Boston Radio: WMEX Expected To Make A Return

Later this month broadcaster Ed Perry is scheduled to revive, legendary WMEX 1510 AM with much of the same music and with some of the same personalities that powered the station in its heyday from the late 1950s through the mid-1970s.

“I grew up with WMEX,” said the 79-year-old Perry, a member of the Massachusetts Radio Holl of Fame told The Patriot-Ledger. “I grew up with (disc jockey) Arnie Ginsburg and the Adventure Car Hop commercials. It was the high school station. It was what you listened to.”

The station is now scheduled to debut on March 23.

Perry is bringing back radio veterans to host the shows, such as Justice, whose “Halls of Justice” was heard on the old WMEX. There’s also Joe McMillan, who has worked for several Boston stations.

Perry said interaction with the audience is the most important thing in radio, and these announcers not only know the business but they know the music. And, they will take requests.

“They have to be friends to the audience,” Perry said. “There has to be an interaction.”

He said that’s something the radio business has lost in recent years as big radio chains built by deregulation and mountains of debt continue to cut costs through automation and syndication.

And while Justice and McMillan will broadcast live, they won’t be broadcasting locally. Both will broadcast out of home studios: Justice in Florida and McMillan in Maine.

The remainder of the programming is a work in progress.

WMEX’s 10,000-watt daytime signal covers much of Eastern Massachusetts. When the power is cut to 200 watts at night, Perry said, listeners will be able to find the station online.

WMEX signed off in 2017 and Perry bought the license and some of the station’s equipment later that year. WMEX, however, had lost its transmitter site. Since then, Perry has been securing approvals for a transmitter site at a tower off West Squantum Street in Quincy — not far from where the original WMEX towers were located. The frequency is now carrying audio from co-oened WATD 95.9 FM in Marshfield, MA programs until the new format debuts.