HomeMy WebLinkAboutIn With A&M Athletics Transcript, WTAW First 100 YearsProject HOLD
WTAW Interview
Bill Hicks |WTAW Owner
Tom Turbiville | WTAW Radio Host
Daniel Hayes | Transcriber
Transcript
00:00:00 Dick Bolin (DB)
College Station, Texas, April 24th, 1947. Dick Bolin talking. Here's the latest news from the
Associated Press. Now, the big-
00:00:07 Speaker 2
WTAW joined with businesses from across the Brazos Valley.
00:00:11 Speaker 3
Aggies win 74-72! Here's your ride!
00:00:16 Speaker 4
16.20 WTAW.
00:00:19 Tom Turbiville (TT)
This is WTAW, the first 100 years. I'm Tom Turbiville. Even before WTAW's call letters were
first mentioned in 1922, a year before that actually, this station was doing sports. WTAW owner
Bill Hicks is duly proud that the station is leading the way in sports coverage and has been for a
while.
00:00:40 Bill Hicks (BH)
Well, this is a sports mad community, and it's centered around Texas A&M athletics along with
high school football and basketball. When I came here, all that we had on WTAW and KTAW at
the time, the FM, was A&M Consolidated football. I knew how important sports could be, and as
long as you have the broadcast time available, you needed to add sports programming. So, I
ended up pushing through Houston Astros baseball. They had done it historically in the past, but
we brought it back.
00:01:12 TT
Our commitment to A&M athletics actually started with coverage of women's basketball.
00:01:18 BH
We tried every which way we knew how to do anything we could with Texas A&M. And the
first opportunity came when Wally Groff suggested that we would we consider broadcasting
Texas A&M Lady Aggie basketball with Lynn Hickey. And we agreed to do it because here's a
door open and it was in its infancy back then. So, that was our first foray in with Texas A&M.
Ultimately led to us doing baseball. And then gradually we became the flagship station for Texas
A&M Athletics.
00:01:54 TT
And we still are on WTAW, the first 100 years.