TIBBETT! They're naked!

A life can be measured in songs cued, flags saluted, and nights under stadium lights. We sit down with radio mainstay Ted Tibbett to trace the winding road from a childhood spent in studios and parades to a draft notice in 1968, a detour to South Korea, and a homecoming that turned into four decades behind a high school press box mic. Ted’s stories are vivid and generous: a father who sang and read poetry on the air before World War II, a small-town talent show where Elvis Presley placed third, and the early shifts where cab fare cost more than the paycheck but the dream was worth it.

The conversation delves into what local radio brings to a town: companionship, context, and a familiar voice when the weather turns or the Tigers take the field. Ted shares lessons learned during a rookie hurricane broadcast about who calls the shots, the delicate boundary between personality and professionalism, and the grit it takes to keep a station alive. 

You’ll hear outrageous, laugh-out-loud moments with a mercurial owner who once boomed “TIbbett! They’re naked!” at a Broadway show, along with tender reflections on veterans’ service, civic leadership, and why the national anthem still brings a tear.

We also pull back the curtain on today’s talk radio, including conservative news talk, the economics of satellite programming, and how to maintain a local heartbeat when syndication pays the bills. 

Ted guests range from members of Congress to SEC legends. He also reveals why time, temperature, and the Powerball update still matter more than algorithms. If you care about media that sounds like where you live—Hattiesburg, the Pine Belt, or any town with a signal—you’ll find wisdom and warmth here.

Subscribe, share with a friend who loves radio, and leave a review to help more listeners find these stories. Your voice keeps this community strong.

Links to Stephen's incredible novels:

The Death Letter

Subscribe, share with a friend who loves radio, and leave a review to help more listeners find these stories. Your voice keeps this community strong.

Links to Stephen's incredible novels:

The Death Letter
The Bondage of Innocents

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Hello everyone, and welcome to Stories from Cold Springs. This is the podcast where we examine storytelling and creativity. Today's guest is both just an amazing storyteller as well. He's well known around uh these parts. He's a radio announcer, radio man, uh, radio talk show. He's done it all, and we'll have him tell us about that. But more than that, he's a dear friend, he and his wife, to my wife, and me. So, Mr. Ted Tibbett, welcome.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Well, thank you very much, uh, Stephen, Dr. Beam, Professor Beam, Storyteller Beam, writer Beam.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Well, I appreciate all that as well.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

You you'll answer to one or all, won't you? Yeah, yeah. Why not? Why not? It's it's interesting that uh a man of medicine who was a man of education before that has found that his love of life after retirement is writing and talking and visiting with people. That's pretty good. You're doing it right.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Well, I appreciate that. I I enjoy what I what I'm doing now more than anything else I've ever done, I believe, except I did enjoy teaching a whole lot. I didn't dislike being a medical doctor. I don't want to come off that way. But uh I love this more, and there's there's no harm in that.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

You know, if people live by that old phrase, if you love your job, you never go to work. It actually is true. Well, it is true. Yeah, I do that same thing. I love what I do, or else I wouldn't still be doing it at my age.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Well, I know you you've had a long career. Let's go back to how you got involved in radio.

Loving Work After Medicine

Growing Up in Radio

Father’s Pre‑War Showbiz Life

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Getting involved in radio is pretty easy for me. My father was in radio. I grew up in it. My father, prior to World War II, was a nightclub entertainer. He had a band and a yellow Chrysler convertible and zoot suits and those two-tone shoes and wild ties, and uh he sang with his band all over the South. And he had a radio show at night that was broadcast uh at night on a nightly basis, I think, around the South, a lot of radio stations. But uh the kicker was, and he told me, and I I couldn't believe people would listen to this knowing what we do today on radio, but he would sing and read poetry at night. And so uh later in life, uh when I was grown, and I was going through some of his memoirs helping him write some stuff, I found l hundreds and hundreds of letters from women who said, Oh, Gene, I said, I went to bed listening to you last night. Uh- you were in my bed as I listen. I said, Daddy, you need to get rid of this stuff. You know, if mom ever caught you with all these letters, these women but they were radio listeners, you know, back then, and he was a good-looking guy and uh had that band and could sing, and uh he was kind of a tenor, a Frank Sinatra sort of guy, and did real well with it, but then uh Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, so he went and joined the Marines and served in the Marines during World War II, which leads up to some of my patriotic work that I do. When he came out of the military, he joined uh veterans organizations like the American Legion. It was very active in him. So as little kids, my sisters and I were going to parade, saluting flags and saying the Pledge of Allegiance, and which I loved that, but my father found that there was more money in management and ownership of radio than there was in singing and reading poetry. So uh a friend of his, Bob McGrainey, who was one of the founders of the Mississippi Association of Broadcasters, invited him to uh put a radio station on there in Tupelo, Mississippi. And so that's where I was born. I tell people that uh Ted and Elvis Presley are both from Tupelo, and I said, There's two statues when you go into town. Mine's the one with pigeon poop on it, you know. He did a lot of broadcasting there, and I go with him to different events. He was at events, I was just a baby. They asked his radio station at the Alabama, Mississippi State Fair in Columbus to MC a contest, Tupelo's most promising talent. And Elvis Presley finished third in it. And some little kid on harmonica finished first. And so I said, Ah, Dad, what was that like? He said, Well, you know, this little kid came up to me and said, Mr. Tibbetts says, Would you manage me? I believe I could be something one day. I said, What did you do, Dad? And he says, Oh, I told him, You ain't got no talent, but this kid can play the harmonica. And you know, it was funny because uh Brandon Presley used that picture when he was running for governor last time in his campaign, talked about how he was Ken Delvis and showed that picture, and there's my father with this jet black hair MC in the thing, you know. And I talked to him on the phone. I says, uh, you know, I'm more of a Republican than Democrat, probably. Just don't tell everybody what the deal is.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

But a real nice guy, he was.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

I enjoyed talking to him.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

So your dad was in radio?

SPEAKER_02 5:28

All his life. All his adult life, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

When did you first start really dipping your toes in?

Tupelo Tales & Early Elvis

Childhood Around Entertainers

First Radio Jobs & Lessons

SPEAKER_02 5:35

Well, I I went to a lot of events as a kid. Matter of fact, my parents, when I was about six or seven years old, bought me a suit and I'd go to parties with my parents. Big cocktail parties somewhere, major events, or important people in them. And I would walk around and tell jokes and talk to them, and I was kind of a trained dog, I think, sometimes to go play with everybody while we're doing there. We lived in Atlanta, and he owned a business that he represented a group of radio stations, a big uh kind of av agency, and he'd put them all together. And they had a variety club in Atlanta. And so as a kid, I'd go on a Saturday with him downtown, and he would go get his hair cut. Now, haircut to my daddy in Atlanta, Georgia back then, and the way he dressed, he wore ties to football games. That's the way people did back then. But he would get a haircut, a manicure, and a shoe shine, all in the barbershop. I don't think you see that anymore. He would do that and then we'd leave that and we'd go to the variety club, which was the top of a big hotel there. And that's where people in the entertainment industry all gathered. I've sat at a bar about nine, ten years old with my father and Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin and people like that, you know. But you you don't act like they're stars. You know, if you're in the variety club, you're supposed to act like everybody's whatever. And he was in it from the radio end of the entertainment business, which was still very big back then. Uh, you know, back then there was more people listening to probably radio. Then television was in infancy, and when I lived in Atlanta, probably ten years old. I can remember when uh we got our first television set, and we were the first on the block, and this in like 1951, and everybody run over there to see it, you know, and he'd watch an old black and white screen. So I just grew up in that, and then uh we would go to veterans' events and have fun with that. And when I was in high school, my mother said uh one day, said, I'm tired of him just sitting around doing nothing. Take him and give him a job. So that was like lighting up for me. I went to the radio station he owned in Laurel. All radio announcers started on either late Saturday or early Sunday morning, and I started introducing gospel music and preachers on Sunday morning, which wasn't the most fun thing in the world. I wanted to be on Sunday afternoon and play rock and roll, which I finally got, and I thought, man, I'm playing music I love to listen to. Girls are calling me on the phone and talking to me, and at the end of the week I'm getting a paycheck for it. I I would have worked for free. You know, just uh being in radio, but I would I was gung-ho and doing everything around the radio station I could, and the older employees counted me in the room one day and said, You better slow down, boy. We're gonna take care of you. I said, What for? I said, You're making us look bad. You're working too hard. And that's the first experience I've had with people trying to slack off. You know, I thought, you know, you work, you're supposed to work as hard as you can. So I kind of grew up with that with my father and got to doing it. And uh there was a guy there named Fats Harveston who was well known in the Laurel area. He broadcast games on Friday night, but they taped them and played them back on Saturday morning. And so I got interested in play by play with going to him and carrying a big old tape recorder. They didn't have computers or cassette recorders or anything. Everything was on a big tape recorder and you had to plug it in, and we'd record games and play them back on Sunday. Wallin's Wallen Sack and Ampex were too big, which you know. So uh I I started out uh probably in uh 1962, something like that. I finished high school in 63. I worked in radio and went to Jones for two years and then came to Southern. When I finished Jones, I'll always remember this. Now keep in mind I'm from Laurel. Students from Laurel back then thought Jones was the thirteenth and fourteenth grade of high school. You know, we weren't from Soso Meyer and Glade or someplace. They were in college, you know. We were just additional grades. We'd go there in the morning and go home in the afternoon, you know. You had to have a letter from your parents if you took a girl out back then at Jones. So it was different. But I finished Jones and the counselor said, I'm from Laurel. He said, Now you got to go to senior college. I said, Well, where do you suggest? He said, How about southern Mississippi? I said, Where's it at? He said, son, it's in Hattiesburg. You sure? I said, I've been through Hattiesburg. I don't think I've seen a school there. Everybody in Laurel was old Miss Mississippi State. So when I came to Southern, it was the first time I was doing there. But I worked at the radio station in Laurel, and I wanted to be a fast talking dish jockey, because I thought that's what the girls like. Everything was about what the girls like or wanted to me. And so there, I'd be on there and I'd say, Hi there, boys and girls, guys and cows from your stacks of wax and pallas of platters from Soundstage No. Two, here's the Beatles just for you. And hey, boys and girls, you want to know what the weather's like? Well, I'll just take a leak out the window and see. Oh, my daddy came screaming down the hall. Ted, we do not leak out the window on the radio. Do you understand that? Slow down. Slow down. So my first experience of being reprimanded by my father, I worked harder than anybody because if you ever work for your family, you want to prove yourself. Everybody's watching you, thinking you're going to get a better deal or not work as hard as everybody else. So I worked real hard, and that was just part of it. I came to Hattiesburg, he came with me and got me a job as a radio station. At first I wanted to work for the old Triple Egg. That was a rock and roll radio station. And I went over there, and the manager of the station at that day was at the country club. And so my father called him. My father knew everybody. He was a past president of the Broadcast Association. And they said, uh, hey, my son, I got my son Ted down here. He's going to go to Southern. I'd like to work at him. I'll be glad to give him a job. Have him come back tomorrow and talk to me. Well, he said, Ted, if you come back tomorrow, I said, man, I don't I wanted to come back with him. I felt more secure because he knew everybody. I said, is there anybody else? He said, well, there's another station in town. This guy's a little different, but his check will always be good and he'll take care of you. So I went to work for the old WHSY. Went over there and I remember my father said, Charlie, when they talked about old times, I said, I'd like to give my son an audition. And he says, No, I won't. And my daddy says, why not? He said, because if he's your son, he's got a job. Tell him he'll start the next day. So I started radio there and was losing money initially because my hours were Saturday 4 to 8, Sunday morning 6 to 12, and back Sunday night 6 to 12, and probably making less than$1.50 or$1 an hour. But I was living in the dorm at Southern, and I didn't have a car and I was taking a cab there and back. And cab fare was running me more than I was making in my paycheck. And so I had to do something. I went home one weekend. My parents had moved to Mobile. I never lived in Mobile. But one of their neighbors had a 54 Ford for sale for$100, and my mother loaned me$100, and that$54 Ford became my vehicle. That's a real girl picker up.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

What kind of music did HSY play then?

SPEAKER_02 12:57

They played what they call middle of the road. Because I always remember there was an artist called A Walk in the Black Forest, Horse Johnkowski, and that was about the fastest thing I ever played. Now on Sunday night from 10 to midnight, we played classical music, like Beethoven and Chikowski and stuff like this, which I didn't like and didn't understand. But the only people really listened to it were professors at Southern, but they were rather religious and sitting around their radio and listening to that. Well, I'd be on there and I'd try to introduce this music. I thought all people should introduce it, and the phone would start ringing, and it'd be those professors. Young men said, Would you do us all a favor? I said, What can I do for you? They said, just play the damn music and don't try to introduce it. So I'd put on two hours of classical music, then sign the station off and jump in my 54-4 and head back. I got the uh one of the first job I had there had hardly been hired, and a hurricane was coming through. So there was a guy that owned the radio station, there was a manager of the radio station, there was a sales manager, and I had just worked that night, and I was going to work midnight to six. They normally signed off at midnight, but due to the hurricane, they were going to stay in the next morning. They were talking to me, and the owner of the station told me what to do. The manager told me what to do, and the sales manager told me what to do, and all three were different. And so this is when I first really got introduced to the owner of the station that I became his boy until he passed away. I went to the program director, was a guy just a little older than I am. I said, Man, I don't know what to do. I got three different instructions, man. I'm going to be in trouble. He said, Who told you? And I told him the owner, the manager said, He said, Do what the owner says. He runs this damn place. Don't worry about anybody else. So I did just as he did. And about ten minutes after midnight, the manager called me and said, That's not the way I told you to do it. I said, That's the way Mr. Holt told me to do it. Okay. Then the sales manager's thing, and I told him to say, well, okay. So I learned real quick in life that uh the one that carries the most weight is the guy that owns the place.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

So you got a degree, received a degree at Southern Medicine, right? And then at some point you married.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

I got married, I guess, around the senior year, shortly after we got married, we got she got pregnant, and we had a little girl, beautiful daughter, that's uh still the apple of my eye. She's uh very successful with Goldman Sachs in Dallas right now. She's a vice president of them in the Dallas area. Done real well, but that's when I got drafted 23, married out of college, six-month-old daughter. That was real rough, and I had to learn to uh be a father, you know, and then go off to war and I went to uh Jackson for the abduction station and I I think I was explaining earlier, but they took 110 people and they took 110 of us.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

What year was this?

SPEAKER_02 16:04

1968.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

1968. So Vietnam was fully ablaze.

College Years & On‑Air Mishaps

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Vietnam was was where I probably should have gone. I ended up eventually after all my training in South Korea. I kind of got lucky. First thing I didn't get lucky when I was in the induction station and they're testing you to find out where they're going to send you for basic training and then AIT advanced individual training. And they said, Can anybody in here type? And I started to raise my hand because I could type 105 words a minute on a manual typewriter. I had taken typing in college and it just blown out, I blew all the girls away, you know. I don't know why I could type, but I could type real well. But I've been telling people who I was and what I've been doing. This guy next to me elbowed me, says, Don't let them know you can type. I said, Why is that? They'll keep you here for two years at Fort Polk, Louisiana in this hell hole down here, typing orders. You won't ever go anywhere to do anything, and says, based on what I know about you, more than likely you're going to the Pentagon. I said, You know, I probably am. They probably need me out there. I'm great at public relations and advertising marketing. I can help this war out from the Pentagon. Yeah, I'm not going to make a that mistake. Sad mistake. I could have spent two years at Fort Polk typing orders, you know, but I didn't do it. So then I went to uh basic training, came out of basic training into AIT, and you get your orders then. And my orders said eleven B ten. Anyone in the Army that's listening now know that's light infantry riflemen. That's the guys that get shot. I said, Oh my goodness. So I went through infantry training at uh Fort Polk, what they call Tiger Land. You'd walk down the street and a hole would pop up and a Vietnamese would jump out and go, pa-pa-pa-pa, you know, you're dead. Just try to scare you all the time. You'd you'd be in formation during the day and they'd tell you how many of you are gonna die. Luckily I was 23, keep in mind, a little more steady than these 19-year-old kids, and they're just crying every night, you know, we're gonna die. Listen to the radio and hearing Glenn Campbell play Galveston, you know, and then Peter, Paul, and Mary leaving on a jet plane or something. They were just all so I kind of became a counselor with that, and then I I graduated from that and uh had an unusual deal. My father was in Washington, D.C. on business, he was in radio, and John Stennis was a friend of his, very powerful man, great guy, too. And so uh they were good friends, and they were talking over some coffee or something, and he said, How's your family? He said, Oh, my son's at Fort Polk, and you know, he said, Well, that's not good. Your son's real talented, or something like that. He needs to be doing something good. And my father said, Well, you know, they're doing whatever. So I don't realize when they get through with that, John Stennis gets on the phone and calls the commanding general down there and says, You've got a guy down there you better check out. So I'm walking around the base, and this Jeep and MPs pull up, grab me, and throw me in there and says, uh, the general wants to see you. I said, Oh my God, what have I done? Major general of the whole Fort Polk. So he comes in there and he says, sit down in this seat right here. It's more comfortable. I'm looking around, I'm a private, you know. And he says, How do you know John Stennis? I said, I don't know him real well. My father and him are very good friends. Well, he tells me you ought to be in my chair and ought to be in your chair right there. I said, Well, that's not quite true. But he was a real nice guy, and he talked to him and he gave me a couple MLS. I went to send to another school, and then said, I just see where the seats fall, but you'll have So I I went to a school for 71L20, which is an admin specialist, and then they awarded me a broadcast specialist, which I'd have loved to have gone for work for Armed Forces Radio. But I found out it really don't matter where they train you, they've send you where they need you. And at that particular time, during the war, there's four weeks in a month. Vietnam needed three weeks a month for whatever. If you were a cook, if you climbed a pole, if you drove a tank, or if you shot a machine gun, it took three weeks to keep Vietnam going. It took one week to keep the rest of the world. So if you hit that one week, you went someplace. You went to Italy, Berlin, Germany. In my case I went South Korea. But it's just kind of like a lottery, you know. Three weeks three of the four weeks of the month you go to Vietnam, one week you go someplace else. So I went to South Korea, which uh it was still it was considered combat over there because of the demilitarized zone, but served my time, came home, and uh went back in radio.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

And so you've done that ever since.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

I've done that ever since. I came back in 1970. I got interested in doing play-by-play sports. And so for 41 years I was the voice of the Hattiesburg High Tigers, and I broadcast that, and my last year of doing it, they named the press box in Hattiesburg High, the Ted Tibbet Press Box, which was pretty good to me.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Well, that's quite an honor.

Breaking In at Hattiesburg Radio

SPEAKER_02 21:07

It was a great honor. I appreciate that very much. The school board had to okay that, and so I tell people, you know, if you ever go there, go into my press box and enjoy it. Very active in the community. Initially, when I came back out of the military, I'm like, more soldiers, we don't want to hear military. You know, let's let me get away from it for a while. But then I became very interested in it and what was doing, and I'd started joining veterans' organizations, getting real active. And in the middle 70s, I was selected. Well, I was first outstanding I'm men of Hattiesburg, and then I became Veteran of the Year. And I became chairman of the Hattiesburg Veterans Committee. I was uh commander four years of the American Legion Post and commander four years of the BFW Post. And I still do that. You know, I just uh I'm I'm one of those, I don't call them I j I just enjoy flag waving, you know, that I still get a tear in my eye when I hear the national anthem, and I stand proudly and salute or put my hand over the heart, and my family does the same thing. I tell you what, in life it's a lot easier if you're married, if your wife supports you and she does with you what you do. And I'm very fortunate my wife Barbara does that. So I'm broadcasting radio and doing crazy things and that.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

At uh some point in your career, you're told me stories about a man you worked for.

SPEAKER_02 22:27

Yeah, the crazy guy that said I could have the job without the audition.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

He called me Tibbett. And he'd got, son, son, Tibbett, come over here, you know, do this. And he'd take me everywhere the story you like. He was always doing something. Well, one day he had gone to the Qantas Club, and some of those Qantas members, older gentlemen, I'm one of those now, but not back then. And they said, Charlie said, we understand y'all are playing some heavy steel on the radio station. And so he came to me, called him his office, and said, I got to ask you something, Ted. I was his manager, and I said, tell me the truth now. We're playing heavy steel on this station. Didn't even have heavy metal, right, you know. And I said, I promise you, Chief, we're not playing heavy steel on this station. Well, okay, I'm worried. I'll tell him not. He was he was crazy in ways, a great broadcaster, and one of those from the Great Depression, never finished high school, became a multimillionaire and then lost all of it. But he was a bugler right before World War II over at the C C C the Roosevelt program. He was in Richmond. They helped build a football stadium in Laurel and down at Kelp Shelby, the lake, and all that. He was a bugler and a cook. But he got in radio and he he never really changed with the times too much. But you like the story of the Broadway store.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

Oh, I'm waiting for it.

Hurricanes, Hierarchy & Doing It Right

SPEAKER_02 23:51

We went to New York. We'd go to New York or Chicago all the time. I always travel with him. He would buy books and I would have to carry him. He'd buy 15, 20 books and carry him back. And Broadway shows had to see every Broadway. We'd go to two Broadway shows a day, and then go to the Algonquin Hotel afterwards and sit in the lobby and listen to the critics and the writers and the actors all talking to each other. But I was so tired of going to Broadway shows and he was telling me, he says, Tibbet, little buddy? Tell me, little buddy. He says, Go down and see the concierge and get us some tickets to a Broadway show. So I went down there and said, What's available in the afternoon? The guy looks at you, you know, most of the good shows are at night. I said, I just got to go to something. He looked at me and he says, Is nudity bother you? I said, Not me. He said, How'd you like to go see old Calcutta? I said, What's it about? I said, just a lot of nude people. I said, Give me two of the better tickets. So I went back up there and said, Holt, I got us two great tickets to a new show here you're really gonna like. So we go into the theater and sit down, and I'm sitting with him, you know, and uh about that time the stage curtain comes up and the lights come on, there's drum rolls, and there's about twenty naked people on the stage. I mean, they didn't have socks on. And Holt, in this loud radio voice, hollers, Tibbot, they're naked. Damn, they're naked. And everybody in the theater just started laughing, you know. I said, Oh my god, I'm trying to slide in the seat. So during the show, after that, every time there was a lot of nudity on the stage, the whole audience would holler, Tibbett, they're naked, they're naked. And Ho says, Why are they doing that, little buddy? They know you. Oh, God, Ho. The stuff that you do. It's heavy steel, and they're naked, but he was he was a great broadcaster. He built a TV station, Tallahassee, part of the downfall. And we had we had lunch with the president of uh NBC. And he says, Do you need any help down there? And I remember my boss telling him, he says, No, we got it all covered. It ain't nothing but radio with a picture. Well, you don't tell a TV person that. We went to Hollywood. That was the fun part about it. We'd go to Hollywood to their NBC affiliates parties. So we're out there, and I'm like a Japanese tourist. I got a Kodak camera going around getting pictures, made with everybody. And I'm with Dick Clark talking to him. And so we're talking, programming stuff, and then Holt sees me and he runs over there. You know, he's always trying to jump in my picture. And he says, Tibbett, can I get in this picture too? I said, Okay.

unknown 26:28

Ho.

SPEAKER_02 26:28

So he gets in there and the three of us take the picture and he turns around and he shakes his hand. I'm Charlie Owen. He says, Dick Clark. And he says, What do you do, little buddy? And he says, Well, a little radio and a little TV, and he patted him on the back and says, You hang in there, son, you might make it one day. And he turned to me and says, Where do you find all these losers? Get somebody in Portland. I tell you one on me that I got caught. Marie Schreiber was there, and she was dressed eloquently in a low-cut dress. So I says, Marie, and you got a name tag on it, and they're really kissing up to you because you own the TV stations, and they got to make sure that the affiliates are happy. So I go there and put my arm around her to get my picture made with her, which is fine. And I was having to keep my eyes straight ahead because she was bosom-y. About that time I feel a vice come down on my shoulder and it's starting to hurt as it gets tighter. And this voice says to me, Tod, can I get in the picture too? I said, Oh my God, Arnold Schwarzenegger. And he looked at me the whole time, and I looked up at the ceiling. If you get the picture, my eyes are up on the ceiling after that, you know. I said, good to see the two of y'all. I'm not going to hang around them. And came up. My wife was just up and downs hanging with politicians. I worked one summer for a month when William Winter was hold low me out to William Winter running for governor. John Bill Williams beat him at the time. But I I feel funny about they do this autopin.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Don't know Mississippi.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

They have autopin. Now they talk about that all the time, what Biden did. Me and these other people would spend half a day signing the governor's not that he wasn't the governor, but William Winter's name on a letter, you know, a fundraising letter. So glad to hear about something. I'm not even a good writer. You know, I don't know how they ever confuse my signature for his.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

So what do you do today in radio?

Marriage, Draft, and 1968

SPEAKER_02 28:25

Do talk radio. Work for uh WMXI and WFOR. We have two stations. We actually own WFOR, which was the first radio station on the air in Mississippi. And now we own it. It's a sports talk station, but on uh WMXI we do News Talk. It's a conservative station. We carry Fox News and programs like Sean Annity. It's good.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Radio today, currently, how do you see that landscape?

SPEAKER_02 28:55

News talk is still very good. And actually news talk does good under any. It's good now because President Trump's in. It was good when Biden was in because everybody is mad at him. You kind of walk a thin line with it. But particularly if if you're in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, you know, across this country there's hundreds into thousands of conservative talk radio stations. I don't know of any real liberal talk radio station. They just don't make it. We've got to be informative, entertaining, and and and another reason people listen to radio sometimes is to be a constant companion. You're in a car by yourself, you want to hear another voice. And you got to realize that people want to know the time, the temperature, and what's going on. And you know, this morning one of the biggest first things, did anybody win the Powerball? You know, people waiting on that. Nobody did. So we give little tidbits like that, actually, what the payout is. We have a lot of guests. We have Congressman Ezzel on every week. Uh we have Frank Corter, which is a political blogger who knows state politics very well. And we other have other people like that. Michael Guest, the other congressman, and every once in a while a real interesting guy we have Senator Tupperville from Alabama. He was the coach at Auburn. I noticed when they signed the uh proclamation move in the space to uh Huntsville, that Tuberville was next to President Trump when they were signing that being promotion. He's gonna run for governor too of Alabama, by the way. So it's a fun job. You'll never get rich, you know, maybe if you own the station, but if you just work in but it's again one of those if you love your job, you never go to work and I I do it to be involved. I I'm quite confident if I retired I'd go home and my wife would either eliminate me or I would die of going to sleep watching gunsmoke on TV, so there's nothing good on TV anymore. And that helps us 'cause people listen to radio.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

You'd mentioned before we started recording that it's tough for radio disjockeys who want to be disjockeys the way they used to be, to bring on the music and uh introduce the music and do all of that soft patter that they used to do when I was growing up listening to radio, but that What's happened to that?

Training, Typing, and Avoiding Vietnam

SPEAKER_02 31:10

So much is satellite driven now. I doubt if there's a radio station in the Pine Belt that has an announcer on the air twenty-four hours a day. We're live from six to eight in the morning when we do our talk show and maybe for some other special things when we carry ball games. But after that it's satellite driven. So you will have uh Sean Hannity on the air or Ryan Killmead, or so there's very little of the local element into it. And even the music stations, if they're country rock or whatever they are, they're probably satellite driven as well. Their big shows are all major from networks somewhere. And uh in one sense, it's been good because of SAB Radio, it saved a tremendous amount of money on personnel costs. If you're running satellite 24 hours a day and it's a great program playing the music or news or talk top talkers, whatever it is, and you're not paying a salary. Back in 19 late 70s, our payroll was larger at a lower wage than it is today for personnel. Because you don't pay for all these satellite programs, you know, that you've got. So in that sense, it's been good for radio.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

So they're paid for by ads then that uh ads and the network to have them on now. So I'm assuming you have engineers and things at every station that takes care of that.

SPEAKER_02 32:35

Yeah, we have an engineer. We're very low. We got a few local uh we got salespeople and we got some management and bookkeeping and as far as on air. Myself and the owner, Michael Paul, are the two main ones that do everything.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

And that's the way it is.

SPEAKER_02 32:51

That's the way it is in most of them.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

Your personnel cost is down and you're able to exist. And if you were paying today with as competitive as is, an ounce was twenty-four hours a day, you probably wouldn't make it. Not in a market this size.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Well, this has been uh wonderful, most informative. I learned a lot about you I didn't know, which is always good. Hope you forget some of it. Yeah, well, I probably will, you know. I'm I'm not at an age that I remember some things anymore. So I want to thank our listeners for uh spending some time with us today. We drop a new show once a month at this point, on the seventh of the month. So we invite you to keep listening to us, keep downloading these. Finally, I would like to mention that I am an author and I have two books that you can find on uh Amazon or the other platforms, or you can find them at your local bookstore. If they don't have them, they can order them for you. The Death Letter and Bondage of Innocence. I appreciate if you pick those up. So again, thank you. Thank you, Ted, for joining us.

SPEAKER_02 34:00

Well, it's been a pleasure. Always a good friend, you and your wife, and you're doing a great job. But thank you very much for allowing me to be on there with you.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

Appreciate that. Join us next month.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

This episode of Stories from Cold Springs is brought to you by MCS Home Center, Bellevue. They're more than just a building supply store, they're your destination for creating a cozy, beautiful home this season. They've got everything you need to make your house feel warm and welcoming. Located at 7329 US 98 in Hatterburg.