WPIX blew through several different formats in the 80s, before finally ditching the WPIX call letters and settling on Smooth Jazz. Towards the end, it was a soft AC station.
This is a perfect example of what SOFT AC really was. Very few stations go this soft today.
Owned and operated by Tribune Broadcasting, the WPIX calls now reside only on the TV side.
This was Robin’s first stint at 101.9. She now does a Sunday morning show, and is also one of the imaging voices of the station. She also is the creator, programmer and voice of “Jayne” and Jack like format geared towards women and syndicated by the Jones Radio Network. Robin has also worked at WKJY, and got her start at WAPP (The Apple), where I got to meet her when she did weekends there.
From the car-dealership commercial “celebrat(ing) the New Year” as well as the music mix in this aircheck, this was from January 1987-and not the autumn of that year. This aircheck of WPIX was “Soft AC” in that it was its AC/MOR hybrid “The Bright and Lively Sound of New York” format of late summer/early fall 1986-spring 1987. By well into the spring of ’87, the MOR music(read: Adult Standards) were jettisoned and it became all-soft rock again(renaming itself “the X-press” and “Easy Rock 102”). WPIX remained as such for another 1 1/3 year(this time with a straight AC format(except for a hybrid AC/soft contemporary R&B/smooth jazz program in the mid-to-late evening hours) until it became smooth jazz CD 101.9(WQCD) in August of ’88. (In February 2008, it flipped to its current rock-based Triple-A format and the callsign WRXP[101.9 RXP-The Rock Experience].)
Correction: That should have read, “By well into the spring of ’87, the MOR music(read: Adult Standards) was jettisoned and it became all-soft rock again(renaming itself ‘the X-press’ and ‘Easy Rock 102’).”
WPIX-FM is now WFAN-FM, and simulcasts the AM (at least most of the time, anyway).
Not only did the Giants “have it in the bag,” but THEY WON THE SUPER BOWL THAT SEASON! (More proof that this aircheck dates back to January 1987 and not the fall of that year!!)