No Artist - Kiss 96 FM: WKSS Radio album flac

On April 13, 1980, copies of “The Hartford Courant” daily newspaper included an insert from “beautiful music” radio station WKSS among the other colorful advertisements (such as coupon books, grocery store circulars, and department store catalogues) that were packed inside that Sunday edition. Printed on card stock with a glossy sheen, the left side was a flexi disc that could be cut off with scissors and placed over the spindle of a record player. Raised plastic grooves on the outer inch of the round picture of the air staff allowed phonograph needles to reproduce the recorded message heard in this video when played at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute (RPM).Branding itself as “the good music station with personality," "Kiss" was already one of the most popular stations in Connecticut when this was published by American Audio Graphics in Waukesha, Wisconsin. In fact, in April/May 1980 the five highest rated stations in the Hartford – New Britain radio market were (in descending order) middle-of-the-road (MOR) / talk WTIC (AM), beautiful music WRCH-FM, top-40 WTIC-FM, WKSS, and all-news WPOP. Like most commercial media organizations, however, WKSS was working to expand its audience. This recording outlines the strategy that it was employing to do that.Dick Bertel, the station’s host of the a.m. drive show “Good Morning, New England,” leads the record’s listeners through the changes that WKSS had been making since 1978 when he was hired to be the program director and operations manager. He introduces the new line-up of announcers including news and sports director Scott Evans (Vowinkle), meteorologist Bob Harris [who worked concurrently for WNEW (AM, now WBBR), WNEW-FM, and WNEW-TV (now WNYW), Channel 5, in New York], mid-day host and newscaster Jim Perry (who was also the station’s chief engineer), and Mike Ogden, the host of “Kiss in the Afternoon.” Mentioned but not heard are hosts Jon Stevens and Greg Williams (Laitinen, also the production director), news reporters Barbara Gallow (Liskow) and Roxanne Dorey (Flanders), and arts critic Steve Vallensky.Insilco Broadcast Group (named "Covenant Broadcasting" before 1978), the station group division of Broad Street Communications, acquired Kiss in 1977. A written greeting from the vice president and general manager of WKSS, Tom Durney, who was also hired in 1978, appears on the record’s flipside.The photograph was taken in front of the fireplace in his office, the ballroom of the 1893 Borden – Munsill mansion at 2 Wethersfield Avenue (the southeast corner with Wyllys Street) in Hartford’s South Green Historic District. Kiss began operating from there in 1971 when Communico, the station’s previous owner, purchased WBMI in Meriden, changed the call letters to WKSS, and launched the beautiful music format with the oversight of Bonneville consultant Marlin Taylor. Over the years since then, the mansion became the unofficial mascot of WKSS, visually representing the class and stateliness that the “easy listening” programming was meant to evoke. Around 1974, Kiss moved to the consulting services of Schulke Radio Productions (SRP), widely considered the pioneer of the beautiful music format which is comprised of symphonic rearrangements of popular songs and standards, typically by emphasizing instruments like pianos, flutes, saxophones, and violins as substitutes for the vocals. In 1979 Kiss switched to Radio Programming Management (RPM) which had developed a variation of the format it marketed as “contemporary beautiful." It included occasional original mainstream titles and artists such as "Longer" by Dan Fogelberg, “Just the Way You Are” by Billy Joel, “Little Jeannie” by Elton John, "The Rose" by Bette Midler, and "Slip Slidin' Away" by Paul Simon. As listening habits continued to shift from AM to FM, the intent was to differentiate Kiss musically from direct competitor WRCH-FM and appeal to the information oriented audience of heritage station WTIC (AM) where Bertel, Ogden, and Stevens had previously established themselves as well-known personalities in the Hartford market.WKSS was acquired in 1981 by the Sturgeon Corporation, a subsidiary of Marlin Broadcasting (which was not associated with Mr. Taylor). It continued to operate Kiss as a beautiful music station although it shifted from RPM, which was struggling to provide beautiful music versions of new pop songs, to the nearly identical "beautiful contemporary" music service distributed by Bonneville Broadcasting Consultants. By that time, however, audience interest in beautiful music had already peaked across the country. In 1984 the next licensee, Precision Media, converted it to a top-40 station to go head-to-head with WTIC-FM, a rivalry that continues to the present day.