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W.B. Fishbowl
Age: 59
Joined: 02 Oct 2014
Posts: 5031
Location: New York, New York, USA
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 Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2025 11:16 pm Post subject: |
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| NEW YORK OMNIBUS 2629 wrote: | December, 2025.......
The late John Lennon (RIP) has now been gone for 45 years (where have all the years gone?)
Back in 1980, despite the rampant graffiti scourge, the subways were still a mecca for "classic minded" transit buffs (the IRT was then still 100% SMEE, and ALL trains had RFWs), there was NO shortage of Fishbowls and "Dangerfields": in the MTA fleet, the infamous "Borough Bombers" (GRUMMANS) were then the "new kids on the block", while "slant-back" RTS were already at "woik", outside of Manhattan.
And, sadly, the "improvement" of the once-grand "Port-of-Authority" was well underway.
Indeed, the music world, the transit world, and the world in general, has drastically changed since that fateful day in 1980..........
"NYO"
["M"] |
In terms of the music world: Amen to that. It began to change dramatically the year before, when the industry consolidated into basically six "majors": CBS, WEA, PolyGram, MCA, EMI and RCA. That year, Capitol acquired United Artists Records after a consortium that bought it the year before from Transamerica defaulted on loan payments EMI made to them, A&M entered into a distribution deal with RCA, as did 20th Century-Fox Records, and MCA swallowed up ABC Records. A year later, PolyGram acquired UK Decca (London in the U.S.) Today, it's just three - Sony (which now owns both Columbia and RCA), Universal Music Group (which acquired PolyGram in 1998), and Warner Music Group (the latter two of which picked from the bones of EMI 12 years ago). And the music scene has largely changed for the "woise" since then. They don't develop and nurture acts anymore, they pretty much manufacture them now based on a pre-determined formula (isn't it interesting that "American Idol" bears the same exact initials as "artificial intelligence"?). And radio? Likewise. Now basically three companies - iHeart, Audacy and Cumulus.
Too, the news coverage of Lennon's death and memorial would be a template for future other cases (i.e. Michael Jackson in 2009). |
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W.B. Fishbowl
Age: 59
Joined: 02 Oct 2014
Posts: 5031
Location: New York, New York, USA
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| Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2026 1:50 am Post subject: |
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I only found this out about a month or two ago, and on IMDb of all places, but a former 1010 WINS anchor/reporter who tipped off the editor on duty on that fateful night to something funny going on at the Dakota passed away on Dec. 8, 2025, the 45th anniversary of Lennon's murder: Lee Murphy, at age 93, of natural causes in Cornwall-on-Hudson.
His time at WINS spanned late 1965/early 1966 to 1982. I say "spanned" because after a late night Dec. 13, 1970 broadcast where he was reporting on former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's recently-published memoirs and quoting him as calling then-President Nixon an "S.O.B." (Mr. "K" used the full term; Murphy abbreviated it on the air), he and one of the people at the "editor's desk," Jerry Nadel, were suspended and, two weeks later, fired; Murphy and his union, AFTRA, then brought his case to the American Arbitration Association, which in June 1971 ordered him reinstated with full pay and no loss of seniority (WINS claimed he had violated "journalistic tenets" and "company policy" in so reporting, but it was found three months before he used the same "S.O.B." quote as cited by then-California Governor Ronald Reagan in describing a political opponent, and the management at WINS and Group W didn't even hardly notice).
(A side note: Nadel left WINS entirely after his firing, moving to Boston and becoming that city's bureau chief for Fairchild Publications and its flagship Women's Wear Daily; he would pass away in 1977.)
None of Murphy's obituaries I read mentioned his time as a broadcast journalist (also, in 1960, he was program director of a recently-started small radio station in Islip, NY); instead, they made it seem like his career began in 1983 when, after starting up a recording studio dealing in voiceover recordings for adverts and PSA's (Briggs Bakery, on the Upper West Side), he landed the job of narration director and post-production mixer for the PBS children's series Reading Rainbow for which he would take home two Emmys for his work, staying there through its 1998 demise.
My memories of Mr. Murphy were in the late 1970's on weekend mornings at WINS where he handled the TOH shift (:00-:20), Allen Shaw was on the MOH (:20-:40), and the former "Crown Prince of Rock 'n' Roll" from WINS' Top 40 days, Paul Sherman, handled the BOH (:40-:60). In those days, sports reports on weekends were handled by the anchor on the other side of the 20-minute wheel (i.e. Sherman did sports at :15, Murphy at :45, all from "carts").
Meanwhile, here's a link to that article which mentioned Murphy in connection with the Lennon murder, from veteran WINS reporter Juliet Papa who was a "split-shift" writer at the time:
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/1010-wins-juliet-papa-recalls-the-night-john-lennon-died |
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