Remembering Ben Manilla
• Ben Manilla, award-winning radio producer, audio entrepreneur, pioneering disc jockey and broadcast journalism educator, passed away on Monday, Sept. 30, in Lagunitas, CA at the age of 71.
Over the course of five decades Manilla spearheaded and operated a variety of companies specializing in audio production, distribution, and consulting, and created programming for virtually every radio format and music genre, heard on thousands of commercial and public stations across the US and internationally.
Born in New York City on Dec. 8, 1952, Manilla began his career in the 1970s producing features for News Blimps, a nationally syndicated alternative radio news service, and as production director and disc jockey at New York’s influential WLIR, where he helped introduce new wave music to American audiences, as chronicled in the 2017 documentary film, Dare to be Different. He produced a variety of documentaries and features for WOR/New York and at the Radio Today syndication company, including Flashback, Rock Stars with Timothy White, and Radio MTV.
As an educator, Manilla was a longtime audio instructor at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism where he served as the head of audio journalism. A Peabody Award winner, Manilla was also recipient of Columbia University’s Edward Howard Armstrong Award, the International Radio Festival Grand Award, RTNDA Edward R. Murrow Award, the Scripps Howard Award, and honors from Associated Press International, Billboard magazine, the Radio and TV News Directors Association, the Blues Foundation, and the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, among many others.
In June of this year, Manilla saw his decades of work honored when the Library of Congress included digitized recordings of The House of Blues Radio Hour plus nearly 2,000 original audio interviews into their archives during a ceremony in Washington, D.C.
Manilla is survived by wife Eliza Lape, sons Griffin Manilla and Chase Lape, and sister Barbara Jean Scarfone. Manilla’s complete obituary is posted here. [Special thanks to Ben’s longtime friend, Mike Henry]
