WNBC 66 New York – Howard Stern – September 2 1982

This aircheck is from Howard’s very early days in New York, before Robin Quivers, before Boy Gary, before the pack. It’s Howard with just his newsman. (Sorry about the audio quality. I still thought it was worth sharing, because there is not a lot of Howard out there from his first few weeks on NBC.)

Back in the 1980s, when many radio stations playing music on AM were quickly dying, as music radio listeners had migrated to FM, New York’s 66 WNBC was one of the stations, which continued to play music and have decent ratings. The secret for WNBC was doing high personality radio, along with the music, on the adult leaning Top 40 station.. Some of the high personalty names on WNBC included Don Imus, Soupy Sales, Alan Colmes, Joey Reynolds, Bill Grundfest, Wolfman Jack, and of course Howard Stern. Stern was on WNBC for only 3 years, but during that time, he created must listen radio for many New Yorkers on their drive home. Stern & his antics became very popular in afternoon drive, but throughout his three years at WNBC, Stern had many battles with WNBC management and other jocks at the station, specifically Don Imus and program director Kevin Metheny, whom Stern nicknamed “Pig Virus”. Many of these conflicts were dramatized in Stern’s autobiographical book and film Private Parts. On September 30, 1985, Howard Stern was abruptly fired from WNBC, supposedly due to pressure from NBC corporate. After some time on the beach, Howard took over the afternoon show on 92.3 K-Rock WXRK, eventually moving to mornings, where he spent the next 19 years. -Ellis