Airchexx.com

From contributor Paul Ford, “Here is great aircheck from WDRQ 93.1 FM in Detroit… August 1977 with Jerry St James.” Truly representative of many one-man morning shows at the end of the 1970s, here’s one from the FM dial… which at the time was still having difficulty competing with AM radio. Detroit, however, was in a different position, where the dominant Top 40 station for much of the 70s was the Big 8 – CKLW, across the river in Windsor, Ontario.

DRQ is really trying to win, and it sounds great. Wish we had a recording of the rest of the broadcast day, which would truly give us a slice of what WDRQ 93 FM sounded like – but I’d bet you could get a feel for its sound by searching for Y-100 Miami on this site, since those two stations had a similar Top 40 sound.

As of this writing, WDRQ is called “93.1 Doug FM”, one of those ‘We Play Everything”-type stations, like “Jack-FM” was in New York.

WDRQ Detroit logo from about 1973

The ink was barely dry on Telcom ’96 and the vast consolidation that unravelled radio was only just beginning. No sign of it in Detroit as 1997 kicked off, and Detroit’s newest dance station was RED HOT! From what was previously “Lite FM”, came this Rhythmic CHR station and one hell of a great jock called simply JOJO.

Listen to how JoJo works the phones, does contests and how TIGHT this station was! Who said radio was boring in the 90s?!!