Seven O’Clock with Ed Rodriguez at the Rock Entertainer!
Very few recordings exist of 1390 WEAM. This fulltime 5kw AM station has the distinction of being the FIRST Top 40 radio station serving the greater Washington DC area from right across the Potomac River in Arlington VA, even earlier than the later, better known station WPGC (AM and FM). WEAM stayed with the format despite being outgunned in the 70s and early 80s right up until 1984, when it changed call letters to WMZQ and became a simulcast of Country formatted WMZQ-FM 98.7. Interesting radio history.
Here’s a 5 minute scope of Ed Rodriguez, whom we have never featured here on Airchexx before. Ed is capable and upbeat, and definitely does the format justice, right in the middle of 1976.
Honestly, this sounds GOOD! Imagine listening in the car on a good radio!
Contributor Chris Roth is the Director of Programming for WAVA Arlington, VA. Our thanks to Ed for this wonderful aircheck!
Ed Rodriguez can still be heard on DC radio today, doing traffic reports. he’s one of radio’s “renaissance men” who can do any format and do it well. if WEAM had been able to migrate to FM it might still be around today, but it suffered from the general decline in AM music listenership.
The other factor involved the growth of DC. There are only two AM signals able to cover the market as defined the last many years, 630 and 980. The rest of the dial are at the mercy of highly directional signals, day and night. 1390 tear dropped a signal for the community of license of Arlington and happen to hit DC. Other parts of the metro had no signal. WPGC had an FM pushing listeners there early since the AM was a daytimer and limited coverage due to directional signal.
Robert, Totally agree with you !! Ed Rodriguez has that voice that just makes everything sound better!!
Mr. Rodriguez lights-up the dial wherever and whenever he’s on.
was he the same ed rodriguez that was on wash -fm 97.1 back in the day
WEAM went big band and in 1983 was supposedly being bought by WHFS, the programming that moved there was the Sunday Brokered ethnic shows. The owners of WHFS gave and bought WLOM 99.1 where they remined for several years.
WEAM ended the Top 40 format very early in the 80s (1980-1981), leaving WEEL/1310 in Fairfax as Northern Virginia’s main homegrown Top 40 for most of the early part of the decade. Wonder if there any airchecks from either station from the late 70s/early 80s time frame: the music was quite good on WEAM in this era (more crossover album rock/new wave hits that WPGC and Q107 avoided), while WEEL had the great Allan Prell in the afternoons before he went to relative “stardom” at WBAL in Baltimore!