NYC Radio: Personality Vin Scelsa Announces Retirement

Vin Scelsa

Vin Scelsa, a master of free-form radio who has been a standby on New York radio stations for nearly 50 years, will retire on May 2 with the last installment of his long-running show, “Idiot’s Delight,” on WFUV, he announced on the air Saturday night.

The NYTimes calls the 67-year-old Scelsa one of the pioneers of free-form radio, the style of loosely structured, highly personal programming that became associated with rock D.J.s on FM stations in the 1960s and ’70s.

Scelsa began his radio career in 1967 at WFMU, then the station of Upsala College in East Orange, N.J., which he attended as a student. He has since been heard on WBAI, WABC, WNEW and WXRK, where, during the 1980s, his show took the name “Idiot’s Delight.” After his contract at WNEW was not renewed in 2001, he moved to WFUV, where has remained a fixture each Saturday night.

WFUV also announced on Saturday that Mr. Scelsa’s final show on SiriusXM’s channel “The Loft” would be April 30.