Barry Gray

Barry Gray. (1916 - 1996) , The Father of Talk Radio. , Barry Gray was working as a disc jockey for New York radio station WMCA in 1945 when he decided to put the telephone receiver up to his microphone and share his conversation with the listening audience. The caller that evening just happened to be bandleader Woody Herman, one of the most popular celebrities of the day. This spontaneous live interview was such a hit that the talk radio format was born. Gray subsequently began doing listener call-ins as well., Rival station WOR also saw the attraction of the talk format and Gray worked an overnight shift there from 1945 to 1948 interviewing everyone from Al Jolson to Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. He broadcast for WMGM from the Copacabana night club in the late 1940s, as well as on WMIE radio from Miami Beach. He returned to WMCA in 1950 and stayed there for 39 years, refining the talk show format still utilized today., Gray also pioneered in early television, first as the host of The Barry Gray Show on New York WOR-TV in 1949, then as host of the very first Goodson and Todman game show Winner Take All in 1951., Born Bernard Yaroslaw on July 2, 1916 in Red Lion, New Jersey, Barry Gray was known as a fierce critic of bigotry, and he survived the ugliness of McCarthyism and the Red Scare. A constant target of the blacklisting right-wing columnist Walter Winchell, Barry was fearless in calling out those he found mired in hypocrisy and abusive in power., He lived at 143 Dorchester Avenue in the Heathcote section of New Rochelle in the 1950s and 60s with his wife Nancy and three children. In 2002, industry publication Talkers Magazine selected him as the 8th greatest radio talk show host of all time., "He was one of the big influences in my life and one of my genuine heroes," said CNN talk-show host Larry King.