Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon
to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you
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smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. One O seven point nine FM WBT, Charlotte's
FM News Talk. Today is the day we flip the
switch and apparently nothing broke, which is as I advise
at the end of every show, don't break anything while
I'm gone. I am glad to hear that the team
of expert engineers did not break anything when they flipped
everything over. They did it all seamlessly, perfectly. It seems
good job to them. It really took a lot of people.
Folks don't understand, like when you when you flip this
stuff over on to a different signal and you're moving
the amount of stations that Urban One has moved in
the Charlotte market, it is a massive undertaking. And it
went over at midnight so I know it was a
late night for a lot of people, and thank you
very much David and even Ron coming out of retirement
to help out. We'll appreciate all of the work. There
are a bunch of other people. I shouldn't even have
started naming them because now I'm going to forget people.
But thank you to everybody that made this happen. And look,
I understand it's a bittersweet day and change I get it.
I will say though, this is not my first time
on one oh seven point nine FM. In fact, I
dare say I may have more airtime on one oh
seven point nine FM than any other of the hosts
in our lineup because back in my day, well it's
actually still my day, so back in one of my
earlier days, many of my earlier days. Actually the day
it started was nine to eleven. I was in the
WBT newsroom, our sister station one oh seven point nine
the link their afternoon drive time team was Matt and Ramona,
and Matt Ramona came in and asked me can I
come into the studio and do an update for them, just,
you know, like a one minute, one and a half
minute newscast kind of a thing, and because it was obviously,
you know, a great national tragedy and huge story and
everybody was covering it, and so I said sure, and
I you know, jumped over there and started what began
a daily live newscast with Matt Ramona. And that then,
uh you know, continued for about seven years and the
segment grew from a minute or two into a full
half hour daily segment with Matt Ramona. So if you
are a longtime listener to one oh seven point nine
FM back when Matt and Ramona were on in the afternoons,
you may remember me by a name that they gave me,
which was Pete the pit Bull. That's what they called me,
and it came from our boss at the time. During
there was they gave me an award one year and
the boss, Rick Jackson, had described me as a pit
bull that once I got onto a story because at
that point I was a news reporter. And then he said,
when he gets onto the story, he does his story.
He doesn't let go. He's like a pit bull. And
now I'm like that with Steak, just mainly just Steak.
But so that's what so Matt Ramona started calling me that,
and so it became this whole segment, and I did
that for several years. And I bring this up because
that really was my first experience, I guess, being part
of a talk show because up until that point I
had only done news reporting, and I continued on as
a news reporter, but as I would be on the
air with Matt and Ramona and they would ask me
questions about you because I would go in there and
do you know, just a couple of headlines not because
it was only a minute or two newscasts. So I
would do a couple of headlines that kind of thing,
and then they would ask me questions about stuff, so
then I would have to answer the questions or so
then I was like, I need to be better prepared
when I go in. So that taught me show prep.
So now I'm going in there and Matt would ask
me questions, usually crazy off the wall questions, which I
would then try to plan for. Okay, what's the craziest
question somebody could ask me about this story? I think
the first time that this really erupted there was a
story that I had done about the use of goats
being used to pack in supplies and stuff with the
US military going into Afghanistan, and Matt thought that was
the most hilarious thing that he had ever heard, and
so he had a lot of questions about the mule train.
But it really was like I really did learn a
lot about being a host by sitting in with two
professionals like Matt Ramona. And from there then I became
a host on WBT nine to midnight. And then we
got bought and sold or I guess, yeah, well same process. Really,
company came in bought all of the Charlotte stations. Well,
the ownership got bought by Lincoln Financial. Then Lincoln Financial
sold off the Charlotte properties. The new company that bought
us then I think they real lies. They paid way
too much money because they really wanted the properties, and
then they couldn't afford to keep everybody, so I got fired,
along with a bunch of other people. There's a bit
of a blood letting that over the next year. Then
I went up to Asheville. I worked up in Asheville
for about eight years as a host, and then I
came back and so here I am. And then after
my arrival, now they they move as a new corporate owner,
Urban one, and Urban one has decided We're going to
move WBT to one oh seven point nine FM, Charlotte's
FM News Talk, And I am happy about the move,
but I am also kind of you know, there's legacy
and history with the eleven ten am signal, but I
will tell you that, you know, over years, the signal
it's you know, it's difficult to listen to a lot
of times. Some nights it's really good. And this gets
into sort of the sign of the of the radio waves.
And I'm not a scientist. I'm not an expert in
this stuff. I was never like in the weeds on
the engineering behind radio waves and frequencies and all of
that stuff. But I know that, like I've picked up
listeners in that nine to midnight time slot on BT,
I picked up listeners up in Jersey. They you know,
John from New Jersey still participates in the show. He writes,
writes in on the text line, which, by the way,
the phone numbers are changing. They have changed. So UH,
if you've been you know, speed dialing us or we're
in your contacts list, you need to update the uh
the text line and the call in line same number.
UH seven O four five seven oh one oh seven
nine seven O four five seven oh one oh seven nine.
And by the way, the WBT text line is driven
by Liberty Buick GMC. And I say it like that
because it just sounds like a powerful truck, you know.
So I say it like No one's told me to
say it like that. I just say it like that.
I just feel like it deserves that kind of you know,
does it sound better on the FM when I say
it like that? I hope it does. So. Yeah, So
I went to Ashville, then came back and now coincidentally,
now WBT has moved to one oh seven point nine FM.
Now is that a coincidence that they bring me back
and then they put yeah, it's totally a coincidence. Actually
total coincidence. By the way, you can also tell you're
a smart speaker to just play WBT Charlotte and if
you just say that, it'll it'll find us. I know
there have been a lot of questions. I spent too
many hours yesterday on the Facebook, uh, you know, trying
to engage with listeners who had questions about what was
going to happen and why it's happening and all of this.
So I will tell you that Radio one Urban one
Radio One is the parent company here, and they will
continue to operate the AM signal. Saw somebody make a
somebody suggested we donate the signal to the NPR station
down Like, I don't think that's happening, but yeah, they're
going to continue to operate the AM frequency eleven ten AM.
Right now, it's being simulcast on both stations. WBT is
on both the eleven ten AM and one oh seven
point nine FM, but that will cease at some point
in January when the AM frequency will flip to a
different format. And by the way, WBT on the eleven
ten AM format has flipped formats on that frequency many
times over its one hundred and three year history, so
that is going to happen sometime in January. I don't
know what it's flipping to, but when I find out,
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dot com. Okay, so the thing to keep in mind here.
Look and again, I understand people are lamenting the the
loss of WBT being connected to the eleven ten am frequency.
I understand that. Look, I've been saying that frequency with
BT's name for twenty five years. The station's been around
for over one hundred. But by the way, I think
like the frequencies have changed over the years. But to
you know, to just kind of go into some of
the engineering as I understand it. Again, I'm not an expert,
as you will learn on a great many different topics,
but as I understand it. You know, AM travels differently
than FM. FM kind of runs a long on the ground.
AM bounces, so it goes way up in the air
and then bounces, and the WBT signal is so strong
that it would like bleed over into other stations, particularly
one in Omaha. And because of that, they're on the
eleven to ten position as well. Decades ago, the government
said you can't bleed over into their signal. So they
got to protect their signal, and so we had to
flip what's called directional and you would hear it when
the sun would go down and the sun comes up,
you would hear. And that means we're foot and directional,
and that means everybody west of Charlotte lost our signal
in order to protect that Omaha, Nebraska, Omaha. That's why
I will never step foot in Omaha. No. But that
sent our signal up and down the east coast. But
those are not in our market. Those stations aren't or
those places are not in our market. So like the
audience that listens on the SKIP on that bounce. They
don't count for us. I mean that's just the way.
I mean, like, we can't sell advertising to a company
in Virginia because after the sun goes down, they can
hear our signal. We can't do that. We're a local station.
So if you are listening to one oh seven nine
and you've not been listening to WBT prior to today,
that explains that helped hopefully, this explains why the move
was done. And I'm also going to, you know, kind
of explain what it is that I do. And look,
every host on WBT is different. We are completely live
and local from five am until nine pm every weekday,
and I'm not aware of any other station that does that,
not just here in Charlot. I really, I'm not sure
there are other stations that have that kind of a
local lineup. So, like this is the most local station
that you're going to find. So when they flip the
station directional, we lose a lot of the local audience.
And so that's why they picked up the ninety nine
point three translator. I think it's out of Chester, South Carolina,
and it would beam into sort of Gaston County west
of Charlotte area. But there's another thing going on here
besides the car radios not carrying AM, but also there's
a lot of interference now on the AM band from
a lot of the modern day tech. It interferes with
the signals. It creates problems like I live in West Mecklenburg,
and when you know, the sun goes down, I can't
hear WBT, and I'm like eight miles away and I'm
in this spot where the ninety nine three FM signal
doesn't come in very doesn't come in well at all either,
So like I can't even listen when the sun goes down.
I have no idea what's on the air unless I'm
listening on the app, which, by the way, we do
have the app. You can listen live on the app
as well and on the website WBT dot com. But
Urban One Radio one will continue to own and operate
eleven ten Am. Again. We're going to simulcast through the
end of the year. The eleven ten AM frequency will
then be changing formats at some point, I am told
in January. And you know, honestly, like this protects the
biggest asset that Urban One has in the Charlotte market,
which is WBT and we are all i mean the
hosts but also management, all very aware of the history.
I mean Urban One came in, they acquired cluster of stations,
they had a couple already. They acquired the cluster here
at Julian Price Place. You know, wfn Z, the Sports Talk,
w L and K one oh seven nine, they and WBT.
And right after they acquired us, they you know, we
were we were fixing to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary
of WBT. And it would have been very easy for
a new ownership to come in and just say, no,
we're not doing that. You want to do what now?
You want to spend what kind of money on this
right you want? And they but they they did not
do that. They embraced it, and they you know, they
not just allowed it to go forward, They helped it
go forward. And it was a great celebration. We had
a great time. So they they understand, they're radio people,
so they understand the legacy and the heritage. We I mean,
we didn't build a hall of fame, the WBT Hall
of Fame, and you know, put people's plaques up on
the wall just to tear it all down. So that's
that's not going to happen. You know, there's a there's
a brand with WBT, the brand of BT, and then
there's the frequency, and they have overlapped for decades. But
I think in order for BT to survive for another
one hundred years, it has to it has to get
over onto the FM dial. And one one O seven
nine is a monster of a stick that has been
in our It's right next door. It's like it's been
part of this cluster for I don't know how long decades,
forty years something. So it just makes sense. And so again,
like I get the nostalgia, I get the you know,
the sense of loss. I do because I feel it too,
But there's also this sense of excitement and like we
are now going to be exposed to you know, another
eighty percent of people listening to radios that didn't even
know the AM band existed. They never went there. So
now we have an opportunity to reach more people and
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Allow me to dispel one of the rumors that I
have been seeing on the social media's George Soros did
not buy the station. Okay, some people have been asking
about that. That did not occur. Radio One still owns
WBT and eleven ten AM. George Soros did not buy
that station. He did buy a bunch of shares in Oudyssey,
but they don't own us anymore. So he has bought
a whole bunch of Hispanic stations. But he did not
buy WBT or eleven ten AM or one oh seven
nine FM. He didn't buy any of that, Okay. Chris
on the text line says, turning on certain lights in
our home caused static on the AM station. I happily
discovered today. The problem seems to have disappeared with the
switch to FM PS Love your Show. Yeah, like that's
the I've told this story before. When I first moved
to Charlotte, this would have been somewhere around nineteen ninety nine.
I want to say, and moved into my little apartment
down in Meers Park, plugged in my landline phone and
picked it up, you know, as you do to make
sure that you got the dial tone, that it's working.
And so I picked up the the receiver and I
listened in, and I hear WBT on the phone and
not like in like a far off, distant, staticy sort
of way. I pick it up and I'm listening to
it as if I've got an earbud in, like I'm
listening on a headset. It was super clear because apparently
the wiring in that old apartment building, which I think
was probably built around like the fifties or something, all
of the wiring act as a massive antenna, and so
all the landlines would pick up the AM signal. That's
how powerful the signal was. And this was at night,
so I don't know. I don't know if it did
it as much during the daytime, but yeah, it was powerful.
But again, nowadays, there's a lot of interference that comes
through the lines because of all of the tech. Shannon
says on the text line, this is weird. Can we
say that word again, Yes, we can say weird. I
never stopped saying weird. I did not allow that word
to be co opted by politicians. Weird is weird. People
feel free to keep using it here in the Lake
Norman area. I've always had to stream to listen to
the station. It's good to know though, that when I
trek up to Moresville these days, I won't lose the
radio signal. Now. Yeah, that's it's good. It's gonna be.
It's a good thing, you know. Let me see here
to do? All right, that's off, that's off topic. R J.
Can you tell us the new format for eleven ten am?
I cannot bane not that I because I don't know.
I don't know what the format will be. I'm not
sure if the people deciding what to do, I don't
I'm not sure if they know yet. But obviously they've
got some ideas or maybe they maybe they know what
they're going to do, but they haven't told me so,
and I've asked but and so that, but nobody knows
at this point. So right now, it's like, we want
to focus on making sure that all of this went well,
because this was a massive lift, you know, to try
to make sure that all the technology worked properly, and
because again, like they moved us from eleven ten AM
to one oh seven nine FM, and they moved Mix
to one hundred. I'm seeing now I'm gonna mess up
the frequencies. They moved them to one hundred point nine
and ninety nine point three, which was the WBT translator
for Gaston County area Western mech down into Clover. That
was praise, praise, then moved to where the block was
and the block exited the market. The block was taken off,
so they had to move what is that four stations
two five stations. I was told there would be no
math when I took this gig, so I apologize for that.
Coming in loud and clear in Forest City. Very nice.
Thank you. By the way, if you when you send
a text to the WBT text line driven by Liberty
Buick GMC, when you send a text, you can just
give us your name so I can put it into
the into the little profile thing here, so I don't
have to refer to you as like a seven oh
four number or anonymous person says, I can just say, like, oh,
it's Bete, so like for example, this is uh a
four to one zero number from Maryland, So a Maryland
man or woman. I guess it could be one oh
seven point nine sounds great. I'm an avid eleven ten
AM listener. I hope I get coverage eleven ten gave me.
I will say also that I used to do when
I was working up in Ashville. I could pick up
one oh seven point nine FM. It's in the outer
bands of the footprint. So I'm back on the air
in Ashville. I know I have a large western North
Carolina audience from when I was up there, so maybe
maybe they'll pick us up again. Jordan says, longtime listener,
love your work. It's going to be weird that I
used to listen to Michael Jackson and eighties pop on
one O seven nine. Now I get my favorite political commentator.
Thank you, Jordan. I appreciate that it's only weird if
you make it weird. Jordan, Okay, it's only don't make
it weird. But I will say in the next segment here,
I'll kind of go a little bit deeper, read some
more of your text messages as well, but give you
a little bit of a flavor. If you've not listened
to my program before. First off, that's very hurtful, but
also like I'll give you just sort of an idea
of how I approach my show. Every host is different,
but what my sort of philosophy is and how I
approach the show and what kind of content that we
do here, and by we I mean me but no,
but also producer Nick and Bernie, what we kind of
how we focus the show, how you know, the stuff
that I'm generally focused on, because all of the shows
sound different, mainly because there are different people, you know,
doing the shows, and we all have our own opinions
about things. We disagree on stuff, and you can disagree too.
In fact, I prefer it. My favorite phone calls are
with people that don't agree with me, and so like,
if you don't agree with me, usually I'm gonna get
you on first, I'm gonna put you at the front
of the line because I prefer those conversations. I am
a former political science guy. In college, I was mass
colm broadcast. I went to Winthrop University in Rockhill, and
I was a polycy minor and a philosophy They wouldn't
give me a double minor. I had enough credits though
for it. I had enough credits for a double minor,
but they would not offer me a double minor. I'm
not better. I swear I'm not bitter about it, maybe
just a little. All right, if you're listening to this show,
you know I try to keep up with all sorts
of current events, and I know you do too, And
you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources.
Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which
is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's
an app, and it's a website, and it combines news
from around the world in one place so you can
compare coverage and verify information. You could check it out
at check dot ground, dot news, slash pete. I put
the link in the podcast description too. I started using
ground News a few months ago and more recently chose
to work with them as an affiliate because it lets
me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom.
The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored
by the left and the right. See for yourself check
dot ground, dot news, slash pete. Subscribe through that link
and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use
the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.
Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it
also supports ground news as they make the media landscape
more transparent. Some messages from the WBT text line. Steve says,
thank you for the new and stronger FM signal. Pete,
welcome to more power. He's got a tim the tool man,
Jiff Brett says, I listen to the station for almost
forty years, love it and by the way, you do
sound taller. Thank you. By the way, for folks who
may not have heard the program before, the inclusion of
that rim shot is intentional. I put it in there
because the all of the data shows that use of
the rim shot makes my jokes about fifty seven percent funnier.
And I need all the help I can get, so
I use the rim shot. I also use the bell
just for sometimes no reason at all. No, Usually it's like, yes,
I agree, Ding ding ding. You know I use the
bell too, So I just want to let people know
in case you aren't aware of that. Hmm. Bobby A
says with the new WBT on one oh seven point
nine FM, Now, do we need special glasses or hats
containing foil? No, you can make your own. You can
make your own, Bobby. We do not provide any of
those to you. But if you do have some of
the glasses left over from the I was gonna say
soul stife, but that's not correct. It's the eclipse. If
you got those eclipse glasses, those can be helpful. Chris
wants to know why there is a delay on the
one oh seven point nine FM that's longer than the
AM signal. I noticed this too this morning when I
went around the house and I was switching over all
of the all of my old clock radios, and which,
by the way, this came at a perfect time for me,
not that it's about me, but because I was looking
for a new clock radio to put in the bathroom
that so it has to be able to like sustain
the you know, the humidity of the shower and all
of that, but I need to have the AM on it.
And like, I could not find a clock radio for
the bathroom that didn't have all of the digital components
in the USB ports and all this stuff. And I
also wanted one that hung on the wall. And it's like,
like you just can't find them. So yes, we are,
we are moving into the twentieth century here, folks, real quick.
And then after this newscast at the top of the hour,
we're going to get into some of the topics. So
just real briefly in about a minute and a half
here that I've got left before the news. I started
off as a local reporter. I've always believed in the
power of local news, local radio. You're not going to
be able to get local coverage and local conversations with people,
you know who understand the local news environment. You can
ever replicate that on a satellite you can't replicate it
on a you know, a syndicated national show. It's just
this is what we do. This is what I have
done since I started at WBT as a local reporter,
covering city council, county commission, school board, state government. So
that's been sort of my lane that I've been traveling down.
When I went to Asheville, I focused on the Asheville
city government, county commission. Now back in Charlotte, still doing that.
I do cover national issues though, because national can impact
the local obviously, but really like the focus that I
try to take is to take these large local issues
and try to get to sort of the political underpinnings,
the philosophy right why we're seeing what we're seeing, and
in the next hour you're going to hear there's a
story about the stabbing on the light rail train. Where
you've got all of these different inputs, all these different
types of stories that are all playing a role in
this one story. All right, that'll do it for this episode.
Thank you so much for listening. I could not do
the show without your support and the support of the
businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like,
please support them too and tell them you heard it here.
You can also become a patron at my Patreon page
or go to thepetekaalanershow dot com. Again, thank you so
much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.