Ben Manilla

Ben Manilla, award-winning radio producer, audio entrepreneur, pioneering disc jockey and broadcast journalism educator, passed away on Monday, September 30, 2024 in Lagunitas, California. A native New Yorker and a California resident for more than 30 years, Manilla, 71, is survived by wife Eliza Lape, ex-wife Saundra McPherson, sons Griffin Manilla and Chase Lape, sister Barbara Jean Scarfone and a large extended family.

Over the course of five decades Manilla spearheaded and operated a variety of companies specializing in audio production, distribution, and consulting, and created programming for virtually every radio format and music genre, heard on thousands of commercial and public stations across the US and internationally. As an educator, he was a longtime audio instructor at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism where he served as the head of audio journalism. In June, Ben saw his decades of work honored when the Library of Congress included digitized recordings of The House of Blues Radio Hour plus nearly 2,000 original audio interviews into their archives during a ceremony in Washington, D.C.

A Peabody Award winner, Manilla was also recipient of Columbia University's Edward Howard Armstrong Award, the International Radio Festival Grand Award, RTNDA Edward R. Murrow Award, the Scripps Howard Award, and honors from Associated Press International, Billboard magazine, the Radio and TV News Directors Association, the Blues Foundation, and the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, among many others.

James Ben Manilla was born on December 8, 1952 in New York City. His father, James, was a filmmaker and his mother Margarita (Fernandez) Manilla was a fashion director. Manilla played football and was a nationally ranked wrestler at Manhattan's Trinity High School, but declined an athletic scholarship at New York University in favor of its drama school, where he DJ'd at the college radio station, WNYU, and performed in school stage productions.

Manilla began his career in the 1970s producing features for News Blimps, a nationally syndicated alternative radio news service, and as production director and disc jockey at New York's influential WLIR radio station, where he helped introduce new wave music to American audiences, as chronicled in the 2017 documentary film, "Dare to be Different." He produced a variety of documentaries and features for New York powerhouse radio station WOR and at the Radio Today syndication company, including Flashback, Rock Stars with Timothy White, and Radio MTV.

Manilla moved to San Francisco in the early 1990s, where he founded Ben Manilla Productions (www.bmpaudio.com), a production and syndication company located in San Francisco's Mission District. From 1991 to 2022, the company's many award winning productions included the long running Elwood's BluesMobile with Dan Aykroyd, a program whose archives were recently inducted into the Library of Congress, along with series and specials for clients ranging from the Blues Foundation to PBS to the Walt Disney Company. Other national and international series include:

Philosophy Talk from Stanford University

Inside the National Recording Registry with the Library of Congress

The Science of Happiness from UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center

Voices in the Hall from the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

The Blues with Keb' Mo'

The Loose Leaf Book Company with Tom Bodett

The Putumayo World Music Hour

From the Archives of The History Channel

Manilla's work with Martin Scorcese and the Experience Music Project helped lead the year-long, nation-wide multimedia event, "The Blues." It included BMP's thirteen-hour radio documentary, The Blues with Keb' Mo', the most widely distributed special in the history of Public Radio International (PRI).

In 2004, Ben co-authored his first book with Dan Aykroyd - "Elwood's Blues" published by Backbeat Books.