NYPR Archives & Preservation
Post Post, A Sampling and Tribute to Some Classic Live Morning Music Moments
Steve Post was the antidote to an industry riddled with chronic cheerfulness. With the world going to hell in a hand basket, how could we possibly listen to a morning radio personality who sounds like they're smiling or even about to chuckle or laugh? For the hard-core tsoris-laden New Yorker there was only one choice and that was Morning Music host Steve Post. His sarcasm, wit, rants, puns, droll observations and commentary with a classical playlist even made listening to fundraising perversely entertaining.
Like many people, I grew up listening to Post on WBAI. There he honed his dyspepsia and futilitarian worldview only to release it, fully matured (or immature as the case may be) on WNYC listeners couched in a kind of cranky poise and resonant voice that somehow made my half-empty glass, half full.
What exactly was it in Steve's live nihilist radio recipe through the 1980s and 90s that somehow girded us to face another modern day in New York City and its environs? Could it have been the artful station identifications?
Perhaps it was his style of news delivery developed long before Howard Beale's Network rant.
Or, maybe it was Steve's insights into the weather?
His respect for authority?
Could it have been his keen sense of self?
Or maybe it was just the theme (Chopin's Mazurka in C Major (Op. 24 No. 2)) and tone set at the beginning of each Morning Music program?
And just how did Steve, as he liked to say, "get away with it?" After all, he was pretty much free to say whatever entered his head, within the bounds of the law. Indeed, he retained creative control over the spoken portion of his program, a rare thing in broadcasting. Remember, this is before XM and Sirus radio, before webcasting and podcasting. In a 1996 tribute to former WNYC President Mary Perot Nichols, Post explained it this way:
After the demise of Morning Music in the wake of 9/11, Steve went on to many more years of perfecting his art of broadcasting on The No Show, a weekly compendium of whatever was on his mind. Sadly, Steve passed away on August 3, 2014, at the age of 70. He is recalled here, by producer and host, Sara Fishko.
There will be a memorial for Steve this Friday evening at 6 PM at Symphony Space. For more information see: Post Memorial.
Steve, you are missed.
Thanks to Irene Trudel and Sara Fishko for contributing some of these vital bits of Steve.
Steve, joined by Sara Fishko, recalling his 'firing' by Mary Perot Nichols.
But it didn't stop with Mary Perot Nichols. Steve's reading of the WNYC President's office memos continued with Laura Walker.
Steve Post and Sara Fishko yuk-it-up for the first hour of WNYC-FM's 50th-anniversary celebration on September 21, 1993.
