GARTV: Georgia Radio and Television

As someone who once had an interest in media production, there were a few the media who I had the utmost admiration for. And one of those few died today.

RIP Ed Bradley of CBS News and 60 Minutes.

The CBS Special Report: Katie Couric announces the death of Ed Bradley from Leukemia at age 65.




Ed Bradley's interview with Michael Jackson on "60 Minutes"

Ken Mann, who was the longtime radio news anchor for Cumulus Broadcasting Macon (formerly US Broadcasting) stations WMAZ-AM 940 (later WMWR and WMAC), WPEZ and WDEN has died after a long illness.


His obituary on the AM-940 website

http://www.wmac-am.com/kenmann.htm

The Macon Telegraph

http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/15600970.htm

Mr. Mann briefly worked for WGXA-24 when it was an ABC affiliate.


Personal note: I did not know him personally but I have had many occasions where I met or had personal contact with Mr. Mann. He was a regular customer of a store where I worked part time. And I sat at the same table with him and others after the funeral of a mutual acquantance. He was a unique type of person. Very polite and called everyone sir or madam, regardless of age. He was also very smart and well informed on ANY topic. He could debate anything and would have been an excellent talk show host.

Honestly, I felt intimidated by him (for his stong attitude and intelligence) so I kept my mouth shut.

And he always had a positive attitude despite being sick for so many years. The last time I saw him in person was a couple years ago when he was shopping at a Kroger supermarket. He was pulling a small oxygen tank as that assisted with his breathing. He put his own groceries into his marked WDEN news car (a Ford Tempo) and drove away. Shortly after that he left local radio.

Of course people are saying that he will be missed. I already missed his type or voice and personality in broadcasting. Another one of the good legends is gone.

AM 1670 WMWR has replaced its TALK lineup with Spanish programing. The station is called "Viva" and it is the first station of its kind in the Macon market.

Last year Clear Channel converted their oldies station into a spanish language music station. That station is also called "Viva" and broadcasts on a couple FM signals in the Atlanta area.

This will definitely fill a void in the area. There is a large and rapidly growing hispanic population in Central Georgia and now they will have a local radio station that targets THEIR community and musical tastes.

The radio station at 1670am in Macon is now stunting. This was "Talk Radio 1670" WMWR-AM. Their website is also down and there is no hint as to what the "new" station will be.

The station is owned by Clear Channel and offered mostly syndicated programing and FOX sports at night and on weekends. Their programs included Bill O'Reilly and G. Gordon Liddy.

This station never kept a consistant schedule. Most of the syndicated radio shows in existance were on 1670 at one time or another over the past couple years including Dr. Laura, Dave Ramsey and Mike Gallagher. They had a couple of local programs on the weekend, one of those was a spanish language program. And they tried having a local morning show. The host of that show is now on AM940 WMAC reporting news for their morning show. (Note, at one time the call letters WMWR were on AM 940)

I wonder if Clear Channel would turn 1670 into a full time spanish language station. Central Georgia does have a sixable hispanic population and there are no current spanish programs on the air. And Clear Channel owns a couple of spanish language stations in the Atlanta area.

I will update the website as soon as I hear the new programing on AM 1670.

I have to share this piece of my childhood. My sister called me this evening to inform me that the TV news reported the death of "Skipper Chuck", who was the host of a local children's television show that we grew up watching. His real name was (Charles) Chuck Zink and he was a popular local TV and radio personality in South Florida for the past 50 years. He died yesterday at age 80. (News Article)



The news hit me hard for a minute and brought back a lot of memories. And I mean way back memories for me....the early 1970's! when I was the first one up every morning and watching
cartoons on TV. The cartoons started at 6:30am when the TV station signed on the air.
It was Channel 4 every morning. Batman reruns at 6:30 and "The Skipper Chuck Show" from 7 to 8am. Captain Kangaroo came on at 8 but I never watched that. We had to leave for school after 8, plus when I was 6,7,or 8 years old I thought Captain Kangaroo was for "babies".


But Skipper Chuck was our hero. We could actually be on his show, or he could bring the show to our school. Or we could hear our name called on TV for our birthday. We loved this man! This was the days of only having a few channels to choose from. But we were grateful and thoroughly enjoyed THE children's show of South Florida every morning. The show ran for 23 years, earned TWO regional emmy awards and was intergrated at a time when it was unheard of and not acceptable for Blacks and Whites to share the same spaces in public. That was at the insistance of Skipper Chuck himself in the late 1950's.


Like most kids growing up in South Florida, I wanted to be on the Skipper Chuck show. But the waiting list was 2 years long at the show's peak of popularity in the early 1970's. However I do remember the show coming to my school and other live public events. Mostly, I just enjoyed sitting in front of a Sears TV set tuned to the old WTVJ Channel 4 every morning before school.

The Skipper Chuck show ended when CBS began a morning news show in the late 1970's and by then I was probably too old to watch this kiddie show anymore even though I watced plenty of cartoons well into my teens. Then we moved to New York where I would attend High School. By the time we moved back to S. FLA in the mid 1980's Chuck Zink was doing commercials and entertainment programs for a much older crowd, the senior citizens of South Florida. For them he hosted big band and jazz programs on the radio and I enjoyed listening to some of them.

Chuck Zink also hosted the local edition of the annual Jerry Lewis MDA Telephon, a quiz show and some national programs including beauty pageants.

I left Florida 12 years ago and moved on and now I frequently reminisce over my youth. I have had he death of my mother along with so many changes in my childhood hometown area and now the death of the entertainment icon of my youth is less than one year. These were big changes and big losses but happily for me, they are BIG memories.

Cherished memories!

Charles D. Zink aka "Skipper Chuck" (1925-2006)


Photos taken from WTVJ "NBC-6" in Miami. This is the former WTVJ Channel 4 that aired "The Skipper Chuck Show" and was a CBS affiliate that was purchased by NBC in the 1980's, became a NBC affiliate and moved to Channel 6 in 1995. Not to be confused with the current CBS affiliate on Channel 4 in Miami, WFOR-TV.

On January 1st at 12 noon, R&B Urban WFOX "97.1 Jamz" in Atlanta changed to a Classic Hits format called "97.1 The River".

The new station will play mostly rock music from the 1970's and 1980's to possibly "fill a gap" between the music offerings of Atlanta's 96Rock and "92.9 Dave FM" and maybe even retain some of its former "oldies" listeners from the old "FOX 97" days that ended in 2003.

From 2003 until now, WFOX was an R&B Urban Hip sound targeting a slightly older audience than listeners of Atlanta's V-103 and Hot 107.9 but 97.1 never achieved great ratings. "97.1 Jamz" never had any on air personalities. The other urban stations have very high profile personalities.

There are plans to add radio jocks to the new station sometime soon. The same was said when "Jamz" was introduced in 2003, but it never materialized.

Reported update from 100,000watts.com: WVAG-TV Valdosta (ch44/Digital channel 43) has changed its call letters to WSWG and the UPN station for Southwest Georgia will be offering CBS programing to a subchannel within its DIGITAL signal (ch 43) beginning this spring.

South Georgia recieves their CBS programing primarily from WCTV Thomasville/Tallahassee. According to their websites, Both WCTV and WSWG are owned/operated by the same company, Gray Communications.

A little history note about Valdosta's Channel 44. This station was once WVGA-TV, an ABC affiliate serving South Georgia. The station went off the air in the early 1990's and remained dark until the late 1990's when channel 44 returned to the air and now serves as the UPN affiliate for Southwest Georgia.

"Jimmy Kimmel: Live!", seen latenights on ABC has been a hit around the country since its debut in 2002. But some ABC affiliates around the country choose not to carry the program. This included Atlanta's ABC Affiliate WSB-TV Channel 2 and its sister station in Orlando, WFTV Channel 9, both owned by Cox Communications of Atlanta.

Also of note, none of the ABC Affiliates owned by Albritton Communications of Washington DC have aired the Jimmy Kimmel program, leaving places like Birmingham AL.,Roanoke VA. and Washington D.C. among many areas who did not have the option to watch ABC's entry into the latenight entertainment arena along with David Letterman, Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien.

Like many ABC stations, WSB elected to continue with syndicated programing or repeats of news or syndicated programing aired earlier in the day on the same station. Recently, WFTV in Orlando began airing Jimmy Kimmel in its national live timeslot after Nightline and is offering video highlights of previous years of Jimmy Kimmel's show.

Orlando viewers were highly critical of WFTV for not airing the program making Central Florida the only area in the state where the show was not available. They intitally called and complained and after 3 years, WFTV decided to offer the program. In Georgia, the Atlanta market served by WSB as well as cable viewers around Georgia that don't have a local ABC station but get WSB on their cable system are not able to watch Jimmy Kimmel unless they recieve other ABC stations from neighboring areas. WSB is the only ABC station in Georgia not carrying the show. ABC stations in Augusta, Columbus, Savannah and Macon have carried the show from the beginning as does the ABC stations in Chattanooga Tennessee, Jacksonville and Tallahassee Florida, and Dothan Alabama all available to Georgians who live just across the state line from those cities.

Since WFTV in Orlando and WSB in Atlanta are owned by the same company and are both ABC affiliates then hopfully WSB will finally offer their viewers a better option than a repeat of Entertainment Tonight (which airs at 7:30 earlier in the evening) and the 11:00 "Action News" from less than 90 minutes earlier.