NorthEast Radio Watch 11/3/2025: Philly Mourns a Legend

In this week’s issue… Remembering WMMR’s Robert, KYW’s – CBS layoffs hit hard – Christmas music arrives – Max Maine adds – Ontario FM’s uncertain future

By SCOTT FYBUSH

*When Pierre Robert pulled into Philadelphia in an old VW bus with bald tires 45 years ago, nobody could have imagined that the former San Francisco jock would end up becoming one of the most iconic figures in the city’s radio history.

But on the strength of a few years at KSAN out west, Robert found his way into Metromedia sister station WMMR (93.3) in 1981. While so many rock stations went away in the decades that followed, WMMR survived, and while so many long careers were cut short by budget cuts and format changes, Robert remained a critical part of WMMR and of the city’s music scene, decade after decade.

Then on Wednesday, when Robert didn’t show up for his usual midday shift, police were called to his apartment, where they found him dead, apparently of natural causes.

It’s already hard to imagine Philadelphia radio without Robert’s steady presence. In 44 years on WMMR, he held down almost every airshift, but in recent years under Beasley ownership, he’d settled in as the station’s midday voice, hitting the air on “Pierre Standard Time” after the Preston & Steve morning show wound up for the day, greeting the city with his usual “Greetings, good citizens!” and, often as not, talking about whatever show he’d been out at the night before in his other role as the city’s ultimate rock fan.

Wherever bands were playing, whether it was Springsteen at the ballpark or a new act at a smaller venue, Robert was always out there and always interacting with musicians and listeners.

“I’ve never met a better and bigger music fan in my life,” WMMR’s Preston Elliot told WPVI-TV, “and when I tell you he had a profound love for music, for rock & roll, for presenting that music to people – it was all in his heart. He was just an open book about how much music meant to him and the people he shared it with.”

As the news spread about Robert’s death, marquees at the city’s venues lit up with images of the distinctively white-bearded jock. WMMR itself was full of remembrances of its most famous personality, who had already been honored by having the station’s studio named for him, a 2015 induction into the Philadelphia Broadcast Pioneers’ Hall of Fame, and with a place on the Philadelphia Music Alliance Walk of Fame.

Robert, who was 70, is obviously irreplaceable, and for now WMMR isn’t even trying to figure out what’s next; it will have rotating fill-in hosts on the midday shift for now while it lets listeners and staff mourn this giant figure in the city’s radio history.