Steve Powers

Steve Powers (born February 25, 1934 in New York City) is a musician, journalist and teacher who has had a 45-year career in New York City radio and television, as well as academia.

Born in New York City, Powers attended the City College of New York where he became editor of Roundhouse Magazine. In 1956 he received a degree in Business Administration from CCNY. Powers attended the University of Virginia where he worked at the student radio station, WUVA. He was a member of the UVA Jazz Club, which integrated the university auditorium with a concert by Dizzy Gillespie. Mr. Gillespie invited Powers to sit in. It was an experience that was repeated thirty years later when he played another concert with Gillespie at New York's Blue Note club. In 1987 Powers earned a PhD from New York University in Neil Postman's Media Ecology program.

After graduating from CCNY in 1956, and serving as a Search and Rescue officer in the United States Coast Guard in Puerto Rico, Powers returned to the New York area and started looking for work as a jazz disc jockey. He was hired by radio station WADS, in Ansonia, Connecticut in 1961 as a newscaster. He subsequently worked as a newscaster and news director for several radio stations in Connecticut. In 1963 he anchored the coverage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy on WICC for 13 straight hours.

Powers moved to WMCA radio in New York City and went on to anchor his own morning drive-time news/talk show. He left WMCA in 1972 to become a correspondent at ABC radio network news and worked at RKO radio network news.

In 1980, Powers became an anchor/reporter on television at WNYW-TV, NY (Fox-TV) where he worked for 12 years. He was the first reporter to cover John Lennon's death on December 8, 1980, broadcasting the first network radio reports while assisting with WNYW-TV's television coverage of the story. From 1980 until December 1992, he was the anchor/reporter for WNYW-TV Channel 5 News, where he was awarded an Emmy Award in 1981; in 1986 he was also nominated for an Emmy for an Outstanding Feature story. In later years, Powers was the anchor of noon-6:00 P.M.newscasts for New York Times Radio, and the writer/producer/voice of the "Health Times" medical reports on WQXR-FM, NY. He signed off for the last time from New York Times radio] in June 2007.

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