WKPX - HISTORY

HISTORY

WKPX 88.5 FM is a non-commercial, educational high school based radio station owned and operated by the Broward District School Board with studios and transmitters located inside Piper High School, northwest of Fort Lauderdale in Sunrise, Florida.

The station was conceived by Warren Exmore — a child prodigy earning his FCC Engineering license while still a teenager — who served as an electronics and computer instructor at Piper High School. Also instrumental in putting WKPX on the air was its first program director and broadcasting instructor, Sheldon Shores. Exmore and Shores, working with the hard politicking skills of former Piper principal Robert Beale, and a proposed yearly budget of a $120,000, the station had its maiden broadcast on Valentine’s Day 1983. Upon the departure of co-founder Shores in the summer of 1985, Bill Foreman joined the station as its Operations Manager and its high school program Broadcasting Instructor during its formative years.

Several of the station’s students moved onto successful broadcasting and media careers; the most notable being 1992 alumni and production manager of WKPX at the time Michael Biggins (born as Michael Bigansky) who is better known as his actor/artist name Blackout. He was the first FCC licensed under 18 student to be granted a mixed format comedy talk & music show called 'No Class' that took LIVE phone calls with no on air delay. He went on after WKPX to release several albums of crank / prank calls as well as both talent and technical work in radio, TV, music, theater, film, and the internet. He currently runs his own multimedia production company Blackout's Box Studios in New York City and was one of the pioneers in internet streaming and internet radio including being the first person to stream real time audio of a prank call over the internet. Much of his work from his time at WKPX is still popular and circulating today - given away freely on his http://blackout.com website. Blackout / Biggins was heavily involved in the fight to keep WKPX alive and on the air when they were sued by media giant CBS several times over an 8.5 year battle by CBS to attempt to take the high school station down because they claimed it interfered with one of their local conglomerate stations.

Other notable alumni's include Linda “Energy” Emery, a 1984 graduate, who worked at New York’s “Power 95," as well as South Florida’s WHYI “Y-100” and WBGG “Big 106,” and Steve Robertson, who went onto to work for the defunct South Florida rock station, Miami’s WZTA 94.9 FM “Zeta 4.” He would go onto to become the music director for WJRR in Orlando, Florida. Inspired by WKPX’s programming philosophy of giving airplay to local unsigned artists, Robertson used the airwaves of WJRR to break three of the top selling alternative rock acts of the early 1990s: 7 Mary 3 (“Cumbersome”), Collective Soul (“Shine”) and Matchbox Twenty (during their days known as “Tabitha’s Secret"). His ability to pick hit bands led to a successful career in A&R with Atlantic Records.

Other notable high school programming station graduates also found success in the acting world: Todd Allen, the host of the weekday/afternoon drive, chart tracking show, “The Modern Music Countdown,” became an multiple award winning actor in the South Florida theatre scene, and went on to earn roles in the South Florida based TV Series, “Burn Notice,” “Graceland,” “Magic City” and “The Glades.”

Allen’s classmate Gregg Stewart, the host of weekday/afternoon drive, “The Alternate Route,” also won several local theatre awards, and had a recurring role on “Magic City,” along with roles in “Burn Notice,” “The Glades.”