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. 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 Friday. North, who visited Manilla three days before his death on 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 10-year span in the 1980s who turned a scrappy station at 175 Fulton Ave., Hempstead, 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. (This “Dare to Be Different” era was the subject and title of the much-loved 2017 documentary.)
Manilla also contributed to 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.”
He was, she added, “one of a kind.”
“Ben was hard-core — pure rock ‘n roll back in the day,” said Carol Silva, a news reporter with WLIR during the Dare to be Different era who retired from News 12 after a 30-year run in 2019. “But he grew into a music aficionado whose tastes, thoughts and personality broadened” after the WLIR years.
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 under Ben Manilla Productions (BMP), and continuing for 20-plus 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.
Manilla’s output via BMP was both varied and eclectic. According to a mini biography provided by North and Manilla’s family, other radio series included “Philosophy Talk from Stanford University,” “The Science of Happiness” and “The Blues,” a “multimedia event” with PBS that he worked on with Martin Scorsese, along with an accompanying 13-hour radio documentary, “The Blues: The History of America’s Greatest Roots Music” with Keb’ Mo’ (acclaimed bluesman Kevin Roosevelt Moore). Among many other awards, Manilla won a Peabody in 2012 for “Inside the National Recording Registry” (a list of sound recordings that are considered “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”).
James Ben Manilla was born on Dec. 8, 1952 in New York City — his father, James, a filmmaker and his mother Margarita (Fernandez), a fashion director. Per his bio, he was a nationally ranked wrestler at Manhattan’s Trinity High, who spurned an athletic scholarship at New York University to attend its drama school instead and to work at the college radio station. In the ’70s, he joined WLIR, and later WOR, then in 1991, moved to San Francisco where he launched BMP.
Manilla — who was also a longtime professor who headed the audio instruction program at University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism — is survived by wife Eliza, sons Griffin and Chase, and sister Barbara Jean.
Verne Gay is Newsday’s TV writer and critic. He has covered the media business for more than 30 years.
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