When legendary rock jock Carol Miller was approached to write her memoirs, she knew it couldn’t be a tell-all book. But the introspective broadcaster would have to open up about her life. She agreed and Up All Night: My Life and Times in Rock Radio by Ecco Press was created. The autobiography has two recurring themes: her serious health problems, that were hereditary, and the lighter dalliances with famous rockers.

Miller has been part of New York radio at WNEW-FM, WPLJ and WAXQ/Q 104.3 since the Watergate scandal grew forty years ago this summer.

Related: FishbowlNY, Q104.3′s Carol Miller ‘Just as Enthusiastic’ After Nearly 40 Years in New York Radio

“I realized if I was going to do it that I would have to get more personal,” Miller tells FishbowlNY. “But on the other hand, I really didn’t feel that I, for the most part, had to say anything embarrassing.”

When a sensitive topic was broached, an alleged case of sexual harassment by a program director, she left out the name.

Miller made the decision to create a cultural chronicle through her eyes of the last half of the 20th Century.

“It was about a person from a particular ethnic background, who jumps right into the frying pan with the media and everything that’s going on in this country,” Miller says.

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For a stretch from the late 1970s into the early 1980s, Thom Morrera was the overnight air personality at WNEW-FM. It was the height of WNEW’s and Morrera’s popularity.

Multiple sources confirm to FishbowlNY that Morrera died over the weekend. We’re told that Morrera died of complications from a massive heart attack last month.

Paul Cavalconte remembers his longtime friend and colleague, having worked with Morrera at three radio outfits, including Sirius.

“His many friends in the music and radio biz will miss him because he was so good at keeping up with people and being social and a gracious host,” Cavalconte tells FishbowlNY. “And also a committed mentor to many people. He earned the name ‘Father Thom’ as well.”

While playing the now-deemed “Classic Rock,” Morrera also spent time in management as the WNEW-FM music director. He returned for a brief weekend stint in the early 1990s.

Morrera’s voice was also familiar to New York Rangers fans as the team’s public address announcer for several years.

Cavalconte added on his Facebook page, “I will miss his candlelit holiday feasts, summer cocktail fetes, phone chats, e mail hits and most of all encouragement to take it all in stride.”

Morrera’s death marks the second passing of a WNEW personality this year. In April, Pete Fornatale died a short time after suffering from a brain hemorrhage.

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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The nation’s first all-sports radio station is about to celebrate 25 years, and FishbowlNY is joining in the accolades.

Beginning today, we start a special, week-long series commemorating WFAN’s silver milestone July 1.

There are interviews with two charter members of the station, the first person on the air, and the signature voice a quarter-century later.

But we begin with a look back through the eyes of operations manager Mark Chernoff, who joined WFAN in 1993.

WHN owned the frequency at 1050 when Emmis suits, led by Jeff Smulyan, decided country music had run its course.

Smulyan, sales manager Joel Hollander, and others flipped the battle-tested country format in 1987 to sports. It was a mixed blessing, as WFAN was an untouched canvas on the radio easel.

“Its earliest incarnation was very different from what the ‘FAN eventually became,” Chernoff says.

Specifically, the programs were national in flavor, with many short-form features interspered within the shows. Original programming also consisted of 4 sports updates per hour, as opposed to today’s “20-20″ version. The Mets and WFAN have been perfect together since the station’s inception.

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Pete Fornatale, the man at the forefront of the progressive radio movement on FM in the late 1960s died yesterday after complications from a stroke at Manhattan’s Beth Israel Medical Center. He was 66.

Fornatale was an institution in New York radio, and at Fordham University’s WFUV. The Bronx native graduated in 1967 with a B.A. in Communication Arts. Fornatale remained on the school’s station until 1969. His future would soon be tied to WNEW-FM, with two decades at the station that long billed itself as the place “where rock lives!”

Another legendary air personality, Dennis Elsas worked with Fornatale at both stations. He was at the microphone yesterday informing listeners of Fornatale’s passing. Their friendship started 45 years ago. Still a student at Queens College, and working for the school’s radio station, Elsas found Fornatale by mistake on his alarm clock.

“I really enjoyed the show,” Elsas tells FishbowlNY. “…That accidentally hearing of his show, and liking what I heard, was the formation of a relationship, and we quickly saw that we had a lot in common.”

Fornatale had a misstep when he attempted to join WNEW in 1967, as he recalled to me in 2009.

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Legendary saxophonist Clarence Clemons who traveled with the Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band for decades, died Saturday following complications of a stroke the week before. He was 69.

He was so much more than a part of the band.  The “Big Man” could be considered a sidekick to “The Boss.”

Carol Miller, the legendary Classic Rock jock, who does the night shift on Q 104.3 (WAXQ), saw the Clemons/Springsteen partnership blossom, as Bruce’s first album hit the shelves in 1973.

Miller was still working at Philadelphia’s WMMR when the future of Rock was on display.

“Bruce came on first, alone in those early shows, and did ‘Does the Bus Stop…’ Then, he would bring out the band,” Miller recalls. “When Clarence started playing, to be completely honest yet corny, he literally blew everyone away.”

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Regis Philbin has been no stranger to broadcasting or the broadcasting accolades. As Philbin, 79, prepares to leave Live with Regis and Kelly this year, he has been receiving various lifetime achievements.

The latest for Philbin is that he is being honored with induction into the New York State Broadcasters Association (NYSBA) Hall of Fame.

Philbin, who grew up in the Bronx, has been working steadily in New York since 1982, although nationally syndicated since 1988.

In 1999, his career surged into prime time, hosting the hugely successful Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

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Her voice has been synonymous with Classic Rock in New York for four decades. Carol Miller, with a one-part powerful, one-part silky voice, has been a distinctly unique combination for the genre. DJs are taught to speak to their audiences individually, but Miller mastered that trait. 

After a brief stint at WNEW-FM, she established herself in the mid-1970s at WPLJ.

The 1980s, and through the 1990s, meant a return to the legendary WNEW. That led to her current run at Clear Channel’s WAXQ/Q104.3 since 2004.

Her radio journey began as a girl growing up on Long Island, hearing the WMCA Good Guys and WABC All Americans.

“I was one of those kids that listened to my transistor all the time …I really loved it, but I never thought of it as a career because it was not what a girl would do—be a fun Cousin Brucie type of person.”

By the time Miller arrived at the University of Pennsylvania that all changed—sort of.

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You heard about the incredible story of Ted Williams who has been homeless throughout the last 20 years in Ohio. Williams, a former radio announcer who grew up in Brooklyn, has a second chance waiting for him.

Williams got lost on the wrong track with a combination of drugs and alcohol. This week, as part of the media frenzy, Williams declared that he has been clean and sober for two-and-a-half years.

“Having so many friends and family that have battled addictions, that really popped out at me,” Johnny Sialiano says. “I was really, really happy for him for that.”

Sialiano, known as Goumba Johnny, is a radio veteran who left WKTU in December after 15 years on air.

“He’s now bearing the fruit of all his hard work in beating his addictions. It’s just an unbelievable story,” Sialiano tells FishbowlNY.

(TVNewser has the latest on Williams’ numerous job offers.)

More reactions from notable radio personalities after the jump

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Elsas and Lennon on September 28, 1974

Today marks the 30^th anniversary etched in the minds of Beatles fans around the world. John Lennon was murdered outside of his apartment building, The Dakota, overlooking Central Park.

“There was no precedent to any of this,” Veteran New York DJ Dennis Elsas reflects. “The assassination of a rock star, that was totally new.”

Elsas, six years earlier, had what many consider the definitive radio interview with Lennon. Elsas, working at the time for WNEW-FM, spoke with Lennon for two hours that Saturday afternoon. You can hear portions of that famous interview on Elsas’ website.

The legendary DJ for more than a decade has been an afternoon fixture at Fordham University’s WFUV (90.7 FM). He recalls for FishbowlNY that fateful night when the WNEW on-air staff and listeners mourned as one for the loss of the music and goodwill giant.
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