Radio Personality Still Wins (Guest Host: Greg Thrift)

This week on Wired Together, we welcome legendary South Hill radio personality Greg Thrift — proof that even in an age of automation, personality still wins.

From his first day behind the mic to the big tech shifts that changed radio forever, Greg shares laugh-out-loud stories, behind-the-scenes memories, and a few truths about keeping community connection alive in a digital world.

Whether you remember the days of carts and turntables or you’ve only known streaming and smartphones, you’ll love this mix of nostalgia, humor, and heart.

🎧 Wired Together is produced by WinternetWeb Technologies, a family-run web design and tech studio based in Bracey, Virginia.
💻 Visit us at winternetweb.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:05

Alright, welcome again to uh WonderNet Web's uh uh Wire Together.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Yes, today was uh gonna be a special day. We uh we kind of gave you all a teaser last week, but we have Greg Thrift with us as a guest star. And um maybe our AI co-host can introduce him, and then I'm sure Greg can introduce himself as well. But um Alright, uh can you introduce Greg Thrift?

unknown 0:38

Absolutely, I'd be happy to.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

So everyone, I'm privileged to introduce our human guest host, uh Greg Thrift. Greg's a long time voice in South Hill. He's been a favorite MC at local events for years. He's got that great radio energy and plenty of movies we're doing. So we're lucky to have him on today.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

All right, he said that just like I wrote it. Right, that's right, exactly. He does that, it's weird. I love that guy. So, how is everybody?

SPEAKER_02 1:16

Uh it's it's been a it's been a busy week. We got to start a school, and I'm sure any families and family businesses can certainly understand that struggle.

SPEAKER_05 1:24

Yeah, many prayers to everybody as kids start back.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

I'm a little nervous. This is only my second podcast ever.

SPEAKER_05 1:31

Oh, wow. I didn't know you hadn't one before that. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Well, I well, I was a rookie at that. Hermie Sadler had me do one for him. This has been uh a couple of years ago. Oh wow. All this is all this technology is very small beans. All this technology is very you you have you have microphones in here that cost more than my first car.

SPEAKER_05 1:57

So uh you know, you want to get it started? And what you're talking about, you know, the early days and how new this has all been. So um, you know, one thing we talk about is tech and old and new. So um what was it like in the beginning?

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Uh in radio? When I was a kid, that there was a there was a gentleman on the radio in South Hill, his name was Barry Callis. And and I really, really looked up to him. He has one of those great radio voices, but I never had or never will have. Oh, he did. Great voice. And uh he went on to work in Richmond. But I remember as a as a kid, like in sixth, seventh, eighth grade, whatever, listening to him on the radio and thought, what a cool job that that would be. Well, uh, I graduated high school and I was going to be a uh an elementary school teacher. And so I was going to college to to be an elementary school teacher and uh was working part-time at a radio station uh down in Henderson, North Carolina, in order to pay for college. And a uh uh full-time slot opened up at the station, and the manager came to me and he said, you know, you're not horrible at this. You can do one or two things. Thanks for that vote, right? You you can you can do one or two things. You can drop out of school and starve to death in radio, or you can stay uh in school and starve to death as a teacher. So uh I I left school and and I always regret that. I always regret that I left. But uh I got into radio and and kind of over the years on and off was in it for the next 35, 40 years. Right. That is really good. I've never heard that.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

No, I haven't heard it part either.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

It was it was it was crazy, but the the business is so different. When I started my first that first station was a little AM station down in Henderson, they had an FM station too, which was a big, huge FM station, but it played country. I wasn't in I wasn't interested in that. Uh the AM station was uh the Big 89, the Rock of Henderson. It was a rock station, and they had really, really great, great people. So I had some wonderful, wonderful teachers. One of them was a guy named Bill Stainbach. On the area went by Bill Thomas. He left there and went to Birmingham, Alabama. So he went from Henderson, got a job in in Birmingham, Alabama, and he was the Billboard magazine Southeast DJ of the Year. Oh wow! He was really, really, really good. So uh I was I was blessed in those early days to have been around some people that really knew what they were doing and knew how to do it, and what little bit of that rubbed off on me that kept me in the business, but uh uh I'm I'm not enough to turn on their microphone, but that they really were but I was fortunate in that way, but it was also different, of course. Back then we were using 45s.

SPEAKER_03 4:43

Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

And I mean now it's all it's all digital and everything is recorded, but uh you would have to place the the the 45 on the turntable, take the needle and put it on the beginning of the record, and then you would have to hit it just right. You would have to move it back and forth with your finger until the sound hit the needle, and then you would stop and you would back it up a quarter of a turn. That way, when you started the turntable, it had gotten up enough speed before the needle hit the hit the actual sound on the record, right? Or else it would start like this. And so that that but all those things are so different. They had cart machines, which you're familiar with, I guess. But interesting enough, that the the that first FM station was a country station, and they had the first automation system I'd ever seen. It was a huge computer, and it probably would have taken up the biggest part of that wall.

SPEAKER_03 5:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Um, and there there were big round reel-to-reel tapes. And the uh you they had a service from a company that would send these big reels of tapes, and they would have the different DJs on those tapes and the different hours you know, on the tape. You had to change the tapes. So my first job was going in on Saturday mornings and changing the tapes on the automotive machine, and uh then on Sunday I took the remote equipment out and uh set up for three different church services. We had three different churches, and we did remotes from those. So my first job was was changing tapes and and uh doing church services. But when when the when the job opened up uh to be on the air, literally, I had to go in a room every day for two weeks off the air and do a radio show that nobody ever heard. You had you had to do the show and they would they would evaluate and record it and they would critique critique your show. And uh some of it was brutal. Some of the show was beautiful, brutal, and some of the critique was really, really brutal. I thought you were critique, yeah. But it was it was it was it was it was fun. Um I I I don't I don't remember my my first day on the air. I I I don't remember that I'm not even exactly sure what what the first uh what the first day was. I I know it was in the summer and for some reason I'm I was thinking it was it was late August and I may be able to go back into it. But back in the day, you had to actually have a license to be on the air. And I went to um while I was in college trying to get a job at the station, you had to go to Norfolk to the FAA testing site, take a test. I bought a study guide at the college bookstore for the FAA license. That's so cool. And uh and looked up and passed the darn thing. And and I say that looked up because literally I I got a license to operate a radio station and had never been inside one.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

There you go.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

I had never sat in the board, but I was licensed to do it. Now uh you don't even have to have a license. Right. But they changed that rule you know some time ago.

SPEAKER_05 7:51

Just be able to speak. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Basically, if they like you and they don't think you're gonna steal stuff from them, they'll give you a job. That's most places though, isn't it? Exactly. But it's uh all all of that is has changed. But so many, I've been blessed to work over the years with with so many fun people and so many talented people that not only that at that first station down in Henderson, but uh I worked at stations in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. I worked at stations obviously up here in Henderson. I worked for a station in Burlington, North Carolina, several different places. That business, you you you move, you you go from place to place, and uh, you know, sometime it's because you want to move, and sometime it's because management wants you to move. Yes, right.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Volunteed.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

I've been on the receiving end of both of those. But uh, you know what? I mean, anytime I've I've ever been asked to uh to disassociate myself, uh let's just say it has always led to bigger and better things. So anybody out there, if if you if you if you've ever been fired, you probably know that something better came along. Oh right. And so if if anybody out there, if they ever fire you, just look at it, it's it's it's a better opportunity coming because for me it always was. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_05 9:03

Sometimes that door slammed shut on purpose.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Absolutely, and uh, you know, the Lord upstairs is is looking out for you, right? That's right. We we were we were talking about you know funny things that had happened in in in broadcasting over the years, and uh one of the funniest is the great Christmas Frisbee disaster.

SPEAKER_05 9:23

Christmas Frisbee? I feel like that's a title.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

I left W H N C and I had had gone to another station and I'd come back to Henderson and I was working at the other station in Henderson, which was W I Z. There were two stations in Henderson, and still are, as a matter of fact. But uh but I think well I think H N C is actually gone, so there's only W-I-Z-S now. I was working at W-I-Z-S and uh I was doing mornings and we came up with an idea. It was it was Christmas time, and we went to some of our advertisers and got prizes. And we went to the town town council in in Henderson. You remember the turkey drop from WKR?

SPEAKER_05 10:05

I can't help but think about the turkey drop.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

This is so similar, it's it it's not and and if if if you don't believe me, you can ask Mike Brooks, who works at 98.4. I know his voice. He was there. He he was there. I gave Mike Brooks his first job on radio down at WICS. But anyway, we we went to the town council and we said, here's what we want to do. We want to go to the top of Vance Furniture. That is that's a five-story building in downtown Henderson, which was the tallest building in Henderson. Still still is, I guess. Um but uh we went to the town council and we said, look, we want to we want to go right before Christmas, we want to you know promote some of our advertising, we're gonna do a remote from the top of Vance Furniture, and we're gonna throw frisbees off the roof. And under the frisbees, we will have prizes. And you know, people can catch these and turn the prizes in.

SPEAKER_05 10:58

This is a great idea.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

What can happen? So we go there and we I I probably shouldn't say this. We we we we we had a we had a young man that was working there uh as almost like an intern. He was a part-time guy. His last name was Norwood. I won't give his first name. Mr. Uh Mr. Norwoody. And they were they were probably in there, he and his twin brother uh both worked there. And and the reason I'm I'm disguising his his his first name is because that morning he may or may not have imbibed some illicit uh substances when he got there because he was a great big kid and red hair and he dressed up as Santa Claus. Well, this was a big deal. We uh we we talked the fire department into bringing him down Main Street, he's dressed up as Santa Claus in their bucket truck, and they raise him to the top of Vance furniture in this fire truck, and here's this Norwood kid, and he's dressed up as an hour of his mind, and he said he when when when he clears that the front of that building and I see him, I know we're in trouble. We're in big trouble. So anyway, so Santa Claus gets up there on the roof, and uh we've got all these you know boxes, cardboard boxes filled with frisbees. Now, granted, one of them I think I think it had $250, certificate for $250 cash on it. It may have been $500, but we were so the station was so broke back then, it probably was too, it might have been $100, I don't remember.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

Couldn't have been money.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

But there was some currency attached to one of these frisbees out of the four dozen we were gonna throw. Most of them were for a sausage biscuit. Or an oil change. Right. And I mean keep in mind back then, this is probably 1980, maybe. So, you know, an old change was probably 12 bucks, who knows? So anyway, but there were sausage biscuits and oil changes and you know, tire rotations or something. Anyway, um, but one of them had a decent prize under it, and we started throwing these frisbees off the building. Unbeknownst to us, down that street there's an updraft. And so the frisbees would would would sail out across the street. Now, now we're looking down and the street, there's a mass of people. Huge.

SPEAKER_05 13:32

Huge.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Oh, yeah, we promoted this on the airbag. I mean, you you you couldn't walk down there. They had to block off. That's why we had to get the town council approval, because they had to block Main Street, which was Glenn Street, and you know, there were masses of people, and we're throwing these frisbees and they're coming right back and hitting Mr. Norwood in the face, and then sliding down sliding down the front of Vance Furniture Company. They had just put up a brand new cloth hunting over the front door. People were climbing on that and pulling that off the building. Uh some of them did manage to actually go across the street. Now, there was a little diner across the street, and and Tommy Haithcock's sister-in-law, uh, Tommy Haiticock's a friend of mine management, his sister-in-law, Norman Haithcock's wife, ran that diner. And everybody named her Booger Bear.

SPEAKER_03 14:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Well, Booger Bear's diner was across the road. Well, some landed, and she had a little low one-story building, it landed on the roof of that building. People were crawling up the side of the building that broke the gas line on the side of her building to get to the top. You know, it was but these when these things did make it down to the street, there were you know 17, 18-year-old kids knocking over 75-year-old old ladies to get a frisbee. Get a biscuit. For a biscuit. Exactly. Anyway, that uh but that that that did not that did not go over uh quite a bit.

SPEAKER_05 14:56

Cool on paper, then it was a great idea.

SPEAKER_02 15:01

It read well.

SPEAKER_05 15:02

I mean, they talked about it forever.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Oh, yeah. As a matter of fact, this is true story. My wife and I went down to Henderson to buy a new sofa and and chair for our living room, and we actually went to Vance Furniture Company and we're talking to the owner, and he it he didn't remember it, but he remembered people there talking about it. Still, right? Yes, anyway, so that's it, it's it shall live in infamy. But we we we've had we've had lots of great moments over these, but that's that's one that that really, really does stick out.

SPEAKER_05 15:37

That is too funny.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

That is crazy. So yeah, I mean we've talked about that, we've talked about funny moments, and you kind of were hinting in on the technology with the the reels that were you know pre-programmed for different hours, and you had to put all them on. Um I guess go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

But you had to record your commercials on real-to-reel tape. Right, right. And then you would you would piecing together a program. You you would you would dub them or transfer transfer them, record them over to what's what was called a cart. And the cart was about the size of an A-track tape, a little bit bigger, and it went into the machine. In the studio, you would have a stack of these. Most most studios had three, some had six. But uh you would slide the tape in and pull a handle, and a little rubber roller would come up and into the through a hole in the bottom of the of that little cart and engage that thing. And when you push start, it would it would start that tape, and you would at the end of it, when you recorded it, you would put a sub-audible tone, something you couldn't hear with your ear, but the machine could hear, and that would tell it when to stop. And so it would like if you had a 30-second commercial on there, you would it would it would play for 30 seconds and stop and it would be queued up to play it again. Interesting. And uh, and and so what basically what you did, you you had 45s, and so I mean, you had some albums you would play, but very few, most of them were 45s, and and then when it was time for a commercial break, you would load whatever commercials in these, you know, slots and these cart machines, and you would hit it, but then you when that one was over, you had to hit the next one. You had to hit the next one, and then when all that was over, then you you would hit a what was called a liner that would say, you know, uh whatever station you were on, and write a call letters and and then you would you would station intro your next record. But uh every every uh disc jockey known to man knows a whiter shade of pale than the god of the vita.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

Yeah, they were your bathroom breaker. They were your bathroom. Yeah, exactly. Yes, right, right.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

But uh perfect. Yeah. Oh, I I got fired over the phone one time.

SPEAKER_02 17:47

Oh, that's cute.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Yeah, that that was as a matter of fact, that was that was at WIZS in Henderson, and I'd only worked up by text. Right, it's something, yeah, right. I'd only been working there for maybe a month, and I and I literally uh had a had a a month-old baby at home, and uh uh I just started and it was a Saturday morning, and I was doing a Saturday morning shift and and the phone rang, and I I shouldn't say, but the but the general manager called me up and he was lit to the gills. Okay. Are you seeing a trend in video back in the day? Yes, yes, I do. Anyway, he uh he asked me what I was playing, and I and I told him, I said, Sir, it's it's a it's a song. He said, Well, if that's the kind of stuff you're gonna play on my radio stage, you just pack your stuff and get out of there. Okay. Oh my. Yes, exactly. So I didn't know what to do.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

You've had a lot of motivational speakers in your life. Absolutely. You have no idea.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Uh it's a brutal business. But uh so so I called the assistant manager. Right. And he goes, That guy doesn't even know what day it is. He says, Stay there, finish out the ship, and I did. I stay there, finish out the ship. Walked in Monday morning. Right. Scared to death, and uh the general manager comes walking in whistling, how you doing, Greg? Anyway, so it's great. So many, so many interesting characters that he really hated that song, apparently. Yeah, he was it was it was a new country song, and this would have been again about 1980, and that's when when when country was going through a transition. Every once in a while a little pop star would come in. Exactly. Exactly country. Less less Porter Wagner, more Ronnie Millsap, or even Alabama and something. Yeah. And so you know, some of the some of the old country music fans were not big fans of of what was coming along. But then everything like that, but the rock and roll changes like that. Yeah, definitely. I don't know if you've noticed, but most country songs now sound like rock and roll songs from the late 70s.

SPEAKER_05 19:41

Oh, and they've got what uh getting a little bit of rap into country and stuff like that. Different sounds are trying to. Right.

SPEAKER_02 19:51

And I think part of it is to get on different platforms so that you can multi- you know, send out your album things.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Well, just like everything, they're trying to reach a broader audience. Oh, yeah. It's like NASCAR taking races down to Mexico. They see a whole new fan base there, so they're gonna do that. So country music.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

I guess it'd be hard in England, wouldn't it? Would it have to go the other direction? I don't know. So smaller cars. I mean, I'm sure the engineers are like, how do we do this? Sit on the other side of the room. Yeah, right, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

Yeah, that's gonna throw the pit through off.

SPEAKER_02 20:22

Right, exactly. We're ready. Where were you? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

But uh no, we uh but uh everything changed in radio probably in the in the 90s, I guess it was. That would make sense. I mean, with the advent of CDs, of course, sure you didn't have to play records anymore. But all all the music started going to uh uh stored on digitally. And then they came out with with programs, and and I'm sure you're familiar with those, where all of your music and and and it'll pull up random, you know, songs and that sort of thing. And when when you could store your commercials digitally, you could store your music digitally, then they would have programs that would set up the whole day.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

You could set your platform based on whatever.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Exactly. And then they they brought in what's called voice tracking. And voice tracking, you're looking at what's called the log. The log used to have to be a paper log, and you had to check off every commercial every commercial you were supposed to play was listed on a sheet of paper. Yeah, like a manifest. Right, and then you would you would check that off as as you played that commercial. Well, the the log now is is digitally and it's on a computer screen, and you'll you'll see which song is is coming up, and then there'll be a voice track, and it's just like a slot. And you're in the production room and you go into that program and you record what you want to be in that in that space. So let's just say you're coming out of a Bruno Mars song, right? And you've got um uh for lack of a better word, uh nickelback coming. Right. Because I don't apparently I don't care what my music sounds like. But uh anyway, it would be in in in between a Bruno Mars and a Nickelback song, yeah, and uh or if it were coming out of an out of a Bruno Mars song going on a commercial break, yeah. You would say you would just start the recording and say, that was Bruno Mars with his latest here on 1077 of the lake. Coming up after the break, we got music from Minuto uh and and this artist and that artist and that artist, and you list about three and like a segue. Right, we'll be back right after this, and then you stop recording, and it will store that voice track in that slot.

SPEAKER_02 22:36

Right. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

And you may be recording that uh at nine o'clock in the morning for it to play at three in the afternoon. Well, you could do a radio show that would run from one o'clock in the afternoon to four o'clock, you could record that in about 30 or 40 minutes. And then you don't have to be able to get it. And then nobody nobody would have to be there. Right. And so most of the local radio stations, unless it you can tell if it's live in the morning, but they've they've gotten very good at disguising that. Yeah. Right. You know, because rather than give the exact time, they would say that you would in that log, you know that this is gonna hit probably about 20 minutes after you know one o'clock. Yeah. And so you would say, instead of saying it's 20 minutes after one, because you don't know that it's gonna hit the you would say coming up on the bottom of the hour. Yeah. Or right.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

Right. That makes sense. That's a good thing. Yeah, keep it vague enough to.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

If you're getting off work at 1.30 today, you got just a few more minutes to hang in there. I mean, there are different ways to say the time without saying the time. That's right. And so that that was that that was one of the things that they've started using as voice tracking. And so what that allows radio stations to do, you can have multi radio stations in one building. And you can have you can have four or five DJs that will do a shift on each one of those stations.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

And do a lot of prep and setup and exactly.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

And so they can they can run five stations with three DJs. Right or with or with five DJs. And so that has really cut down on the on the number of people that are actually working in the business. Right. Uh, most of the people in the radio now are are salespeople. If they are on the air, they're also doubling as salespeople. So um it's but it's it's it's much and and for that reason it's it's actually a little harder to get into the business to get on air now than it was when I mean when I was there. If your station was on 24 hours a day, you had to live a live person 24 hours a day. That's why most of the thing. Right. Most of the stations would sign on at you know six o'clock in the morning and would sign off at you know 11 o'clock at night. Yeah. In the case of most AM stations, they would be sun up to sundown. Right. And that was what they were licensed to do, and so you only had to have people in the summer, you had to have people longer in the air and that sort of thing. But all all of that's changed, and you can run a radio station now with three. Well, when we had 107 7 the Lake in South Hill, I was there. I was the only full-time employee. We uh I did I did some sales, I did a lot of the the recording, but we could also, you know, email a commercial to Roanoke Rapids, which is where the the the center of the of the station was, and somebody there, you would have a a different uh announcer there, cut the commercial, email it back to you, and put it in the system. And so a lot a lot of that's changed, but it it's just it's just a fun business.

SPEAKER_02 25:28

Yeah, I imagine.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

And uh but but when when they when they instituted voice tracking, it made it so much easier. I'm sure. Because I mean you still had everybody, every station almost has has a live morning show. There are syndicated talk shows like uh John Boyd and Billy or Anna, and they're they're somewhere else, and they they'll have a local person come in and record the weather and they'll have weather drops in that program. But uh it it's just it it's made it it's made it a lot easier, but it's also made it a little bit tougher to actually get in the business if you want to do it, if you want to do it locally.

SPEAKER_05 26:03

And and as we're doing the podcast, uh maybe that's why podcasting has become so big as you get back into interviews, connecting with people, that kind of thing, as opposed to you know, maybe too much automation.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

Well, when when I left radio, I had people go, why don't you open a station? Right. Well you can't just, you know, oh yeah, sure. Here we are. I mean you have to be licensed by the FCC, and then you have a transmitter, and then you have to have a tower, and then you have to have all this equipment. Podcast, you need a laptop, a microphone, and uh access to the internet. Is that about it? Pretty much.

SPEAKER_05 26:38

Yeah, a little bit, yeah. A little bit more know-how as far as uh I don't know, he does things and whispers to himself.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

He's a technological genius, right?

SPEAKER_05 26:46

I just tell him to do things, and and he's like, I don't know. And it's like, no, no, no, I know you can do this. And then it just happens, he kind of just hums for a minute, and then all of a sudden there it is.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

There it is. There may there may be some other words in there.

SPEAKER_05 27:00

Well, you cover it well.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

I I am I am amazed by people that can do that because literally when when when I started in radio, I put a 45 on a turntable, moved it around with my finger, and pushed start. I mean, we we used to laugh about it, but you know what what's involved in working in radio? Push a button, get a check. I mean, it's it's it's it's a delicate dance to it.

SPEAKER_05 27:22

Yeah, that's it. It wasn't rocket science. It's got to go together, it's got a groove. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

Here's how they taught me when I first started in radio to be on the air. You have five things that you can say: time, temperature, call letters, frequency, and your name. You can you can mix those things up and do it, do a five-hour radio.

SPEAKER_02 27:42

That's funny.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

Well, yeah, I just with Greg Thrift on 107.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

Or the temperature. Yeah. 82 degrees outside on your Monday morning with Greg Thrift on 107.7.

SPEAKER_02 27:55

Just mix it up. Whatever.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

You just have to do that. And that's all you can, and then you throw in the title of a song and you can do a whole show. But if you can do those five things, time, temperature, call letters, frequency, and your name, you mix those up, you can do an entire show. It's it it ain't it ain't that hard. If I if I did it, it wasn't certainly wasn't that hard.

SPEAKER_02 28:15

You think of sports. It's like the number four, uh, you know, it's like a basement up the, you know, and they just they're just spouting out stuff to keep things going.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

Because I could never know how to pronounce the name. Oh, yeah. Because you never cover your mouth and just mumbled and common up. Exactly. I like sports, but you you would you would see um you'd see somebody's name that you unlike the if you were doing baseball then C-A-L-D-R-O-N-E. Is that Calderone? Right. Calderone. Where do we put the X? Exactly. Right. But you knew, however you said it, somebody listening knew whether it was right or wrong. I knew you didn't know. I knew that you didn't know, I knew that you were gonna hear about it. Right because the phone was gonna ring. It's Calderon, you idiot! Right.

SPEAKER_02 29:01

So I think Oh, it's one of our uh listeners. Isn't that great? Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

Well, listener feedback sometimes tough.

SPEAKER_02 29:08

Well, this is easy because uh, you know, nobody can say anything when we're not alive.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

We can edit and nobody knows the phone number where you are. Right, exactly. So they can't go up and yell. Oh, I I had uh I I I had the the station owner one time uh uh call me while I was on the air because uh we were doing a request show and it was at night. And these guys that you know had literally been you know knee deep in some Jack Daniels were calling up like every theme, yeah. Like every 45 minutes or every 14 minutes with a request. Make sure you say that's you know, that's to to Hilda from Bobo! And so you know you you do that and then he calls back in in 10 minutes make sure you say that's to Hilda from Bobo.

SPEAKER_02 29:57

Well, at least I want a different name.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

Exactly. But what was so bad was he kept it and so fine and said, dude, you know, you you've had enough tonight. Let me get you know some other people. He came, you know, across a small town. Right. He called the owner at home.

SPEAKER_02 30:11

Oh, there you go.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

And and the owner called me on the air and said, Why would you play this? Play the song. He didn't want to hear about it anyway. That's right. That's funny. It's your pony, I'm just riding it.

SPEAKER_03 30:23

Right, right, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

Oh man. But I loved, I loved working in small town radio.

SPEAKER_02 30:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

South Hill, and I can honestly say South Hill was my favorite place to do radio out of all the places that I've ever done. Because I came in, I I'd heard him ever since I was a kid, but I came in after Frank Malone. And Frank Malone was there probably for the first 10 years or so that I was there, and he did mornings and I did middays. And I learned so much from him. Because when I I came there, I had been working at at stations in Rocky Mount and stations in Burlington. And I always had a regional approach. You wanted to reach as many people as you could reach. And so, you know, and and Frank's thing was keep it local. Yes, he was always the heart of the community. He he absolutely was, and it took me probably six months, but in six months of watching him, I said, that's the way to do local media. And and that's how I did it from from then on, right, wrong, or indifferent. Sure. If you know if you use Frank Malone as as a guide, you were gonna do okay. Frank had the quickest mind of anybody I had ever done in a couple of years. He was funny, he was he was quick, and uh, and and if you write a line, he would let you know. Yeah, he would let you know.

SPEAKER_02 31:50

In a very kind way, too.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Sometimes not so kind.

SPEAKER_02 31:53

Well, I'm talking about in public, not behind not behind the door.

SPEAKER_01 31:57

Oh, in public, yeah, absolutely. But you know, sometimes but but behind the scenes, his criticism could be sharp, but accurate. Yeah, I'm his baby. And at the end of the day, that's that's really what what you wanted. I mean, right but to watch him, to watch him work a crowd. But I mean, who else could get on on the air and talk about the mayor's wife's pantyhose? I mean, he he literally could could talk about anything and anybody, and nobody would ever get mad because it was Frank. Yeah, right. Some of the stations I worked at, if you had done that sort of thing, I would have run you out of town on rail. But we we were blessed to have Frank for so many years because he really did know how radio was supposed to work in a small town radio.

SPEAKER_02 32:44

He served his community. Yeah. He was the Chris in the morning kind of so um yeah, so I guess we've talked a little bit about uh you know the technology and of course small town radio and we mentioned podcasts just briefly, but do you have any advice on how we can stay connected as technology changes? And I kind of have something to follow that up with too.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

Stay young. Yeah, well yeah. I don't think that's always a possibility. In that case, let me write this down. Keep a teenager close. Right, right. That's my best surprise because I I have I have I have a nine-year-old granddaughter who knows how to work my phone better than I do. Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_05 33:31

And uh stare.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

I joke about it all the time with my wife. I think I used to could run a radio station. Now I I can't operate a smartwatch. I you know, I I I don't know how any of the technology works.

SPEAKER_02 33:44

Well, it's one of those things if you don't use it all the time, I mean it changes so quickly. Oh, it does. And technology makes very fast, accurate mistakes.

SPEAKER_01 33:51

Very fast. Oh, wow, I guess it does, yeah. Yeah, because I've never heard it put like that. Very fast, accurate mistakes. A lot of tech quits. Oh, yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

Um but you're also talking about how when the radio industry was changing as far as staffing, because the technology allowed for a lot of automation and how it's hard to get into that industry now, what do you think they're looking for now? When it when all the resumes are dropped on their desk, you know, are we getting back to more character? Getting back to what's what can the human bring that the technology isn't?

SPEAKER_01 34:22

In radio?

SPEAKER_02 34:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

I honestly think the personality is gonna be the big thing. Right. Um because as as Frank Malone explained to me years ago, a Beatles record on this radio station is gonna sound the exact same as that Beatles record on another radio station. It's gonna be the same. That's true. The only thing that sets your station apart is what you can put in between the records. That's true. And how you can connect. So I've it's personality. I mean, uh, literally in 40 years of radio, the one thing that I've that I've had to sell the most of was myself. Yeah. Because I mean, let's face it, I don't know how to weld. I I'm not a mechanic, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a I don't know how to do anything, and my wife laughs about that all the time. Now, I don't really know how to do anything uh, you know, productive. You know, I I can run the vacuum if I can find it, but um it's uh literally be personable. That's right. That's that's gonna that's gonna be the the best advice if you if you want to get on the radio, be different, be unique, but be personable and be relatable to whatever extent you can.

SPEAKER_05 35:37

Well yeah, we tell our kids all the time. I mean, it's it's not always what you know. Because you have the Library of Congress right here at your fingertips.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Absolutely, yeah, you gotta know.

SPEAKER_05 35:45

And so it's not so much what you know, it's it's a lot of what's gonna change uh into the future, especially with technology, because we have so much, is uh kind of who you are and how you present it, uh your character and your integrity.

SPEAKER_01 36:00

Absolutely, because uh for everything else you have YouTube videos.

unknown 36:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

Yeah, pretty much all I've used it to do that why something if you were to scroll through my phone and all of my all of my my YouTube searches, they all start with how do I that's right, there you go.

SPEAKER_02 36:18

Oh man.

SPEAKER_05 36:18

That's that's fair. That's true. Well good and kind of jump in too, you know. We've kind of learned that in small business. It's you know, maybe just go ahead and jump, you know, and you don't have to know it all, we'll figure it out, but just jump.

SPEAKER_02 36:33

Yeah, and I think it's part of that just creative just ambition, just go in and do it because like everyone says, sometimes fake it till you make it and everything. You don't know, but and start talking about it. Right, we have to push a button, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:48

Absolutely. I walked into a radio station with a license and had never seen the inside of one. Right. So that is wild. I mean that is.

SPEAKER_02 36:56

I guess at some point you get a fishing license, and if you haven't even fished, right? Exactly. So, you know, it's but yeah. Well, look, Greg, we really want to thank you for being on our podcast today.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

And and and for the two people that are still with us, thank you for listening. I have bored you to tears, and for that I apologize.

SPEAKER_02 37:17

No, I'm I muted the droid because of uh um it would still be thinking we're talking to it, and it's just a limitation of technology, but it'll come around. So but I think we're gonna be signing off our podcast here, wired together, and um, you know, if you're listening, you found us, but you know, we can be found on many of the apps like Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, YouTube, your smart TV, your device that might be on your kitchen counter. So uh we really appreciate everyone for you know being supportive, sharing our posts, and helping the word get out there. Um check back for more. We hope to have another interview in about two weeks. We'll talk more about that next week as we're planning ahead, but unplugging for now.