Howard Hoffman

Howard Hoffman (born October 6, 1954) is an American voice actor and a broadcast branding producer in New York, NY.

He also operates the internet radio station Great Big Radio.

He was also a presenter of Contemporary Hit Radio shows in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Providence, Phoenix and Houston.

Hoffman is currently the Creative Services/Production Director of WOR (AM)/iHeartMedia New York.

Howard's first radio job came in 1971 during his senior year in Suffern High School.

An English Teacher (and faculty adviser of the school radio station WSHS), Hank Gross, was working at WTBQ Radio in Warwick, NY on weekends and brought in Howard to do odd jobs like news-gathering, music filing and an occasional newscast.

The station hired him full-time shortly thereafter, and he did the 2pm-to-signoff shift.

While finishing his final year in high school, Howard also took on the role of music director, and the station made a transition from a "beautiful music" format to a more adult contemporary sound.

After a brief stint in Spring Valley, NY, Howard landed his first Top 40 job doing evenings on WALL in Middletown, NY in 1973.

It was here where Howard found his voice, relying heavily on listener phone participation.

What set the show apart was the inclusion of local and national pop culture topics as well as humorously touching on the news as part of the show's fabric, along with the hits and oldies.

Hoffman said, "… that's where I first started doing stuff like putting callers on the air, clowning around with them, hanging up on them … and they loved it."

Howard also included pre-recorded parodies and sketches, which were a coveted talent that set apart the top DJ entertainers.

This did not go unnoticed, and in 1974, he was hired at WDRQ in Detroit for his production and on-air skills.

In 1975, Howard was picked up by WPIX-FM in New York City – originally as a fill-in host before taking the reins as WPIX's permanent evening host on the station's "Disco 102."

After initial success, the disco craze eventually fizzled, so Howard set his sights on an area he always loved, New England.

This drew him to WPRO-FM in Providence, Rhode Island, which gave him free rein to do an evening show with even more irreverent humor and poking fun at the music he had to play.

This sparked some hilarious conversations with listeners who gleefully took on Howard – either in agreement or rage.

A highlight of Hoffman's tenure happened on February 5, 1978, during the Northeastern United States blizzard of 1978.

He and several other WPRO AM and FM staffers were stranded at the radio station for three days.

With the FM discontinued and its transmitter unreachable, WPRO's AM and FM staff double-teamed on the AM and brought non-stop news and information to the area.

Howard calls this his "first true radio moment" – in how the medium can be a galvanizing force in bringing a community together in an emergency.

In 1979, Rick Sklar, vice president in charge of programming for ABC Radio, sought out and hired Howard to take over the evening show at their Houston FM station, KAUM.

The station had just switched formats to CHR (contemporary hit radio – the new moniker for "Top 40") and despite his New York upbringing, Howard was a hit at KAUM, bringing the station to within striking distance of the long-established CHR leader, KRBE.

In late 1979, Howard got what everyone in the radio business refers to as "THE call" when WABC, New York, program director Al Brady Law offered him the coveted evening slot as part of a major restructuring of WABC's lineup.

As it turned out, it was while Howard was in Providence that Law listened to his show while Law was programming WHDH in Boston.

Howard jumped at the chance and became one of the last on-air hires of WABC's MusicRadio era.

To accommodate his phone-intensive act, WABC installed an extra mixing board and a telephone hybrid system – something the station never used previously.

Ten minutes into his very first night, he showed his self-deprecating side when he said "hello" to his parents listening in Suffern – then said, "Who am I kidding? They tuned out of this mess five minutes ago."

Howard's high-energy delivery was a shock for many WABC listeners, who were accustomed to the station's more "adult" approach.

Critics weren't kind to this sudden shift and wondered what WABC was thinking.

However, everyone involved was aware that FM was beginning to dominate the radio landscape, and Howard's arrival was designed to be part of a game-changer for the station.

Long time afternoon fixture Dan Ingram was moved to mornings, Ingram sound-alike Bob Cruz was placed in the afternoons and Sturgis Griffin was brought in for overnights.

Hoffman's tenure at WABC was marked by two diverse events.

First was his now notorious 1979 New Year's Eve show, just two weeks into his job.

It was a huge in-studio party with WABC and WPLJ engineers, staffers and announcers while Hoffman counted down the top 100 of the year.

That show continued almost two hours into 1980 before he finally reached number one.

The second was the night of the killing of John Lennon, shortly after Howard took the helm of the overnight show.

WABC became a mix of all-news and all-Beatles throughout that night, with Hoffman anchoring the event.

Despite an improvement in listenership, the handwriting was on the wall for AM's future, and WABC began the switch to talk in 1981 with the addition of the New York Yankees, which moved Howard to the all-night shift.