Nine legendary members of the broadcast community will be inducted into the 2021 Massachusetts Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame during a luncheon ceremony on Thursday, Sept. 30, at the Boston Quincy Marriott Hotel.
Selected as 2021 Hall of Fame inductees are (alphabetically by last name): “Bax and O’Brien,” the WAQY “Rock 102” Springfield Radio morning team of Michael Baxendale and John O’Brien; WCRB Classical 99.5 Boston morning program host of more than 20 years Laura Carlo; Eric Jackson of Boston’s WGBH 89.7 Radio, who is widely considered the “Dean of Boston Jazz Radio;” accomplith anniversary on WAQY Rock 102 as “the dominant radio personalities in the Springfield market,” according to The Reminder newspaper of Western Massachusetts. “While [their] show may be known for its outrageous humor and commentary,” the newspaper wrote, “it is also a venue for local political discussion. Area mayors, city councilors, state representatives and others are regular part[s] of the show.” Bax and O’Brien are also known for their tireless charitable work. As an example, for more than two decades they have hosted and broadcast continuously the annual Mayflower Marathon, a 57-hour on-air food and fund drive that takes place each year on the weekend before Thanksgiving to benefit the Open Pantry food bank of Springfield.
Laura Carlo
Laura Carlo has been WCRB’s Morning Program host for more than two decades. Under the station’s original ownership Eric Jackson Eric Jackson is widely considered the “Dean of Boston Jazz Radio.” He began his broadcast career in 1969 as a Boston University student, hosting three programs offering jazz, rhythm-and-blues and what he calls “mixed music” on BU’s closed-circuit AM station, WTBU. Continuing his work in college radio, he went on to host WBUR’s The Grotto (1970) and at Harvard’s WHRB Going East (1971) before moving to the commercial airwaves and a Sunday afternoon jazz program on Boston’s WILD (1972). Jackson hosted a contemporary mixed-music show for WBCN Boston where he also produced and hosted Third World Report, a weekly public affairs forum. In 1975 while still at WBCN, Jackson wrote and narrated Essays in Black Music, a 35-part chronology of African American musical history that aired weekly on WGBH Radio, Boston. Jackson became a regular part of the WGBH lineup in 1977 with Artists in the Night, an overnight jazz music showcase. Eric in the Evening debuted in 1981 and with it, his emergence as one of public broadcasting’s most popular on-air personalities. In 2006, Jackson received the National Jazz Journalists Association’s Willis Conover-Marian McPartland Award for Excellence in Jazz Broadcasting. He was awarded Jazzweek’s Major Market Programmer of the Year in 2008. In 2012, Jackson received the 2012 Duke Dubois Humanitarian Award. Over the years, Jackson has hosted more than 3000 interviews with music greats ranging from Wynton Marsalis to Ornette Coleman to Dizzy Gillespie. He is currently a member of the Northeastern University faculty where he teaches The African American Experience Through Music. WGBH celebrated Eric Jackson’s more than 40 years of employment with “Eric Jackson Week” activities in April, 2018. Paul Kelley – Pioneer Award Nancy Quill
Retired radio executive Paul Kelley, best-known for championing expanded professional and college sports broadcasts throughout New England will receive the 2021 Pioneer Award, given, as Hall of Fame Committee Chair Peter Brown explained, “to an individual who has distingui“The Award,” Committee Chair Brown said, “was establiThe Sean McDonough Celebrity Golf Classic – has raised nearly four million dollars over 10 years, with the proceeds distributed to 129 children’s charities throughout Massachusetts.
