WKIP

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WKIP
City of license	Poughkeepsie, New York
Broadcast area	Poughkeepsie and vicinity
Slogan	"Music of Your Life"
First air date	June 6, 1940
Frequency	1450 kHz
Format	Adult Standards
Power	1 kW daytime 1 kW nighttime
Class	D
Callsign meaning	W PoughKIPsie [sic]
Affiliations	CNN Radio
Owner	Clear Channel Communications

WKIP is a radio station licenced to Poughkeepsie, New York and serving the immediate Poughkeepsie area. The station is owned by Clear Channel Communications broadcasts on 1450 kHz at 1 kilowatt daytime and nighttime from a tower adjacent to its studios in the Arlington section of the Town of Poughkeepsie.

WKIP broadcasts the Music of Your Life adult standards format and from Clear Channel's purchase of the station in 2000 until 2004 headed the Hudson Valley Nostaliga Network with the same programming (minus some advertisements) being also heard on WELV in Ellenville, WGHQ in Kingston, and WHUC in Hudson.

[edit] History

WKIP signed on in 1940, the first radio station in Dutchess County since the move of WOKO in Beacon to Albany a decade earlier. Like many other "local" frequency stations the FCC approved in the period leading to and after the NARBA treaty and realignment, WKIP began its life with a full-service locally based format and from the outset had an affiliation with the NBC Blue network which later evolved into today's ABC. WKIP's involvement with ABC would last for the remainder of the 20th Century.

Like similar stations, WKIP would evolve to a local news-heavy Middle of the Road format in the 1950s, a time where WKIP also added FM coverage when they purchased the former WHVS at 104.7 MHz in 1958. Rechristened WKIP-FM, the station would see many upgrades and was sold a decade later and is now WSPK.

WKIP maintained its original format and opnership until late 1967 when the station was sold to Star Broadcasting which saw the imminent flip of ABC Radio into four sub-networks as a new beginning for the station. Affiliating with the Top 40-leaing American Contemporary Network feed, WKIP would flip at the start of 1968 to a Top 40 format. The station was not successful with its new format against competitor WHVW and that October returned to its prior MOR format. In 1970, WKIP would be sold again to Olympian Broadcasting (to whom Star had sold WKIP-FM to two years earlier and who would resell that station to WBNR owner Lance Broadcasting). Modifying the format to a forerunner to adult contemporary, WKIP would rise from being last place to first place with a combination of increased local involvement and help from format changes at WHVW and WEOK that had it at or near the #1 position until the mid-1980s.

When Richard Novick purchased WKIP from Olympian in 1987, assorted changes started to take place starting with Novick allowing veteran morning host Van Risthie to leave for WCZX. This move plus the imminent decline of full-service AM formats led WKIP to go through a short-lived Fun and Games (hybrid oldies/talk) format with the station going to a talk radio format in 1989. At that time, Novick launched FM station WRNQ which had the spirit of WKIP's former format as well as Van Risthie.

The talk radio format would last for the entire 1990s, surviving a simulcast attempt with the Novick-controlled 96.9 MHz which also sported the WKIP-FM calls. After Straus Media purchased Novick's stations in November 1996, elements of WKIP's programming began to be heard on sister stations in Ellenville, Hudson, and Catskill. WKIP and all of Straus's stations would be sold to Clear Channel Communications in June 2000 with Clear Channel taking control of the stations that October and the current standards format being put into place.

[edit] External links

• WKIP Website, launched March 2007
• Query the FCC's AM station database for WKIP
• WKIP History Page
• Clear Channel corporate page on WKIP