Musicradio77 Profile of Steve Goldstein
By Scott Benjamin

During the groovy 1960s, teens had transistor radios pinned to their ears waiting for MusicPower 77 WABC to play the current Beatles hit – such as  “She Loves You”, “Yesterday,”  “Hey Jude.”,

By 1980, John, Paul, George and Ringo had been making their individual hit music for a decade, much of which was not only on the WABC play list but those of  the album-oriented FM stations – which also featured Led Zeppelin and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.  

Just after midnight on Tuesday, December 9, 1980, 77 WABC’s past, present and future intersected. 

The station, which had promos in the late 1960’s calling it “Un-talk radio” went all-John Lennon talk after the former Beatle was shot outside the Dakota apartments. 

WABC Assistant Program Director Steve Goldstein recalled, “This was in the days prior to cell phones. I got the call from [overnight air personality] Howard Hoffman to come over to the station. We made the decision to flip the format.” 

He remarked, “That was maybe the most important night in my broadcasting career, because we used every resource available to use, both locally and nationally, and we were receiving calls all night long from all around the world because of W-A-Beatle-C. People thought that’s who we needed to talk to.” 

“We fed audio to radio stations around the world that night,” he said. “And we had the news team - Bob Hardt, Rick James - out in the field doing real reporting. It was a horrible night and exciting night at the same time.” 

Seventeen months later, WABC would be all-talk. 

Goldstein, who grew up in Westchester County and graduated from Mamaroneck High School in 1975, had been a WABC freak. Like others, he has his letter from the Kemosabe of afternoon drive, Dan Ingram. 

Goldstein had only been out of college for a year and a half, but he was the assistant program director at what had been, until recently, the most listened to station in the nation with air personalities who had become legends. 

He had been program director for two years at Ithaca College’s campus station, WICB. He changed the format from Top 40 to rock and WICB surged past the commercial stations and topped the local ratings. 

In a September 10, 2025 virtual .interview with Musicradio77.com, he said the school boasted a terrific communications program. Its alumni include Disney President Bob Iger. 

After Ithaca, Goldstein worked at “The Source,” the NBC Radio youth network, and built the FM-oriented broadcast outlet, hiring a news staff from Boston, Los Angeles and St. Louis. 

But he didn’t want to leave the Big Apple. He did part-time news anchoring at WNEW-FM and was discovered by Jeffrey Sprung, the director of ABC Radio News.  

Goldstein anchored newscasts for the ABC-FM network, but knew this future was in programming. 

Sprung contacted Jay Clark, the program director at WABC, and after two interviews and writing some copy samples, Goldstein became the station’s assistant program director. Clark had become program director after his predecessor Al Brady made the controversial decision to jettison popular air personalities Harry Harrison, Chuck Leonard and George Michael in November 1979 and move WABC in a different direction.  

The station was no longer the ratings leader, as WKTU’s disco format was wearing the crown. 

Brady wrote in a Musicradio77.com essay that WABC, as was the case with other AM Top 40 stations, was cume driven with a short listening span as the audience tuned in primarily to hear the top four hit songs of the week. With the growth of FM programming and the advent of disco music, the cume had dwindled. 

Goldstein said that when he became assistant program director in 1980, “The cume had eroded, but interestingly the cume went up. I don’t  remember the exact numbers, but the cume had gone up fairly significantly during my first six months at the station, certainly not because of me, but because of all the various initiatives. I think there was a lot of sampling of what was going on.” 

One of the new components were the New York Yankee broadcasts. 

Clark had arrived after a successful run at WTIC in Hartford, where Bob Steele, the morning air personality, had become an institution in The Land Of Steady Habits with his birthday announcements for people over age 80 and reading of the high and low temperatures in major cities in the 48 contiguous states. WTIC also carried the Boston Red Sox.and had a sports talk show anchored by Arnold Dean. 

Commented Goldstein, “I think Jay was brought in because he had a background in mainstream AM talk and music radio, what we would have called MLR at the time, and had built sports franchises on radio stations and had built personalities.”  

Before either of them arrived, Ingram had succeeded Harrison as the morning air personality. 

He had done morning drive in Dallas and St. Louis before arriving at WABC.

However, the transition from afternoons to mornings wasn’t successful. 

“He was more constricted,” explained Goldstein.  “You had two long newscasts per hour. You had a full commercial load. You did have traffic reports. You had weather reports. There wasn’t as much time for Dan to develop personality. But remember, Dan was seven second disc jockey. That’s what he did best. He talked over the front of songs. The morning show in WABC didn’t have that kind of momentum.” 

Said Goldstein,  “I don’t think he ever loved it. I don’t think it worked all that well, and I think he was relieved and happy to go back to afternoons.” 

Ingram returned to afternoons in March 1981. 

Commented Goldstein, “They wanted a personality-driven show in the morning. We hired Ross and Wilson, who were in Atlanta. That was big change for the radio station.” 

Years earlier teens tuned in the evenings to hear Cousin Burcie open his show with the shouting puppet montage and the Four Season playing his theme song.  

By 1981, the nights were devoted to talk shows. 

Art Rust Jr., one of the first African-American sportscasters, hosted a sports program. 

Goldstein described him as a “brilliant guy.” 

In the 1970s, John Sterling had hosted a sports talk show on WMCA and Marv Albert briefly had a similar show on WNBC. In the early 1980s, only WABC and WFUV at Fordham University were the only stations in New York City with sports talk in the era before the launch of WFAN in 1987 and the surge in all-sports talk radio. 

Goldstein trained psychologist Judith Kuriansky how to perform on radio and the station launched On Tracks in October, a show that focused on relationships. 

Goldstein said Clark discovered her. She turned that opportunity into “a mini media empire with a show on CNBC, feature reporter from WCBS and WABC television, a columnist for The New  York Daily News and her Love Lines show on Z100.” 

With more talk and less music some of the air personalities were curious about the future of WABC. 

Goldstein recalled, “A lot of the air talent would put themselves down in my office. They would sit in my office often, and we would have conversations about adapting to the future, because, of course, these were big paychecks at the time. And these were big air personalities sat the time. So the insecurities were there. I don’t think Dan Ingram had the insecurities, but he was always curious as to what was going on. But I think everyone else was trying to figure it out, and I was a conduit.” 

WABC still had coveted air personalities. 

Ron Lundy would spend nearly 17 years at the station, the second longest tenure – after Ingram – during its time as a music radio station. 

Goldstein commented,  “He was ideal. But when you think about it, he was not the ideal recruit. A southern guy doing middays with a drawl in New York. But there was warmth in there, and he was quite skilled. He wasn’t Cousin Brucie. He wasn’t Dan Ingram in terms of the celebrity, but I don’t think there was a more solid DJ on the air.” 

Johnny Donovan had arrived in 1972 as a utility air personality – handling weekend shifts and substituting when needed. He would remain at WABC into the all-talk format in 1982 and would spend 43 years there -serving as the production director and chief staff announcer. 

Goldstein remarked, : “He was eager to stop doing the DJ stuff and become the voice of WABC, and I think that was role better suited to him. I think he was much more left-brained that he was air talent, right-brained.” 

In early 1982, the station made the decision to go to all-talk, starting on Monday, May 10 at noon. 

Goldstein said he was in a meeting with Clark, WABC General Manager Al Racco and ABC Radio President Ben Holderman. 

The question: “Can WABC ever be number one again playing music?” 

Clark said, “ ‘No, I don’t think so’ “   

Hoberman replied, “Let’s prepare to go talk.” 

However, Hoberman, who had turned KABC in Los Angeles into an all-talk station wanted to put psychologist Toni Grant and other West Coast syndicated hosts on WABC. 

Goldstein commented,  “It was a terrible idea. Jay and Al Rocco did not want to do that  but they were forced to do it. So [in] phase one of that [talk] radio station [it] was not a local radio station.” 

Before the transition to talk, Goldstein departed WABC to become program director at WTIC-FM in Hartford. 

He said that the station went from a “four share to an 11 share,” making it “the highest rates top 40 station in the United States during that time.” 

From there he became program director at WHYT and then WOMC, both in Detroit, and then a founding partner and executive vice president of SAGA Communications. 

According to Goldstein’s bio at New York University (NYU), where he now teaches part-time,  Saga Communications “grew to operate over 100 radio stations and became publicly traded on the American Stock Exchange.” 

Goldstein left Saga 10 years ago as he started Amplifi Media, based in Westport, CT. It is “focused” on on-demand audio.  

 “When I left Saga, we had about a thousand employees,” he said. “I wanted to run a boutique firm. I didn’t want to have a lot of people I actually only have one person and me. And we started out by consulting, not surprisingly, companies that knew who I was and had an interest in being in on-demand audio. I consulted Skyview Networks, ABC News, NBC, Dave Ramsey, who’s the number-one money voice in the United States.” 

“And so I was off to a very quick start, Ernst & Young, Trader Joe’s, with a lot of big brand names, who needed the captaincy and understanding of how to develop on-demand audio,” added Goldstein. 

Goldstein said podcasting has become more popular because of on-demand flexibility, fresh voices and perspective, stale traditional formats in radio and linear media, a shift away from linear media and more intimacy and connection between the audience and the talent. 

He said cable news has “a median age of 70”, while the” median age of podcasting is 34.” 

Goldstein said his course, taught out of NYU’s Stern School of Business, has taken on more importance as podcasting has become “a $2.7 billion business. So it has grown a lot in that 10-year period. There are plenty of courses that you can find anywhere on how to make a podcast. I would say every university, every college every community college has a how-to make a podcast course. This course that we developed is the only one that’s about the ecosystem, the business of podcasting, and we’ve been doing it for three and half years.” 

Goldstein had a short tenure at WABC during a time a time of transition when some longtime listeners objected to the switch from Top 40 to talk. 

Yet, he called it, “One of the greatest moments of my career.” 

Resources:

Virtual interview with Steve Goldstein, Musicradio77.com, on Wednesday, September 10, 2025.

E-mail interview with Steve Goldstein, Musicradio77.com, on Sunday, September 14, 2025.

E-mail interview with Steve Goldstein, Musicradio77.com, on Thursday, October 2, 2025.

https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/people/steve-goldstein

https://www.musicradio77.com/albrady.html

https://www.musicradio77.com/sked8182.html

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