After WBCN moved to its second location (on Stuart Street in Boston), Sam Kopper hired Andy Beaubien, a recent University of Rhode Island graduate who’d begun working in local radio when he was just 16, doing shifts at some small Rhode Island stations. “As I was wrapping up my college years, I was saying to myself, ‘I’m getting kind of tired of this radio thing.’” Beaubien once said with a laugh because, in the end, being a deejay and radio programmer become his lifelong career.
JOINING WBCN
WBCN’s newest addition debuted in a slot that Kopper was having trouble filling, because all of his deejays were heading west to Upstate New York. “I started [during] the weekend of Woodstock, August 1969, so that’s why I didn’t go [to the concert]!” Beaubien immediately fell in love with his job. “It was the most fun radio experience I ever had, even more fun than college radio. The station was truly free-form, no restrictions at all. The only thing that the on-air guys tried not to do was anything that they’d done on the previous couple of shows; the idea of repeating something was bad.”
‘BCN DEPARTURE, JOINING WCOZ
Beaubien remained a full-time member of the air staff until 1977, when he left the midday slot to pursue a career in artist management. Interestingly, after only a couple years, he returned to radio, but as a deejay and program director at WBCN’s slick, top 40-oriented rock-‘n’-roll rival, WCOZ. Contrasting sharply with his earlier free-form days at 104.1, Beaubien rode ‘COZ’s fantastic rocket ride of success with its “Kick-Ass Rock and Roll” slogan, then gathered what was left of the pieces when that format crashed and burned by 1982.
Beaubien proved to be resilient and knowledgeable, transitioning from ‘COZ’s demise into a lifelong radio career outside of New England.
(by Carter Alan)
Carter Alan is a former WBCN deejay who’s now heard on WZLX-FM in Boston. He is the author of five books, including Radio Free Boston: The Rise and Fall of WBCN (University Press of New England, 2013).
