( CNN ) Longtime New York City radio and television personality Joe Franklin has died . He was 88 . `` Joe went unexpectedly and passed away Saturday night , '' friend and former producer Steve Garrin said . Franklin was a fixture on late-night radio and TV in New York , working at WJZ and WOR , and recently at the Bloomberg Radio Network . `` The last two weeks were the first time he ever missed a broadcast in over 60 years '' Garrin said . Though he never broke onto the national scene , Franklin was `` in many ways , the pioneer of the modern TV talk show format , '' according to his website , which says he interviewed more than 300,000 guests . The likes of Woody Allen , Dustin Hoffman , Barbra Streisand , Bill Cosby and Liza Minnelli got early exposure on his show . He also interviewed offbeat characters who would give `` The Joe Franklin Show '' a `` great uniqueness . On any given night you might find a world renown artist sitting next to a balloon folder from New Jersey , '' his website says . He was remembered as a `` NYC legend '' and `` radio and TV icon who was the spirit of a hard-working New Yorker '' by fans on Twitter . Others said that his `` accidental absurdism was like an Ionesco play every night '' and that `` Joe Franklin was every New Yorker 's oddball , congenial neighbor . '' People we 've lost in 2015 . Franklin , who was often parodied on `` Saturday Night Live '' by Billy Crystal , also played himself in such films as `` Manhattan , '' `` Ghostbusters '' and `` Broadway Danny Rose . '' He was an avid collector of entertainment nostalgia . His website says he had more than 50,000 movie stills , 170,000 magazines , 20,000 playbills and 200,000 pieces of sheet music . Photographs show a lot of his collection crammed into his office . Actress Martha Plimpton tweeted : `` All the best things about New York are going away . RIP Joe Franklin . '' And a tweet from Actor Harvey Fierstein read : `` Joe Franklin gone ! ! ! ! Damn ! He gave me my first TV exposure and I certainly was n't alone in that . '' That sentiment may be his enduring legacy , as comedy writer Chris Regan tweeted : `` Before YouTube , Twitter , etc. , the ambitious-but-not-necessarily-talented had few options . Places like The Joe Franklin Show gave them voice . '' CNN 's Joe Sutton contributed to this report .
Franklin was a fixture on New York radio and TV for more than 60 years . He also played himself in films like `` Manhattan , '' `` Ghostbusters '' and `` Broadway Danny Rose ''