I vividly remember listening Hy on"Kicks 101 ½". They also had a female on voice on there called I think Raggedy Ann was it? Hy and the gang at Kix did a wonderful job at. It was very good radio.
At the time Fidelity Communications and the chief owner was Philadelphia radio personality Ed Hurst. Philadelphia radio Hall of Famer Hy Lit and his son Sam Lit were brought in to anchor the air staff.
After the Lits left in the early 1980's, Bo Weaver (from WTTM 920) joined the staff and helped coin the phrase, "Kicks 101 ½" and instituted their Adult Contemporary format. On March 1, 1990, "New Jersey 101.5" was born.
From an earlier post:
During the summer of 1979, Hy was working at 1540/KPOL Los Angeles & I was at KBAI/1150 San Louis Obispo, when we received a call from Ed Hurst. He indicated he represented a Group of sophisticated investors including David Hafler & Gerome Bresson, that had just purchased WBJH/101.5 Trenton & WBUD/1260 Fairless hills, for 1.3 million dollars. Would we be interested in returning to the area to structure the investment properties?
When we arrived weeks later, The FM calls had been changed to WTRT at settlement, and Ed said he wanted to go oldies as WTRT Trenton oldies. After some research, I determined that a new, custom advanced sound was a little more plausible for the 80's. I was asked what I wanted to call it. The only answer I could naturally come up with was the simple reason I was doing this, and that was, I was doing it just for KICKS, and of coarse its subsequent benefits. So Kickx ‘101 FM', was born. (WTRT/WBUD Trenton/Fairless Hills calls remained as we applied for WKXW AM/FM with a modification change of the AM Fairless Hills city of license to Trenton.
We came on with a big splash and immediately we were sued by 101.1/WCBS & 101.1/WEAZ for similar frequency identification, and WXKW/Allentown petitioned the FCC to reject the WKXW call letter assignment due to call letter similarity, and the close proximity of the geographic location.
Since 101.5 was rather undesirable and indistinctive at the time, particularly since all the FM allocations in town were .5's. So Hy indicated that it’s the devastating Half that makes the difference, particularly where we were concerned, so it was clear that Kickx One O One and a HALF (Kickx 101½) was our new moniker. We subsequently had to go back and re-record all the station I.D.’s. As for WXKW, their petition was rejected, and three months later WKXW AM/FM Trenton, was granted.
But by then we were already movin’ along as Kickx 101½. Fortunately, with the release of the first book, which ironically had started on the first day of the format change, we were Number 1, with the highest ratings ever achieved on both frequencies.
Trenton is one of the most congested radio markets in the country. No less than 77 signals could be received without an external antenna, at the time, even more now.
Incidentally, Jay Sorenson gave us a run for our money as he and I both did mid-day's. When the first book came out after our launch , Tom Taylor (you may recognize his name) fired everyone on the WPST air staff, except Jay Sorenson. WTTM also fired everybody, and flipped to country. Mark Didia, (now with Columbia/Sony) my music director at kickx, came running in the station with the newspapers' exclaiming headlines, 'radio blood bath in Trenton'. Bo Weaver (WQXI, WIFI) was hired by me for mornings on day 1 of the launch of Kickx. He was escorted out 2 weeks later after a fight with the GM.
