NorthEast Radio Watch 10/27/2025: Cats, Sliwa Spar Over NYC Election

In this week’s issue… Sliwa out at WABC – WHYY gets WPSU on second try – WITF CEO’s abrupt exit – Star shines again in Saratoga – Canadian AM signs off

By SCOTT FYBUSH

*We’re just over a week away from the mayoral election in NEW YORK City, and it’s hard to think of a race in recent memory that’s had one radio station so deeply involved in the politics of it all. (Come to think of it, there the NEW JERSEY gubernatorial primary WKXW’s morning man Bill Spadea lost a few months ago, so maybe let’s limit this to general elections…)

In any event, it’s a heated finish to what’s become a three-way race following the exit of incumbent mayor Eric Adams, who dropped his third-party bid in hopes of keeping the Democratic nominee, Zohran Mamdani, from winning the race against former governor Andrew Cuomo, also running on a third-party ticket.

But while Cuomo’s supporters (and Mamdani’s detractors) hoped for a two-man race to the end, there’s a complicating factor: Guardian Angels founder and longtime WABC (770) talk host Curtis Sliwa has the Republican line in the general election, and the louder the calls get for him to drop out, the more firmly Sliwa seems intent on staying in.

The situation came to a head on Wednesday on WABC’s airwaves, when Sliwa appeared as a guest on Sid Rosenberg’s morning show, complaining that WABC owner and GOP political kingmaker John Catsimatidis was favoring Cuomo’s candidacy on the station over Sliwa.

Following Catsimatidis’ public call for Sliwa to drop out of the race, Sliwa told Rosenberg “you will never see me at the studios of WABC again, never, no matter how this election turns out.”

Calling the station the “Always Broadcasting Cuomo network,” Sliwa complained, “I feel personally, personally offended by what my friends and colleagues, many of whom I trained at WABC, many of whom wouldn’t have a job at WABC without me, have done.”

“You’re gonna lose and you’re gonna lose badly, embarrassingly,” Rosenberg fired back as the two began shouting over each other.

So that’s the end of Sliwa’s long WABC career, which started in 1990 and has seen him come and go from the station several times… right?

Not so fast, at least not according to Catsimatidis, who tells the New York Post he and Sliwa “have a handshake deal and he has a 30-year contract,” adding, when he calms down, I believe Curtis has always been reasonable.”

Barring a massive upset in which Sliwa actually wins the election next Tuesday (he’s currently polling a distant third), it’s easy to imagine that after a cooling-off period, WABC will indeed end up welcoming Sliwa back – he’ll fit right in, after all, in a talk format that’s sure to be heavily critical of Mamdani (if he wins), or even of Cuomo if he too comes from behind to win.

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