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- a historical perspective from 1978 -

December, 1978 -- WYNC is the closest thing New York City has to a "public station." The operation is an affiliate of National Public Radio, but has held a commercial station license throughout its existence.

In 1978, WNYC has no real news department -- a pool of 15 staff announcers read the news. But the station does have a public affairs presence.

"There was a curious newspaper strike story..." remembers Neal Conan, now host of Talk of the Nation on NPR. "During the newspaper strike in 1978, I helped produce a weekly show called "The Sunday Papers" hosted by Fred Ferretti (New York Times) that included Beth Fallon (Daily News) and Anna Quindlin (New York Times) as reporters, Jerry Tallmer (New York Post) as a cultural reporter, Archer Winston (New York Post) did movies...Francis X "Frankie" Clines (New York Times) as a reporter, Phil Pepe (Daily News) did sports - that was the year the Yanks overtook the Red Sox from 14 games back, yes, where Bucky Dent aquired the middle initial "F" in Boston. I did the first several shows, then Marty Goldensohn (now at WHYY in Philly) took over as producer. "

Despite the rich history of public affairs programming, WNYC's news presence in 1978 is subdued, as shown on the datasheet page linked below.


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See Also:

WNYC Datasheet - Station stats on staffing, wires, cart machines, and much more!

Visit more stations - Back to the home page to visit more stations' news departments.

WNYC Elsewhere on the Internet:

Today's WNYC  - Today's WNYC web site.




About this report
This research documentary is Copyright 1979, 2002  Martin Hardee - All Rights Reserved. (read more...) Material may be quoted or excerpted for non-profit research purposes without additional special permission. For additional information email martin @ hardee.net.