More Talk Radio Coming to Coastal Alabama- Lagnaippe
It looks like Pirates are as endangered in Mobile as they are in the Indian Ocean.
As of May 1, 106.5 FM will cease operating as “The Pirate” and begin a new life as “FM Talk 106.5,” giving the Mobile area its first all-talk FM station. Morning show hosts Sean Sullivan and Wayne Gardner will anchor the station’s new lineup talking about local and statewide issues weekday mornings from 6 to 8. They will be followed by an eclectic mix of what Sullivan believes will prove to be provocative and listenable syndicated shows throughout the rest of the day.
Sullivan has been at the helm of WAVH for just over a year now, ever since the station was purchased by Bigler Broadcasting. Gardner joined him a few months later. Both men previously worked at dot.com plus, which owns WZEW and WNSP, where they each served as morning hosts on the sister stations. Sullivan has also written a humor column for this newspaper since its inception. Gardner said the switch to an all-talk format is one they’ve long been eyeballing and one they think is right for both the market and the time.
“This was the business plan from the very beginning. This is why this group was put together, to do what we’re about to do,” Gardner said. “We wanted to give The Pirate adequate time and resources to see if it could be done. Now it’s time to go.”
When Bigler took over The Pirate, the station was playing music from the ‘70s through the modern era, and Sullivan said the thought was to give it a go and see how well the model worked. Currently, though, they said there are so many stations playing some variation of The Pirate’s song list, it seemed a good time to go in their own direction.
“You can take any song we’re playing and you can conceivably hear it on four other stations. Some songs you can hear on five,” Gardner explained. “We’re doing this to be able to stand out in this particular format.”
Both Sullivan and Gardner say they are extremely excited by the opportunity to address some of the day’s top stories in their own interesting, thought-provoking and irreverent way. They don’t expect their morning show to be something that will be either ordinary, boring or driven by their callers.
“There’s not talk in FM around here and the current political debate is very lively – the economy is in recession. People are so tuned in. I don’t think the timing could be better,” Gardner said.
In addition to assembling an eclectic list of syndicated hosts, Sullivan said the station will also soon be joined by Meteorologist Dr. Bill Williams, who has done the weather forecast at WZEW for the past several years. Gardner and Sullivan’s morning show will revolve around 12-minute segments focusing on the day’s top stories and will allow “some callers.”
Following their show will be Neil Boortz from 8 a.m. – 11 a.m., followed by Michael Savage from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. Then comes Todd Schmitt from 2 p.m. – 5 p.m. followed by Clark Howard offering financial advice from 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. every evening.
“This is a talk station programmed a lot more like a rock station,” Sullivan said. He added that he and Gardner would reprise the popular outdoors show they used to do at WNSP, and that it will run on the weekends. The station’s full lineup will be available at their Web site
www.fmtalk1065.com.
“I picked the people I wanted without regard to the ease of getting them and let the product drive it,” Sullivan said. “This is a station people are going to talk about for a long time.”
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