K
Kevinc
Guest
With all the TV stations doing specials on remembering 9-11-01...it caused me to recall where I was when the attacks took place.
I was producing the morning show at KLDE at the time with Mike McCarthy and Janice Dean (now on Fox News Channel doing weather...) We got a call about the first plane hitting a building from our news guy, JP Spees at Metro. At the time we had no television in the studio so we had no clue how bad this was. Then when the second plane hit we knew we were under attack. By then we had stolen a TV from the lunchroom and were plugged in to what the national news was saying about this. We suspended all music and commercials for the next several hours and opened the phone lines to listeners. We heard from the angry, the sad, the skeptics, the confused, the ones who wanted to go nuke the entire middle east that very day... we heard it all. We stayed with the talk format until about noon..taking breaks every now and then to air reports from network news sources.. Our morning show stayed on the air through early afternoon rather than having a midday guy come in and take over.. someone finally thought to bring us pizza about 1 p.m. although we hadn't really thought about being hungry. I remember looking out the window of our studio and the eerie feeling of not seeing any planes flying... Our window faces north so we always see flights coming and going from Intercontinental and some heading across downtown toward Hobby... But there were none that day. When Ron Parker finally decided it was time to go back to a little music mixed with the talk... I had to decide what song was to be played first... so since we were an oldies station I picked Jackie DeShannon's "What the World Needs Now is Love." I recall staying on the air with Barry Kaye for about an hour after he took over at 3 p.m. It was my job to help him get up to speed with everything and to help with the phones until more relieve showed up.
When I finally left the station to head for home... I remember just sitting in my truck for a long time trying not to cry. I don't think I was successful in that effort though.
Kevin Charles
I was producing the morning show at KLDE at the time with Mike McCarthy and Janice Dean (now on Fox News Channel doing weather...) We got a call about the first plane hitting a building from our news guy, JP Spees at Metro. At the time we had no television in the studio so we had no clue how bad this was. Then when the second plane hit we knew we were under attack. By then we had stolen a TV from the lunchroom and were plugged in to what the national news was saying about this. We suspended all music and commercials for the next several hours and opened the phone lines to listeners. We heard from the angry, the sad, the skeptics, the confused, the ones who wanted to go nuke the entire middle east that very day... we heard it all. We stayed with the talk format until about noon..taking breaks every now and then to air reports from network news sources.. Our morning show stayed on the air through early afternoon rather than having a midday guy come in and take over.. someone finally thought to bring us pizza about 1 p.m. although we hadn't really thought about being hungry. I remember looking out the window of our studio and the eerie feeling of not seeing any planes flying... Our window faces north so we always see flights coming and going from Intercontinental and some heading across downtown toward Hobby... But there were none that day. When Ron Parker finally decided it was time to go back to a little music mixed with the talk... I had to decide what song was to be played first... so since we were an oldies station I picked Jackie DeShannon's "What the World Needs Now is Love." I recall staying on the air with Barry Kaye for about an hour after he took over at 3 p.m. It was my job to help him get up to speed with everything and to help with the phones until more relieve showed up.
When I finally left the station to head for home... I remember just sitting in my truck for a long time trying not to cry. I don't think I was successful in that effort though.
Kevin Charles