95.5 WPLJ‘s next to last day broadcasting as a commercial pop music station. It was reunion day, as the station invited back dozens of people who worked on air at the various format variations of WPLJ going back to it’s inception in 1971.
There are balloons everywhere, celebrating all these people getting fired
The end of 95.5 WPLJ as a commercial station, prior to Educational Media Foundation’s taking control and changing the format to non-commercial Christian music K-love was probably the most covered format change in the history of modern broadcasting. The only exception perhaps was the format change of 77 WABC on May 10, 1982. This was covered on other radio stations, WABC-TV Channel 7, newspapers and even on the CBS radio network. CBS covered the event as a news item. This is likely no coincidence, as, while Entercom never owned WPLJ, nor did CBS, locally, WCBS-FM‘s morning team was the morning show on WPLJ. Scott Shannon teamed up with Todd Pettingill for 22 years, prior to his departure for WCBS-FM. He spoke of the format change on his morning show. And in something that would have been unheard of in years past, WCBS News Radio 880 ran a story on the end of WPLJ.
The WCBS 880 story aired much of the day. To put this aircheck into perspective, I recorded the story, and it plays first in this aircheck before the actual Todd & Jayde scoped first hour.
The recording you are about to hear was captured in its entirety off the air. This was not an internet feed. The WCBS 880 aircheck was recorded using an HD receiver. I get an HD lock here in Connecticut for WCBS. The WPLJ recordings were all captured by Contributor Matt Seinberg, founder of Big Apple Airchecks. Many thanks to Matt for spending an entire day recording the programming of WPLJ, then a few more days in front of his machine splitting up the recordings into one-hour segments.
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This is the first of over a dozen segments that we will post concerning the WPLJ Reunion Day! I think you are going to very much enjoy what you are about to hear. The first three segments are the normal Todd & Jayde morning show. Aside from their comments about the end coming, there’s nothing out of the ordinary here. But the excitement builds in the later segments. Reunion Day begins in ernest starting with Segment 4. We sincerely hope you will enjoy this special presentation from Airchexx.com and Big Apple Airchecks!
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