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Conservative radio's Bob Grant dead at 84

Conservative talk radio pioneer Bob Grant died on New Year's Eve in Hillsborough, N.J., the Branchburg Funeral Home announced Thursday. He was 84.

Grant, who hosted shows on New York City's WABC and WOR from 1984 until 2013, was seen as a major influence on many of today's leading conservative talk show hosts, including Sean Hannity, who replaced him at WABC.

"He was certainly one of the most important talk show hosts of all time," Michael Harrison, the publisher of the trade magazine Talkers, told New York Daily News on Thursday. "There were others before him, but he was a founding father of modern talk radio."

Grant was fired from WABC in 1996 after he joked that the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown may have been the one person to survive a fatal plane crash "because at heart I'm a pessimist." (Grant later expressed regret over the remark.)

Grant worked at WOR from 1996 until 2007, when he returned to WABC before retiring in 2013. The New York Daily News and Newsmax have more details.