Bob Gay after we met for lunch on July 14, 2004. Photo: Michael Hibblen
I’m sad to learn my high school radio broadcasting instructor Bob Gay died Friday, Dec. 6. He was 87. Bob had a lengthy career working at radio stations and later shared his wealth of knowledge with students. While I later learned more nuanced information in college, especially about journalism, I always felt I got more real world information about this challenging industry from Bob.
In his class at Little Rock’s Metropolitan Vocational Education Center, which I took from 1988-89, he even taught us things like how to cold call program directors to express interest in working for a station. He didn’t sugarcoat the profession, and for those interested in pursuing a career, offered advice on how to build professional relationships and what not to do.
For much of the class we operated as a radio station, with students rotating through different positions each week: being a DJ following a strict format clock, writing and producing commercials, writing and delivering newscasts, and preparing commercial logs. It enabled us to have an understanding of how all broadcast-related positions worked together to make a station function. We operated out of facilities that up until a year earlier had housed a real radio station, KLRE-FM 90.5, which was central Arkansas’s first NPR station and had initially been licensed to the Little Rock School District.
I wish I remembered details of the stations and places where Bob worked. One time in class he put a tape on the reel-to-reel machine and played an aircheck he was clearly proud of him with him being a DJ for a top 40 station, circa 1974. I’m making that assumption on the time period because he played Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown,” which was released that year, several times during his shift. I’m confident that station wasn’t in Arkansas.
Bob eventually worked for KSSN-FM 95.7 in Little Rock starting in the 1970s, which grew to become the top-rated station. Longtime morning man Bob Robbins mentioned Bob Gay while telling a story at a 2015 reunion of radio people. The newscasts at KSSN were recorded, and Bob Robbins said he stumbled midway through a newscast and proceeded to yell a string of expletives. He rerecorded the newscast, but ended up putting the wrong tape into the automation system and those profanities were played on the air. Bob Gay didn’t hear the broadcast, but came out of his office asking, “What did you say? What did you say?” One of the many things Bob Gay taught us was never say anything in a radio studio you wouldn’t want to be broadcast, and perhaps this incident was why.
Bob helped me get my first paying radio job — a small, financially struggling AM station in Benton where most of my paychecks bounced. But it gave me a chance to get some experience, get better on the air, and I got hired at a better, more financially stable radio station six months later. My career progression was exactly what Bob encouraged his students to do. Keep improving our skills, then look for better stations or bigger markets. I ended up working in radio for 34 years and don’t think it ever would have started without Bob. I’m still in broadcasting, but today in television at Arkansas PBS.
I met up with Bob a few times over the years. The last time I saw him was in 2004 during a visit home to Arkansas. He was thrilled that at the time I was working as a news anchor and reporter for a major station in Miami, and he seemed to enjoy hearing my adventures. I wish I’d reached out to him in recent years.
I know there are many other students who learned a great base of knowledge from Bob and went into radio. I hope to see some at his service, scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 12. According to his obituary, it will be at Smith North Little Rock Funeral Home with visitation to begin at 10:30 a.m., followed by the funeral at 11:30.
UPDATE:
I learned a lot more about Bob during his service, and it was wonderful visiting with his wife and childern. A few of Bob’s former students were also there, including Doug Virdin, who was in my class, and Todd Stuart, who had gone through the radio program a few years before me, but who I would eventually work with at KJBR, Power 102 in Jonesboro.
The man who led the funeral spoke about how Bob had grown up in Newport, Arkansas and experienced a few tragedies in his life. During a July 4th celebration, he witnessed the drowning of his 18-year-old brother. He also developed polio in 12th grade and lost all muscle in his legs. Bob ended up having to walk a mile to school each day using crutches while relearning how to walk.
A man who worked at a local radio station saw Bob and started giving him rides. Eventually he brought Bob to the station where he worked, which was the beginning of Bob’s radio career. Eager for more opportunities, he would take jobs at radio and TV stations around the country in markets of all sizes.
Bob met the woman he would later marry on the first day he arrived for a job in Marion, Alabama. He also worked for stations in Burlington, North Carolina, Memphis, Tennessee, and at WBCM in Baltimore, Maryland. I might be missing others.
He eventually returned home to Arkansas, working in Little Rock at KARN, television station KTHV, and as I mentioned earlier, helped put KSSN on the air, with a country format that would dominate Little Rock radio for decades. He also did some on-camera work in TV as a weatherman, though I’m not sure if that was at KTHV. Among photos rotating on screens as the visitation was underway was one showing Bob at a weather map in the pre-radar days, with hand-drawn weather patterns on a board. Another photo showed Bob in front of a large television camera with KTHV on the side.
It was a nice service and I’m glad I learned more about Bob’s life and career. Somehow these details never came out when I was his student or in later years while visiting over lunch.
Director of Public Affairs at Arkansas PBS, 36-year broadcasting veteran, photographer, interested in radio, TV and railroad history, author and host of the book and podcast series Rock Island Railroad in Arkansas.
