R.I.P.: Ben Manila, Former WLIR Personality

Ben Manilla (1953-2024)

Ben Manilla, a legendary DJ with a legendary station — Hempstead's WLIR/92.7 — who decamped from New York to San Francisco 33 years ago to launch his own celebrated radio production company, has died. 

Newsday reports he was 71, and had been battling multiple myeloma over the past several years, according to former WLIR news director Steve North, who announced Manilla's death on Facebook. North, who said Manilla died Sept. 30, added that he had been hospitalized over the summer for treatment for a blood disease.

Manilla was one of the DJs over a ten-year span in the 1980s who turned a scrappy station into a music industry dynamo and one of the most influential radio stations in the U.S., by embracing punk, synth and New Wave long before its rivals in the big city just off to the west.

The Early Years

Manilla also worked in WLIR's news department, as host of the short-form reports called "News Blimps." After North and DJ Bob Waugh were the first to confirm the death of John Lennon on the night of Dec. 8, 1980, Manilla was a key member of the team that pulled the all-night marathon that followed.

In an email, WLIR's Donna Donna — now with WBAB/102.3 — said "Ben had a remarkable and quite consequential career after he left WLIR, but Long Islanders will probably remember him initially for the ‘News Blimps’, his comedic and melodic production of topics in the news as well as his morning show ‘It’s Manilla Time’ with sidekick Mark the Shark [Mark Drucker, who died in 2005]. Ben was so creative he even turned the mundane weather report on his show into a bit by creating a superhero named ‘WeatherMan!’ (and his wonder dog Skippy) to have adventures and somehow announce the weather along the way."

Manilla became a Peabody Award-winning radio producer after the run at WLIR, and along with his friend Dan Aykroyd, he created and produced "The House of Blues Radio Hour with Elwood Blues" (Elwood was Aykroyd). Launched in 1993, and continuing for 20 years, "House of Blues" was probably the most consequential and sustained celebration of blues history over that run. In June, the Library of Congress acquired the entire collection, which included some 2,000 audio interviews.