NorthEast Radio Watch 10/14/2024: J.J. Jeffrey Dies

In this week’s issue… Remembering J.J. Jeffrey, Canada’s Bullard – Cumulus surrenders WFAS license – 7 Mountains shuffles Hornell, Mansfield signals – TV director’s death cancels newscast

By SCOTT FYBUSH

Jump to: ME – NH – VT – MA – RI – CT – NY – NJ – PA – Canada

*There have been plenty of great top-40 jocks, and plenty of top-notch station owners, but it’s hard to think of anyone who’s so seamlessly segued from one role to the other as J.J. Jeffrey, who excelled for so many years in both areas.

Jeffrey, who died Oct. 10 at 84, started and ended his career in MAINE, working at Portland’s WJAB before making his way into the Boston market as one of the “Melvin X. Melvin”s on WMEX in the mid-1960s.

But it was at his next stop that he’s still best remembered: when RKO General woke up its sleepy WNAC (680) in early 1967, turning it into high-energy top-40 WRKO, it was Jeffrey who was tapped to host afternoons and the weekly top 30 countdown.

While his run at WRKO lasted just two and a half years, it was long enough to make him a rock star of Boston radio, and to propel him into gigs that followed at WFIL in Philadelphia and WLS in Chicago.

From there, though, Jeffrey took a different path from many of his on-air colleagues. Returning to Maine with his partner Bob “Doc” Fuller, he formed Fuller-Jeffrey Broadcasting in 1975. The pair’s first acquisition was WBLM (then on 107.5), the underground rock station serving Portland from a double-wide trailer up north in Litchfield.

With a knack for business that matched their skills on the air, Fuller and Jeffrey grew their company thoughtfully and consistently, trading up to get WBLM on a bigger signal at 102.9 and pairing it with additional Portland stations including WJBQ and the mighty WHOM, expanding into New Hampshire with WOKQ in Dover, and eventually expanding westward to Des Moines and the California coast. By 1999, Fuller-Jeffrey’s stations were worth $63 million in a sale to Citadel that could have allowed Jeffrey to retire happily.

But he and Fuller had a second chapter as radio owners, creating Atlantic Coast Radio and returning to their Portland roots. Both had worked for the old WJAB (1440), and that 1440 signal became part of the core of the Atlantic Coast group along with erstwhile competitor WLOB (1310) and several newer FM signals on 95.5, 95.9 and 96.3. Over the years, the formats would shuffle a bit, but with a strong focus on news-talk and sports and, always, an eye to signal improvements that ended up making 96.3 (now WJJB) into nearly a full Portland-market FM.

Both Jeffrey and Fuller were inducted into the Maine Association of Broadcasters’ Hall of Fame, among other honors, but perhaps the highest honor was simply the esteem in which Jeffrey was held by fellow broadcasters who deeply respected his broad knowledge of all facets of the business. (How many owners of WHOM over the years have really understood how special the station’s superpower status high above Mount Washington is? Jeffrey certainly did.)

In recent months, Jeffrey’s health had been failing. He’d sold his stake in Atlantic Coast to Fuller two years ago, and recently the cluster went on the market. When it’s sold, it will conclude a radio odyssey that took Jeffrey full circle over more than 60 years in the business.