Alex Mitchell on 1540 WDON Washington
From the late-70s (I’m guessing 1977) when Jimmy Carter was still president and the Nation’s Capitol still had music on AM, here’s Oldies WDON. Alex Mitchell sounds excellent in this, a very AC sounding Oldies-based station.
WDON bills itself as “Washington’s Gold Rush”. Well, this is unique. You’ll never hear The Partridge Family played on any of the remaining Oldies stations today!
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WDON-1540 was in part an attempt to fill a format void left by the change of an FM (!) station away from oldies. Sonderling’s WMOD-98.7 became a partially-automated oldies station in the fall of 1968 and was successful for several years, as it added more live talent. But by sometime around 1975-76, it had drifted away from oldies into a somewhat subdued Top 40, maybe even AC, slicing between WPGC-FM/AM (95.5/1580) and WASH-97.1, an FM AC pioneer. WDON, a non-directional daytimer, changed hands sometime around 1974 or 1975, and the new owners (don’t know name) took the opportunity. Stan Karas (spelling may be incorrect), heard on at least one spot on this aircheck, had been a personality at NBC’s WRC-980 in its MOR-full-service days and by the mid-1970’s was involved in sales, management and eventually station ownership. Andy Parks, who programmed WDON and was morning host, today (2007) is a morning personality on WMAL-630, the ABC-owned news-talk station. WDON ended up jumping (too late) onto the disco bandwagon around 1979, then became some form of Christian music station and eventually was sold and became Spanish as WMDO and later WACA. Alex Mitchell always sounded good wherever he worked around DC. Thanks for the memories.