Johnny Calabro

Johnny Calabro was born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. and raised on the music of The Beatles played on rock and roll radio stations, WMCA and WABC. Johnny caught the radio bug in his early teens while liv ...Show More

Johnny Calabro was born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. and raised on the music of The Beatles played on rock and roll radio stations, WMCA and WABC. Johnny caught the radio bug in his early teens while living in the Marlboro Housing Projects, and with his best friend, built an illegal "Pirate" radio station that became the subject of an intense Federal Communications Commission manhunt in the mid 1970s. After being caught and shut down by the FCC, it didn't take long for Johnny and friend to set up yet another clandestine underground radio operation while attending Brooklyn Technical High School. This time, WFAT 1620 AM, was able to elude the FCC for over 16 months, while transmitting up and down the Eastern Seaboard of the USA, as fr west at Kentucky, and north to Ontario, Canada.By the time Johnny and his band of merry radio pirates were finally shut down by the FCC, Johnny had become the most prolific Pirate Broadcaster in the US with 15 years worth of underground broadcasts on "The Largest Underground Radio Operation in the United States" logging more hours on the air, including from the 1987 Radio Ship Sarah, Radio New York International (RNI) anchored 3.5 miles off the coast of Long Island, NY. Johnny's exploits as "Hal Hall" while in high school on WFAT, and the subsequent manhunt by the FCC agents in New York were the inspiration for the motion picture character "Happy Harry Hardon in "Pump Up The Volume."Johnny entered the world of professional legal radio and worked his way up to the ABC Radio Networks Engineering Division (as a Master Control Engineer) and ABC News Radio (as a News Engineer) working with ABC News anchors such as Peter Jennings, Sam Donaldson, and Paul Harvey. In 2013, Johnny decided to make the move from behind the camera and step out in front of the camera - and began a new career as an actor. Hide