by Olivia Young<\/p>\n
Today, Gary Axelbank is a 72-year-old veteran journalist, best known for his longtime role as the host of BronxNet\u2019s talk show BronxTalk. But 50 years ago \u2014 before he was awarded the 2025 Bronx Walk of Fame People\u2019s Choice Award,\u00a0 or became a regular on City and State\u2019s Bronx Power 100 list \u2014 his career launched as a disk jockey at WETT, a Maryland radio station, during a hurricane. <\/p>\n
Axelbank grew up in Van Cortlandt Village, first in the Amalgamated Housing Cooperative and then in Park Reservoir, Amalgamated\u2019s sister co-op. The middle child of three boys, he spent his days the way most of his peers did \u2014 basketball in the park, stickball in the schoolyard and blaring The Beatles\u2019 \u201cSgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band\u201d on the radio. <\/p>\n
His dad was a principal at a Bronx high school, and his mom the director of Marble Hill Nursery School, Axelbank said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just a kid from the Bronx,\u201d Axelbank said. \u201cWent to school. Didn\u2019t play by all the rules. Wasn\u2019t particularly brilliant. Wasn\u2019t particularly stupid.\u201d <\/p>\n
In the late \u201860s and early \u201870s, a broadcast style called progressive rock emerged, where DJs picked music attuned to the listener\u2019s lives. A sunny day meant \u201cSummer in the City\u201d by The Lovin Spoonful. A rainy day was \u201cRiders on the Storm\u201d by The Doors. Throw in some Bob Dylan, \u201cSubterranean Homesick Blues\u201d or \u201cLike a Rolling Stone,\u201d and this era was transformative for Axelbank. It taught him how to live and how to think, he said.<\/p>\n
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, \u201c\u2018Why am I not nervous?\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
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 \u2014 following the advice of his parents, who were urging him to figure out his life path, he said \u2014 attended Announcer Training Studios, a broadcaster school that used to be in Midtown. <\/p>\n
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 \u2014 Hurricane Bell, a tropical cyclone that hit much of the East Coast, had made its way to Ocean City. <\/p>\n
\u201cWell, welcome to broadcasting,\u201d Axelbank said, recalling that first day. <\/p>\n
He bounced around East Coast stations for the next few decades, at one point working under broadcaster Howard Stern, years before \u201cThe Howard Stern Show\u201d launched. In the early \u201890s, 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. <\/p>\n
The first story aired on the new network on July 1, 1993, was Axelbank\u2019s. 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. <\/p>\n
BronxTalk has no primary focus, but instead spans the wide range of issues that touch the borough \u2014 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. <\/p>\n
Axelbank said the philosophies between radio and television broadcasting are similar, allowing him to make the transition with ease. <\/p>\n
\u201cI 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,\u201d Axelbank said. \u201cI\u2019m doing the same thing every week on BronxTalk.\u201d <\/p>\n
With more than 1,500 episodes under his belt, it\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
Another source of pride have been stories that highlight the borough\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
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\u2019t be. Spotlighting residents\u2019 work or informing them of available resources is crucial, he said. It also strengthens his bond with community members. <\/p>\n
At the end of each BronxTalk episode, Axelbank said he asks himself, \u201cWhat is the message that will help Bronxites do better coming from this discussion?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\tKeywords<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tGary Axelbank,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t BronxTalk,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t BronxNet,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Bronx journalism,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t broadcasting,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t radio DJ,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t WETT,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Van Cortlandt Village,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Lehman College,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Bronx media,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Bronx Buzz,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Howard Stern,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Bronx Walk of Fame,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t journalism career,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Bronx news\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Olivia Young Today, Gary Axelbank is a 72-year-old veteran journalist, best known for his longtime role as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[8914,128,117656,117652,117655,15899,64114,104907,117651,104908,117657,117658,24449,9,24,63,117653,129,131,130,91388,117654],"class_list":["post-311851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-broadcasting","tag-bronx","tag-bronx-buzz","tag-bronx-journalism","tag-bronx-media","tag-bronx-news","tag-bronx-walk-of-fame","tag-bronxnet","tag-bronxtalk","tag-gary-axelbank","tag-howard-stern","tag-journalism-career","tag-lehman-college","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-radio-dj","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-van-cortlandt-village","tag-wett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}