NorthEast Radio Watch 6/24 & 7/1/2024: Mike Marchinuke, A Great Radio Guy

In this week’s issue… Remembering Albany’s Marchinuke – Storm sends a remote flying – RadioHOF adds Mayo, Harris, Siegel – New FM in RI – Canadian owner expands

By SCOTT FYBUSH

Jump to: ME – NH – VT – MA – RI – CT – NY – NJ – PA – Canada

*In the big, crazy world of radio, there are a handful of people who are just beloved by almost everyone who’s had the pleasure of working with them.

Whether you knew him as “Shadow Michaels,” “Mike Patrick” or by his legal name, Mike Marchinuke, he was one of those guys to his friends and colleagues along a career that took him from Ohio and Indiana to the Berkshires and Albany. After a long series of health problems that included open-heart surgery a few years ago, Mike had spent more than a month in the hospital in Saratoga Springs before he was taken off life support on Saturday.

We last encountered Mike in these pages a couple of years ago, when WGY was celebrating its centennial and Marchinuke was right in the center of the action. The iHeart news-talker, where he was then the morning host, put on a big show for the anniversary, complete with a humorous recreation of its 1922 opening night staged as a parody radio play with Mike as the announcer.

It was just another reminder of how versatile his talents were, both in and out of radio. Mike’s radio career began in Ohio in 1977, doing overnights at WNCO in Ashland and later working in Mansfield and Elyria. He came to Albany for his first stint in 1986, serving as APD and night guy at WFLY (Fly 92), where as “Shadow Michaels” he was one of the most talented top-40 jocks around.

He spent much of the 1990s working a day job outside of radio while also teaching at the New School Center of Media in Albany, where many of his students would later end up becoming his colleagues. After a few years in Columbus, Indiana, Mike was back on the region’s radio dial in 2002, working at WBEC in Pittsfield as morning host and as the cluster’s operations manager, then for Pamal in Glens Falls, doing mornings on WFFG, and finally for a dozen years with WGY and the iHeart cluster in Albany, doing news, traffic and social media for stations around the Northeast before his retirement last year.

Even after that he stayed active, working with radio veteran Jeff Pierce on Wreaths Across America Radio in support of veterans, acting in dinner theater and webcasting, as well as keeping up a vibrant social media presence until his final illness.