Posting just in time for the format and call letter change this date to Family Radio programming, this came to us with no date, but the music is mainly late 70s fare. Joe Niagra is the jock. WPEN here sounds like a full-service AC and you’ll hear all the great elements that made good radio including traffic and a full newscast.
Courtesy of our good friends at Big Apple Airchecks!
I assume this is after their oldies format was changed to a more MOR-contemporary format. That should be around 1977-1980. I lived in town and woke up with Geoff Fox (WPEN) on my radio.
You mention GeofF Fox – when I got here to CT about 5 years ago, Geoff was the main weather guy at WTNH 8 New Haven CT. I only recently, like, this week, learned why he’s not doing the weather anymore. It seems he got caught up in a racy sexting scandal. He had just gotten a new contract from WTIC-TV/HD 61 Hartford when that all hit this past year. Too bad, WAAY talented guy. I enjoyed the Geoff Fox aircheck I put up of him on WPEN as well. I hope he clears himself up and gets back in the business somehow. Maybe I’ll invite him to join me on HitOldies or on AirchexxRadio… – Steve
You’re right, Steven. This is after WPEN’s first oldies format was modified to a gold-based (what would now be or was probably just starting to be called) adult contemporary format some time in 1977. The station went to a Nostalgia (which, like (traditional) Middle of the Road, is now called Adult Standards) format two years later and reverted back to oldies in 2004. It went to a sports format a year or two later (in the later years of the latter-named format, it became the Philly affiliate of ESPN Radio). Family Radio, which had owned 106.9 WKDN Camden, NJ since the late Sixties, sold that station in 2011 (I doubt that I really you have to tell you why by now) to another religious-broadcasting concern
(which, ironically, flipped the station to a Christian pop rock network). The following year, it blew up the sports format in favor of the Family Radio network. Plus, it retired the WPEN call letters, took the WKDN call letters out of retirement and reassigned them to 950 (formerly known as 95) AM. This time, the call letters are now assigned to Philadelphia and not to Camden, NJ.
The air date for this is Monday, November 21, 1977. Check the newscast for references to Anwar Sadat’s 44 hour visit to Isreal and the Eagles loss to the St. Louis Cardinals the day before. Plus, there’s a Chuck Berry concert spot for an upcoming show on Saturday, November 26th. Nice aircheck!
Correction: Family Radio actually sold 106.9 WKDN Camden, NJ not in 2011, but in the spring of 2012. The new owners flipped its format to talk–and call letters to WWIQ. It wasn’t until late 2013 that it was sold again–this time to the Contemporary Christian radio network K-LOVE, which flipped WWIQ to said network’s programming–and the call letters WKVP. It remains so today on both counts.