Longtime WPLJ overnight jock Dave Stewart is now keeping listeners up all night on WCBS-FM. In a radio industry where pre-dawn voicetracking is the norm, particularly on music stations, Stewart is delighted to be live each weeknight on the Classic Hits mainstay.

“CBS-FM is my dream station, so I can’t even express how honored I am to work under that logo,” Stewart tells FishbowlNY.

It’s a change for CBS-FM where Joe Causi was on “tape” during overnight. When Causi was promoted to evenings, music director Lenny Bloch handled the voicetracking duties.

“The people at CBS/New York have welcomed me like family,” Stewart says. “I will do my best to uphold the legacy.”

Stewart debuted on CBS-FM Friday morning.

After 22 years at his station, Stewart left WPLJ in October 2011, as part of layoffs at the Cumulus New York cluster.

WhyHunger is the organization at the heart of Hungerthon, the yearly charity event broadcast today on many stations, primarily owned by CBS Radio.

Started in 1975, this year’s event takes on a special need–victims of Superstorm Sandy. The devastation altered the airing of Hungerthon, which traditionally runs close to Thanksgiving.

“Hurricane Sandy created a crisis that was front and center in everyone’s minds and life experience,” Noreen Springstead, director of marketing and fundraising for WhyHunger, tells FishbowlNY. “Families who had never before been without food or shelter were forced to endure these hardships for the first time, and many are still struggling to meet their basic needs.”

Despite the agency’s focus on the long-term poverty crisis, WhyHunger partnered with numerous tri-state groups to provide essential food and water to those struggling in the days and weeks since Sandy.

“Through Hungerthon’s many public service shows we are shining a spotlight on those organizations and also raising funds for their work,” Springstead says. “We have long-term relationships with the most effective organizations in New York and New Jersey that are solving the hunger problem and are able to support them during this critical time.”

Springstead says those in need can call the national hotline at 1-866-3-Hungry for assistance.

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With the Nets debut in Brooklyn, this was a banner year in the professional life of Joe Causi. He was named WCBS-FM nighttime jock after Ron Parker moved to middays, when health factors caused veteran Bob Shannon to retire.

Causi has been with the station since its return from the “jockless” Jack format in 2007. Most notably, he was the host of a reworked Saturday Night five-hour block, updated with 70s music.

Of course, the personality who uses the on-air moniker “Brooklyn’s Own” had to be on the short list of our interview subjects.

Causi is a Bensonhurst native, whose boyhood house still stands. The 97-year old edifice remains in the family, now home to Causi’s brother.

“My whole life was four blocks,” Causi remembers. “You didn’t have to go out of a four-block radius.”

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With apologies to Joe Causi, Cousin “Brucie” Morrow is the original “Brooklyn’s own.” The legendary air personality is remembered fondly by the last generation (or two) for his years at WINS, WABC, WNBC, and WCBS-FM. Today, Morrow maintains a radio presence with his Saturday night show on SiriusXM.

But it all began in Brooklyn. And with the Nets now calling the borough home, FishbowlNY brings you a special week-long “Back to Brooklyn” series commemorating the borough’s first major league franchise in 55 years.

It was October 13, 1935 when Bruce Meyerowitz was born. He lived in Sheepshead Bay, on East 26th Street between Avenues V and W, when stickball and egg creams were all the rage.

“Then my dad got rich, and we moved to East 29th,” Morrow jokes.

After attending grade school just a few blocks north at P.S. 206, Morrow was zoned for James Madison High School in Midwood. The shy Brucie Meyerowitz was not the extrovert that Cousin Brucie became with performing his radio, TV, and movie work. It was an elementary school teacher who encouraged Brucie to act. His first foray into the performing arts was in a hygiene play as a cavity. While a star wasn’t born, Morrow knew he found his calling.

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A WCBS-FM mainstay is no more. Midday jock Bob Shannon, who hasn’t appeared on the station since late 2011 while on medical leave, will not return to the Classic Hits station.

Until earlier this month, Ron Parker and Joe Causi had been filling in saying, “In for Bob Shannon…” Now, Parker has taken the midday slot. Showing an unfortunate end to Shannon’s illustrious radio career, Causi is no longer rotating at night or saying that he’s in for Parker.

As early as April, FishbowlNY learned that Shannon would not be able to return, but remained quiet due to privacy issues.

Shannon, 64, is a link to the Oldies past of CBS-FM, where he was the popular afternoon DJ starting in 1986. For the recent 40th anniversary celebration, Shannon was heard on tape from several years earlier. It is yet another indication that Shannon was apparently too ill to participate live.

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It was the perfect night for a concert at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow, Long Island.

Making the evening even more ideal was that the concert was free.

As one big thank you to fans for 40 years of loyalty, WCBS-FM hosted its Saturday in the Park with disco great KC and the Sunshine Band.

The on-air gang was there for hours, just like the throngs of listeners. “Broadway” Bill Lee did a later than usual Saturday show, as a live remote just feet from the stage. Fittingly, he stayed on the air until, “Brooklyn’s Own” Joe Causi (above) started his Saturday Night Seventies on scene. The air personalities, including Ron Parker, signed autographs from adoring fans.

Causi provided the “opening act” for KC and the Sunshine Band. Waiting for the sun to set, the classic disco band took the stage at 8:30.

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It was a stretch of nearly 25 years for Al Bernstein at WLTW/Lite-FM. Bernstein left the Clear Channel, perennial top-rated station, in 2007. Nearly five years later, he’s resurfaced at WCBS-FM in a part-time role. After a brief training appearance this week, his first official shift is Sunday afternoon.

Bernstein is reunited with his former program director, Jim Ryan, who took over that position at CBS-FM last month.

WCBS-FM has been in the market for another personality since veteran jock Bob Shannon went on medical leave before the start of the year. While Shannon convalesces, evening and overnight DJs Ron Parker and Joe Causi have rotated on the midday shift.

With more than three decades in New York radio, Bernstein has also been heard on WNEW-FM, WBLS, WYNY, and WKHK (the Country precursor of WLTW).

A native of Westchester, Bernstein’s distinctive sound has led to doing voice-over work on an assortment of radio and TV commercials.

Credit: whud.com

It’s a weekend four decades in the making. WCBS-FM, the venerable Oldies turned Classic Hits station, is marking a milestone, after launching the vintage Top 40 tunes on July 7, 1972. To commemorate the occasion, the station is welcoming back, or playing vintage clips of, CBS-FM’s most popular DJs.

The call letters were created in the 1940s. In those nascent days of radio, WCBS-FM was simply a simulcast for the WCBS-AM’s programming.

Finally in 1966, CBS-FM started its own format. The Easy Listening, “Young Sound” was born. A year later, a plane crash into the transmitter, forced WCBS-AM to debut its all-news format on the FM tower.

In 1969, WCBS-FM, still seeking an identity, opted for a freeform rock genre, molded in the WOR-FM and WNEW-FM style.

But it was until 1972 that CBS-FM had its niche in New York–Oldies.

Bill Brown, longtime midday jock, and late night DJ Don K. Reed were CBS-FM “originals” from the freeform days.

The station wasn’t just the greatest oldies or greatest hits of the last 40 years. It showcased some of greatest jocks in history. Dan Ingram, Ron Lundy, Harry Harrison, “Triple D” Dandy Dan Daniel, Bob Shannon, Dan Taylor, and “Broadway” Bill Lee are just a select few that could be inducted into the CBS-FM “Hall of Fame.”

Ironically, as the audience got “older,” the music got younger. In the last several years, the original feel has been slightly altered to focus on the 1970s and 1980s, while putting the 1950s “Oldies” into “semi-retirement.”

The weekend lineup after the jump.

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She was the person, arguably, most associated with the Disco era. Donna Summer, known as the Queen of Disco, died today after battling cancer. She was 63.

A five-time Grammy Award winner, Summer had a string of hits including, Hot Stuff, Bad Girls, On the Radio, and No More Tears with Barbra Streisand. In the 1980s, Summer kept the music playing with She Works Hard for the Money and Unconditional Love, featuring Musical Youth.

WCBS-FM jock Joe Causi has been playing her tracks for years, dating back to his days at Disco 92/WKTU.

“[I'm] still in shock over the passing of Donna Summer,” Causi tells FishbowlNY. ”She was a ‘major’ part of my passion for dance music in the clubs and on the radio. Her music was magical, constantly reinventing herself with every album of music she has given us.”

Summer notched her first number one single in the U.S. with MacArthur Park in 1978. That same year, she got a starring role in the Disco flick Thank God It’s Friday, where she sang her signature, Last Dance.

“Artists like Madonna, Lady Gaga, and other pop superstars should pause for a moment and recollect on the originator,” Causi says.

Summer is survived by her husband, Brooklyn Dreams singer Bruce Sudano, three daughters, and four grandchildren.

WCBS-FM mainstay Bob Shannon has been missed recently on his midday shift. The veteran of the Oldies, now Classic Hits station, has been replaced by night jocks Ron Parker and Joe Causi for the last several weeks.

Staffers are left to speculate about the reason for Shannon’s silence.  

“No one has heard from Bob in several weeks,” a source tells FishbowlNY.

Shannon arrived at CBS-FM in the early 1980s. After the Jack FM debacle, Shannon was rehired by the station, linking listeners to CBS-FM’s glorious past.