As I write this, today is September 11. Many radio stations will have short memorial productions about the event, but for the majority of stations on the air today, it’s’ just business as usual. This is especially true of most FM music stations. Today’s music stations have neither the staff nor the time to produce fresh productions concerning historical events.
Now, this isn’t to say that most stations will ignore the 9/11 attacks. I’m betting that many will at least talk about them on their morning shows. It’s good content that morning personalities can use without having to dig deep into their tool bags to come up with. The AM News/Talk stations will, of course, honor the event in depth and they’ll use it as a backdrop to talk about how things have changed in the 23 years since America was changed forever.
Radio itself has changed forever. Lets consider how radio covered 9/11 back in 2001, which was only 5 years after President Billl Clinton passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Even in 2001, most of the local stations still had full air staffs, and most still had the ability to cut away from normal programming and do their own local coverage as it happened.
Let me give you an example of how radio covered the event from my perspective at the time. On 9.11.2001, I was employed at two places. My first job of the day was at some office which I can’t remember now, employed by a temp agency. Whatever my function was at this office building, I had my own desk and I was doing computer work. Data entry of some kind, as I remember. Now, we were allowed in those days to keep a radio on our desks if we wanted (most offices today do not allow radios, over copyright issues – in fact, many don’t even allow streaming of stations from company computers, but thats a different story). I was listening to Kix 106 (WGKX Memphis), because I was also a part time/weekend jock there, in addition to my two main jobs. Yeah. Lets just say I stayed busy. 
Anyway, I was working and at about 8:50 this particular Monday morning, my good friend Rhett Walker (WQXI/WYHY/WGKX/KJR) who was the morning news guy for the Andy & Debbie Morning Show broke into programming. I vividly remember his exact words. “I don’t know if is true or not, but I just heard a report that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City…”. The team of Andy and Debbie Montgomery kinda speculated as to whether or not it was a small Cessna or a commuter plane that wandered off course, then went into a traffic report done by a legendary traffic reporter, ex Memphis police Captain Pat Adams, and then into a commercial break. At the time, I, like probably everyone else listening, had a sort of morbid curiosity and many went to see if the report was true by turning on the TV. I was stuck at my desk with my work. That is, for the next 10 or so odd minutes, when someone came running into the office from the break room and shouted in horror, “We’re under attack! A huge jet just crashed into the other tower!!” Well, at that point, not really having known about the second plane hitting the second tower, it was quite a shock, but more importantly, it was verification that the report my friend Rhett Walker had made just minutes before was true!
At this point, I, being a radio guy, first of all, turned the volume up on the little radio I had to hear more of what Rhett and the morning show were talking about. Now, you have to understand that I know the personalities of my friends at Kix 106, so to hear Debbie Montgomery screaming and then sobbing while the rest of the cast was discussing the event, well, I knew this was quite serious. Debbie was (and probably still is, but I’d never know since I lost track of her after Andy and her separated. I still see Andy’s posts all over Facebook). I listened to Kix for a while longer, but then out of curiosity to hear what the other local stations were doing, tuned around. From what I remember of this dial scan of Memphis radio on 9.11, here’s a rundown of what I remember of the first hour after the attacks:
102.9 Rock 102 – the morning guys were all over the topic and taking phone calls from listeners. The same went for 94.1 WMBZ “The Buzz”, my former employer. The morning guy, Kramer, was talking with the rest of the staff and taking listener calls. It was mostly the same across most of the FM dial. Our sister station at 103.5 “Soul Classics”, they were doing coverage… as I think about it, most of the stations on FM were at least talking about it, but by the second hour, most of them had piped in one of the TV stations for network coverage. On AM, it was slightly different. There were two stations that did Sports programming, 56 WHBQ and 790 WMC (AM). As I recall, the local morning shows made mention of the attacks, but then went into their typical network sports programming. Maybe not WMC- I think they went to a feed of their former co-owned WMC-TV 5 coverage along with WMC-FM 100. 600 WREC, the lone News/Talker in Memphis went to network coverage soon after the attacks, and they wouldn’t exit network coverage except for local news updates for several days. And then there were the religious stations, such as 640 WCRV and 1380 WLRM stayed with their religious preaching/teaching formats. This was the case with many smaller AM signals without a network news affiliation. Most had very small staffs, and were left with no option other than to remain in normal programming and report on the attacks during the hourly news reports.
But 23 years ago is a long time, and this reporter’s memory isn’t what it used to be.
On 9.11.2001, not only did I have a morning job at a temp agency, but I was the Afternoon News Anchor for what was then The Information Radio Network. IRN News was part of a larger organization known as FAMC – First American Monetary Corporation – if you’d like to read an interesting story of corruption that someone really should make a movie about, Google it. At any rate, I had a full-time job as the News Anchor on 9.11, and I went into work an hour early, knowing that there was a whole lot more to this unfolding WTC attack story and I had phone calls to make, stories to write, and there was no time to waste in getting to work that day.
Oh. I neglected to say, the temp job – that office complex closed down and let everyone out of work early, as many large corporate offices did out of an abundance of caution – after all, America was under attack and nobody knew if there were more attacks coming, maybe in the form of bombs placed in office buildings, or whatnot. We didn’t know then what we know now, and everyone was frightened. I was told to go home from that by 10 am. Supposedly, the corporation was called by the FBI and told to close. At least, that was the story my immediate supervisor told us.
At IRN, we had a very small staff. I’m going to give you an inside view of the most bizarre radio company you’ve never heard about. What you’re about to read in this paragraph is about a company that I describe as a Radio Network attached to a Church attached to a Bank. The corporation was headed by Larry Bates. A former Tennessee state legislator (that should ring warning bells right there) who founded a Christian Broadcasting network, funded by the proceeds from the parent business, buying and selling precious metals – gold & silver bullion. The Bates’ entire family was convicted of running a ponzi scheme related to the parent company FAMC. You can read articles related to that conviction HERE, here and HERE. you can watch YouTube videos regarding it HERE and HERE
The network itself featured a four minute news report at the top of each hour, anchored by three fulltime reporters. Hope Duggar did mornings, I anchored afternoons, and one person (eventually my friend Rhett Walker, whom I got hired there and trained) did nights. The overnight news was simply three extra 4 minute reports that the night guy recorded before leaving at midnight and they rotated until 6 am. The client stations never knew. I’m sure the statue of limitations has run out – but it wouldn’t matter anyway, the Bates’ family are all serving lengthy prison terms, which you’ll see if you
Google Larry Bates or FAMC. Larry Bates ran the entire operation. My immediate supervisor was the number two guy in FAMC, Chuck Bates. Chuck was vice president and wore the hats of head of sales for the precious metals side of the house, and “news director”. After Chuck, it was the rest of us news anchors. Chuck’s news philosophy was literally this: (and I know, because I specifically asked him the question, “What is your news philosophy”) “Our news philosophy is to filter all news through the Word of God. Pardon the expression, but I shit you not, So, I considered my position as news anchor (reporter and writer) as to take the ‘liberal slant’ out of all the news we got from the AP NewsWire service and rewrite all of it to a center to center-right position. Was that ethical? Well, as I saw it, no less ethical than the left wing slant that most media had at the time (and, in my opinion, still does). But, I tell you, quite honestly, I tried my very best to make all of my news reports completely factual, and simply changing certain descriptive words which the news service sent to us in its raw form, Network news, sent by AP, UPI (which I think is out of business now) and Reuters, in its printed form made available to radio stations, is intended to be simple read as written. Otherwise known in the business as “Rip and Read”. I thought it was patently immoral to call ourselves an audio news service, or, “news network” by doing the Rip and Read thing, so I rewrote every single story that came across the news wire, then augmented by recording audio from the various TV networks – not their reporting, but the actualities they aired, so that we had the sound bites from the scenes of major stories, in addition to the audio clips that AP made available through it’s “Sound Bank” service available to affiliate stations. We were an AP subscriber and the service was made available to us, but honestly, I had to augment with audio bites from Fox News, CNN, the local stations – basically anywhere I could get it, because AP’s audio cuts concerning current stories was very limited, in my opinion. I can’t tell you if thats how the other anchors did it, but that’s what I did. I took very few breaks during the day, as this work was labor intensive and time sensitive. Plus, every newscast had to be completed, mixed down in Adobe Audition, and the file sent to the playout computer system before :45 of each hour. Otherwise, the system wouldn’t recognize the new file and would play the previous hour’s news. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was another serious problem in and of itself that I won’t even get into.
In short, IRN Radio News did not have a staff of copywriters, as you would see at stations like KYW, KNX, WINS or WCBS. It was just the Associated Press printed news for anchors to read (and all the extra work I put into it), and just us reporters/anchors,
As a side note, I left the network permanently in 2007, due to family issues – my son, mainly, and at the time, I felt horrible about leaving them in the lurch. Hey, that’s how I felt! Chuck and Larry Bates told me they were building the network around me (talk about trying to woo me – I shoulda asked for a half a million dollar salary! They just might have considered it. Alas, I’ve never been much of a salesman, even when it came to selling myself…). At the time, they had just purchased USA Radio from Marlon Maddux, and we had just started calling ourselves IRNUSA Radio News. But that’s yet ANOTHER story that I’ll tell one day.
On 9.11, I was frantically recording audio from the various TV news networks, writing and rewriting stories, I called people close to Ground Zero, to get their take on what happened recorded for my newscasts. I even called my brother in NJ, mom and dad in Massachusetts, my ex-wife and my daughter, friends and neighbors in my little community of Millington Tennessee… Amongst my sorrow for the victims, my feelings of panic and fear in the midst of all the events that day, I somehow managed to remain focused and perform at a level that our client stations would expect from the service we were providing to their stations.
I can’t speak for others who worked in radio during that awful day back in 2001, but for me, I survived it by being so busy doing my JOB, that I didn’t really have time to freak out or feel fear, or lose my composure. That happened later. Then later, I got to thinking, just how could I do something as a reporter and a radio personality to help people get through the terror that everyone felt by the end of that Monday. I started recording. In the days that followed 9.11, I interviewed our office staff at IRN, I talked with others in the community and I got their voices on tape… I actually felt good about doing that, because I felt that I was creating something that people could listen to and relate. The result became “9/11 Remembered”. I finished it in time for the first anniversary of the attacks. America was at war by that time, and some radio stations thought it was appropriate to play my production.
On that note, I present to you “9/11 Remembered” The video is at the top of the page, the audio only I hid down here in the hopes that visitors would read this entire blog post, and read about how a humble radio guy managed to get through 9.11 without breaking down. It was difficult. Not just for me, but for all of us in the media. We radio and TV people were immersed in 9.11 material from the time we got to work until we were finished, and then got to watch it on the evening news. We never got a break. It took many months before our work turned back to normal programming and many of us needed therapy – no, I’m serious about this. How some of us didn’t do the unthinkable is a miracle. Unfortunately, some did, because the sorrow was too much.
A quick story, before I end this. I worked for Sikorsky Aircraft in Stratford, CT a number of years ago. I had a friend who worked on the line with me, a fellow Teamster. I’ll just call him Ken. One day as I passed him by the backdoor, as we were leaving work for the day, he looked very down. I just gave him a normal greeting as I hadn’t seen him all day, “hey Ken, howsit going?”. He replied – and I never forgot this. “Some days you just wanna say f*ck it”. And that was it. We both went home for the night. The next morning I got into work and shortly after muster, someone came up to me and said, “you heard about Ken didn’t you?” He didn’t have to tell me. My first thought was, oh my God. Why didn’t I say something? Why didn’t I do something? You see, Ken had been with the company about a year, after having served in the U.S. Marine Corps in Iraq. Most of his unit was killed after an IED exploded right in front of their Humvee. Ken had joined the Marines after the 9/11 attacks. He was one of so many casualties of a war we shouldn’t have had to fight. I am a veteran myself. U.S. Navy. I’m lucky I suppose, I left the Navy after 13 years as a diabetic on disability in 1997. I suppose had I not been medically unable to continue service, I may have served in that region… I would have proudly served there. But the point of this story is, as you remember the events of 23 years ago today, please remember all of our military members who served during 9/11 and in the two wars that followed. So many suffered so much in trying to protect the rest of us, so that we would be safe.
HAND SALUTE!
