is on. (The success of Sports on FM in Detroit may have been the tipping point for CBS, but the "hey, look at this" moment for the industry was even earlier, when WEEI Boston led the market on AM.) And now the question becomes whether having both WEEI and Boston's new "Sports Hub" grows the audience, in the same way that two Country stations did in the early '90s.