by Olivia Young

Today, Gary Axelbank is a 72-year-old veteran journalist, best known for his longtime role as the host of BronxNet’s talk show BronxTalk. But 50 years ago — before he was awarded the 2025 Bronx Walk of Fame People’s Choice Award,  or became a regular on City and State’s Bronx Power 100 list — his career launched as a disk jockey at WETT, a Maryland radio station, during a hurricane.

Axelbank grew up in Van Cortlandt Village, first in the Amalgamated Housing Cooperative and then in Park Reservoir, Amalgamated’s sister co-op. The middle child of three boys, he spent his days the way most of his peers did — basketball in the park, stickball in the schoolyard and blaring The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” on the radio.

His dad was a principal at a Bronx high school, and his mom the director of Marble Hill Nursery School, Axelbank said.

“I was just a kid from the Bronx,” Axelbank said. “Went to school. Didn’t play by all the rules. Wasn’t particularly brilliant. Wasn’t particularly stupid.”

In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, a broadcast style called progressive rock emerged, where DJs picked music attuned to the listener’s lives. A sunny day meant “Summer in the City” by The Lovin Spoonful. A rainy day was “Riders on the Storm” by The Doors. Throw in some Bob Dylan, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” or “Like a Rolling Stone,” and this era was transformative for Axelbank. It taught him how to live and how to think, he said.

In middle school, while Axelbank was a student at P.S./M.S. 95 The Sheila Mencher Van Cortlandt, he recalled the school needing an announcer for its dance festival. Donning a white shirt and a little tie, oversized microphone in hand, Axelbank recalled asking himself, “‘Why am I not nervous?’”

Axelbank initially wanted to be a gym teacher, and spent a year at the State University of New York at Cortlandt as a physical education major. It was there that he got his first taste of reading the news on the campus radio station. He soon transferred to Lehman College and eventually — following the advice of his parents, who were urging him to figure out his life path, he said — attended Announcer Training Studios, a broadcaster school that used to be in Midtown.

In August 1976, after sending out audition tapes across the country, Axelbank landed a job in Ocean City, Maryland, at a radio station called WETT. Axelbank drove five hours in the pouring rain, accompanied by a pet cat, who laid on his shoulder and watched as the rain started to come down harder and harder. When Axelbank finally arrived at the studio, he stepped out of the car into a foot of water — Hurricane Bell, a tropical cyclone that hit much of the East Coast, had made its way to Ocean City.

“Well, welcome to broadcasting,” Axelbank said, recalling that first day.

He bounced around East Coast stations for the next few decades, at one point working under broadcaster Howard Stern, years before “The Howard Stern Show” launched. In the early ‘90s, Axelbank was DJing at night and teaching during the day at The Center for the Media Arts, a former New York City-based trade school. An executive director walked in one day, Axelbank said, seeking interns for a new cable network in the Bronx that would become BronxNet.

The first story aired on the new network on July 1, 1993, was Axelbank’s. It featured 13-year old Victor Vargas Jr., a national chess champion from the Bronx. BronxTalk launched the next October, and Axelbank has been the face of the talk show since.

BronxTalk has no primary focus, but instead spans the wide range of issues that touch the borough — politics, education, arts, the economy and nonprofits or community leaders leaving their mark. In 2016, Axelbank also launched Bronx Buzz, which hosted journalists, writers and other local figures with insight on news in the Bronx. The program ended in June 2025 due to budget cuts, Axelbank said.

Axelbank said the philosophies between radio and television broadcasting are similar, allowing him to make the transition with ease.

“I used music and being a DJ to help people understand their lives better, to entertain them when necessary, and to support whatever ideas they have,” Axelbank said. “I’m doing the same thing every week on BronxTalk.”

With more than 1,500 episodes under his belt, it’s difficult to pinpoint a moment he is most proud of, Axelbank said. But, the episodes that show debates between local, state and federal political candidates representing the Bronx is what Axelbank feels has been most impactful to the community. It gives constituents the chance to see their potential elected officials in a fair light, Axelbank explained, and it is a responsibility he does not take lightly.

Another source of pride have been stories that highlight the borough’s community. Axelbank pointed to an obituary piece on Mickey Mantle, a longtime player on the New York Yankees and Baseball Hall of Fame inductee. He also recalled a profile on John McSherry, a Major League Baseball umpire. Axelbank and a crew went to Shea Stadium in Queens and interviewed McSherry in the locker room.

At the heart of his five decades in the industry, most of which were spent focusing on his home borough, is a love for the craft and for the Bronx. He believes the borough is underserved, and shouldn’t be. Spotlighting residents’ work or informing them of available resources is crucial, he said. It also strengthens his bond with community members.

At the end of each BronxTalk episode, Axelbank said he asks himself, “What is the message that will help Bronxites do better coming from this discussion?”

Keywords

Gary Axelbank,

BronxTalk,

BronxNet,

Bronx journalism,

broadcasting,

radio DJ,

WETT,

Van Cortlandt Village,

Lehman College,

Bronx media,

Bronx Buzz,

Howard Stern,

Bronx Walk of Fame,

journalism career,

Bronx news