The Radio Tower is a podcast dedicated to exploring all aspects of Long Island’s radio and television past. You’ll hear from former DJs, station owners, engineers, researchers, and more.
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Episode 39: Talking with Judy Blitzer
Today we talked with LIRTVHS member Judy Blitzer. Straight out of high school and Brooklyn she marched her way into a job at RCA at 60 Broad St. in downtown Manhattan. What followed was a thirty-five year career working for John McKenna at RCA. Judy describes for us life at RCA, the intricacies of teletype…
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Episode 38: Richard Dillman and Radio History
Richard Dillman grew up in Westbury and was soon on track for a life pursuing radio history. After getting his ham radio license in the late 1950s, he began unravelling Long Island’s radio secrets and visiting the area’s important sites: WSL in Amagansett, RCA in Rocky Point, Press Wireless in Brentwood and, yes, the old…
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Episode 37: LI Home Front w Dick Wolfe of Oakdale
Dick Wolfe moved with his family from Floral Park to Oakdale in 1940. In these excerpts from a longer oral history interview he gave to the Long Island Home Front project, he describes the bucolic nature of Oakdale during his early years. His family lived on Chicken Street (now Dale Drive) and the surrounding area…
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Episode 36: The Story of Telefunken
Today’s episode is a special cross-over with the Long Island History Project as we bring you the story of the Telefunken site in West Sayville. This forgotten story in radio history involved the technological titans of the day, Tesla and Marconi, along with Germany’s Telefunken company, one of the most advanced concerns in the world. The station…
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Episode 35: John Schmidt and WBAU Adelphi University
There had to have been easier ways to establish a college radio station on Long Island back in the 1960s but you get the sense that John Schmdit relishes a challenge. He enrolled at Adelphi University to earn another degree while working on the lunar landing module at Grumman. Discovering the small, student-run WALI opearting…
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Episode 34: Bernie Bernard on WCWP, WBAB, and More
Bernie Bernard got her start at CW Post on station WCWP. Drawn by progressive rock and the chance to interview members of the music industry, she went on to a career that included stints at WBAB and WNEW as disc jockey, music director, and sometime newscaster, followed by work at Voice of America and as…
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Episode 33: Tom Kuser of WSHU
Tom Kuser is the Program Director and Morning Edition host at WSHU, an NPR station out of Sacred Heart University in Connecticut with a sizable Long Island audience. On this episode, Tom discusses his career – from college and commercial stations to television to public radio. He also relates some of the history of WSHU,…
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Episode 32: Golden Crest Records in Huntington Station
Clark Galehouse started out as a swing band sax player from Illinois and wound up running Long Island’s most prolific independent record label out of Huntington Station. We take a detour from radio history this episode to talk with John Broven about the life and legacy of Galehouse and his label, Golden Crest Records. Broven…
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Episode 31: Ed Lacinski on Audio Engineering and Patchogue-Medford Schools
Ed Lacinski was destined for a career in audio. As a child, he read the liner notes of albums to learn the names of the sound engineers. Then he began taping his school musical performances in Patchogue-Medford which brought him to the attention of Jack Ellsworth at WALK and WLIM. He worked for years at…
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Episode 30: Andy Mendelsohn on WBAB and WRCN
Andy Mendelsohn gravitated to radio from an early age. By the time he was in high school in East Northport, he found himself on the school’s station and at an internship at WBAB. This brought him into the orbit of Bob Buchmann, Roger Luce and Rockin’ Robin, among others. After a stint in college and…
