George Weber, 50, newsman

NEW YORK - Longtime WABC-AM reporter George Weber was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment yesterday with a wound to his neck, said Steve Jones, vice president of ABC News Radio.

Weber, 50, worked at WABC for 12 years as the on-air reporter for popular shows such as Curtis and Kuby. The station let him go amid programming changes last year, and he had since worked as a freelancer for ABC News Radio, the national network.

Jones said he called police after Weber failed to show up for a scheduled shift on Saturday.

Police at first found nothing amiss at the three-story brownstone in Brooklyn's Carroll Gardens neighborhood where Weber lived alone, Jones said. But yesterday, police checked again and found Weber dead in his apartment, the victim of an apparent homicide, Jones said.

Police released few details of Weber's death. A spokesman said only that the victim was found dead at the scene around 9 a.m. with a neck wound. Autopsy results were expected today, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner's office.

Weber worked at stations including KGO in San Francisco and KTLK and KMPC in Los Angeles before coming to New York.

Weber recounted on his blog how he had been fascinated with radio from an early age and had set up a makeshift radio station in his childhood home in Philadelphia.

"While still in high school, I talked my way into a job at a daytime-only radio station in nearby Doylestown, Pa. - WBUX," he wrote.