Frank Millspaugh, a station general manager in the 1960s and 1970s, said listeners sympathized with Mr. Josephson’s age-old complaint about waking up early. But some board members of the Pacifica Foundation, which owns the station, were not pleased with the countercultural tone of Mr. Josephson, Mr. Fass and Mr. Post.
“They wanted a more serious, more respectful sound to the station,” Mr. Millspaugh said in a phone interview. But when they understood the effectiveness of those hosts in raising funds for the station, “they softened their criticisms.”
In the mid-1970s, Mr. Josephson held the position of general manager of WBAI for two years, the company regularly operating periodically. During an emergency financial crisis, the station urged listeners to raise $56,000 to cover monthly expenses. Within four days, $25,800 was poured in, mostly cash.
“We will survive,” Mr. Josephson told The Daily News in 1976. “We have to raise more money and spend less. It was like New York City,” which was dealing with a much larger financial crisis of its own at the time.
Norman Lawrence Josephson was born on May 12, 1939, in Los Angeles. His father, Adrian, once owned a woodworking company; His mother, Marian (Tyre) Josephson, was a homemaker.
Larry loved radio from an early age but did not initially pursue work in it. Instead, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley and studied linguistics, then worked for IBM as a computer engineer in the New York area. (He didn’t finish his bachelor’s degree until 1973.) He started volunteering at WBAI in the 1960s and was hired to host a morning show in 1966 because, according to him, the station couldn’t find it. Who else wakes up so early?
