Because This Is What We Do

March will mark 29 years in broadcasting for me. I have spent my entire career at one company, in one community. A small independent company in North Alabama. I have worked on all three of our properties in one capacity or another, eventually rising to the position of Program Director and, ultimately, Operations Manager.

In all that time, I have been fortunate to learn one thing about our job: the community depends on us more than we may realize.

This past week, we all watched the weather forecast past exhaustion because we know what winter storms mean. We cover a good portion of North Alabama, Northeast Mississippi, and Southern and Middle Tennessee. These areas are no strangers to tornadoes and flooding, and in the winter months, we have seen significant ice and snow in some years.

Over the years, we have had numerous similar winter weather events, and we always had a plan: camp in the office. My old boss, Charlie Ross, had a DEFCON Winter Storm chart, and if we got to DEFCON 3, we prepared to spend the night at the station. We packed clothes, sleeping bags, and supplies. The understanding was that in the event of severe weather, we could not be someplace where we could not go on the air. I have been an operations manager for 10 years now, and that tradition remains.

Although I retired the DEFCON system. Our air staff is made to understand that this is what we do. These are the moments when our job is the most important.

I once had a part-time jock call out because he got caught at home in Tennessee during a flash flood event. I let him off, but I reminded him that he knew this was coming, and the reason he knew he couldn’t make it in was that someone who did his job made it to work to tell him he couldn’t make it in. That’s the point. We get on the air. We don’t give up ground to any other medium. Not television, not the internet. We have a duty to be there. It’s not every day, every week, or even every year, but these moments happen.

Trust me, I do not want to sleep at the radio station for a week waiting for ice to melt, but I have, just so I knew I was in a position to go live with updates from the local police or EMA if I needed to get information out. Those agencies rely on us, too.

Look, I get it. If you are a radio personality with no responsibilities beyond your air shift, and maybe some production, this isn’t something you’re going to want to do. Maybe the money isn’t what you feel is worth that hassle. That’s fair. But this is the job, regardless. This is the moment when you matter the most to those loyal listeners you have.

In the last few years, we have seen the rise of AI in our industry. Now, there’s an entire station on the air with only AI jocks in all dayparts. That’s a reality. It is here. My question to you is, why make it logical to replace you? I don’t want to be stranded at the station for days on end, but I will be if that’s what has to be done. I’ve been to transmitter sites at 3am or on the air giving tornado warning updates, but that’s the gig.

In a world where people are being told it is more cost-effective to syndicate, distance voice track, or use AI in place of live air personalities, why show them they’re right? Give your community a reason to trust you with everything.

Every time the weather turns violent here, I get a call from an elderly woman in the county who lives alone in a trailer asking if there will be a tornado. She is terrified and has no one to help her. I always talk to her, and give her the most updated information I have, and offer to call her local police to see if they can get her to a shelter if it gets worse. I talk to her, and she feels better.

Syndication, remote voice tracking, and AI can’t do that, at least not yet. Until it can, I am not giving up that ground, and neither should you. Shakespeare, by way of Hamlet, said, “You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal.” Don’t give up your greatest value, being there. Being where they need you.

Because this is what we do.

M. Fletcher Brown serves as Operations Manager for Big River Broadcasting in Florence/Muscle Shoals, AL.