He was acknowledged by TV historians as the first talk show host, a pioneer. He died on Saturday reportedly of prostate cancer.
His first late-night show was launched in 1950 and lasted until 1962 on the channel WJZ, the forerunner fo WABC. After what, Franklin kept on hosting the « Joe Franklin Show » on the channel WWOR until 1993. In these several decades, Franklin is said to have interview about 300,000 guests. He was indeed famous for inviting singers, actors and Broadway performers before they were actually famous. According to the New York Post his hosts were notably Charlie Chaplin, Barbara Streisand, Salvador Dali and many more.
He was also working for radios shows . After his TV show stopped in 1993, he worked for the Bloomberf Radio Network. On top of that he also had a try at movies when he played in Woody Allen’s ‘Broadway Danny Rose’.
"The last two weeks were the first time he ever missed a broadcast in over 60 years » told Steve Garrin, friend and former producer to CNN.
Many tributes were made on Twitter such as George Wallace who honored Franklin saying that he was « the first to take a chance on all of [us]. »