November 17 Radio History

➦In 1936...ventriloquist Edgar Bergen & his little wooden friend Charlie McCarthy became an overnight success after appearing on the Rudy Vallee Show.  NBC Radio gave them their own long-running radio show the following year.  Now think about this...a ventriloquist ON THE RADIO!😆

➦In 1970…Elton John, backed by Dee Murray and Nigel Olsson, performed at A&R Recording Studios in New York City for a live radio broadcast on WABC-FM (now WPLJ) which was later released as his "11-17-70" album.

➦In 1979...DJ George Michael did his last show on WABC, New York.

➦In 1982...announcer/actor Bill Baldwin died nine days short of his 69th birthday.  He was a highly regarded commercial announcer in network radio who transitioned easily to early TV.  He also played numerous bit parts in episodic TV, frequently portraying radio and track announcers & the like.

➦In 1990...Stan Z. Burns 1010 WINS NYC died.



Burns, whose clear voice was instantly recognizable to thousands of New Yorkers as a radio anchorman at the all-news station WINS-AM, died Friday in New York. He was 63. The cause of death was not disclosed. Burns began working at the station in 1944. During his 40-year career, Burns covered major news events, including the New York blackouts and transit strikes.

He went to work for WINS as a staff announcer in May 1944, when the station was known for its music and was one of the first disc jockeys in the United States to play a Beatles record when WINS was a Top40 station.

➦In 2003... Rush Limbaugh returned to his syndicated talk show after spending a month in rehab for addiction to prescription painkillers.

➦In 2007…Veteran Philadelphia disc jockey (WIBG, WDAS, WSNI/WPGR, WOGL-FM) Hy Lit, who hosted the nationally syndicated "Hy Lit Show" seen on television in 30 markets, died of kidney failure at the age of 73.

Hy Lit

Lit dominated AM radio from the late 1950s through the 1960s as one of WIBG's "Good Guys," as his Hall of Fame show drew a 71 market share (unheard of before or since.) He released several successful LP "Hall of Fame" collections of music he played on the show, the last of these when he joined WPGR in 1981. Around 1978, Lit moved to California after a brief but successful stint with the Harlem Globetrotters before once more returning to the Philadelphia area. In 1977, when WIBG went off the air forever, he was the last DJ on the air.

Lit moved to WOGL-FM in 1989, hosting the highly rated "Top 20 Countdown" on Saturday and Sunday afternoons in addition to his weekday afternoon shift.

In the mid-1990s, it was revealed that Lit was suffering from the beginnings of Parkinson's disease. Just after the death of Hy's wife Maggie (Russo) Lit in 2000, WOGL and Infinity/CBS Broadcasting management significantly reduced Lit's radio hours, along with a significant decrease in salary. In 2002, a lawsuit was filed against the media conglomerate, CBS Broadcasting, which for a second and concurrent time decided to reduce Lit's radio time and salary and this time cancel his health insurance.

In December 2005, Lit, station WOGL, and CBS Broadcasting settled the three-year health and age-discrimination lawsuit, under the condition that Hy Lit would (reluctantly) retire from the station. Lit did his last Hy Lit Hall of Fame Show radio show on December 11, 2005. However, WOGL management would not permit Lit to reveal he would be leaving the airwaves and abandoning thousands of listeners left to wonder what happened to the legendary Hy Lit.