2026 LIU Post & WCWP Homecoming Weekend October 4, 2026

Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Education, Football, History, Internet, Interviews, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Photography, Pop, Radio, Rap, Rock, Sports, Technology, Travel, Video.
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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 20

NOTE: Two of the alumni hosts, Alana and Tom, do not use their last names on the air. So, I have omitted their last names from this post.

The 2026 Homecoming Weekend block on WCWP/WXBA and at LIU Post ran from noon on Friday, September 18, through midnight on Sunday, September 20 (Monday, September 21). The focal point was the LIU Sharks‘ Homecoming football game against the Villanova Wildcats.

Rather than write a long preamble, let’s get started.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18

I arrived at the Abrams Communications Center around 11:15 AM as Project Independence and You celebrated its 15th anniversary. That weekly show was live in studio 3 and I set up for Instrumental Invasion, the first show of WCWP‘s annual Homecoming Weekend, next door in studio 2. For only the second time (but the first at the station itself), I did not use CDs. All music and liners were on a flash drive that I connected to the computer and loaded into Zetta. I learned along the way that the liners were better off on an internal hard drive. So, nearly an hour into my show, I copied those to a folder on a network drive provided by station manager Dan Cox. He then put those into Zetta for me to re-add.

Homecoming Weekend began one minute after noon, following underwriting and a Jim Cutler-voiced legal ID.

I made a separate recap about my show here, but this is a photo Dan took of during one of my sets:

Aircheck video:

Aircheck audio:

Alana was next at 2PM with Rockin’ Retro Radio, a prerecorded show.

Hank Neimark and John LiBretto were next at 4PM with Strictly Jazz. Jeff Kroll ran the board.

Here is how the show sounded…

…and how most of it looked:

Yes, I was interviewed at one point.

During Strictly Jazz, I took this photo of John Zoni, Jeannie Moon, and Pat Kroll:

John and Jeannie hosted the LIU Sharks football pregame, halftime, and postgame shows in studio 3 on Saturday. John also had his usual classic rock show at 9PM Friday.

Preceding John at 7PM was The DFK Show with Jay Mirabile.

Jay’s wife Leonora took the photo of me and him. Then, I asked for one of her with Jay.

10 days later, Scarlett Helen Mirabile was born! Congratulations to Jay and Leonora!

I made a video featuring of Jay’s first hour, which included another interview of me. Exclusive to the video is a flashback to a Mike Chimeri Show aircheck that had the “wouldn’t you know it, they stopped” quip.

And here is a scope of the entire show:

I got a ride home from my parents during Jay’s second hour.

Jay gave way to the aforementioned John Zoni at 9PM.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19

Saturday began with nine hours of prerecorded shows, including a Strictly Jazz rerun.

At midnight, Spider Harrison.

At 2AM, the bonus edition of Instrumental Invasion, which you can read more about here.

Little did I know what my 1989 ad-lib (specifically, to “Shake It Off“) would foreshadow.

Principal prerecording occurred on my Twitch channel during streams on August 27 and 28, combined below into a 58x speed montage, set to “Cinco Cinco Seis” by Four80East.

The Dad Rock Show with Tom ended the prerecorded streak at 7AM.

Live programming resumed at 9AM with David Friedland, seen after his show with John Zoni:

A scope of David’s show (joined in progress):

I arrived back at LIU Post during the Sharks football pregame show, heard here in its entirety:

That’s my cue to head to Shark Stadium for some of the Homecoming game’s first half.

Villanova would match the Sharks’ field goal, then take a 10-3 lead. The Sharks got within four points on a second field goal, but the Wildcats answered that. Villanova’s 13-6 lead was wiped out on a pick 6 and extra point for the Sharks. Unfortunately, LIU’s go-ahead field goal was immediately answered with a Villanova touchdown (and extra point). One interception later, the final score was 20-16. It was the third straight Homecoming heartbreaker.

The video below combines the Shark Stadium recording from my EOS R7 with studio 3 footage from my Panasonic HC-X1500 camcorders.

I consulted the box score for my on-screen graphic homage to an actual football telecast (if it were the 1980s).

Since this is a radio station, I’ll include separate audio files.

Drive for first field goal (and lead of the season):

Halftime report (plus Jeff Kroll’s cord entanglement):

Postgame show:

After Bernie Bernard called in to announce the 2026 WCWP Hall of Fame inductees, host Ted David spoke to station manager Dan Cox, 2022 HOF inductee Travis Demers, and 2015 inductees Jeff Kroll (seated) and Bobby Guthenberg (standing).

Ted David was inducted into the WCWP HOF in 2014, and Bernie in ’13. 2026 was Ted’s second year as Homecoming Weekend coordinator.

The 2026 class of inductees were Karen Fiorelli (2003), Larry Lamendola (1980), Mark Snider (1983), Steve Torre (1986), and Walter Youngmann (1980).

Here is full audio of the announcement:

And video with some editing of the aircheck:

That was the last video I made this year. The rest of Homecoming Weekend is audio only, but again, this is a radio station.

Speaking of Bernie Bernard, below is her 4PM show, starting as always with “Denmark Street” (about Denmark Street), “We Got to Get You a Woman,” and (not heard in the scope) “Reminiscing.”

Thanks to Bernie for providing her hour 1 file to fill the automation gaps at the beginning and end.

The remaining Saturday photos start with this one of KJ Mills and Alana:

KJ hosted an R&B show at 6PM on Sunday. Scroll down for that, and scroll up for Alana’s prerecorded Rockin’ Retro Radio that ran at 2PM Friday.

Thanks to Alana for taking photos of me with KJ Mills…

…and Travis Demers:

Mike Riccio and Bobby G. hosted their top 100 songs of the 1960s show at 6PM following Bernie Bernard’s 4PM prerecord.

Thanks to Mike for passing along a scan of the top 100 chart:

Here are Bobby G. and Mike, joined in progress:

My parents picked me up for home around 6:30 PM.

Just as I didn’t plan on including the Sharks pregame show, I’m throwing in Bernie’s aural thesis on pirate radio. This originally aired in 2022, but found a new audience this year at 9PM Saturday.

The thesis was followed at 10PM by Total Access with another radio diva, Sami Jo Negron.

Sami Jo and her husband-to-be Pete Sacoulas were among Bernie’s students before she retired in 2016. The theme for Sami’s show was songs from 2013 to ’17, her years as a student at LIU Post. Of course, that included two songs from Taylor Swift‘s 2014 pop turn, 1989. Not only did Sami play “Shake It Off,” which I invoked in my Instrumental Invasion prerecord while backselling a Sam Riney song the year 1989, but also “Style.” See what I meant about unintentional foreshadowing?

As a Swiftie of nearly three years, I appreciated the inclusion of those songs. For the sake of non-Swiftie readers, I’ll withhold Taylor Swift news that broke after Homecoming Weekend, but here I am with Sami Jo and Pete in 2021:

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 20

Sunday’s first seven hours were all reruns: Spider Harrison, the Homecoming loss to Villanova, and Instrumental Invasion.

At 7AM, Cindy Schwartz hosted a [prerecorded] special edition of Rockin’ History, commemorating LIU’s centennial and the United States semiquincentennial.

John Commins’s prerecorded show followed at 8AM with nothing but 1970s rock songs.

Billy the Kid (Billy Houst) had Sunday’s first live show at 10AM. Joey C. (Joe Conte) and Little B3 co-hosted Billy’s hard rock show.

At noon, Jamie Mazzo played a mix of rock, ska, punk, and indie.

Any instances of AC hum were filtered out in Adobe Audition. That was an issue late in Jamie’s show and the start of Ted David’s 2PM show.

Here was Ted during his 2024 Homecoming Weekend show (selfie by Ted):

The main focus of Ted’s ’26 show was cover songs, with most covered by Hindley Street Country Club from Adelaide, Australia, and Moscow-based Leonid and Friends. It was enough for me to affectionately dub this “the Hindley Streetonid and Friends cover song showcase.” Listen:

Jeff and Pat Kroll had their turn at 4PM.

After their show, Jeff and Pat caught up with WCWP alumnus George Petersen, who hosted Shades of Jazz, the spiritual successor of Strictly Jazz, from 1974 to ’77. 2026 HOF inductee Walter Youngmann served as Shades of Jazz coordinator when he was a student. Alan Seltzer shared fond memories of working with George and regular Shades of Jazz engineer Walter Syzak, and how they were regulars at the weekly staff Monopoly game.

Here is George Petersen with the Krolls after their 2026 show wrapped up:

Thanks to Jeff for the photo. I wish there were more photos from Sunday, but as of publication, this is it.

KJ Mills hosted his aforementioned R&B/hip-hop show at 6PM.

It was nice to hear DJ Eli W. Sen make a cameo.

After Rockin’ History reran at 8PM, one show remained: Rock ‘N’ Soul Gospel with Grandfather Rock Chris MacIntosh. Check it out.

Once Garth Hewitt‘s “Red Hot and Cooking” gave way to underwriting, the 2026 WCWP Homecoming Weekend was over and regular programming resumed.

Post-production began on Monday, September 21, and continued gradually through the morning of Sunday, October 4. Unlike last year, I airchecked every second of original programming myself. I did so with timer recordings in Audacity on my bedroom computer and the guest room computer, and on my laptop at the Abrams Communications Center via a USB phono preamp connected to a radio tuned to 88.1 FM.

I learned ahead of September 18 that Windows considers these preamps microphones and outputs one channel by default. That’s why my FM tuner recordings in previous years had unfavorable sound quality. You have to go into audio settings and switch to two channels. Problem solved!

The FM tuner supplied airchecks of the live Instrumental Invasion, Rockin’ Retro Radio, Strictly Jazz, the football game, the Hall of Fame announcement, and Bernie Bernard’s show. The WCWP website’s stream player stops after five hours, but the TuneIn link runs continuously (unless the page crashes and goes to an error message). After alternating between home computers on Friday and Saturday, I mainly airchecked on both computers on Sunday. The link seldom crashed when using the Edge browser. Thank goodness what happened last year (unknowingly airchecking silence) didn’t happen again.

I’ll stop this tangent before I go too far afield.

Thank you very much for reading all the way to the end. Bonus thanks if you also read my Instrumental Invasion recaps. The experience is a labor of love. It may get tedious and stressful, but the payoff in compliments is well worth the strife.

See you in the spring at the Hall of Fame ceremony.

I’ll leave you on a happy note from Shark Stadium: the LIU Sharks football team won their first game of 2026 yesterday! Leading the Mercyhurst Lakers by as much ten points, they hung on to win by three, 27-24. Here’s hoping NEC (Northeast Conference) play yields more wins for LIU in their remaining six games.