I started working at 77 WABC in New York City in the summer of 2002, and although it had been 15 years since the Federal Communications Commission repealed the Fairness Doctrine requiring radio stations to provide listeners with “balanced” programming, the doctrine’s legacy wasn’t hard to see.
The coveted morning-drive-time slot was occupied by co-hosts Curtis Sliwa, the activist and co-founder of the Guardian Angels, and liberal criminal-defense lawyer Ron Kuby. Though the “golden microphone” into which Rush Limbaugh intoned was still in the studios, by then Limbaugh himself usually wasn’t. Iconic left-wing broadcaster Lynn Samuels still maintained a pile of vinyl records in the production studio where I spent most of my time, and she still occasionally did battle with the station’s increasingly right-leaning callers. In short, the station still played host to political conflict, but not the life-or-death sort in which your very identity is on the line. The mission statement wasn’t to change the world, though that would have been a lovely fringe benefit. It was, for the most part, to have fun.
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