Category Archives: News
He Was A Gift
Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch (1978-1989) died Friday, Feb. 1 at age 88. An appraisal by Andy Fisher, posted on the New York Broadcasting History Board, appears below.
Ed Koch never worked for WNEW, but in the 1970s and 1980s, he might as well have.
Ed Koch certainly had a face for radio, and from sound-bite to talk show, he was always entertaining on the air. He presided over New York City’s financial and psychological comeback from chaos in the late 1970s, so he was a pretty good mayor by anyone’s standards, although for a long time, as someone pointed out this morning, he did seem to have a “tin ear” when it came to the subject of race relations.
My first interview with Ed Koch was on primary night in 1974. Howard Samuels, the choice of the Democratic organization, was supposed to win an easy gubernatorial nomination, so WNEW assigned first-string reporter Mike Eisgrau to Samuels headquarters. I was sent to the headquarters of underdog Brooklyn congressman Hugh Carey. Carey headquarters was a pretty quiet place, and I was getting set for a long wait until his concession speech, but shortly after the polls closed, Ed Koch showed up. He was the congressman from the “silk stocking” district, and he clearly knew that something extraordinary was happening. Sure enough, Carey upset Samuels, and Ed Koch was almost a play-by-play announcer for us!
The other time I interviewed him was July 4, 1986, during Liberty Weekend, when President Reagan came to town to re-dedicate the renovated Statue of Liberty. I was a radio correspondent for NBC News, and Mayor Koch came to the press compound on the landfill for Battery Park City. I needled him about Liberty Island really being in New Jersey, and about his own origins in Newark, and, of course, he gave as good as he got. I tend to judge people by their senses of humor, and on that basis, I regard Ed Koch as the greatest New York mayor I can remember.
I can’t conceive of Michael Bloomberg standing on the Brooklyn Bridge asking, “How’m I doing?” I can remember John Lindsay getting huffy when he was reminded about calling New York “Fun City.” You wouldn’t dare try to have fun with Rudy Giuliani.
Ed Koch was a gift to radio, to politics, and, most of all, to New York
A.F.
Photos added by WNEW1130
Born At Dawn
The anniversary this month of the un-plugging of WNEW AM in December, 1992, brought this add from Bill Diehl. (WNEW 1967-1971)
“The 20th WNEW anniversary reminded me of my 45th anniversary. It was my debut on WNEW on a cold January night (can’t remember the exact day) in January 1967. My last cast on the overnight was at 6:00 a.m., when I turned things over to Klavan and Finch. Quite a proud moment to say those words, along with saying those famous call letters. I really felt I’d made it in New York and Gene confirmed it when he gave me a copy of his 1964 book “We Die At Dawn,” and autographed it too.
Red Raven Redux
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
Alan Walden
If you do an Internet search for the Red Raven restaurant, you’ll find it without any difficulty; a steakhouse on fabled Route 66 in Williams, Arizona, billed as the gateway to the Grand Canyon. But the Red Raven I remember most fondly was embraced by the concrete and steel canyons of Manhattan; a little Italian joint on West 45th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues (No real Noo Yawkuh would ever call it “Avenue of the Americas).
It was to that Red Raven some of us would repair at the end of a day of toil in the WNEW newsroom to hoist a toddy for the body, often more than one, and have a cheap dinner while, most of the time, engaging in pure and unfettered silliness.
There were three of us who formed the hard core of the group: The puckish Andrew Fisher IV, the redoubtable S. G. Ruderman, and me. And, while we were joined by a few others from time to time, for the most part the silliness was ours alone.
One evening, having run through the events of the day and casting about for something worthy of nonsense, we decided it would be really neat if we could come up with a list of names for reporters and experts that precisely matched their assignments and/or areas of expertise. It was Andy (No surprise there) who got us started. Young Mr. Fisher had spent time in Germany during his tour with the United States Army, and suggested correspondent Helmut Leiner in Berlin. When we stopped laughing, and it took awhile considering the amount of spiritus fermenti we had by then consumed, Rudy said, “How about Norman Invasion in London.” More laughter as I sputtered, “Or Norman Conquest.” From then on, we were off to the races.
We came up with two automotive experts, Jack Handel and Axel Grease. Our sales manager was Bill Collector. We discovered an Irish anthropologist appropriately named Paley O’Lithic, and his cousin, the outdoor furniture magnate, Patty O’Furniture. Our horticultural expert was Forrest Primeval. There was police reporter Billy Club, Russian hotel owner Comrade Hilton, society reporter Crystal Chandelier, seafood critic Clem Chowder, and CDC reporter Sal Monella. For corporate attorney and legal expert we chose Ann Aconda. Barb Wire was our reporter in Eastern Europe.(The Iron Curtain was still in place). On and on we went (Let’s have another drink). And the names because even more goofy: Willy Nilly in Boon, Les Agna in Rome, Pierre Ahmid in Cairo. Eventually, we became boisterous enough to attract the attention of other diners who were, no doubt, wondering why we were allowed in public without our keepers.
Even as I write this I can think of a few to add: Reporting from China, Hu Wot Wen, and ornithologist Bob Whyte, airport security guard Pat U. Down, and film critic Harry Iball.
I suspect that Andy and Rudy could add those I’ve forgotten: the years have taken their toll on my gray matter. But the larger memory remains: The Red Raven, and the fun we had just being us, and knowing that, the following day, we’d be back at the World’s Greatest Radio Station. At that time it was “Quoth the raven, ‘Evermore.’” But, alas, it was not to be.
One final note: The title of this piece is, of course, taken from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” the narrative poem first published in 1845. Poe is buried here, in Baltimore’s Greenmount Cemetery. And almost every year, on his birthday, someone, identity unknown, places a bottle of brandy at his grave site. I have, thus far, resisted temptation. 
Jim Donnelly (WNEW 1968-1972)
Read Andy Fisher’s comments (below the David Hinkley story) about working shifts with Jim Donnelly, especially two nights when the number 13 figured in the news. Andy is also quoted by Hinkley. And, thanks to Bob Gibson for reminding us that March 28th is the anniversary of Jim’s birth.
Jim Donnelly Set Standard For All-News Radio
BY DAVID HINCKLEY DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, April 23, 2002
Jim Donnelly, one of the defining voices of all-news radio in New York, died Saturday night at the age of 69. Donnelly, who retired in 1992 from WCBS-AM after a 20-year career as co-anchor of the morning newscast there, had suffered from Parkinson’s disease. “Jim’s been gone from ‘CBS for 10 years and people in our newsroom today still consider him a legend,” WCBS-AM news director Steve Swenson said yesterday. “Almost anyone who was here during his years talks about him as a role model.”
Friends remembered him yesterday as an old-school newsman who wrote his own copy and pushed relentlessly for precision and maximum objectivity in news reporting.
“Jim was the consummate professional,” Andy Fisher wrote on the New York Radio Message Board. Fisher was Donnelly’s colleague in the news department at WNEW-AM from 1969 until Donnelly left for WCBS-AM in 1972. Fisher also recalled a man who was “a patriot at a time when patriotism was not fashionable” and said it was “very difficult for him to accept the changes that came over radio toward the end of his career,” when much of the medium moved toward a more informal news style.
Donnelly helped pioneer the two-anchor team in morning drive and was partners over the years with Lou Adler – who hired him from away from WNEW – Robert Vaughn and Brigitte Quinn. Harvey Nagler, former news director at WCBS-AM, suggested after Donnelly retired that the most telling mark of his professionalism was that he never became the story. For 20 years, he kept the focus on the news.
That’s something that’s not true for all news personalities today
Photo added by WNEW1130
A Note from Andy Fisher — At WNEW, before he got the morning gig, Jim worked an evening shift that started at 5 — but his first cast was not until 8. By 8, he would have all five of his hourlies written, and would just tweak them in the unlikely event that news broke.
Jim’s conservative political bent — way out in front of the neocons, evangelicals, etc. — was legendary. He kept an 8×10 headshot of his brother, a Philadelphia police captain, in the top drawer of his desk, and would prop it up against his telephone as he worked his shift.
On the night that the Apollo 13 astronauts came home, we devoted the 11PM news to a montage of all the day’s events, starting with the separation of the command and service modules, through the re-entry and the nation’s (especially New York’s) reaction to it, and ending with the prayer of the chaplain on the recovery ship Iwo Jima. Jim wrote all the newscasts and let me devote the evening to preparing the montage. It included an exchange that did not make it into the Apollo 13 movie, and went something like this:
Mission commander Jim Lovell, getting his first look at the damaged command module from the separated re-entry vehicle: “One whole side of that spacecraft is missin’! All the way back from the high-gain antenna!”
Mission control: “Well, James, if you can’t take any better care of a spacecraft than that, we might not give you another one!”
After the Giants’ first Monday-night football game, a messy game with Dallas in which there were ten turnovers, Jim encouraged me to create a montage of Marty Glickman’s play-by-plays of all those miscues. It was hilarious.
Conservative as he was, Jim encouraged my adventures in radio production, especially in sports, which came in very handy as WNEW became more and more of a sports station over the next several years.
Andy
Editors’ Note– Apollo 13 landed on April 17, 1970. The Giants lost to Dallas, 20-13 on October 11, 1971. And here’s the fumble festival:
http://wnew1130.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Fumbles.mp3