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Howard Stern producer recalls Jimmy Fink’s unhappy New Year’s Day

May

Gary Dell’Abate, the radio producer for shock jock Howard Stern, recently talked on the air about the difficulties people in the radio industry face during holiday seasons. In the process, Dell’Abate referenced my fellow Eastchester High School alumnus and my favorite local deejay, Jimmy Fink.

Last week, Dell’Abate had been chatting with colleagues on Stern’s “Wrap Up Show” about unwanted holiday radio shifts early in their careers. He then recounted a story that involves Fink getting served—and I don’t mean delicious pancakes at his defunct Ardsley restaurant, either:

Jimmy Fink, … great guy, he told me this story: He worked at (a) radio station, and the guy that ran the radio station begged him, begged him, begged him to work on New Year’s Day, which he did not want to do. And the guy says, ‘I really need you to do this: I need you to do 6 to noon on New Year’s Day.’ So (Fink) said that he went out (on New Year’s Eve), but he got home at like 10 o’clock. He and his wife toasted and then he went to sleep early. And he got up and he did 6 to noon, and he got off the air—and the guy called him and fired him…. (The boss) totally knew what he was going to do (and) figured, ‘Why (tick) off one of my employees I’m keepin’?’

Here’s hoping Fink’s current radio bosses at The Peak are far more appreciative.

An interesting fact, which Dell’Abate did not mention: Fink—who spun records at WPLJ and WNEW before working at the same station as the Stern crew at what was then WXRK—now broadcasts on 107.1 FM, the same airwaves that in the ‘70s provided Stern with his first paying radio gig. Back then, though, the station had different call letters and broadcast from Briarcliff Manor instead of its current White Plains digs.

(File photo by Seth Harrison/The Journal News)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 at 10:02 am by Chris Serico.
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