(Last updated 01/29/22) While this is about WWZY “The Breeze”, we’re going to confuse you a bit in the description to provide you with a bit more background info.
Bob Shannon (Don Bombard) has a long radio career that began in 1965 in upstate New York (state). From 1967-1977, Shannon worked in the Syracuse market at WNDR and WOLF before moving briefly to Pittsburgh as a jock on the legendary WKTQ (13Q)! In 1981, Shannon got the call to NYC, first, at WYNY (then at 97.1 as an AC station), and later that year to CBS-FM. Until this time he was known by his real name, Don Bombard, but because CBS-FM already had another ‘Don’ – Don K. Reed, then-PD Joe McCoy changed his air name to Bob Shannon.
Bob Shannon became ill and was officially on ‘medical leave’ from CBS-FM as of January 2012. Later that year, Ron Parker (WCAU-FM, WTIC-FM) was officially named Shannon’s replacement on the CBS-FM PM Drive show.
Another legendary ‘Shannon’ took over morning drive on WCBS-FM – SCOTT Shannon (the man who launched WHTZ “Z100”) on February 25, 2014.
Bob Shannon is best known as the author of “Behind the Hits” and as the longtime afternoon host at WCBS-FM New York, the only CBS-FM jock to survive the two year “Jack” format and return to duties on the new ‘Classic Hits’ version of the station.
***Part 2 of the Radio Greats weekend on WWZY features Bob Shannon. Bob talks about the WCBS-FM format change, his book and syndicated program “Behind the Hits”, and interviews Norm “N” Nite, Don Tandler, Bill Brown, and even features his wife Connie T. Empress, talking about their Empire State Soul Club.
This is a great segment that runs about an hour and a half scoped. It starts with the tail end of Mike Fitzgerald and Joe McCoy’s program that featured HOA (he’s gone by this segment)
Audio quality on this segment is much better. There’s a small dropout where receivers were changed out in the middle of this, but it returns sounding better than before.
