1010 WINS celebrates 60th anniversary of all-news radio

Over the phone from his home on the Jersey Shore, John Montone sounds much the way he always did on the radio — through storms, floods, fires, murders, strikes, World Series, mayoral races and those million other stories in the naked city that he reported on over a 40-year run that ended in 2021. Maybe he's a little raspier, that voice not quite up to that familiar orotund pronouncement that drew out the vowels of his name so distinctively:

This is John Montoonnne of 1010 WINS ...

Nevertheless, his health is fine (he's 71) and glad someone wants to know. But he's especially glad to be asked about the legacy of the station where he spent most of his life, beginning in 1982.

"The people I'm down here playing pickleball will never ask," he says, "but it's certainly something we talked about in the newsroom.

"I always thought of WINS like bagels, Ray's Pizza, the coffee cart guys, taxi drivers — part of the fabric of the city — and not to take anything away from Newsradio 88" — WCBS/880 AM, the sister news station that folded last August — "because I have nothing but great respect for them, but we were the place for news, for listeners to go to for news, before they left their house, to get their buses or trains or when they got in their cars for the traffic reports."

Montone's 1010 turns 60 on April 19, a truly remarkable milestone because in its restive search for listeners, advertisers and (especially) relevance, nothing in radio stays the same. However, 1010 WINS mostly has. The news has never stopped, nor has that insistence that if we just give it 22 minutes, it will give us the world. Through the great city's ups and downs, through Wall Street booms and busts, that clattering teletype tone clattered on. Like Montone's, those familiar names attached to careers that lasted decades here carried on too — names like Stan Brooks, Paul Smith, Judy DeAngelis, Lee Harris, Paul Sherman, Larry Mullins, Lori Madden, Susan Richard and Juliet Papa  to cite just a few.

But like the rest of radio, change has been forced on WINS, too. In 2022, the station began simulcasting on the FM frequency formerly occupied by, among other formats, Howard Stern's old radio home, WXRK/92.3, then changed its call sign to WINS-FM. Over the decades, WCBS/880 had more listeners in the New York suburbs while WINS' stronghold was the five boroughs. But all that flipped in an instant. WINS catapulted over its in-house rival while WCBS' fortunes — and future — dimmed.

Parent company Audacy shut down WCBS/880 on Aug. 26, to the considerable anguish of longtime listeners. Esteemed anchors Paul Murnane, Wayne Cabot and Brigitte Quinn have since joined 1010 on a part-time basis. Its Long Island reporter Sophia Hall is now on the beat for WINS.

LI'S MOST LISTENED-TO STATION

Adding FM has extended WINS' signal on Long Island many miles beyond the AM station's reach.  The upshot: For the first time in its history, WINS became the most listened-to station on Long Island this February, eclipsing local giant WBAB. Nearly 2 million listeners throughout the region tune in to both WINS AM and FM stations each week, but on Long Island alone, the FM simulcast has more than doubled  its share of listeners here, according to research figures.

"Clearly being on FM helped and we certainly have picked up 880 listeners, too," says Ben Mevorach, the station's vice president of news. "But our focus is more on Long Island as well. We used to say we were New York's all-news station, but I now say that we're Long Island's all-news station, too."

The WINS of today is different from the WINS of Montone's years in other ways. For starters, the sound is richer and more rounded. The old WINS had a sharp-edged rat-a-tat delivery style, or as longtime programming consultant (and Philadelphia radio host) Walter Sabo recalls, it sounded "like New Yorkers shoving into a crowded subway car." The new (or newish) WINS is smoother listening — hardly easy listening but far beyond the just-the-facts days of the '60s and '70s.

NEWS WITH PERSONALITY

By the '80s, with reporters like Montone and anchors like Lee Harris at the forefront, 1010 WINS began to develop a distinct personality, too — that street-wise, hard-driving, "Front Page" persona that bonded it so tightly to the city, and vice versa. But these days, personality rules. Morning anchor Scott Stanford cracks jokes, while afternoon veteran Larry Mullins occasionally offers sharp-elbowed asides about some news story that just flew by. If not precisely fun, WINS is certainly more listenable than ever before. It also plays better in the 'burbs.

Even the iconic chattering teletype is now gone — the sound effect that dozens of Hollywood movies sampled over the years to give some scene an authentic down-in-the-streets New Yawk flavor. Mevorach said it had to be sacrificed because it didn't sound right on the FM signal.

A MODERN APPROACH

WINS' boss grew up in East Meadow and lived in Malverne before moving to Massapequa a couple of years ago. After college in Boston, he moved back to become the station's Long Island stringer. As Mevorach, 65, recalls, WINS was "a city-centric station at the time, so I spent most of my time begging them to take the story." He was paid $15 every time the station did.

But after a Long Island housewife, Mary Jo Buttafuoco, was shot in the doorway of her home by her husband's teen lover on May 19, 1992, Mevorach became the station's full-time Long Island reporter. He spent a full year covering the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 in the Atlantic off East Moriches.

When he became news director in 1999, Mevorach said he began to "modernize" the sound of the station in anticipation of a possible jump to FM. "I also looked at the way we were presenting the news, and at all the other news stations and it really was very clear to me back then that if we don't evolve and we continue to do news from the 1970s, as successful as it has been for so many years, we will be out of business in a relatively short period of time."

In the drive to modernize that sound, another native Long Islander, Harris — longtime morning anchor and arguably WINS' most familiar voice over a 30-year run — invented an app in 2012 that allowed reporters to air studio-quality sound from any location with their phone. While covering a flood by the Hudson, Montone recalls that an editor told him "it was like you were right there in the water." (Harris is now director of operations for TV's NewsNation.)

THAT'S INFOTAINMENT

Morning co-anchor Stanford may have been the biggest change. The onetime WCBS/880 sports anchor and longtime World Wrestling Entertainment host and color commentator joined WINS in 2023. With a hint of that WWE flair, the morning drive program he co-hosts with Richard is now the top-rated one on New York radio. 

Not everyone has embraced the jocular Stanford style. Ted David, the now-retired anchor who spent decades on TV (News 12, CNBC) and radio — including at WINS — has criticized the station's occasional infotainment approach in posts on the well-read New York Radio Message Board.

In an interview, he said, "If you're going to listen to the news, you are interested in the news, and you want to get it from a serious source. I don't want someone throwing off one-liners every five minutes. It's contradictory. If you're going to do all-news-all-the time, then do real news. For me there's a credibility gap." (Mevorach's response: "We don't program the station for Ted's demographic.") 

Afternoons have been a big ratings success, too. On a recent day in late March at WINS' Hudson Street studios, Mullins and WINS veteran Madden were prepping the show they've cohosted together for a decade. A former NBC News reporter who joined WINS 17 years ago, Mullins admits "I can get a little brash on the air [but] it helps people relate to me." Then nodding to Madden, he adds, "We have an adult in the room." 

"We got calls and letters after 880 left, and I heard from a lot of Long Islanders, too — they all said, 'We're warming up to you guys.' "

"For the most part, it's worked out nicely."