Memories of 9/11 From Inside the Belly of Talk Radio

Scott Pinsker : Sep 11, 2024
PJ Media

We were trying our best, but there was a near-total news blackout. With everything unfolding in real time, the government was paralyzed; hours went by without any updates. Our audience was begging for something—anything! — that could make sense of it all...

[PJMedia.com] "Well, that's weird." (Screengrab image: via Sky News)

When my then-fiancée (now my wife) told me that a plane had just struck one of the Twin Towers, it didn't register as anything nefarious. I was getting ready for work and figured it must've been pilot error. But when the second plane crashed into the second tower, we knew.

We all knew.

Immediately.

On Sept. 11, 2001, I was working at 1250 WTMA radio in Charleston, South Carolina—"Your news-talk leader in the Low Country!" We were the top-rated news station in the Charleston marketplace, but we weren't alone: There were seven or eight sister stations under our roof, too. Our parent company owned a slew of stations, but we were the largest. Most of the others only had skeleton crews and were run via computers patched to satellites, whereas we had an entire team of on-air talent and a dedicated, award-winning news crew.

Plus... me!

I was still in my 20s and the low man on the Low Country totem pole: My job was to produce a three-hour weekday show for the lovely and talented Nancy Wolf, and I had my own (low-rated) talk show on the weekends. Producing a talk show can mean different things at different stations, but at WTMA, it meant that I was responsible for booking the guests, prepping the host, clipping the show's content, running the board, and fielding incoming calls from listeners.

Nancy Wolf never went national, but she developed a strong, dedicated following in the South and was a recurring guest on "Politically Incorrect" with Bill Maher. She was a quick-witted, tart-tongued right-winger with a gift for gab and the willingness to traffic in filthy, off-color jokes (off-air), so we got along famously.

But there was always tension between the talk show teams and the WTMA news crew. It happened all the time. They were considered "hard news," and we were "editorial." When stories were breaking, there'd often be unpleasant—and highly competitive—overlap. Sharp elbows were a way of life.

Yet the moment the second plane hit the second tower, all rivalries were set aside... Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

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