The Kansas Association of Broadcasters will induct three new members into the Kansas Broadcasting Hall of Fame. Several individual award winners will also be honored at the Kansas Association of Broadcasters convention October 23-25 in Manhattan, KS.
Hall of Fame inductees include:
- Don Free is a 50 year industry veteran. He spent 32 years as an engineer for a radio games on the Royals Radio Network. Even now he still handles the controls for visiting teams at Kauffman Stadium and also does with the the Kansas State Football Radio Network.
- Jack Oliver has worked at numerous Wichita radio stations and logged time on the air in Dodge City. Since 2004, Jack has been program director at KEYN and covering afternoon and morning hosting duties.
- Wyatt Thompson has been in the broadcasting industry for over 40 years working across ‘The Jayhawk State’. In 2002 he became the voice for K-State Athletics. In addition to play-by-play responsibilities for football, basketball, he is also the host for football and basketball coaches show on the K-State Radio Network. Since arriving at K-State, he has been recognized as the Kansas Sportscaster of the Year award six times.
Special honors are also being given to two other industry pros:
- Laura Capps of SummitMedia, Wichita will receive the ‘Mike Oatman Award For Broadcast Sales Excellence’. She entered the radio business in 2001 with no radio experience having worked in Occupational Medicine. She leads sales in the cluster of stations she handles.
- Matt Althouse of Eagle Communications, Great Bend will receive the ‘Rising Star Radio Award’. He started his radio career in 2003 on air and moved on to a series of management positions including Operations, Digital Sales and Program Director. He is now GM for Eagle Communications.
