Speaking of Dating Oneself...And A Couple Of Other Observations

[CentralFloridaEagle]

1) Jackson Walker's is a name I've been wondering about as well! If I remember, he worked for SL-100 and/or WFOR/WHER (or both) after leaving WXXX. Great question; hope we find out where he's at!

2) It should be approaching Jim Gibbon's 45th anniversary at WDAM-TV! That should be close to, if not, the record for continious tenure of a television personality at one station. And all these years he's just done the morning news/weather and co-hosting Midday.

Jim's certainly been in the biz as a talent more than 50 years, starting as a teen at WLAU. Looking at his WDAM bio http://www.wdam.com/Global/story.asp?S=247222, he's responsible for an interesting engineering feat: in the mid-fifties created and produced Mississippi's first stereo broadcast (by wiring together two AM stations to serve as left and right channels.

And 3) Living in the Tampa Bay area, it's amazing to note that Media General, which owns the best run and top rated news operation in the market with WFLA-TV 8 http://www.wfla.com (it also owns the Tampa Tribune, also owns WHLT-TV 22...which it runs as a virtual POS. One would believe that MG would at least make a respectable effort to improve it's worth, especially in the area of news.

 

[gregdymon]

3) Living in the Tampa Bay area, it's amazing to note that Media General, which owns the best run and top rated news operation in the market with WFLA-TV 8 http://www.wfla.com (it also owns the Tampa Tribune, also owns WHLT-TV 22...which it runs as a virtual POS. One would believe that MG would at least make a respectable effort to improve it's worth, especially in the area of news.

Charles,
You know the market well enough to know that WDAM was the only game in town long enough to be able to strangle any other news organization in the Pine Belt. They have the years and years worth of contacts that go back so deep and so far that if they wanted to the staff there could probably write the news before it happens and be pretty much correct. (As a matter of fact, they tried that once... its called the Oscar Black case, remember that?)
MG or whoever owned 22 would have to sink MILLIONS of dollars into the news department and marketing department to steal a few top reporters from DAM and to work VERY hard to quickly establish some important contacts in the area... which wouldn't be done with a News Director from OUTSIDE the market. That makes it that much harder... not a lot of News Directors inside the market are available.
Its a lot like what happened up here in Meridian.... stations came in and tried to topple WTOK... look around here now... only ONE news station on the tube and guess who it is? That's right, TOK. Why? because they already had the relationships, the experience and could use both of those to undermine (intentionally or not) the news operations of the other stations. Incumbency has its benefits.

 

[Russ L.]

Robert Pickering is name that I haven't heard in years. I just came up on this board this past weekend and saw your name. How long you been in Florida? Still in radio?

Russ L. Williams

 

[CentralFloridaEagle]

It was great to see Russ L. Williams' name on this board. Glad to hear you're doing well.

I've been out of the radio business about 12 years now and work in a call centre. My last radio job was as Asst. OM/Public Service Director for a small Standards/Big Band formatted AM in Winter Haven. Between absentee owners and an inability to aggressively sell the station (even with the area's large 35+ population, especially during the winter), it was simply not to be. Regardless, the station sounded really well, and I was really proud of what we did.

Even after this long out of the biz, I still miss it a bit and try to keep up with what's happening.

You can e-mail me at [email protected]. I'd love to hear from ya.