‘Frick & Frack’ Gone Fishin’
As we reported back in December, industry icon Dwight Douglas formally retired at the end of 2016 after a 16-year run with RCS. What we didn’t know at the time was that Douglas’ longtime friend and partner-in-crime, Kenny Lee Karpinski also retired from RCS at the end of the year, closing the book on a 27-year run as RCS Support Manager. Lee spoke with RAMP to share the story of their long and crazy friendship, as he related, “Dwight Charles Douglas and I met almost 50 years ago at WPPJ, the campus radio station of what was then Point Park Junior College (now Point Park University) in Pittsburgh.” (The boys are pictured here on April 1, 1969, during what was billed as “The First Topless Radio Broadcast.”) Lee continued, “I remember the first day I met Dwight — he walked into the studio while I was cueing up a record (remember records?) and asked, ‘What are you doing?’ I explained the process, and now I always get to tell people that I taught Dwight Douglas how to cue a record! We became fast friends and programmed/managed the station for a number of years, branding it as ‘PJ 670.’
“Dwight later went on to become PD of the legendary WDVE/Pittsburgh and he hired me as Production Director and morning ‘personality’ (for lack of a better term) of that ABC property. Dwight went on to become an amazing, accomplished, successful, worldwide broadcast consultant. I succeeded him as the PD of WDVE and later went to Miami as Production Director at 96X and eventually, PD of WAXY-FM.”
Lee continues, “As fate would have it, I started working at RCS in 1989 and Dwight joined the company about 11 years later. We renewed our friendship and had been the ‘Frick & Frack’ of RCS ever since. Dwight and I are now retiring. Somehow, we’re both still alive. Somehow, we will remain close friends, heartily laughing together until one or the other, or each of us, croaks… Somehow, we still remember the comedic assaults we imposed on PJ-670, WDVE and RCS. Somehow, hopefully, good memories of us will survive,” he said.
