radio

Chris Knight's avatar
Okay, maybe I’m more than a little biased.  But as long as I am on God’s green earth I will never believe that there was ever a meteorologist who was as accurate and honest and entertaining as Earl Burton.

Earl Burton was born in Reidsville, North Carolina in 1940.  Two things happened in his young life that wound up spinning him into someone legendary: his love of broadcasting, and the volumes of weather records that he began keeping as a teenager.  Eventually he came to be an announcer on WREV AM-1220 out of Reidsville.

His flair for radio and his vast knowledge of local meteorology collided one fateful afternoon when Earl was about to relay a forecast from the National Weather Service to his listeners.  He was set to read the report calling for rain when he stopped, paused for a moment, and told the audience “Folks, I think ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

You want to know one of the biggest reasons why this blog exists?

It’s because for the longest time, I dreamed of being like Paul Harvey.

I first discovered Harvey as a kid in elementary school. Dad always had one of the local AM radio stations playing on his truck as he drove my sister and I to school, and the timing of the commute every morning happened to coincide with Harvey’s fifteen minutes of news. And then later on I started listening to his “The Rest of the Story…” broadcasts.

That’s what first turned me on to realizing the “other side” of the people and incidents that I read about in the history books. That more often than not there was something else that for whatever reason never got widely chronicled, but always made you appreciate that much more the person or situation.

Well, when blogging came about, picking ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Wasn’t there an episode of King of the Hill about this?

An elementary school in Wisconsin is under fire by a Christian radio network – the head of which seems to have nothing better to do with his time – because it hosted an event that encouraged students to dress as members of the opposite gender.

As part of Wacky Week at Pineview Elementary in Reedsburg, students were encouraged to dress as either senior citizens or members of the opposite sex. Which was all good and fine… until some busybody told the Voice of Christian Youth America about it. The radio network’s director and host of nationally-syndicated show “Crosstalk” Jim Schneider promptly took to grandstanding. He said that “Our station is one that promotes traditional family values. It concerns us when a school district strikes at the heart and core of the Biblical values. To promote this to elementary-school students ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

I’ve a nasty suspicion that this is only a taste of what’s barreling toward us…

So I was headed west down I-40 from a day trip to Raleigh (which I’ll be posting about tomorrow) this afternoon and around Burlington, I started flicking through radio stations.

And as I was going across the AM dial just after 5 p.m. I happened to catch some pastor preaching with all due exuberance and conviction that Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama is “the Antichrist”. This pastor also added that just as the Antichrist does not have “a single Christian ounce in his body” that Obama is going to Hell.

I checked the frequency. It was 880 AM. Which means it was a broadcast of WPIP, a radio ministry out of Berean Baptist Church in Winston-Salem.

Not that this really surprises me.

Apart from sporadic music, from sunrise to sunset WPIP’s broadcasting is pretty ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

John C. Larsh, better known to countless fans during decades of radio work as Jack Armstrong, has passed away at 63.

Armstrong is probably most recently remembered around here for being a longtime DJ at WMQX Oldies 93. I used to listen to him every day: Armstrong was easily one of the liveliest radio personalities that I’ve ever found on the dial. But before that, the Chapel Hill born-and-bred Armstrong had also worked in the Boston, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and San Francisco markets. During his long career he got to hook up with Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, Frank Zappa, and many other musical legends.

Armstrong’s zest for life reflected in his radio work, especially after the Guinness World Records certified him as being the “world’s fastest talking human”. Armstrong also pulled off the rare feat of being a double-record holder when he broke ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Matt Smith at WGSR posted this on YouTube yesterday: it’s the video of the reunion of the WREV vets. WREV – the original one anyway – was Reidsville, North Carolina’s radio station for many years, operating from sunrise to sunset. The classic WREV was replaced a little over ten years ago by “salsa”-style 24-hour all-Spanish broadcasting. So if you’re a current or former resident of Rockingham County, here’s a nice lil’ trip down memory lane…

...

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Chris Knight's avatar

And I’m not talking about what he did either. I’m talking about the reaction to it and how this seems to have become this country’s biggest priority, if you’re going by either the “mainstream” press or the “alternative” media including the blogosphere.

It wasn’t until late yesterday afternoon that I heard what Imus said exactly. Have I been that out of touch with reality for this past week? More like: there were other things… and more important things… for me to worry about. There should be a lot more important things for all of us to concern ourselves with instead of what words a talk radio host chooses to use. If Imus had said “let’s round up all the (your choice of minority here)s and (your choice of harsh fate here)” then that might be something to take note of. But on the scale measuring calamities awaiting modern civilization, Don ...

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