There is probably an easier way to spend a workday than helping wake up Tampa Bay on Wild 94.1, changing musical universes for middays on Q105 and then walking into one of the longest-running Country brands in Florida for afternoon drive. Meredith Andrade apparently wasn’t interested in easier. Beasley Media Group has added her to afternoons on 99.5 WQYK, giving a personality who has already spent more than a decade becoming part of Tampa Bay radio culture an extraordinary third daily role inside the same cluster.
What makes this interesting to me is that none of those stations sounds remotely like the other two.
Wild 94.1 lives in a Rhythmic Top 40 world. Q105 is built around familiar hits from several decades. WQYK has been playing Country music in Tampa Bay since 1971. The music libraries may not agree on much, but Beasley has apparently decided Meredith Andrade can walk into all three rooms and still be Meredith Andrade. WQYK’s Country history now stretches beyond half a century, and industry records from its 30th anniversary already described the station as a deeply established Tampa Bay brand with strong community ties.
That is a fascinating vote of confidence in personality.
Andrade’s Tampa story actually began with a pretty good leap of faith.
She started in radio while attending the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, spending roughly a year and a half working without pay before finally getting a part-time opportunity at 97.9 Kiss FM. Not long after graduating, the MJ Morning Show offered her a full-time job in Tampa.
There was one problem.
She had never been to Tampa.
She took the job anyway.
Andrade packed up, moved across the state and joined one of the most recognizable morning shows in Florida radio on 93.3 WFLZ. She would spend several years there before that chapter ended, and in a remarkably candid interview with VoyageTampa years later, she acknowledged just how frightening that moment became. The end of the MJ show left her struggling financially and wondering what came next.
That detail makes today’s story considerably more satisfying.
Radio careers rarely look clean when you’re actually living them.
We like to reduce them later to call letters and years because résumés are easier to understand that way. Real careers include periods when the phone stops ringing, money gets tight, somebody decides your position is no longer necessary and you wonder whether all the work you put into this ridiculous business was worth it.
Andrade kept going.
She moved into sports radio at 98.7 The Fan, where the job put her around Tampa Bay sports and gave her opportunities to work with athletes, including coverage involving the Buccaneers. But she has said herself that she missed music radio. Then Orlando Davis gave her the opening that would become the defining local chapter of her career.
She joined Orlando and The Freakshow on Wild 94.1 in 2013.
More than a decade later, she is still there.
That matters.
Tampa Bay has changed enormously during those years, and Wild’s audience has grown up right along with the show. Andrade became more than the woman sitting across from Orlando and Rich. Wild’s own biography points to her Tampa restaurant recommendations, Florida stories, charity work and community appearances alongside everything happening on the morning show.
She has also become exactly the kind of multimedia personality radio keeps saying it needs.
Andrade edits and podcasts morning-show content, works in social media, writes digital material, creates video and appears at local events. Beasley’s Tampa operation previously singled her out internally for her digital work, noting that one of her local pieces generated particularly strong attention and praising the way she thinks beyond the radio speaker.
Then Q105 entered the picture.
At the beginning of 2025, Andrade added middays on WRBQ, putting her voice on another one of Tampa Bay’s most recognizable frequencies. It created a pretty wonderful bit of Tampa radio symmetry because the MJ Morning Show that originally brought her to the city now lives on Q105 as well.
Think about that career circle for a moment.
The young broadcaster moves to Tampa because of MJ.
The MJ chapter ends.
She nearly loses everything.
She rebuilds through sports radio.
Wild becomes home.
Years later, she winds up working on the same station that has become the new home of the show that originally brought her to Tampa.
Radio careers are strange.
Sometimes they’re also beautifully poetic.
Now add WQYK.
This is where the move becomes particularly interesting from a programming perspective because Country requires a different relationship with the audience. WQYK is not a new station trying to manufacture heritage. It has been part of Tampa Bay Country radio since the early 1970s. Generations of listeners have heard the station through entirely different eras of the format, from George Jones and Alabama to Garth Brooks, Tim McGraw, Luke Bryan, Morgan Wallen and everything in between.
WQYK also has a history of making its personalities visible around Tampa Bay. The current station content still heavily emphasizes concerts, local happenings, listener experiences and the daily life of the market. Its personalities write about everything from Tampa restaurants and beaches to dating, community organizations and Country shows coming through the region.
Andrade already works that way.
That is why this makes more sense to me than looking at it exclusively through format compatibility.
Do I expect her to suddenly become a different human being because there is a Morgan Wallen record coming out of the stopset instead of Usher?
I certainly hope not.
The best version of this move is Meredith Andrade being Meredith Andrade.
Tampa mom.
Radio lifer.
Pop-culture junkie.
Community personality.
Woman who knows the market because she has now spent a huge portion of her adult life living and working in it.
That translates.
It also makes her one of the most unusual air personalities in the building.
Morning drive on Wild.
Middays on Q105.
Afternoons on WQYK.
That means one broadcaster is moving through three separate generations and musical lifestyles during one workday.
There are probably Wild listeners who know Andrade from the morning show and have never voluntarily listened to a Country station in their lives.
There are WQYK listeners who may have no idea what happened on Wild that morning.
Q105 sits somewhere else entirely.
And yet all of them live in Tampa Bay.
That is the connective tissue.
It is also a good reminder that we occasionally get too obsessed with format boxes when we evaluate talent.
A personality is not a music category.
Great broadcasters understand how to adjust the temperature of a show without erasing themselves. You respect the station, understand the listener and know what belongs in that particular room.
But the personality still has to be real.
Andrade has spent years proving that her personality travels.
She is also continuing to expand beyond radio. Her Headlines and High Heels series on Tampa Bay-based RHStv is now in its second season, mixing celebrity and entertainment stories with conversations involving local businesses, artists and personalities. RHStv describes the program as one of its growing locally focused properties, and recent episodes have included Tampa entrepreneurs and musicians alongside the broader entertainment material.
Again, there is that same pattern.
Start with the personality.
Then take it wherever the audience is.
Radio.
Podcasting.
Streaming television.
Social.
Community events.
Different formats.
Different screens.
Same person.
That is probably why Beasley keeps finding additional places to use her.
There is also an important human element to the move because Kevin Cummings’ departure created the opening at WQYK. He spent two years handling afternoons, and when one broadcaster gets an opportunity it is worth remembering that another broadcaster has just ended a chapter. Those realities live next to one another in this business all the time.
For Andrade, though, this is another step in a Tampa career that almost didn’t survive long enough to reach this point.
She came here without knowing Tampa.
Now Tampa knows her.
That may be the best local angle of all.
The woman who once packed everything and moved to a city she had never visited now spends mornings talking about that city’s people, restaurants, ridiculous Florida stories and everyday life. She has raised a family here. She has supported local charities. She has built television projects here. She has become part of the radio fabric here.
And now, if somebody in Tampa Bay really wants to avoid Meredith Andrade during the workday, they are apparently going to have to start getting very creative with the presets.
I mean that in the best possible way.
Because in an industry that keeps talking about the need to develop personalities capable of moving across platforms, Beasley has one sitting right there in St. Petersburg who can apparently move across formats too.
She can wake you up on Wild.
Hang out with you on Q105.
Then send you home on WQYK.
Hip Hop.
Classic Hits.
Country.
Same market.
Same broadcaster.
And after everything it took for Meredith Andrade to build a life in Tampa Bay, there is something pretty damn satisfying about watching the market make more room for her.
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