WGOE

WGOE was a 5000 watt daytime AM radio station in Richmond, Virginia. The station was sold to a Gospel Radio group in the early 1980s, and broadcasts currently as WFTH. ( See WFTH )

History

The station was first on the air briefly in the late 1950s as a popular Top 40 station with the call letters WEZL, called "Weazel." But, by the end of the 1950s, the station had gone dark due to money problems (and probably due to new Top 40 competition from 24-hour WLEE-AM). The station at 1590 kHz went back on the air in 1964 and was owned by brothers Richard S. (Major) Reynolds III and J. Sargeant Reynolds, two of the grandsons of the founder of Reynolds Metals Company. The transmitter was near Holly Spring Avenue and Hopkins Road in South Richmond. The studios were at Willow Lawn in Henrico County, later moving to Southside Richmond on Belt Boulevard, and later to Carytown in Central Richmond.

The 1960s Top 40 Years

Early on air talent included Jess Duboy and "Gentleman" Jim Granger, Charley Flowers, "Bachelor" Bill Meade, Tom Ogburn, Larry Lewis, Bill James, and Bob Mann. Local legend Norman "Bob-A-Lou" Freedlander also worked there during the station's Top 40 1960s heyday.

In the mid-1960s, WGOE briefly had an FM sister station under different ownership when the Reynolds brothers took on management duties on local classical FM station 103.7 WFMV, which was onwed by Fidelity Bankers Life Insurance Company. (WFMV was sold off to a Pennsylvania absentee-investor in 1968.) During this time, 1590 would bill themselves "WGOE...All The Way Right," to refer to the 1590 position to the far right of the AM dial, and also as "GO Radio" to refer to the WGOE call letters. From about 1964 to 1970, the station enjoyed local success and decent ratings during the “golden era of Top 40" and, for a while, was an aggressive competitor to then market-leading Top 40 station WLEE.

The 1970s Progressive Years

By 1970, listener habits were changing, and WGOE's listenership was falling off mostly due increased competition from then-Top 40 competitors WLEE-AM and WTVR-AMdn. Both boasted 24-hour signals (as opposed to WGOE's daytime only signal), along with a rumored change to Top 40 coming on then crosstown automated country station WRVA-FM (which became fact in 1972 when that station became Top 40 as WRVQ).

Seeing the success of a late night album rock weekend show on crosstown WEZS-FM called "Veronica Lake" that presented rock LP cuts in the then up-and-coming "Progressive" style made popular by several west coast FM stations, the station decided to start its own daytime weekend Progressive Rock show in 1970 called "Saturday Subway." Seeing good results from the "Subway" show, the Top 40 format was dropped and the Progressive Album Rock format was put on full time in late 1970.

During WGOE's Progressive days, they were the only local commercial station that would play "new rock music" right "out of the box" and exposed many up-and-coming artists throughout the 70s, many who became rock legends. Among the regular visitors to the station were Alice Cooper, Todd Rundgren, and Bruce Springsteen, who was a local resident at the time. During the 70s, the station was commonly known simply by its last three call letters: G-O-E. The station also would venture into folk, Jazz, Blues, R&B , and even classical .

Despite the switch to album rock, mainly to needle and frustrate their "mainstream establishment" Top 40 competitors, WGOE held on to the then-new syndicated "American Top 40" show, which was added in their last days as a Top 40 station in early 1970, which they ran on Sunday mornings. The show stayed on WGOE well into their Progressive period, up until the summer of 1976. Show owner Watermark was finally convinced by the much higher-rated and dominating Top 40 station, WRVQ (FM), which had been after the show's broadcast rights for a few years, that it would have a much bigger and wider audience on the FM band at 200,000 watts than on a 5,000 watt AM day-timer that wasn't broadcasting a Top 40 format. WGOE's contract to run the show wasn't renewed. The show moved to WRVQ, where it remains to this day.

Some of the DJs who worked as at WGOE in this period were John Stevens, who later became a popular Philadelphia rock personality, Jay August (who had been on the station a few years before during their Top 40 days as "Bob Mann"), Chuck Ducoty, Pat O'Neil, Ellen Burchill, Steve Forrest, Lauren Foate, Doug Stell, Paul Shugrue, Jim Letizia, and Ken Booton, who was also known as "Melvin The Big Green Frog." August and Booton were considered the driving forces behind the station's progressive format in it's early days. In late 1973 , about a year after Booton left WGOE and was working as a technical director at WTVR-TV , he died of a heart attack during a drug raid in his Fan District apartment in story that made the local papers. August stayed with the station until 1979 , when he left for an advertsing job in Norfolk Va.

During this period WGOE occasionally went on late at night for what was supposed to be a transmitter test: Commercial announcements are not allowed, but you could broadcast non-commercial material, including music. Done by chief engineer Jim Grainger (no relation to "Gentleman Jim" of the earlier Top 40 era), a lot of little-heard music was played, sometimes rock, sometimes something out of the ordinary, even for a station with WGOE's normal wide-ranging Progressive format. Although not publicized by the station, this "show" became known by market insiders and a cult of local and out-of-town listeners as "Jim Grainger and The Transmitter Check." It ran throughout WGOE's album rock period.

The station distributed small yellow round bumper stickers, which were unlike the large rectangular bumper stickers being distributed by the other radio stations. Instead of calling them bumper stickers, they called them "Adhesion Circles." You can still occasionally spot some old WGOE Adhesion Circles stuck to telephone poles, street signs, and the sides of old buildings and even a few cars to this day in Richmond, mostly in the "Fan" area of Richmond, also known as the VCU College area, where most of WGOE's fan base was centered in the 1970s. What WGOE was doing in the 70s is today known as the "AAA" (Adult Album Alternative), although WGOE was much more free-form and adventurous.

1980 to 1982: Oldies as "Go 16"

The progressive format ran from 1970 to 1980 before succumbing to the competition with the emergence of rock music on FM radio frequencies in Richmond with WRXL (102.1) and WRVQ (94.5) in 1980. In 1980, under new manager Jack Alix, the station went to an Oldies format calling itself "GO-16, Rock & Roll Roots" radio, named after a syndicated show Alix had once produced. The Oldies format lasted until 1982. Alix left in 1981 and air staffer Steve "Mr. Beach" Leonard took over as program director. Pual Shugrue, Jim Letizia and Lauren Foate stayed on after the format switch but were later replaced by Bob Campbell, Lee Edwards & Robyn Bentley.

Beach Music : Steve "Mr Beach" Leonard

During this time, Leonard assumed the Morning Drive position and started including in the Oldies format the regionally popular beach and shag music that was a popular dance craze starting at the southeastern beaches in the 50s and 60s, and by 1980 was just starting to get a foothold in Virginia. This led to Leonard becoming widely identified with the music and gave him the nickname "Mr. Beach," which eventually made Leonard a local radio legend in Beach Music and the ultimate Beach Music "authority" in Richmond years after WGOE's demise.

In late 1982, a few months after WGOE's demise, Leonard was recruited by local FM outlet WEZS (now WMXB) to host their newly created "Sunday Night Beach Party" that ran from 1982 to 1996, then moved over briefly to now-defunct sister Oldies stations 104.7 WVGO, and later 106.5 WRCL, then to AM station 1320 WNVZ, and finally on to WZEZ-FM at 100.3 where it currently runs, still on Sunday nights. During his long run at WEZS/WMXB, having the advantage of a large powerful signal on 103.7, based on local listener and club input, Leonard actually created the "Virginia Beach Music Sound" which (unlike the 1950s doo-wop based beach sound of the Carolinas), is laced with more 1960s R&B, such labels as Stax, Atlantic/Atco, and Motown, 70s Soul from such artists as The O'Jays, Spinners, Al Green, The Stylistics, Barry White, as well as a few vintage disco tunes from The Village People and KC and the Sunshine Band, along with Virginia-based talent such as Bill Deal & The Rhondells, Robbin Thompson, Steve Bassett, and Ron Moody. Leonard still MCs many local and regional beach music concerts. In Richmond, you can't mention "Beach Music" without including the name Steve "Mr. Beach" Leonard.

The End Of An Era

In mid 1982 WGOE was sold to an owner who did not intend to keep the oldies format. WGOE's last day on the air as an Oldies station got local newspaper and television coverage. The on-air lineup for WGOE's final day on the air was full-timers Steve Leonard, Lee Edwards, Bob Campbell, and Robyn Bentley, and part-timer Matt Nicholls. The last song played on the station as WGOE was "Another One Bites The Dust" by Queen. The next day, the station was taken over by the new owner, Norfolk-based Bishop L.E. Willis, who flipped the station to a Black Gospel format under new calls WFTH, where it remains to this day.

Epitath

WGOE had three separate "fan bases" of listeners: the 60s fans who remember WGOE as a Top 40 station; the 70s fans, mostly VCU alumni, who remember the pioneering album rock format; the early 80s fans who remember the Beach Music laden Oldies format. Many local radio insiders agree that if WGOE had been able to move to the FM band in the 70s, it would probably be around today as an album rock station in some form or another, like its larger market FM counterparts like WBCN in Boston, WMMR in Philadelphia, WDVE in Pittsburgh, and WMMS in Cleveland.

References

www.steveleonard.com