Tony Pigg, the favored DJ and on-air character at WPLJ-FM and two different New York rock radio stations for greater than three many years, has died. He was 85.
Pigg died Friday of pure causes at his house in New York Metropolis, his spouse of 37 years, Lucinda Scala Quinn, informed The Hollywood Reporter.
Pigg additionally served because the workers announcer of the New York-based dwell morning present co-hosted by Regis Philbin and, after his retirement, Kelly Ripa. Pigg held that job for 30-plus years by 2019.
Richard Quinn was born in Sacramento on April 11, 1939. He studied artwork with painter Wayne Thiebaud at Sacramento State and served with the U.S. Military earlier than starting his radio profession at an AM station in Winslow, Arizona, after which at KROY-AM in his hometown.
He referred to as himself Tony Bigg, named for a favourite uncle and the truth that he was 6-foot-4. However when somebody mispronounced “Bigg” as “Pig,” he switched to a unique spelling of that after arriving at San Francisco’s KSAN-FM circa 1966.
“We had been a bunch of hippies — long-haired freaks — who began the radio station KSAN and a free-form, underground progressive sound, which finally developed into what you hear right this moment,” he informed the New York Day by day Information in 1989.
Pigg got here to prominence throughout the Haight-Ashbury scene, and as KSAN music director and a superb pal of the Grateful Lifeless’s first supervisor, Owsley “Bear” Stanley, he’s thought to have been the primary jock to place that band on the FM airwaves.
Pigg joined WABC-FM in New York in 1970, with the station changing into WPLJ with a format change in 1971, and he labored there for greater than a decade, adopted by stints at WXRK-FM (referred to as Okay-Rock) and WNEW-FM. (Howard Stern, Pigg’s onetime colleague at Okay-Rock, not too long ago mentioned on his SiriusXM present that Pigg helped encourage his radio profession.)
“The heat and wit of Tony Pigg entertained a complete era of New York radio listeners,” Jim Kerr, one other famed DJ at WPLJ, mentioned in a press release. “His expertise was a serious cause why within the Seventies, WPLJ grew to become the most-listened-to FM station in America and is so fondly remembered right this moment. Tony liked his viewers. On the finish of every present he delivered his signature line, ‘Nothing however thanks’ and he meant it.”
Philbin cold-called Pigg when launching his Stay! morning present in New York after listening to him on the radio, his spouse mentioned. He additionally voiced commercials throughout his profession.
Survivors additionally embody his sons, Mark, Calder, Miles and Luca; daughter Lisa; granddaughter Angela; and siblings David and Susan.