The Sound of the Good Life
The
pulsating sound ended in the fall of 1968. Bill Star was retired and returned to being just plain Tom
Shovan. The new WKIP would
emphasize music and personality “plus”. Shovan had an 8 minute 45 record produced for sales to
tout the new sound. “The
Sound of the Good Life” would play Frank Sinatra, the 5th Dimension,
Dionne Warwick(e), and Ed Ames.
“If the song is great, we’ll play it”, according to Shovan. “If it’s good, we won’t. We’re fussy about our music and it pays
off.” Jingles from this time
included “Light and Lively, WKIP”; “At your service, WKIP”. Promotions included the Housewife of
the Day contest, where a lucky lady would receive a bouquet of flowers, and
Triple-S Green Stamps giveaways. A
big addition to WKIP during this time was the News Director, Joe Fratelli, who
would be with the station until 1974.
In
the spring of 1970, WKIP added Mets Baseball broadcasts, a welcome addition to
Poughkeepsie since the Mets flagship station at the time consisted of 3 lower
power stations in the New York City area that could not be heard in
Poughkeepsie (editors note: Lord
knows I tried.) The games were
also heard on the FM side, which had changed call letters to WSPK. WKIP had a local, 5 minute
pregame show before every game hosted by Rich Davis. (There is only one known aircheck of the pregame show, from
May 27, 1970. Listen to it on the
aircheck page.) The highlight of
the show was a trivia question that listeners could answer by sending in a post
card. At the end of the season, a
color TV was awarded to a random drawing of all the previous winners. Paul Gillen of Poughkeepsie won the
prize.
During
1970, personalities that filled WKIP’s airwaves included Tom Stockton and Mike
Fitzgerald, who currently is the evening DJ on WCBS-FM in New York.
Unfortunately
for the Star Group, the days were numbered. It had mounted a ton of red ink. For various reasons, the FM station was required to be sold
and moved to Beacon. The AM
also was about to be sold and WKIP would be hitting its heyday.