John Caracciolo has been a mainstay in Long Island radio for decades, from learning his trade at WNYT to the glory years at WLIR to now overseeing stations like LI News Radio (103.9 FM) and La Fiesta (98.5 FM). On today’s episode you’ll hear more about his journey from engineer to entrepreneur and why he thinks radio is still a vital force in peopl…

Dr. Alex Magoun is the outreach historian for the IEEE's History Center (IEEE stands for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). On today's episode, he gives us the history of the History Center and the organization's drive to document and preserve the innovavtions and developments fostered by its members over the years. Along the w…

John Kannenberg is the man and the mind behind the Museum of Portable Sound. Based in Portsmouth, England, the Museum is actually found wherever John has his iPhone 4S. Visitors sit down with John, don their headphones, and enter the Museum by listening to the curated galleries of MP3s on the device. We talk to John about the inspiration for this u…

We were saddened to learn of the passing of Bob Lundquist. Bob was a long-time member of the Long Island Radio & Television Historical Society who spent much of his professional life as an engineer at the RCA "Radio Central" facility in Rocky Point. This interview between Bob and Connie Currie was recorded in 2015. Our deepest sympathies and condol…

We're revisiting our Long Island Home Front oral history project! Although most of our interviews foccused on people who experienced the years of World War II on Long Island, we also met a few current Long Island residents who, in the 1940s, were living nearby. So today we're bringing you excerpts of our talk with Jo Schenk Eichner. Born in Brookly…

In the late 1980s, WFAN was on the rise as the first all-sports radio station in the country. They brought a fast-paced, rowdy style to the air, epitomized by the likes of Don Imus, Steve Somers, and Mike Francesa. At the same time the New York Islanders, years past their glory days and playing in an aging barn of a stadium, found themselves on the…

Listen to LIRTVHS board member Connie Currie relate some of the radio-related stories and personalities from the town of Islip, Long Island. Including: Edwin H. Armstrong in Bayport and Sayville Norman Brokenshire in Lake Ronkonkoma Clarence Mackay WRST in Bay Shore - Suffolk County's first radio station Music from Pixabay.…

Norm Prusslin came to Stony Brook in the late 1960s and was immediately drawn to the radio station. WUSB was then an AM station heard only in the dorms and building on campus. But there was music in the air, not the least of which was coming from the vibrant concerts given on campus by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, and others. Thus began No…

Peter Kurz is a patent attorney from Germany who fulfilled a lifelong dream by writing a technological thriller set in the early days of the radio industry. The Marconi-Patent weaves together historical events and people into a tale of intrigue, danger, and romance. What's even better, it features the Telefunken transmission site in West Sayville! …

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 machines, and how to meet the pope. Relate…

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 Telefunken site in West Say…

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 was dominated by dairy farms. Dick…

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 Te…

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 as a carrier current s…

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 a teacher and voiceover artist. On today’s ep…

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, memorable stories he has co…

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 started out a lover of …

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 Harman Kardon and along the way assisted in a…

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 radio in Connecticut and Westchester, he returned…

Long Island historian Chris Verga's latest book looks at Nassau and Suffolk counties during some of the most pivotal years of the 20th century: World War II. On today's episode, we talk to Chris about life during that time and the role Long Island played in the war effort. You'll hear about Grumman, Republic, and the vital work of the region's avia…

Join us for part III of our conversation with board member John Vuolo. We continue our look at the advancement of radio technology up through the 1970s with some detours along the way.

We're running a miniseries of interviews with LIRTVHS board member John Vuolo about the history and development of radios. John is a radio collector and restoration expert, in charge of helping build and maintain the Society's collections. Today we march through the 1930s, 40s and some of the 50s, talking about car radios, console radios, and a fel…

We're running a miniseries of interviews with LIRTVHS board member John Vuolo about the history and development of radios. John is a radio collector and restoration expert, in charge of helping build and maintain the Society's collections. Today we tackle the 1920s and the earliest commercially-available sets. How did they operate, how many survive…

Today we speak with Bob Hobday about the operations of the Antique Wireless Museum in Bloomfield, New York. You can visit them at: https://antiquewireless.org/Oleh Long Island Radio and Television Historical Society

Radio was still king during the 1930s and 40s. It was a golden age for tuning in to shows like The Shadow, The Lone Ranger, and others. On today's episode, we offer a quick look at radio memories from the narrators taking part in the Long Island Home Front. Narrators: Fred Seitz, Jack Beebe, Rhoda McManus, Jo Eichner, Walter Winicki, Fred Scopinich…

On this episode of the Radio Tower, we feature more excerpts from the Long Island Home Front oral history project. The subject is aviation and a time of frantic activity on Long Island. With companies like Grumman and Republic Aviation and airfields like Mitchel and Roosevelt Field, there was plenty for a young boy to see in the skies overhead. Nar…

Cindy Clifford never had a plan but she still found her way to a meaningful career in Long Island radio, from WRCN in Riverhead to WWHB in Hampton Bays to a long stint on the WALK morning show with Mark Daniels. Today she tells us more about what drew her to working behind the mic, her thoughts on the state of radio today, and her current podcastin…

Life has taken Larry Davidson from a bodega in Spanish Harlem to a vineyard in Aquebogue and many places in between. Through it all, his keen mind and relentless curiosity have helped him forge a career in broadcasting as an interviewer of authors, singer songwriters, politicians, and more. He's worked on WGBB and Cablevision as well as on a number…

We're featuring more segments from the Long Island Home Front, our oral history project focusing on the impact of World War 2 on Long Island. Today we hear from Marie Mack, Brooklyn Native and longtime Mount Sinai summer resident. We spoke with Marie in the same spot where her family started visiting Mount Sinai in 1924. Married by the start of the…

The Long Island Home Front is an oral history project being conducted by the LI Radio & TV Historical Society (LIRTVHS), Sayville Historical Society and Sayville Public Library. Our mission is to preserve and share memories of Long Island during World War II and we will be sharing portions of interviews via the Radio Tower podcast of LIRTVHS. Today…

Beginning his broadcasting career in his basement as a child in Baldwin, Dave Vieser went on to learn radio at WVHC at Hofstra before landing the dream job: playing music on WGBB in Freeport. He started on weekends, then night shifts, then afternoons and finally mornings. On this episode we sit down with Dave to talk about his career in radio and b…

Robert Ottone sits down with Chris Kretz and Connie Currie to discuss the life and times of his father, Bullet Bob Ottone. A DJ at WGLI and WGBB in the 1970s, Bullet Bob was known for his rapid-fire delivery. He was one of WGBB's "Super Six", hosting the Night Train from midnight to six am. After an on-air career that introduced him to the Beatles,…

Growing up in Riverhead in the 1960s, Jack Kratoville always wanted to be on the mic. He got his wish, forging a career that started with unpaid news reads on WRCN and continued to include stints at WLNG, WWHB, WMJC and more. These days you'll find him on 106.7 WLTW as well as out back of his Flanders home trying to improve the reception on his vas…

Let's go back to the 1980s when album rock ruled the airwaves, Long Island was awash in nightclubs, and Dennis Daniel was unleashing his own brand of audio madness on WBAB. Dennis was a Production Director whose fertile imagination and drive camouflaged spots touting dentists and car steroes inside a theater of the absurd. With a gift for impersona…

Jack Beebe calls himself "Mr. Backstage" but in terms of radio and television history in New York since the 1950s, he's had a front row seat. He started as a teen disk jockey on WALK in East Patchouge, worked alongside Barbara Walters and the future Allison "The Nightbird" Steele at WPIX-TV, kept watch over Murray the K at WINS...and that's not eve…

From the hills of Scranton to the shores of Patchogue Bay, Bill Edwards pursued a career in radio driven by his love of music. As program director at WALK on Long Island, he helped build the sound of the station through the 1980s and 90s. On today's episode he takes us through the evolving history of music programming, from gut-level decisions to p…

If one door wouldn't open, David North found another way in. He forged a career in journalism from the wilds of New Hampshire to the shores of Long Island, from television to radio to print and back again, with some corporate work thrown in for good measure. On today's episode we discuss that long path as well as his time at Channel 67 in Islip and…

We recently received a donation of a TV repairman's toolbox and a 1949 Zenith television. Although interesting in their own right, the true fascination comes from the people behind the donation. This was Sal Locascio's toolbox. He was a veteran of the Army Air Corps in World War II, an artist, and a man who could fix anything. His family, particula…

John Vuolo has been collecting and restoring radios since he was a teenager. On this episode he recounts how he got interested in old radios and some highlights of his collecting career. Music on this Episode: Music For Podcasts by Lee Rosevere from Free Music Archive "Let's Start at the Beginning" "Curiousity" "Tech Toys" Attribution 4.0 Internati…

We were at the Sayville Public Library on Nov. 10th commemorating World War I and its effect on radio history. You'll hear from documentary film maker Joe Sikorski on his latest project chronicling the Telefunken site in Sayville. Built, owned and operated as a German radio station, Telefunken played a pivitol role in the United State's entry into …

We were invited to the Sayville Library for a community breakfast to help kick off The Great Give Back 2018. It was a great opportunity to share what LIRTVHS but also to get to know and appreciate all the other organizations doing so much for Sayville and the community. So we did some on-the-spot recording with some of our co-attendees, asking them…

Daniell Campbell shares a look back at how she got started in the business - from behind the scenes at WGSM's FM station to WNBC during the Howard Stern era to 1010 WINS, Channel 55 and more. This is a special cross-over episode with the Long Island History Project #75. Hear Danielle and Margo Arceri of Tri-Spy Tours on the true tales of Anna Stron…

Dive in to the wild world of ham radio operators with John Smale, one of the founders of the Great South Bay Amateur Radio Club. He's at call sign K2IZ.Oleh Connie Currie, Chris Kretz, John Smale

Connie Currie grew up in Hicksville where her father, Roland Gibson, was the radio/TV repair man at Spiro’s Department Store. She earned her amateur radio Novice License KN2RBM in 1956 but not without some resistance.Oleh Connie Curie

Arne Fogel, host of The Bing Shift on Jazz88 FM as well as a student and devotee of all things Crosby, relates Bing's career in radio. We talk about how Bing helped define the medium, how he rose to be a multimedia star, his role in changing recording technology, and more. This episode was recorded at The Booth, the new podcast recording studio at …

LIRTVHS board member Richard Hawkins of Eastport on his time as a radioman in the Navy.Oleh Long Island Radio and Television Historical Society

LIRTVHS treasurer Ed Taylor remembers growing up in the Bronx and the role radio played in is life.Oleh Long Island Radio & Television Historical Society

Al Bernstein has been teaching television and radio production at Suffolk County Community College since 1974. On this, our inaugural episode, he relates his long career as teacher and also as a producer in the field. He's worked everything from the Breeder's Cup to the Olympics and Islanders' hockey games. Not bad for a kid from Flushing, Queens.…

Welcome to the zero episode of The Radio Tower, the podcast of the Long Island Radio & Television Historical Society. We'll be bringing you interviews and stories of 20th century radio history: the men, women, myths and machines that made Long Island an early cradle of radio. You can find out more about the Society at lirtvhs.org.…