Wally Phillips
| Wally Phillips | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
July 7, 1925 Portsmouth, Ohio, United States |
| Died | March 26, 2008 (aged 82) Naples, Florida, USA |
| Station(s) | WGN, Chicago, Illinois, USA |
| Country | United States |
Walter Phillips (July 7, 1925 – March 26, 2008) was an American radio personality best known for hosting WGN's morning radio show from Chicago for 21 years from January 1965 until July 1986, and was number one in the morning slot from 1968 until he left for an afternoon radio slot in 1986.
A pioneer of the radio call-in talk show format, Phillips delighted in a form now banned by the FCC: putting people on the air without their knowledge.
Phillips was born in Portsmouth, Ohio. Six years later, after his father's death from tuberculosis, his family (including three siblings) moved to Cincinnati. Phillips later dropped out of high school to join the United States Army Air Forces during World War II, but he ended up in Georgia in a tow target squadron assigned to fly practice targets for fighter pilots and anti-aircraft artillery.
After the end of World War II, he attended drama school for a while and then became a disc jockey in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A year after beginning his DJ career he returned to Cincinnati.
Phillips expanded his career as a radio personality at WLW in Cincinnati where he established his call-in format and his trademark style of remixing prerecorded interviews as a comedy piece. He was eventually fired after he inserted a phony item into a newscast. Discussing this piece in a 1976 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Phillips said,
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