Mr. Wooten, going to the boss and telling him to put UBNO on 590 after Katrina has to be one of the greatest things you've ever done. It belongs on your permanent resume (you never know, Clear Channel may decide they can't afford you one day.) WDIZ also belongs in the Broadcasting-101 text book chapters on Hurricane Katrina, UBNO, and WWL. This story is also worthy of being mentioned in your eulogy.
Zach, excerpts of the story about WDIZ and UBNO belong on the history pages on your website. For some reason the Wikipedia page on United Radio Broadcasters of New Orleans is very brief.
As far as the OO vs. PAP case, the WJHG news report is short on details. It has signs of good ol' fashion southern spin to cover up the true story of that evening written all over it.
Here's how the story should be passed down to the young'uns, it should keep getting better every time it's told.
The Bay county public information officers were manning the fort as the deadly squalls of Hurricane Dennis moved into Panama City when Mr. Wooten realized that the bad guys across town were sabotaging his work and attempting to bring the good folks of Panama City down for good. He quickly jumped in to his pickup and drove through hurricane force winds and blinding rain to the front line of the attack. Once he arrived at the Legion of Doom... Mr. Wooten jumped out of his pickup with his trusted double barrel in hand, he spit out a chaw of Red Man, and proceeded to put the evil doers down just before blowing a couple of holes in the unlicensed transmitter that was interfering with his work. The Panama City police were called in to pick up the bodies as Mr. Wooten cracked open his last cold Budweiser and returned to his post manning the controls at WPAP. As required by federal law, the incident was reported to the FCC, but the Yankees sent down to investigate didn't understand "Southern Justice" so no federal action was taken. No one will ever know how many lives Charles Wooten saved. Since that night, OO has never been able to recover or they could simply be afraid of what Mr. Wooten might do to them if they ever tried to compete, making their future in the Panama City radio market uncertain, at best.
There's certainly more to the story because now Mr. Wooten is under a gag order and will never be able to confirm any of this to the public, but perhaps he'll tell some of the story on his deathbed and it'll be added to his eulogy along side aiding UBNO and using WDIZ to deliver the best news available to the evacuees in Panama City.
As a disclaimer, I lost my house to Katrina, so all the UBNO/WWL news reports after the storm will be burned into my mind forever.
