WKPX - Flip To Alternative Music

Flip To Alternative Music

Initially, the station broadcast Top 40 and Classic Rock formats on a 24-Hour schedule from 1983 to 1985. However, staffing a 24-Hour Operation with high school aged students (in the days before computer automation) proved to be difficult, and presented risk management issues to the school board. Another contributing factor in reducing WKPX from a 24-hour operation to a 12-hour operation was to cut the stations operating costs, which threatened to silence the station permanently. Thus, WKPX was successful in petitioning the FCC to broadcast on an sunrise/sunset schedule, usually reserved for AM Radio operations, of 7 A.M to 7 P.M.

However, the weekends still presented staffing difficulties for the station. At the time, Piper High School also served as an Adult Education/Community School, so an Adult Education Program in Radio Broadcast Journalism was developed in 1987 to recruit and train adult aged/college graduates from the community to build a weekend air staff. It was during this period that Helaine Blum, an English teacher from New York, who also worked as an English instructor at Piper High School, was appointed as the station program director and broadcasting instructor.

During those first night school classes held in mid-1987, Scott David, a rock club disc jockey and record store manager, would became the first graduate of the adult education program to air college/alternative music at the station. The show proved to be popular enough that Helaine Blum flipped the station format to alternative rock music 7 days a week. Steve Robertson (later of WJRR Orlando), graduated from the first adult education classes, alongside Scott David.

In an effort to offer alternative programming heard nowhere else in Broward, she developed early morning specialty block programs during the adult weekend programming hours, airing Blues, Jazz, and Reggae. In addition, she developed the immensely popular Wednesday afternoon Heavy Metal program “Overdrive” hosted by Amy Downing, and "The Bump Show," a Rap/Hip-Hop Bass program that aired on Friday afternoons; both aired during the station's high school student staffed hours.

In addition to the format flip to alternative, the station began airing unsigned local bands championed by Scott David on his program, “The Alternative Beat.” David is noted as the first DJ to air the music of Marilyn Manson (signed to Interscope) and Collapsing Lungs (signed to Atlantic). Other local bands first aired on WKPX, then signed to major labels, include; Nuclear Valdez (Epic), Mary Karlzen of Vesper Sparrow (Atlantic), For Squirrels (Epic), Saigon Kick (Atlantic; Top Ten hit “Love is on the Way), Manson protégés Jack Off Jill (Risk Records), and the Mavericks.

Geordie White, whose Coral Springs based thrash AmBoog-a-Lard aired on the WKPX hard rock Specialty Shows “Tea Time” with Yvette Lam, “Iron, Led and Steel,” and “Overdrive with Amy Downing,” moved onto a successful career with memberships in Marilyn Manson, The Perfect Circle (fronted by Tool front man Maynard James Keenan), and Nine Inch Nails. White also auditioned for a spot as bassist in Metallica, which is featured in their documentary film, Some Kind of Monster.