Small Town News

Radio Legend Walks Away from Microphone

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I have always been a listener to talk radio.

I was a faithful listener to "The Morning Show" with Steve Preston and Ed Rynders on WALG in Albany. Steve now teaches elementary school in Albany and still works some as a disc jockey, the last I heard. Ed, who lives in Leesburg, went into politics. He is a member of the Georgia House of Representatives.

Following their program was "The Ludlow Porch Show."

I can't remember when I began listening to Luddy, but I was a faithful Whacko (or Wacko), as his listeners, are fondly called. I found he and I had a lot in common, especially a love for trivia.

IT WAS TRIVIA that propelled Ludlow (born Bobby Crawford Hanson on October 11, 1934) into talk radio. In 1971 Sports illustrated magazine was searching for five trivia experts to profile in an article. Lewis Grizzard, Ludlow's stepbrother, was a stringer for the magazine and told his editors about Ludlow. They sent a writer to interview Ludlow and he came away convinced the man was a trivia expert.

The 1972 SI article caught the attention of radio station WSB in Atlanta. The station invited Ludlow to come on the air. Station officials at WRNG were listening and offered Ludlow a week's visit on their station. That was the beginning of a radio career that spanned more than 30 years and launched a network.

Ludlow worked at WRNG for 10 years before moving to WSB when WRNG converted to an all-news format. He was a regular at WSB for more than a decade.

On New Year's Day 1991, Ludlow and Denny Ainsworth, who had been his producer for most of his time at WSB, launched the FunSeekers Radio Network. The program airs 9 a.m.-noon on most stations, Mondays-Fridays. Ludlow picked the topic of the day, except for Friday when listeners could call in about anything.

Over the years the show developed an army of Whackos, of which I was proudly one. Callers were drawn to its easy conversational style, its devotion to nostalgia, its clean wit and the high moral ground it took. The latter was evidenced not only in the conversations between Ludlow and his listeners, but in his signature signoff line, "Whatever else you do today, you find somebody to be nice to." I ran that closing line as a screensaver on my computer for a time.

DENNY, who hails from Mississippi, programmed Top 40 music stations before coming to Atlanta. He used that background to change the way music would be used to accent an all-talk program. His bumper music reinforced the topic of the day. The show's signoff song is Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again."

Many Whackos have a call-in name. Mine was Big Mac. Trivia would sometimes be the topic of the day. Ludlow would ask callers to answer trivia questions. I was proud that he thought of me as a top trivia player. I tried stumping him by giving him introductory verses to popular songs and he had to give the names of the songs. Many of the popular ballads from the 1940's and 1950's were written that way.

Many interesting characters called the show. One of the most popular was an ad salesman whose Whacko name was Ron De Vous. He pretended to be an effeminate person, but nothing was farther from the truth. I met him at one of Ludlow's annual Whacko parties held on Labor Day weekends. I was wearing a Citadel T-shirt. He was wearing pink pants. All he wanted to talk about was how awful he thought it was that females were trying to get in the military school.

LUDLOW has been a writer as well as a broadcaster. I can see eight of his books on the shelf in my office as I am typing this. And he is a wonderful public speaker. Helen and I were privileged to attend "An Evening with Ludlow" in Moultrie one night in the mid-1990's.

I became friends with Ludlow, Denny and Phil (Ludlow's son, who assisted with the show for several years). I visited the station several times when it was located in the hotel of the Falcons Complex in Suwanee.

Ludlow retired from the FunSeekers Radio network, Monday, September 6 to turn his attention f ulltime to public speaking and to writing. He is currently co-authoring a book with Emory Jones that he promises will be very funny.

Ludlow, who was inducted into the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame in 2007, changed the face of talk radio in Georgia. For more than three decades, he made people laugh. To so many, he was more than a good listener; he was a good friend. He will be missed, but Denny is carrying on the tradition.



Copyright 2010 The Meriwether Vindicator, Greenville, Georgia. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from SmallTownPapers, Inc.

© 2011 The Meriwether Vindicator Greenville, Georgia. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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