12/19/2023 0 Comments Kuar fundraiser quiz![]() John Robert Starr, the former Arkansas Democrat managing editor, once wrote that Byrd was “the best radio newsman who ever worked in Arkansas.”Īt news conferences in the governor’s conference room of the state Capitol, the first question for a governor often would come from Byrd rather than a print reporter. Byrd covered the news for Little Rock radio stations for more than four decades and was a thorn in the side of six governors - Orval Faubus, Winthrop Rockefeller, Dale Bumpers, David Pryor, Bill Clinton and Frank White. The epitome of the hard-charging Little Rock radio newsman was Herbie Byrd, who died last April at age 87. KAAY-AM also had a strong news operation in its heyday. It was an era when a news conference in Little Rock would bring out reporters from commercial stations such as KARN-AM, KLRA-AM and KLAZ-FM along with the newspaper and television reporters. I worked full time in my first political campaign in the early 1980s. Because of automation, the offices of small-town radio stations often are locked tight even in the middle of a weekday. While there are still some Arkansas radio stations with a commitment to local news, radio reporters are becoming rare in an era when many stations obtain their programming from satellite broadcast services. There also were the so-called public affairs shows (required by the FCC back then), for which various people would be interviewed at length, and live coverage of major events in town. It was common in those days for local radio stations to cover lots of local news with extended newscasts early in the morning, at noon and late in the afternoon. I started working at my hometown commercial radio stations - KVRC-AM and KDEL-FM - in high school and continued to work there through college while simultaneously holding a newspaper job. Thus began my love affair with radio, which continues to this day. The Associated Press picked up the story, and it ended up running in newspapers across the country. The Arkansas Gazette published a feature story on the radio program - which included music and news from Arkadelphia’s Goza Junior High School - complete with a photo of the three of us at the KSWH controls. I was too young to drive so my father drove me to Little Rock early one Saturday morning to take the test for my Third Class Radiotelephone Operator License, which I carried in my billfold for years afterward. Disc jockeys had to be licensed by the Federal Communications Commission in those days. When I was age 13, a Henderson State University faculty member named Don Pennington allowed two friends (the Balay brothers) and me to have our own show on the school’s radio station, KSWH-FM. Before I began working for a newspaper as a high school student (a real newspaper, not a school newspaper), there was radio.
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