John Mullaney,
fell into remote broadcasting in 1978 by accident. He was sitting at home in Concord, MA
listening to WBCN's "Duane Glasscock" (Charles Laquidara) doing a remote from an
airplane. He noticed the station was having a problem receiving the remote broadcast
signal. The same signal he had found earlier on his scanner and was picking up fine. So he
called the station's listener line and convinced than part time engineer and producer,
Marc Gordon (now chief engineer at FNX) to put his scanner on the air. The entire show was
completed with John's scanner hooked up to his phone. When Charles (or Duane) landed and
heard the story he called John right up and invited him up to their Prudential Studios.
Soon after that John was receiving all of BCN's remotes high atop the Pru. When he won the
the transmit end position he asked his longtime friend from High School, Dave Powers to
take over the Pru. They experimented with many things including moving remotes and for
several years put WBCN's Mark Parenteau on the air from almost everything and everywhere.
In 1983 John was contacted by Mizlou Sports and picked up the job as the engineer for the
Boston Bruins home games for Jack Campbell's WPLM. Working alongside Bob Wilson and Johnny
Bucyk for 8 years from 83-91. He picked up the Red Sox in 84 engineering the home games
for 12 seasons even through a rights change from PLM to WRKO. Remember the USFL? John was
the engineer for the short lived Boston Breakers on WBZ with announcers Gil Santos and
Gino Capaletti in 1993. Ironically he got to work with the same broadcast team again for
WBCN's opening season with the Patriots traveling home and away with the team for 1995-96
season.
Mizlou the company who hired John originally, also needed someone to engineer the teams
who did not travel engineers into town. Dave Powers started with a few teams expanding it
through the years till he eventually had over half of all of the the visiting sports teams
traveling into Boston.
Somewhere during this time John and Dave decided what they really loved to do was remote
broadcasts. But the only way to succeed at this was to do everybody's broadcasts. So
through an agreement with WBCN they started to branch out first with WXKS and than onto
the others. In 1994 John and Dave decided to completely pool their resources and go for
it. They formed a partnership, Minuteman Communications and purchased a television ENG van
from WBZ-TV. The truck was converted into a
radio broadcast van and an extensive project was launched to upgrade their prudential
receive site. A second truck was added a few years later and
since then Minuteman Communications has grown to the point where they serve
almost all of the Boston Radio Stations
and many national broadcasts. A look back at our
recent events page will
give you a good idea what MMCOMM has been up to over the last few years....
John's email address john@minutemancomm.com
John's personal home page http://www.john.mullaney.com
Minuteman
Communications