My dad is Les Woodruff, reporter for WEEI. We lived in Natick. My dad driving home from the Pru building got stuck on the road on the way home. My mom's sister lived in Brookline and my dad was able to walk to her home. Our home was snowed in and any door to the outside was covered by snow. I remember it well.

@altfactor

2 жыл бұрын

Nathan: Your dad did many years of outstanding radio news reporting and anchoring. He should be in the Massachusetts Broadcasters Association Hall Of Fame if he isn't already enshrined in it.

@nathanwoodruff9422

2 жыл бұрын

@@altfactor _"He should be in the Massachusetts Broadcasters Association Hall Of Fame if he isn't already enshrined in it."_ I'm pretty sure he isn't. My dad was at WEEI from 1968 to 1980. He then moved on to WCBS out of Washington DC.

You'll notice that these guys are not spreading fear or panic or mock concern nor are they editorializing. They are simply reporting the event as it unfolds. Shame we dont have that anymore

@robertwelchny

2 жыл бұрын

It pretty much remains as that on radio news. Lots of cable TV has gone down that other road, unfortunately.

My father was stuck on Route 128 near Muzi Ford in Needham. He had to spend the night in a local church. I was so excited when we saw him on TV in the background during a news segment and knew that he was OK.

THIS is how AM radio should sound.

@jkratoville

6 жыл бұрын

With all that electrical hum, buzz and whine in the background.

Brings back so many memories my mother listened to WEEI all the time 👍

It was the best 2 weeks of my life, I was in school at BC & I was busing tables at Ken's Pub on Comm Ave, I walk to work down Comm Ave the snow bank were 6' tall. People were really nice to each other, it was a throw back to the old days.

i feel like I'm in 1978 listening to this radio.

Awesome ! Thank you for posting. Back when radio was an actual business and cared for the area they were broadcasting in. Awesome.

The 4-note sounder was used on WCBS-88 for years before WEEI adopted it. The CBS TOH 5-note news sounder was the centerpiece of CBS's massive 1968 re-imaging audio package. Great memories of an incrdible era in radio history.

@rebecca8525

Жыл бұрын

2:08 I remember it well from when I was a kid in the 1980’s. My parents had WEEI on the kitchen radio every morning until it became a sports station in the 1990’s. Then they listened to WBZ.

I was 17 and we lived in weymouth right on the ocean, the ocean was above the seawall and we got 3 feet of ocean in the living room and we had to evacuate, all 5 of us trudged through knee deep freezing ocean water to 1/2 mile up the hill to my grandad's house , we were in good spirits considering, at one moment we basically started laughing at how helpless we are against mother nature, I carried my 6 year old little brother most of the way. Couldn't go anywhere for at least 5 days, but thank God we were intact as a family. 🙏

@DCinchi

2 жыл бұрын

Yikes!

That was the year I graduated from Hamilton-Wenham high and the ceremony was bumped forward because of the 2 weeks everything was shut down. Talk about shoveling snow!

Boston Edison in those days, no NStar. Thanks for uploading this. Seems like yesterday.

@billkussmaul2940

3 жыл бұрын

YES ! I worked as a lineman out of the Framingham service center at that time.

There was a pretty good snowstorm around 1/20/78 that everyone forgets about. I was stranded in Boston that day and was lucky to have found a hotel room. The subways were halted and people walked in the subway system to get anyhere. Driving was nearly impossible. Very nasty event that quickly dumped about 2 feet of snow upon the city.

I was in high school back in the blizzard in 1978 I was also a junior and I was turning 18 later on next year. I was told my daughter that with this storm that we went through when we were kids is nothing compared to what it was like while I was growing up. We lost power for four days and I remember that very clearly there are also out of high school for those four days. Talking to a young lady who is the same age as my oldest daughter and she would tell me that her grandparents raised her up and said the storms are nothing compared to the Blizzard of 1978. With the equipment they have today there’s no way they could stop a storm like that due to the fact that the weather people can only guess how much snow we’re going to get and also they really can’t track it either. I would love to see another blizzard of 1978 at least with 40 inches of more in Massachusetts people would freak out.

@rebecca8525

Жыл бұрын

I was going to upvote your comment until I read the last sentence. I was only a baby in ‘78 so I don’t remember it, but I still haven’t recovered from the winter of 2015!

@hippiegirl58 Ironically, Boston Edison was the original owner of WEEI, back in the early 1920's. Edison sold the station to CBS in the late 1930's, and CBS continued to own the station well into the 1980's. This explains why WEEI's all-news format had, in the late 1970's, the same sounders as CBS's other all-news stations (WCBS New York, WBBM Chicago, KNX Los Angeles). Washington's WTOP, although not CBS-owned, was (and still is) an affiliate of CBS radio and also used these sounders.

I remember Dukakas in a sweater telling people to stay home.

they were a CBS owned station at that time. Later they were sold to the owners of Papa-Gino's, then sold to the Boston Celtics & switched to sports.

My mom had this on her clock radio for 3 days.

Paul Benzequin did an excellent description of the Blizzard on his way into thestation t hat night.

I’d love an unscoped recording of an entire hour of this... anything from WEEI Newsradio

It was thanks to this blizard that made my parent 'over react' for every forecast winter storm thereafter. I don't blame them...most young folks just don't understand the impact of an event like this. I was 7 years old. Oh - and if you didn't live by the ocean during this storm - it was just a snow and wind event. Try adding the fury of the Atlantic Ocean and then you have the makings of a legendary Blizzard.

I remember waking up and looking out the window and the snow was covering all of the cars. The shoveling was brutal as we had to put the snow to one side only so someone had to go around to the back of the pile and pull snow off the top. It was crazy as we could jump off our our deck into the snow which was over 36" deep, what 13 yr old wasn't all about it.

Grew up around the Bean and my mom always had 590 on when I was small and dragged around out and about. It was actual news minus the politicized trash you see and hear today. Great station, sad that it's gone

This was my hurricane of 1938...what a hell of a storm!!!

@vinylguru1968

6 жыл бұрын

Am590 weei boston ma all 24hour news radiio station newsradio59 Robert ames legendery news reporter allso worked on am1030wbz news radiio 1030

I remember that blizzard

I was only a baby in’78, so I don’t remember the blizzard. My parents, however, told me all about it. My dad was stuck for hours in his car on 128 before he finally got home.

Today, there are clocks available (including those powered by batteries) that receive signals from the atomic clock at the National Bureau of Standards and Technology, and keep time accurate to a millisecond. If such a clock existed at the old WEEI Radio in 1978, the station would have been able to join network newscasts at the right time instead of "vamping" until a news anchor or engineer literally picked-up the one-the-hour "tone", or perhaps some other cue to go to the network, through their headphones.

@msm6186

5 жыл бұрын

I'm amazed their master clock wasn't on the genny circuit. I bet that was remedied soon after!

@robertwelchny

3 жыл бұрын

The format of CBS for decades including present day... has 5 beeps go down the line between 10 and 5 seconds before the newscast. The line is then quiet for 5 seconds before the hour.

awesome!!! thanks for this...where di you get???? history

And CBS News anchor David Jackson's hourly network radio newscast didn't lead with the storm??

WPOP Hartford also used the same sounders when they were all news....all new in Hartford???? yes there was

i went to the beanpot that monday night. what an idiot i was

@altfactor

2 жыл бұрын

Back then, the Beanpot college hockey tournament wasn't televised. Had the 1978 Beanpot been televised, chances are that instead of a crowd at the old Boston Garden approaching the building's capacity at the time of 14,500, fewer than a thousand would have been there in person with the rest of the ticketholders staying home (or in their dorms in the case of students from the participating schools) and watching it on TV.

AM radio is going the way of the Dodo, sadly

I don't know folks, the blizzard of '93 was a hell storm as well...!!

@michaelsouza5086

9 жыл бұрын

the snowdawg The Blizzard of 78 will be the worst storm we will ever see... it was not just the amount of snow; it was the 60 plus mile an hour steady winds for about 18 hours that made it deadly; we have had more snow totals since but not the constant strong winds. With the advances in weather forecasting it is unlikely we will ever be caught off guard like then ever again.

@travo2112

9 жыл бұрын

+Michael Souza Oh for real? I vaguely remember '78 storm. I was 5. However, peeling back my cobwebs in my brain, I do remember my mom and dad shoveling non stop. And I remember the snow being as high as the trunk on my dads Volare.

@michaelsouza5086

9 жыл бұрын

the snowdawg Find the clips of 1000's of vehicles that got stuck and stranded on the major highways... including 18 wheelers and snow removal equipment... the plows could not keep up with the snow and wind and got stuck themselves... no one was prepared for the magnitude of the storm... that's why nothing will ever compare.. if we ever get another one like that we will be warned well in advance; everything will be shut down hours before it gets that bad; like they did in '93. The perfect storm was probably the only one that could compare; but fortunately that occurred in the Fall.

@HayastAnFedayi

8 жыл бұрын

+Michael Souza I agree with yoy, but don't underestimate Mother Nature, we could very easily be caught off guard again

@rebecca8525

Жыл бұрын

I was only a baby in ‘78 so I don’t remember the Blizzard, but I have heard from my parents and others that it wasn’t the worst blizzard in terms of snowfall or wind. The reason why it was such a catastrophe was because it was not forecasted. Today, meteorologists have such high-technology equipment, that there is no way that a storm of such magnitude would even go undetected.

this sounds more like Jim Westover to me.

@msm6186

5 жыл бұрын

It is Jim. Bob Ames was the VO in this clip, doing positioners.

I WAS THEIR SNOW 2 ND STORY WINDOW BAD 2 WEEKS FOR ROOFING💐!!

When Boston had a real very high quality All News Station.... WBZ is a lazy sloppy sounding embarrassment

@msm6186

5 жыл бұрын

WEEI was owned by CBS, so a tight ship was maintained. I found their all-news operation superior to WBZ's later product. WBZ dropped their NBC affiliation in the mid-1950's, and was an indy until the NewsRadio 1030 change. I didn't listen much - I was on FM or WEEI or WHDH a.m.

@milfordcivic6755

5 жыл бұрын

Agreed. Brain dead Barbie and Ken dolls who talk about nothing but Brady and the patriots.

@nathanwoodruff9422

3 жыл бұрын

@@msm6186 My dad was Les Woodruff and was there at WEEI until December 1979.

@rebecca8525

Жыл бұрын

@@msm6186 Isn’t WBZ owned by CBS?