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Lynn Samuels, NY Radio Talk Show Host, Dies At 69
By
Jen Chung
Published Dec 26, 2011
Modified Dec 26, 2011
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By
Jen Chung
Published Dec 26, 2011
Modified Dec 26, 2011
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Lynn Samuels, the former left wing radio host on WABC, died of a heart attack on Saturday. The 69-year-old had missed her Saturday morning Sirius XM radio, so, the Post reports, "SiriusXM sent someone to her apartment, and that person notified police, who found her body."
The Daily News' David Hinckley has a thorough obituary, noting how she worked at WBAI and then WABC for 15 years, where she was fired three times and rehired twice.
On the radio, Samuels was exactly what much of the country thinks New York sounds like. She had a city accent she never tried to hide or soften, even when her bosses suggested it would prevent her from ever getting a radio job outside the city.
“This is who I am,” she said...
Samuels was a self-described progressive who often threw curveballs. She was a long-standing critic of President Obama, saying she didn’t believe he ever really had progressive credentials.
Her periodic unpredictability didn’t serve her well in today’s party-line talk radio, but helped give her a long run in the earlier, looser talk era.
Her criticism of conservatives often extended to her fellow radio hosts, but she would add that she liked a number of them personally. She became close friends with conservative host and writer Matt Drudge, serving for a time as his call screener.
Here's an old clip of Samuels on the radio:
And listener John Lightning writes, "Lynn was perhaps the last real reason I had for subscribing to the Sirius/XM diminished service, particularly as they had cut her ‘air time’ down from a regular shift on their ‘Liberal’ channel, five days a week, to six hours on weekends. I loved Lynn, and her New Yawk accent that makes me sound like I’m from the midwest!"
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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