Friday, June 24, 2016

Miami Radio: WZAB Brings Back The Beatles Brunch

Beatle Brunch, which aired Majic 102.7 from May 31, 1992, until last December, when the station has since relaunched as '80s-based 102.7 the Beach, is back on-the-air.

Last week, after months without a local station to call home, Beatle Brunch with Joe Johnson returned to Miami airwaves on Salem's WZAB 880 AM The Biz, where it will air every Sunday from 2 to 3 p.m., according to Miami New Times.

Although the station is mostly business news oriented, it has made a slight departure recently to cater to the older crowd. “They run a Sinatra show on Saturday morning. It’s two hours,” Johnson says. They reached out to him a couple of months ago to express interest in bringing back Beatle Brunch to Miami listeners.

WZAB 880 AM (4 Kw-D, 5 Kw-N
As Johnson has written on the Beatle Brunch Facebook page, AM radio is, for many, “where you heard the Beatles for the first time.” He speculates there may be an unintended nostalgic appeal to hearing the Fab Four on this frequency once again.

While he concedes that millennials haven't yet rediscovered AM radio in the way they’ve embraced, say, vinyl, Johnson acknowledges that at the end of the day younger generations just want to hear the music. “There’s so many little kids getting into the Beatles that they’re not going to be able to relate to that [nostalgia], so that doesn’t matter. They just want to hear the songs.”

To that point, Johnson's first show back prominently featured a kindergarten class from Heron Heights Elementary School enthusiastically singing along to “Yellow Submarine,” “Love Me Do,” and “Hey Jude.”

Another generation of Beatlemaniacs is born.

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