Stories From The Hurricane Highway Season 1 Episode 7 Transcript - 1999 Part 3/3
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welcome to stories from the hurricane Highway the podcast Series where we go back in time and look at this metaphorical as well as very literal Journey Down the hurricane Highway as I call it this is part three of the year in 1999 it is January the 15th 2020. so glad you could tune in in this part three the ending uh look at 19.99 I have my first guest on this podcast series you've heard me talk about a lot of different people so far so this will be the first time that I've had one of those people that you've heard me speak of joining me tonight and his name is Mike Farrow we'll talk about how we met and then we're going to go back and kind of rewind the clock again and look at the Hurricanes of 1996 1998 1999 through his perspective in broadcasting we'll talk a little bit about how broadcasting has changed over that time frame uh from then to now especially and just tell stories like I've been doing ever since I started this back on December 4th so again glad you could join me I do appreciate it I think you'll find tonight's conversation uh as engaging and hopefully as interesting as we have so far so just to recap in Parts one and two of 1999 and we went through the big storm surge map project that I did I was doing my hurricane tracking charts for TV stations for radio stations and that included cumulus broadcasting in Wilmington the Curtis Media Group up in Raleigh TV stations from Norfolk down to Charleston and several places in between the massive storm surge mapping project for the Army Corps of Engineers and project impact Etc where we got public and private Partnerships together with the government it does actually work if you do that believe it or not and it did it did very well and then of course we had these hurricanes Dennis and Floyd in 99 I bought my Isuzu Rodeo my first quote Chase vehicle even though we really intercept and we don't really Chase we've already been through that uh and dealt with Dennis Floyd and all these different people that have come in to these stories uh Eddie Smith I talked about him Jamie Arnold who now of course is the chief meteorologist at wmbf in Myrtle Beach and Mike farro I've talked a little bit about Mike Farrow uh he was with wgni in the day when I met him and her first heard of him and I think it's best to let him talk about that so without further Ado um I'm going to introduce my first guest on stories from the hurricane Highway Mr Mike Farrow Mike thanks for joining us good to have you thanks Mark uh it's such an honor to be the first guest of uh of the series here um well Mark mentioned cumulus broadcasting uh one of the stations that cumulus owned at the time here in Wilmington was wgni 102.7 G and I as we called it then and I was the program director of it I'm not anymore but was at the time and was the afternoon man and so let's go back to 1996. um now before 1996 though it was still owned and when you get into the technical stuff of it by Hannah or somebody it was a different owner right and that's what happened the stations get purchased and I mean that's all part of this deregulation came along and you're allowed to buy as many stations as you wanted basically and the Dawsons saw this as an opportunity to sell their stations in Wilmington and Fayetteville and so they sold to uh cumulus humans ended up being the number two uh largest radio company in in the country but I knew of wgni as the hurricane Information Station probably as early as 1995 driving around Wilmington I would put it on listening to my adult contemporary and uh that's what it was about adult contemporary yeah and y'all would come on during the summer and do these hurricane updates and then you had what do you call it in the radio world when you have that pre-recorded sort of didn't you got the music and whatever gni your hurricane information I know we call them liners there you go I heard that and it and it roped me in that made me a listener before we became colleagues well we kind of stumbled into hurricane coverage uh we really didn't know what we were doing it at all but just kind of a little bit of of History if we go back a little bit before 96 the um I I think the previous impacting hurricane in Wilmington was Diana if memory serves I wasn't around then none of the people at gni at the time were around then except for one guy and that was 1984 1984. so I think it had been a long time since there had been a direct impact hurricane in Wilmington so that's the the mindset that was going on in the public at the time so all of a sudden Bertha pops up the B storm was at June July July July 10th 11th 12th around there there you go 1996. and nobody really knew what to expect uh including those of us in the radio business yes none of us had ever done that before so I credit a lot of the uh stumbling into providing hurricane coverage to the morning man of gni at the time his name is Craig Thomas yeah he's still in radio here in Wilmington different station uh still good friends uh to this day and I you know we had virtually no meetings right before the hurricane came except for maybe a couple of casual conversations in the hallway about what to expect what we might do but it was nothing like we do now where we sit down and have high level meetings right three and four times before the arrival of a hurricane just because we'd never done it before sure so Craig Thomas takes it upon himself to just start doing hurricane coverage on his Morning Show which meant jettising the music and just start talking about what we might expect and more importantly or most importantly taking phone calls right from people that turned out to be our secret sauce right the phone calls that were coming in and one phone call would lead to another somebody would call and say well you know you need to fill your bathtub with water you need to you know take water bottles and freeze them and you know put them in the and then when they melt you know you got first of all it keeps the refrigerated everything cold in the refrigerator and then you got water to drink one thing led to another and well as soon as I heard that I said that's it you know there's there's our coverage right right there so as the program director I just said gosh guys let's just continue doing that right and that's what we did and and luckily I remember it luckily it was captivating yeah you tuned in to the radio like it was you know something on television that's what people wanted to hear they didn't want to hear by you know Madonna or whoever was big at the time they wanted to hear how to deal and survive this hurricane that was coming luckily it turned out to be a category one hurricane I think it was barely a one Bertha made it up to a two-it landfall officially in Pender County because it weakened a lot before it got here after Puerto Rico's encounter and then it got under better conditions because I remember that for Bertha I was down at the Waterway Lodge filming it and I walked into one of the rooms where the media was it was who knows who was there you know how the media will take over those hotels and somebody had channel three on with Kim Downing and actually have video of this and this will be in my hurricane Highway series that I'm working on because a lot of that series is going to be based on flashbacks you know so that that moment I remember Kim Downing I filmed him saying I filmed the in the room he goes he's reading the report he goes maximum sustained wins have now increased to 105 miles per hour category two that Bertha was really on the upswing very quickly um so for technical purposes you know it definitely made landfall as a two uh Pender County Topsail Island Surf City in that area were the most heavily impacted but it turned out to be not devastating correct now not for us especially in the Wilmington area right kind of bad for those beaches up there but nothing as compared to what was coming so again let's let's think of the mindset of of the radio listener at the time in the population at Large that wasn't so bad right but in the process wgni 102.7 G and I kind of became a little bit of a hero there it's like people said wow this radio station just you know I don't know they did a pretty good job covering this hurricane that that stayed with him sure so all right we continued with you know the recovery information there wasn't a whole lot of that but whatever there was we uh did did that it kind of all you know Bertha kind of faded away and then bam two months later was two months later yeah let's see it was like six weeks or so September 5th so not even too much yeah not even two months early September Here Comes Fran Here Comes Fran much bigger much more powerful Governor I remember Jim hunt saying he was the governor at the time uh that clip of him I remember him saying you know we got a hurricane coming that's like the worst of all possible worlds and it was like that's it I remember that and you know it was it was bad it's going to be a hurricane and an asteroid hitting at the same time it was a Fran looked to be pretty devastating but it also looked like it was going to go into South Carolina because I also remember yes John Hope on the Weather Channel talking about the day of landfall that and I remember certain things get seared into your memory people remember where they were when Kennedy was shot where they were when the moon landings where you were for September 11th Etc it goes on and on and on and in my world of hurricanes my wife gets aggravated with me you can remember all those details but you can't remember the supermarket right it's usually appointments or you know whatever um and that's how it works I can't explain human nature but it is what it is and I remember John hope saying and it just shows you the limitations of modeling and forecasting back in 1996 that morning on the Weather Channel he's talking to whomever at the desk there in Atlanta about somebody said it might have been Tom Morrow I think was or Jeff Morrow Jeff yeah I went to school with somebody named Tom Morrow wow that's a brain fart but Jeff Morrow asking him I think that's who it was will he see any threat to Wilmington today no I don't think there's any more you know I don't think there's any reason to see it would go up to Wilmington in like 12 hours later whatever it made landfall in Wilmington direct and it was a category three and the I went right over Wilmington it was the First Eye that I had ever been in and of course I was out there dancing around like a madman like and I've already talked about that on a previous episode uh or chapter as it were of this stories but for gni and you guys Fran was a no a whole new level wasn't it yeah and and again in retrospect when you look reflectingly back at what we did for Hurricane Bertha that stayed with the population at large so as soon as the threat of Fran surfaced they flocked to 102.7 G and I and just so you know gni is has always been a very uh strong radio station in Wilmington usually number one in the ratings it's a hundred thousand Watts the most power you can have of an FM radio station covers from Jacksonville to Myrtle Beach West to Fayetteville massive coverage so it was it is a monster radio station and to have coverage like that and then uh you know Geographic coverage like that and then to have the acceptance of the listeners it was phenomenal sure they didn't hesitate to come to to uh to gni and we knew it we felt it we heard it when we went to the grocery store when we interacted with the community after Bertha and everybody would come up to you you know wherever you were and say man you guys did a good job you know when you're covering Bertha man I got all kinds of information uh you know I mean we didn't take that lightly and so you know we we had uh we had our ducks in a row for that you were ready for friends we had some meetings and sat down and talked about how we were going to do it and what we were going to do and who was going to be on the air and how long we were going to do it and to the point where and remember this is 1996 social media didn't exist right um cell phones were in their infancy but they were there and that's one of the things that kind of saved us and we'll get to that in a minute here but the important thing is social media didn't exist which means nobody could go to their phone and look up the the smart man right yeah on their phone and right now the radio became the social media well there was sweet stumbled upon listen to this little anecdote this little note here we stumbled Upon A company that would provide continuous radar loops to radio stations and TV stations whoever would would pay the money to subscribe to the they brought in the Satellite Dish and you gave you they gave you the Monitor and was it dtn uh I don't remember that that sounds like who it might be yeah it's kind of rings a bell they have a satellite based I remember that I think it was dtn but we had nevertheless we had a satellite picture continuously right in our studio so we were able to look up and see there was a feeder ban coming in and was gonna hit us in 10 minutes we were able to talk about that and none of the other radio stations in Wilmington had that so that was another tidbit that that separated us not that we even really needed it but it was just something that solidified our uh our uh place in in history of hurricane coverage in Wilmington when it's all hands on deck for something like that you have to be at the radio station and so you've got a family and Craig Thomas has a family and you know you guys are working at the station what does the rest of your family do and think about that you know are they like okay fine I mean because I have to do the same thing I mean even you know especially when they hit home and I discussed that in uh the previous chapter here when dealing with Dennis that that was the first time I had ever dealt with a hurricane and having kids uh I had two kids when Dennis was coming in 1999 and I neglected to do much to prepare and I got in trouble with my wife it was very stressful and I learned a lot since then and now you know we have a whole plan and everything but people think about it that anybody in television and radio Folks At The Weather Service and it just goes on and on people working the hurricane quote-unquote um you do have to go basically stay at the station for a while and you're on the air again you're not you're not playing you know 90 minutes of continuous music it's 24 hours of continuous Fran yeah it's and that means you got to be there called a wall-to-wall coverage so how do you deal with that where do you know you got to sleep there and yeah it's a different world you know you're right it's it's uh everybody's family situation is is different everybody deals with it uh differently luckily uh my wife uh now is the same wife I had then as a matter of fact we had just gotten married and she has a large family here so she was able to kind of go to them and I didn't have any worries now there were other worries with some of the other people you know some of the other employees and they kind of had to deal with that but they understood their responsibilities uh especially the A-list you know announcers right not necessarily some of the weekenders or part-timers but you know the main and announcers that you know handed handled air shifts uh had to deal with it and of course we we didn't force them to stay we said if you can can you be here because we you know we need your help right we need your abilities and uh some good some couldn't uh but but that's because of Bertha we were able to figure that stuff out ahead of time this time because we knew what this time we knew he built on those experiences exactly exactly and one other little anecdote that really helped us and again keep in mind that our coverage was what I said before wall-to-wall continuous talking about the hurricane either before during or after they're prepared how to prepare for it what's going on during it or how to recover from after the the hurricane leaves and this was continuously talking for hour after hour after hour and it went on for several days yeah it did so the content and again I'll use the term Secret Sauce was the phone calls coming in and that's where cell phones came into play a lot of people had cell phones then and they were able to call in and and strangely enough enough of the cell towers stayed up right that they were those calls were able to get through a lot of people still had landlines and so we were able to use you know tap into both of uh that uh for for content and one of the public officials call in too right to give you yeah yeah strangely enough the uh the the official form of communication at the time was facts right you know how when was the last time you got a fax in you know 2020. um I don't remember the last time I got a fax but uh back then the facts action stuff right back then I think we had three fax machines in the building and they were all operational and they were all receiving official documents from you know whatever right government agency needed to convey information to us a lot of stuff was coming in on the phone and I had an employee a part-time employee and I'll say his name because he deserves some some uh some uh visibility in this whole thing Dan Grady is his uh his name and he was the most organized guy I ever met in my life and he took it upon himself to be this guy in the background that collated all this information coming in and he organized it to the point where we had what we call the Source book yeah and at the end of our coverage and it ended up being about this thick and my uh fingers my hands are about six inches of heart for the radio audience here uh full of um hard copy information so when somebody would call in and say I heard you talking about uh when they're going to open the bridge in Carolina Beach what is that well we have that organized and we could flip to that that's amazing and say uh looks like officials say they're going to open at six o'clock on Tuesday night right wow and so he did all that himself that that book still exists it's right you know I've no longer I'm no longer that should be in the Smithsonian it should be North Carolina broadcasting Hall of Fame yeah really but uh and um you know that's how we got through it it was phone call after phone call and some of the phone calls were stupid some of the phone calls you know maybe I remember some of those where you're like okay but you gotta remember people were tuning in to what make what I call eye contact right we were making eye contact with the listener and a lot of the that eye contact was just people being real real people being real and a lot of it was good quality hardcore information that people needed to know but some of it was not but even that was appreciated sure because it was real people out there you know this got started I don't know necessarily started but I remember this happening to Brian Norcross on television during Hurricane Andrew when they all went down and hunkered in a more Fortified Area of his TV station in Miami as Andrew's rolling in and Brian and them just started taking calls from people around Miami to just give them hope give them information and he did the same thing on the air hardly anybody could see that and I guess back in the 90s there you were able to listen into television through radio and sometimes you would simulcast it through and we'll talk about the low end of the dial that's where their audio channel was right and Brian did that I remember that very and they made an NBC I think it was NBC somebody did a movie about that a made for TV movie in 1993 in fact so that's interesting that the phone calls start coming in you know we we can pretty much understand the before part G and I and the radio stations talk radio whomever was doing it uh you know Raleigh was probably doing the same thing I would imagine wptf am 680 um was doing the same thing you know ramping it up and going over the coverage and we understand before so once it's happening the Deering part you all fielded some phone calls that you know to this day would make a very interesting audio part where they sort of show the tapes spinning when you show it on a television show like the audio part yeah right right and um uh from Bald Head Island or somewhere didn't you have some there were some harrowing moments well as well that were very serious weren't there the one that stands out to me is in the height of the storm I mean it was the storm was upon us uh a frantic call from a mom whose son was a uh suffered from from uh um what's it called when you can't breathe right uh COPD or asthma asthma sorry I can think of the word uh suffering and the he was out of medication and um well this phone call was gone out over the air yeah and yeah I mean she was frantic and actually I wasn't on the air at the time I can remember listening to it in my office going oh my gosh this this mom needs help and you can tell she's she's by her she was by herself right with the kid did not have the asthma medicine and uh hung up and immediately people started calling in uh she gave her address and within a half hour's time people were calling in going yeah if I made it to her house I you know I got a four-wheel drive and you know I gotta whatever you know big old Jeep uh I got there my son is also asthmatic and so we had the medication right here at the house so I just ran it over to her so I think she's okay now and uh I mean that that's the one that stands out to me I thought there was one where some people were trapped on Bald Head Island and they called in they were like really harrowing you know they thought they were gonna die um I mean that could have been where they called in to TV maybe channel six Francis Weller and Ken Murphy but I thought it was on the radio show the show The Hurricane Fran show for the next 48 hours um I just some of that is we're talking a long time ago right and but I can't remember specifics but it was Bald Head Island near Southport that you all definitely had your share of people that were panicked worried they were telling the stories of what was happening there was fear and apprehension in the voices and then that would get broken up either intentionally or by accident um by people that maybe had a little bit too much to drink one guy I remember called in and said something about that he rolled over in his trailers trailer was rolled over yeah his trailer was rolling over I remember that you guys you just kind of go along with it and this is live you know you have a dump button I guess if you have to presumably the old red button radio your ears right we're recording this in a studio uh right now there there's the dump button here actually uh the the here's the little behind the behind the curtain secret there was no dump buttons whatever went out over the air whatever came in went out so there was no delay no we didn't we didn't you know what you know what we didn't even think about that at the time nor did we really care because we knew that whatever was said it would be forgiven later because of the importance of what we were doing I don't recall that there was any controversy from that and I hate to say it and um this is the the stories from the hurricane highway is supposed to be almost exclusively in the past but I feel like if this happened again today you wouldn't be able to do it because there's it's a different culture no it's no as a matter of fact in the the radio stations people lost their filters in this this generation the company that I'm the company I'm involved that I work with uh now we have gone through a couple of hurricanes here and uh everything is through the delay because that's because of that just ask James Spann in Alabama at ABC 3340 or whatever it is any on Twitter anyway we'll get there in the future but that that's part of the past as those hurricanes and you get through Fran Fran was our uh and at the moment to to that point in 1996 our most damaging and costly hurricane it uh made landfall as a category three uh it knocked down you know the big church steeple in downtown Wilmington uh it devastated parts of Northeast New Hanover County Porter's Neck area it caused a massive Surge and there was this delay which is built into the system and it's very hard to describe this to people when they want to know what to expect in a hurricane you couldn't get back out on Wrightsville Beach as an example Carolina beach remember that so after it's over these calls are still coming in and and the tone does start to change because people start to get frustrated don't they well yes but that's only believe it or not a small part of um what is going on because people just need help There Was You Know far more people that needed help than were frustrated because they couldn't get back on on Carolina Beach yeah we had had some of that uh but uh and that's the that's another thing about hurricane coverage that we learned the aftermath is almost as important maybe even a little more important than the pre-hurricane landfall coverage because people are wanting to get their lives back to normal and they don't know how to do that all the services all the agencies are not there for them and we offered them a way to hear how they might be able to get back in touch with those services and I remember a lot of stuff coming in after the fact and we hear we're we're thinking all right you know six o'clock in the morning the Hurricane's done uh maybe we can go home now well no our jobs kind of had just started and that's the other thing we kind of stumbled into is I can remember having discussions with staff going can you stay for four more hours you know and then you know can you sleep in your office and then put you back on at noon right uh a lot of that went on because that was pretty important and it starts wearing on everyone and I go back to that point that y'all are still trying to cover it you know and TV stations do the same thing this is valid for any media uh and it it just wears you down um it is it is hard for people to comprehend what people go through that deal with a hurricane on a professional level in their jobs from the emergency managers to the law enforcement to the people on the work on the lines the alignment power companies Etc folks in broadcast I mean it really does wear you down to the nub and I was talking with a good friend of mine Jamie Arnold the other day and went and did an interview with him on camera for the hurricane Highway series and he talked about that you know he's almost passed out on the air during Matthew he literally was about to go and he gave the clicker to somebody else another I can't I gotta sit and it almost dropped and I remember that almost happened to me after Hurricane Ike I was to go on air on CNN in Galveston with Rob Marciano and I hadn't eaten worth a hoot in two days hadn't slept you know probably was dehydrated and I thought you get that tunnel thing and he was like oh boy and I gotta go on live and talk for 45 seconds which seemed like an eternity that stuff wears you down and that's just the micro Universe of us working the hurricane it's also wearing down the public and you got to see that a little bit that people call in and they want to know they want to know they want to know it's a lot of redundant questions I'd imagine but it's live you don't get to say you know go to our Twitter page it's a few tweets back in 1996. so you go to that Playbook again that this gentleman you said compiled were the faxes still coming in you know with how did you get information when it was over no well luckily the the kind of information that that we needed um the communication lines were still there a lot of the emergency operation information coming in from from them and you know their lines are right very very secure very solid uh but a lot of those just the the public communicating information that they have they had found out themselves like I just drove by the 7-Eleven or I just drove out of the sheets and you know they just there's a there's a truck sitting there with with a big old supply of water you know containers of water that would be on the air and people were here like oh that's over up at Gordon Road I know where I'll just we'll just hop here and oh there's the gas station open over here on Carolina Beach Road oh that stuff would come out over the over the radio and you know we'd write it all down and they would end up in the book and and but people would would hear it and I can remember afterwards people saying I couldn't leave my radio I just had to have the radio on all the time because I never knew when I was going to hear something that I I would need to get you know get me through the day or the next couple days right it was uh it was like a constant Cliffhanger that you know he would wait for the next bit of information that could be revolutionary to your life right and I remember listening to G and I had a world band radio that I had purchased I love those radios like Fingerhut or something back in the day yeah yeah and my wife was at work it was her first year working as a nurse at Pender Memorial and um I was in my backyard I lived in Leland at the time no children yet and uh I was sitting out on my picnic table slept out under the stars and I was listening to both gni's coverage all the local stuff and I would switch over and pick up like shortwave I guess or whatever and pick up the BBC and hear what they were talking about on a world scale and them talking about the hodokin uh and whatever but boy just being able to listen I was one of those guys that even though Fran and Bertha were part of my Beginnings as this hurricane guy uh I was a listener I was still a customer but or whatever you want to call it at the time I was dialed in because I wanted to know and I'll never forget that that jingle that slogan the hurricane Information Station stuck with me so 1997 was a year of no hurricane activity to speak of because of a major El Nino uh 1998 um cumulus broadcasting snapped up wgni and am 980 Wave radio Etc so you guys were now part of the cumulus family when Bonnie came around in 1998 did that change things did it make it like because now if I recall everybody was you know you were all working it wasn't just G and I anymore it was double queue and wave and then at some point wbct wanted we want our signal on the air it it kind of made it I mean you can talk about it because it's back in the past and you're now with a different group did it make things harder easier was it more work now that you're part of a larger what the number two radio group in the country it had to have some impact well it did it had a negative impact in in my mind because we just come you know through a couple of hurricanes that uh put us on the map right and we were being heralded as radio heroes in in all the way up to FEMA by the way yeah it's not recognized we got awarded by uh with a with a visit from uh the FEMA director whose Name Escapes James Lee Witt there you go I came to the radio station to present us anyway so we're coming off that and uh yeah a year removed but all of a sudden now we're dealing with corporate America without getting into into all the other details there's a lot there was a lot there sure yeah you just infer that they're just Hoops after hoop and plus now we were five radio stations right instead of just two and uh that provided a lot of obstacles and uh and uh problems uh in and of itself uh We've but we again we were still known as the hurricane Information Station So within those constraints we able were able to still provide coverage uh on a scale that we thought or a level that we thought was better than everybody else uh in town it was not as good as I wanted um but uh we still were able to hold our heads High I remember that and I remember the you know gni was kind of like the flagship but all these other stations inherently baked into the fact that cumulus had bought them up and you were part of this group here in Wilmington you know they wanted a piece of that pie and so you had you know everybody you had your wwqq the country station and so I found myself admittedly switching around sometimes I want to see what's happening on Wave am 980 the talk and then back to gni and then over to double Q that's like darn it it all used to be wgni and so it became more challenging for me on a personal level I remember that very distinctly and sometimes I would hear Craig Thomas they would have him on the different stations it wasn't just wgni and it was neither here nor there and that wasn't necessarily bad but it made it well it's changed and people are resistant to change and you have to adapt to change it wasn't as clear there was no clear-cut radio station to go to there there you go that's a good way to put it and um and I can remember back in those days most of the radio stations had full-time staffs right nowadays it's a lot different nowadays so we didn't think in terms of simulcasting which would have made a whole lot of sense right had we you know thought to go that route but there was still a lot of we were still pretty territorial back then too uh and you know double Q wanted to do their own thing right wave wanted to do it's our own thing and we certainly wanted to do our own thing uh so it was like no we don't want to share right you know we didn't say it out loud but you know everybody thought that and so that's what we did we kind of did our own thing nowadays you know with the limited staffs uh you still got five and six radio stations in a building right but uh you got the staffs of that can handle maybe two radio stations so you put everything together and then you simulcast now through one or through every every the same thing exactly one I gotcha one uh show yeah out over five signals God future and so Bonnie was another hit um and it uh it was also a category three it had a big flood event with it but nothing like 1999 where we got another double barrel hit and I talked about Dennis and Floyd in the part two of the 1999 series here uh that we've been going through so Dennis and Floyd kind of ended our lucky for us our rash of hurricanes uh it's the end of the 90s um you know the internet is now more prevalent in 1999 I mean you know everybody's got a personal computer I know I had one that was coming up um and more people knew so just three years after birth of Fran doesn't seem like that long but in the world of technology and and you know Western Civilization with what we can accomplish here in America things tend to move very fast was there a difference in coverage with Dennis and Floyd and then when Floyd was coming Floyd was supposed to make Fran look like Child's Play can you remember was there much difference just three years later you know and how you covered it what you talked about it was a different world we were approaching Y2K and all that we were a much smarter Society so what what changes did you remember from 1999 the biggest change you're the the the most obvious thing in my mind at the time was we were we were still holding on to this territorialness of individual stations and this was three years later we shouldn't have been that way right you know we you know and and we did not pick up on the fact that we needed to pool our resources to be a stronger number one to be a stronger one entity uh and uh so that kind of hurt everybody right Plus at as time went on all the other radio stations in town the competition if you will figured out how to up their game so they all of a sudden had generators for the transmitter side and the studio side so they didn't go off the air they had full staffs they had game plans for covering hurricanes so they were all of a sudden they were you know provided some some stiff competition uh to us so it was no longer just gni or just cumulus broadcasting out there doing a fairly good job and then after 1999 we went several years luckily for us that we didn't have uh any major hurricane threats in southeast North Carolina these are things that I'll get into in future chapters of the stories from the hurricane Highway series um but just for the sake of kind of wrapping things up here move ahead 20 years you know now almost 21 years to 2019 2020 how has radio changed in 20 years if we had a major hurt well we have but we'll get to that let's pretend that we haven't and that there has been nothing since then in southeast North Carolina or even as the a nation as the whole our nation as a whole Mike how has radio inherently changed and the way it can serve people in a natural disaster such as a hurricane in 20 years better content coming in uh and I have to credit social media for that now having said that it's it's it's a dangerous pull upon to to to immerse yourself in but if you know that it's dangerous you can watch out for the alligators and and the creepy crawlies that are out there and by that I mean bad information wrong information fake news and all all of that we're pretty Adept at figuring all that out now just because we're we have a lot of social media Savvy and with that comes um uh strength in recognizing things as what they really are right but if you embrace all of that that's a lot of good stuff there's a lot of good stuff coming in now we still got the phone calls coming in how about the facts you still get faxes like I said before when was the last time you really got all right we still got a fax machine right I can't remember ever getting a fax I'm into this radio station for three years and I haven't had a fact since I've been here gotcha but all that stuff coming in you know whether you're talking about Facebook or Twitter or you know Snapchat me a little bit overloads you it can it can and you got to be careful um but the other thing that's that's happened is all of the radio stations have downsized in terms of numbers right there hasn't been a change fundamentally in radio and broadcast as a whole in the last 20 years and speak to that just a little bit you were going there so it's been downsized and so how does that change things it's harder well it's well the one it's harder on one respect but it has forced us to go the simulcast route gotcha yeah just simulcasting is you do one broadcast but you put that one broadcast on all of your signals right we have six signals in this building that we're in now at the company that I'm involved in now and so the Hurricanes of the past three years we've covered them using the simulcast method which allows you to um take all of your your your limited staff right and spread them out over the course of covering the the the hurricane so if you know when you when you give in to that you say okay well no longer we're no longer territorial right you know um z107.5 is not going to be the station or sunny 103.7 is not going to be the station yeah they're all in all it's got to be one big happy family right and whatever is said on this station is going to go out over there let's let's come to grips with that and we're all friends here and let's play play nicely yeah and we do and when you do that when you Embrace that you're able to utilize the bodies that you have and a lot of other capacities which includes social media you got somebody covering just social media and nitpicking you know picking out all the good information there that that needs and and it happens you'll hear it you'll say uh you know we'll be talking along and and we'll we'll see a tweet that from someone that uh that uh such and such gasoline station is open on Carolina Beach Road sure that might have come in on a phone call back in 1996 exclusively yeah but now it's in a tweet we're able to say that and it's basically the same thing yeah yeah just a different way of getting there so that then I wonder does the public get anything different now than they did 20 years ago or should they expect something different from radio as a medium during a hurricane emergency then 20 years ago or is it still the same basic underlying principle that you know radio is there and it's going to be all I got to do is turn it on I absolutely believe it's it's the same thing now as it was when radio was invented in 1920 if you if you want to be honest radio is a medium built to disseminate information along the way we have decided that okay well we can do some entertainment here too you know when there's not a whole lot of uh you know need needed information to disseminate right let's let's become conveyors of of entertainment sure of course back in the 20s and 30s it was the live big bands and the live shows and whatnot nowadays it's spinning records yeah but we all recognize our our main calling our number one calling is to when there's something going on out there that affects the the community as a lot at large as a whole uh you know turn the turntables off you know unplug the music and turn on the microphone and start start talking about stuff people need to hear and this is why we talk about you know people make sure you have your battery powered radio because that signal is still out there I know is it all digital now like it was there some like does it have to be digital is there are still some stuff I don't understand the technicalities of it stuff moved over to digital I know television did it's called DTV I did radio it has okay so radio still it's basically waves yeah the the AM signal and the FM signal of of a radio station is still basically the the same thing now what we have in the studio that we're in right now is All Digital sure but it is turned into a an analog signal when it's sent out interesting yeah so that's important that when we talk about you know you know 20 years ago I would turn on my car radio or I had that that you know World band radio it's the same principle now 20 something years later as it was um 80 years later you know right 1920 well more than 80 years right um no it is it it's a hundred years it's a hundred years it's 20 20. so okay thank you for that math correction and that folks is why I did not go into meteorologists you've said that before couldn't
but what I was getting at is that that's that's the point here is that those radio waves travel through the air the same uh now that they did a hundred years ago and so when you would listen to whatever it was about the Hindenburg over your uh radio station World War II coverage or whatever yeah that you're going to be listening to Something in 2020 as you were in 1996 about a hurricane about a natural disaster about a man-made issue War whatever that radio is hopefully always going to be there I mean at least it'll exist as a physical entity it's up to us to keep embracing it yeah it's uh I mean don't let it go everybody talks about I mean this is a whole other subject now I'm like I don't want to get too far down this this off ramp here but uh you know people that's a good hurricane highway there you go I didn't think of a metaphor sub metaphor perfect I love it but uh yep I I agree uh every it's so easy now I mean yeah we do have all these other sources we do have social media you know we do have the internet and you can Google anything in the world and you know if you have uh you know access to the internet you can find out a lot of stuff but still when you're driving down the road it's real easy to turn that radio on on your car radio and hear something coming off that radio speaker and sometimes that's good information about where the gasoline station is that you're looking for right and that's your local information and that's what I really remember so much those Vivid memories of the local updates from the people calling in that we talked about some of them you know more interesting are helpful than others obviously to the local officials you might have the governor that would call in or you would talk about a press conference you read the facsimiles that would come in and it was very helpful uh you know even as a young adult you know just getting into the field that helped me in that part it helped me as a guy who went through the hurricane you know my wife and I and our little ranch style house in Leland North Carolina wanted to know what was going on and radio was there any let me just to give you one final anecdote here and this this is probably a good way to maybe wrap this up um you you're you started to get into covering you know how entities cover hurricanes and I was I found myself in the studio on the air on the night that Fran then made landfall I was actually I myself was actually on the air on 102.7 gni when the hurricane was making landfall and at one point I looked up and there were five news sources Five News companies in our building covering what I was doing wow um one of them you were the newsmaker yeah I I was actually the story well the hurricane was going on sure it kind of they kind of had no other place to go and I guess back then they they didn't have their act together enough to you know get to the Holiday Inn or get to the Hilton downtown or whatever the case may be right but whatever the case was they were in there I can remember one was a Raleigh TV station one was an NBC was NBC yeah the network network and I can remember wow talking and I look up in one of those big microphones with the big fuzzy covering whatever those are called was right above me and you see them on the news conferences all the time and the president's speaking they still use those and I looked I can remember looking up and seeing one of those right above me uh there was a TV station out of New York I mean a newspaper out of New York City and I think it was long is it Long Island news day it might have been anyway news day there's a anyway uh who wrote up a big piece yeah and I can remember my mother finding it and cutting it out and sending a copy of it to me where I was quoted and they uh they printed uh quotes from people that were calling in on-air personality Mike Farrow talked to such and such from Castle Hayne about being their kids being scared and uh but there were five different news organizations in the building hovered around the the studio that I was in right covering me do you think that that would be the same today would there be that much interest or is it like radio is just ah whatever I don't think so I because they're very interesting yeah there's you you know you do have the competition of you if you will of social media yeah and the the mere fact that Gina was probably gni was probably the only station really doing that for all I know ground breakdown probably were off the air at the time right that's why they ended up you know in my building uh but there's so many other places for them to go now right very interesting well that was all part of my journey along this metaphorical and very real sometimes hurricane Highway that you know once it landed in Wilmington for me I moved to Wilmington in 1989 and um you know started college here shortly thereafter and again in the mid 90s I remember wgni and hearing your voice Craig Thomas Etc so it was really good to have you on and talk about that give a different perspective um next week we get into the year 2000 you know 1999 comes to an end uh yeah just to give you a brief summary again I won the award from Project impact up in DC and I had that hurricane Coast post remember the hurricane Coast poster I did Mike with the five it was birth a friend Bonnie Dennis Floyd as far as I know it's still hanging on the wall in my old office over at cumulus broadcasting yeah I sold enough of those and we'll get into this in the uh the next chapter here the year 2000 comes along we got a new century no we didn't have all of our computers completely flip out and the world come to an end we were not all uh killed by gas emissions because the power plants shut down and all the noxious gases we're still here we made it it's true so we entered a new decade a new century well the Whole Decade thing is still very much in debate as when does the decade start but it was definitely a new century you can't argue that the year 2000 we will cover that on the next chapter of stories from the hurricane highway I am Mark suddath Vince speaking with Mike farro good friend of mine all these years we appreciate you tuning in uh as always here on patreon it's exclusively on patreon and for Hurricane track Insider members I appreciate it you know I do and I'll be back with you next week I am marks out of hurricane track.com thanks as always for tuning in I'll have another chapter hopefully intriguing for you as all these have been next week talk to you then