Brad Michaud & the JB105 Top 35 Countdown, 105.1 WPJB Providence | 1981

Its been so long since WPJB on 105.1 was really a radio station that it’s hard to find any images… even though Google has a vast search engine. Its just been gone for so long. So, perhaps this still photo of the WWLI transmitter, taken by radio guru Scott Fybush will do. It was the transmitter (or at least the transmitter room) of JB105. a station that for a time was the hottest Top 40 station in the Providence, Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts market. WPJB gave 92 PRO-FM, the OTHER Top 40 station in the market, a real run for its money.

**Find out more about Scott Fybush and his work at his website, fybush.com.  Be sure to become a subscriber, and tell him Airchexx.com sent you!**

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Rather than lament the loss of this station which I heard in it’s latter years before it changed to Soft Rock (a format that remains to this day), lets celebrate what was, arguably, the hottest CHR station in New England. Except, perhaps, for WTIC-FM Hartford, which at the same point in time, was doing the “Hot Hits ™” CHR format.

It was a great time to listen to FM in New England. I lived in a little town close to the New Hampshire border. Orange, Mass. Where I grew up, the terrain favored Boston and Worcester… with a line of sight (for FM) south to Providence and even, on a good day, Cape Cod. JB105 came in strong much of the time. The closest Top 40 station to it was WVBF on 105.7, and by the time I really started listening, WVBF was softening up and moving away from Top 40. And that’s the era I’m describing that most closely matches that of this aircheck.

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JB105 is a HOT rocking station at this point. The first thing you’ll notice is that most of the music is uptempo. The second thing is the station’s processing was juiced so that it was loud. I mean, loud EVERY TIME YOU HEARD IT even if the song was a slow one. JB105 used reverb for most of its existence. The reverb isn’t really loud on this aircheck, at least not like WABC New York was, say, in 1975, but it was there.

I cannot find any information on this jock anywhere, no photos and nothing matching him on social media. Perhaps one of our visitors knows what became of Brad Michaud. He was a GREAT CHR jock! Just listen!

This aircheck was donated by contributor Paul DiMarco (the Ice Cream Man!). It was actually culled from a tape called “Southern New England Aircheck Part 2”. Somehow Part 1 got lost in the web on the way to airchexx, but there are some really great other stations heard on it and those will post separately, because unlike some of our earlier “composites” from 15 or more years ago, these, individually deserve their own aircheck posts. (Teaser… Next up from this tape is going to be Jack Lawrence on 1360 WDRC (AM) Hartford… do any of you realize just how hard rocking the old Big-D was? You’ll find out soon that even in 1981.. WDRC AM was STILL an amazing Top 40 station!).

Audio fidelity on this varies. It’s MOSTLY very good. Some white noise on the FM signal is heard and a little tape wear is evident, but overall, this is an amazingly good aircheck, and of what I can find on the web from JB105, this ranks as the best. Ok, I actually only found FIVE airchecks of JB105 in total out there. Two sound like garbage, but being from 1975 they are pretty interesting, considering FM was still way behind AM in popularity. You get the picture!

LISTENING OPTIONS

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LINKAGE
Former WPJB JB105 Jock Mike Waite is featured on Airchexx. Find his work at THIS LINK.
96.5 WTIC-FM is mentioned in this post.  Access those airchecks on this site HERE.
Contributor Paul DiMarco (aka “Mr. 70s”) has donated a lot of airchecks and we have a substantial backlog of his tapes still to post.  Access his collection HERE.