HomeMy WebLinkAboutProject HOLD Chip Almost Leaves RadioProject HOLD
WTAW Interview
Chip Howard | WTAW Sports Talk Radio Host
Tom Turbiville | WTAW Radio Host
Laura Quezada | Transcriber
00:00:00 Dick Bolin (DB)
[Music] College Station, Texas, April 24, 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.
-------------------------------
00:00:12 Tom Turbiville (TT)
This is WTAW, The First 100 Years, I'm Tom Turbiville. Chip Howard has been a fixture on
sports radio for decades in the Brazos Valley and has been doing his daily Chip Howard sports
talk for 28 years, the last 22 on partner station KZNE The Zone. But he started in 1994 on
WTAW, before that on another station in town, but he very nearly went in a totally different
direction.
00:00:40 Chip Howard (CH)
I was looking to get out of this business because I was poor, I had two kids, I looked into a
couple of different job opportunities. This was providential how it came about. I took a vacation
in the summer. I went through Lubbock on the way up to the mountains, and I saw this billboard
on Jack Dale, who was a longtime play-by-play fixture in Lubbock at Texas Tech, and it was
advertising Jack Dale in the mornings, and it was a different station. And I went, “Well, that's not
right. Jack Dale works in the afternoons. He's worked at this station forever”. I got back and
called him, I said, “Jack, I saw this billboard ”, and he said, “yeah”, he said, “I've changed”. He
said, “I'm doing a talk show with my son in the mornings”. He finished the conversation with,
“You know, you should do that. That would be a big hit in College Station”.
00:01:27 (TT)
Talk radio, well, turns out wasn't Chip's ambition.
00:01:30 (CH)
Honestly, I didn't like talk radio. I never wanted to do talk radio, that's not why I came into the
business. But Jack put a little bug in my ear and I'd call him back and I'd go, “what about this?”,
and “how do you do that”? And he would always end the same way, “You should do that down
there. It would be a good place for something like that”.
00:01:51 (TT)
Well, thank you, Chip Howard; thanks, Jack Dale. [chuckles] That's more history of WTAW, the
First 100 Years.