Date of Recording: 01.22.1973
Station: 1190 WBMJ San Juan, Puerto Rico
Format: Top 40
Featured Air Personality: Scott Brady (jock). George MacDugal (news)
Contributor: Karl Phillips
Post Date: 10/29/2017
Total Time: 30:44 (scoped)
Airchexx Entry: 1,522
…From San Juan (Whaaaaa!!), W B M J. A Bob Hope Station!
Curator’s Notes:
Shortly after Puerto Rico was devastated for the second time in two weeks by a hurricane, I put the call out to see if there were any airchecks of radio on the island to post, to give more publicity for the need for more help for this ravaged U.S. Territory. Contributor Karl Philips immediately contacted me to say he had a few recordings of his time on the island several decades ago. What follows is a great recording highlighting the Rock of San Juan in it’s heyday. And, yes, this was one of the stations owned by Bob Hope. There’s a whole writeup on wikipedia on the history of WBMJ. Today, the station uses a variation on the old Rock of San Juan slogan, but today, the “rock” refers to Jesus Christ, in this multilingual Christian broadcasting station.
Karl got his start in radio at the age of 17 while in high school as an intern at WQXI 790 in Atlanta. Worked on the FM side on 94.1 (Now Star 94) He joined the Navy and worked at American Forces Radio in Icelant, WBMJ, WIAC-FM and WRAI in San Juan while in the Navy. He joined WGST 920 Solid Gold in Atlanta in 1975 and later worked at WLKQ (Lake 102) in North Atlanta. He is a Voting member of the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame and a contributor to this site.
Thanks for posting this. My family always went to Puerto Rico for Christmas vacation in the early 70’s. WBMJ was the station coming out of every Continental’s transistor radio while lounging around poolside at the Caribe Hilton, The El San Juan, or The Americana. I remember hearing “Never Been to Spain” by Three Dog Night for the very first time on WBMJ and thinking that it must be a local hit because Puerto Rico is Spanish speaking. The other English language station was 870 WHOA. This station was for the upper demos with MOR music and NBC News and features. There was a third English station in Ponce running Drake’s automated Hit Parade. Today, the CHR station of course on FM is KQ 105 featuring Spanish speaking announcers and a mix of hits in Spanish and English.