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WTAW Interview
Louie Belina | The Zone Sports Talk Host and Former WTAW Member
Tom Turbiville | WTAW Radio Host
Laura Quezada | Transcriber
00:00:00 Dick Bolin (DB)
[Music] College Station, Texas, April 24th, 1947, Dick Bolin talking. Here's the latest news from
the Associated Press…
00:00:07 Associated Press (AP)
He got a touchdown! Oh, doctor!
00:00:10 Speaker 3
…News and Talk, WTAW.
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00:00:13 Tom Turbiville (TT)
This is WTAW, the First 100 Years, I'm Tom Turbiville. It was the year 2000. WTAW went to
1620 on the dial and our longtime frequency, 1150, became The Zone Sports Talk. And that's
where you know Louie Belina over the last two decades plus, but he started as a four hour a
week hand 31 years ago on WTAW.
00:00:38 Louie Belina (LB)
Well, WTAW was how I got into radio. They were looking to hire someone to work 4 hours
every Saturday to run Longhorn football. WTAW was not the flagship like it is now of Aggie
Athletics, but you wanted to have the A&M Texas game. A, you could sell it, and B, everyone
wanted to listen to it. So WTAW, I think, in brilliant counter programming, had Longhorn
football. So, I was hired actually to run the entire Longhorn football schedule, 4 hours a week,
and then once I got here, I loved listening to football on the radio. Vin Scully was calling the
CBS Sports Baseball Playoffs that WTAW run. And I was sitting there in the studio asking to be
scheduled during those shifts because I was so in love with listening to baseball on the radio, but
it's Vin Scully, so it's not just any baseball. Fell in love with listening to Rush Limbaugh and
Bruce Williams; given that financial advice and the way they could tell the story, the way that
they did the presentation, I fell in love with everything kind of AM radio. Now, before I worked
for WTAW, I didn't even know there's an AM dial on the radio, by the way. You know, FM, DJ,
Rock 'N' Roll, that was the only thing in the universe I knew, so the whole idea of talk radio, no
clue.
00:01:52 (TT)
And that's Louie Belina, one of the real long timers of WTAW, the First 100 Years.