After seven decades, WTAB goes silent
Hours after signing WTAB off the air Monday, owner Eric Sellers was taking calls at his desk. Just a day earlier preachers and lay ministers spoke of their experiences at the station during their final day there, on the air. They include, below, from left, Rev. Bobby J. Davis, Doug Childers, Marshal Russell, Corey McPherson, and Greg Cartrette. (Deuce Niven, TLT)
By DEUCE NIVEN
tribdeuce@tabor-loris.com
Gospel music played in the moments before WTAB went silent, just before 7 a.m. Monday.
Tabor City’s AM radio station, at 1370 on the dial, didn’t quite make it to 71 years. A day after receiving Federal Communications Commission permission, WTAB signed on the air on July 1, 1954.
Billed then as “Columbus County’s largest radio station,” WTAB was the counties’ second, following WENC in Whiteville. Opening day programing included music and news, station manager Jerry Honeycutt said in a June 30, 1954 The Tabor City Tribune story.
Originally a “sunrise to sunset” station, WTAB later expanded its hours, its 5000 watt signal lowered at night for broadcasts that included Tabor City High School, and later South Columbus High football games.
End of an era
Just a couple of hours after signing WTAB off the air for the last time, Eric Sellers was at a loss to name the last song broadcast there.
“It was from a playlist, I don’t know what it was,” Sellers said sitting in his office, reading glasses scattered across his desk, and the phone occasionally ringing.
“I bet it’s for Swap Shop,” Eric said of the popular morning buy-sell-trade show that had become the station’s trademark during the late Jack Miller’s days there.
Hired as a staff announcer in 1975, Miller and his wife Bonnie bought WTAB from Don Curtis 20 years later. Miller wasn’t interested in buying the FM WKSM at the time. It was sold separately, and 104.9 FM became what is now “Bob FM.”
Sellers and his wife Julie bought the station from “The Colonel” Jack Miller at the end of 2012. Eric is Jack’s stepson, the son of Jack’s widow, Bonnie.
Radio was changing in the era that brought smart phones and saw the Internet grow in power and influence.
“AM radio is just about gone,” Sellers said Tuesday.
Closing the station was a business decision, Sellers said, with an offer to buy the property from its neighbor and parent company of this newspaper, Atlantic Packaging, bringing what was inevitable closer.
Current plans for the station property are to use the office building for Atlantic’s IT (Information Technology) offices, extending the company’s main Tabor City campus along the full length of Avon Street, Atlantic CEO Rusty Carter said Tuesday.
For more on this story see this week’s Tabor-Loris Tribune in print and online.
