Cape Fear

Part 2

by Dan Kennedy

Welcome to Cape Cod Hate Radio, brought to you courtesy of Ernest J. Boch, the onetime poor boy who never went to college and who clawed his way to the top of the car business by smashing windshields in TV commercials, dropping pumpkins from helicopters, and battling law-enforcement agencies, state regulators, and anyone else who got in his way -- even two of his sons, both of whom he once demoted when their performance failed to live up to his high-profit credo.

In recent years, a new Ernie Boch has emerged. The nouveau riche bumpkin with the garish mansion and an estimated $100 million in the bank. The extroverted septuagenerian health nut who runs every day and stays away from alcohol, tobacco, and red meat. The philanthropist who in 1994 gave $2.6 million to the Cape Cod Center for the Performing Arts (now the Boch Center), and who last year donated an underutilized AM station to Boston University's WBUR Radio, allowing the public-broadcasting giant to extend its signal to Cape Cod and the Islands.

The recurrent theme in Boch's weekend life on the Vineyard, though, is that of the island-society wanna-be who's shunned by the upper crust. In a memorable 1993 article by the Boston Globe's late society columnist, John Robinson, Vineyard doyenne Pat Sayre said of the Bochs: "They're not Vineyard people. They don't fit in. They're a little scary. He's got a lot of money, and he's an important person, and he seems like a very nice guy. But would you name your boat `Come On Down'? There's that calling attention to himself that annoys people."

But if Boch has been a victim of elitist snobbery, he's created plenty of his own problems as well. No doubt it's part of his combative personality and his need, seemingly programmed into his DNA, to make money, even though he's already one of the wealthiest men in the state. That drive led him to launch a years-long battle with Martha's Vineyard officials for the right to build a harborside parking lot.

And it has led him to assemble a small but growing empire of Cape Cod radio stations that, when they're not humiliating teenage mothers and trashing local officials, are filling up the airwaves with cheap, nationally syndicated talk-show hosts, ranging from right-wing homophobe G. Gordon Liddy, of Watergate fame, to liberal weekend screamer Tom Leykis, of accused-wife-beater fame. Today Boch owns four stations, giving him the largest group on the Cape. Three, which he bought last year, are the sleepiest of operations: WCOD-FM, a music-and-news station, and two music stations that are almost entirely syndicated -- WJCO-FM, which plays big-band music, and WWKJ-FM, a classic-rock station. The big gun in the Boch arsenal, then, is WXTK, which has been bellowing at listeners since 1991.

There are those who think the point of Radio Free Ernie is to promote its proprietor's ultraconservative ideology. Indeed, with the exception of Leykis, who's only on during Sunday afternoons, the station's lineup is unremittingly conservative: local morning hosts Lambert, who suspects Vincent Foster was murdered, and Giles Threadgold, a Howie Carr sidekick; and then, from 10 a.m. through 7 p.m., Liddy, Rush Limbaugh, and Carr himself, whose WRKO show is simulcast.

"I think Ernie unabashedly wants the station to reflect Ernie," says Republican political consultant Kevin Sowyrda, an occasional talk-radio host who's done some work for WXTK. "Rush Limbaugh is the definite liberal on that station."

Yet it would appear that Boch's true ideology is the bottom line. WXTK generally places third in the Cape Cod ratings war. In an effort to boost ratings, the station has dumped right-wing nut case Oliver North and local conspiracy theorist Gino Montesi, a personal friend of Boch's. And though Boch Broadcasting vice-president/ general manager Cary Pahigian says McKeag, a buddy of Ted Kennedy's, left the morning show this summer on the best of terms (McKeag declined to be interviewed), the new show, Lambert and Giles, has aped national radio trends by toning down the politics and playing up the humor -- or alleged humor, as anyone who suffered through a recent Threadgold shtick about Bill Clinton's supposedly getting his ear pierced would attest.

In a telephone interview, Boch made it clear that to him, it's simply a matter of numbers, no more, no less. "We try to listen to the customers as much as possible and give them what they want," he says. "I think that's what our programming formula should be."

No doubt Boch's attack-by-proxy on a low-income teenage mother was terrific for ratings.

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Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com.