Westinghouse decided to take WBZ out of the pop music field, and quietly did so when no one was looking. Dick Summer, whose late show was unique and famous, and who was a friend of editors of this newspaper for years, moved to New York City to work for WNEW FM, an experimental serious-rock station.

Then WMEX decided it was in for a complete change, and started planning at the beginning of last year a total turn over. They brought up Warren Duffy from Washington, D.C. and made him program director in July. Duffy got a whole new set of disc jockeys, including Bud Ballou, who does the evening show.

Duffy brought with him the idea of "much more music" and worked on making the music they played more hip. WMEX were among the first people to work "underground" music into their Top 40. If you find it difficult to believe that it was only last July that AM radio started playing the kind of music that used to come only on WBCN, then it is only because your easy assimilation of it now obscures your memory. We have had large amounts of "far-out" music in this medium for only seven months. Perhaps you can remember what a big deal they made out of playing all seven minutes of the "long" abbreviated version of "Time Has Come Today" by the Chambers Brothers. That really isn't such a big deal now.

And it is true that record companies, as a result of this change in radio, have started to issue a new kind of record--singles based on the popularity of cuts on albums. Two out of three singles distributed in 1968 were cuts (both edited and unedited) from albums already released or released simultaneously. Sometimes, record companies make singles strictly for radio promotion; and you can't buy the song except on an album. The top 50 albums are now always outselling the best single.

If WMEX isn't back up tied with RKO in the ratings yet, it is only because R-co has got a much stronger signal. But MEX is going up to 50,000 watts as soon as the FCC approves it sometime this year, perhaps soon.

And we shouldn't doubt that WMEX is the best rock station in Boston and probably just about anywhere in the country. Their programming is organic the way R-co's can never be as long as they are locked into their system. Warren Duffy, who as Cousin Duffy does a 4:00 to 7:00 show, says that they at MEX aren't really sure where the hell Short is . . . . aren't really sure where they are going, they're just responding. That's a very existential way of looking at things. Because the medium is a very unknown phenomenon. How could they experience their situation otherwise?

WMEX is intentionaly free with the way it lets its disc jockeys set their own particular styles for their own shows. That's good because it recognizes the importance of humanity to the medium. But WMEX still isn't free enough to avoid getting stuck in its own format occasionally. For example, when the new Beatles album came out at the end of last year, the station groped around to fit it sensibly into the way it organized its music. But this couldn't be done.

There are thirty songs on the new album. Most of them are quite playable on radio; several of them are really great radio stuff. But how could their Top 40 react? Certainly, no number of them could suddenly go on the charts. It was impossible to measure which ones people liked most. People were pretty much above the usual manipulation that makes them like whatever they are given because the album was so generally known. There were all kinds of moods in the album so it was a perfect weapon for the disc jockeys to use to control the flow. And some songs were played effectively on MEX; but on the whole, their play was less than the interest of the music normally would have demanded.

It should be added that the album is still being played. But one suspects that if they weren't the Beatles, none of it ever would have been played. Not that all interesting music on albums ought to go on the radio, but that music which is well suited to do the kinds of things that radio does for us ought to be played. And now, even though MEX is playing album cuts, there is no way to effectively get these songs into the Top 40 without first getting them released as a single.

And there are other ways in which we suspect WMEX is not living up to the full potential of the medium. Of course, they still play some pretty awful songs: "You can hang yourself by not playing Jeannie C. Riley and the 1910 Fruit Gum Company," said Bud Ballou.

Bud Ballou does the evening show leading up to the late night talk show (the only way I can excuse the latter is by saying it makes us appreciate the rock shows all the more when we do get them). Ballou says that he thinks he would be able to identify much more closely with disc jockeys called the WMEX Bad Guys instead of, as it is now, the Good Guys.

His entire come-on is very cynical with feints towards being nasty, and transparent attempts to make enemies. Again we are up against something "unnatural." What is it in cynicism that appears to us so appealing, especially when the trip guide in the flow is the cynic?

I think that the message in cynicism is, in effect, that: we don't know anything really about our own existence, all we can do is to feel, but we do know that we can't accept the explanations that are given to us. Cynicism is a denial, and that is a good way of saying that we only trust what we experience and know to be true.

What I have just described isn't a message that Ballou, himself, is trying to get across. It's the kind of thinking his radio experience makes us feel like.

Cousin Duffy on the other hand, is a really "out front" personality (to borrow a term from The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test). That is to say that he is very direct, brings out front what is on his mind, and is terrificly aware of the moment. He has a neat trick of making you aware of a greater sphere of existence than the most immediate ones, as, for example, he places you not only in the time of day, but the time of year. It really helps you deal with the flow if someone does that kind of thing.