Broadcasting Live from K-A-A-Y

I love radio.  I love the live on-air broadcasting endorphin-like boost that radio gives me.  I love listening to radio because it’s so RIGHT NOW!  I love broadcasting on radio because of the intimacy of being alone, or one-on-one, in a room with a guest discussing and broadcasting the topics of the day yet having what could perceivably be the whole world listening!  And how could anyone not love being on the stage in the “theatre of the mind?”

Being a Mass Communications major graduating from Harding College in 1977 I wanted to  fulfill my desire to continue my campus radio station KHCA experience. I also wanted to use my entrepreneurial skills in advertising, and provide an audience with a program format that, to my knowledge wasn't ever available in the Little Rock market at that time.

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My “big idea” was to have a live, Bible based, radio Q & A program.  That idea sort of percolated with me for a few years.  My thought was this new radio program format would fill a social and spiritual need from a non-partisan biblical perspective.
 
A few years earlier I had just left home for my adult years. I attended two Church of Christ colleges. York College in York, Nebraska, and Harding College in Searcy, Arkansas. Those institutions taught me Bible like I had never been taught before. Now as a recent graduate I was away from home, out of my Bible colleges, married, and on my own. 
 
I moved to North Little Rock, Arkansas to take a job in broadcasting, albeit not radio, but television news. A week later I walked into the Levy church, heard Leon Barnes teach a Bible class with thoughts and insights that I had never heard before.  Leon was somebody that helped me makes sense out of all I had been learning the past few years, but now he also showed me how to use that knowledge.
 
Leon also helped me find direction in my spiritual life. My previously youthful years was that of growing up in a church, with my mother being the guiding and spiritual life leader of our household of seven, (two parents and five children).
 
My advertising agency was just taking off but unfortunately it was still a non-profit organization, even though that wasn’t supposed to be that way. To supplement my income, I took part time preaching jobs at various congregations.  I would go home in the evenings thinking about how I could better monetize my skill set in a combination of ways in mass communications.
 
Unbelievably, at that time we did not own a television (our ‘s broke and I didn’t have the money to get it fixed). At night I spent a lot of my time remodeling an old home.  While doing so I listened to talk radio.
 
I listened to Bruce Williams, a then very popular and current radio program host. He was a common sense, financial advice guru that inspired me to want to produce some sort of live Radio Q & A program like he had.  Listening to Williams reminded me of my idea for a radio program that never left my mind. I learned a lot from listening to him heralding the concepts of common-sense financial advice, long before Dave Ramsey was ever clutching his money wallet in one hand and microphone in the other. I also listened to him because I was intrigued by his radio presence, his extemporaneous command of a conversation, and his amazing ability to listen to a problem, synthesize the situation, and immediately come back with an intelligent, and helpful solution. 
 
Even though I never met him, Bruce Williams inspired me to believe that I could blend all my professional and personal disciplines, of communication, Bible teaching, radio, advertising and entrepreneurship.  But I didn’t have all the expertise I needed to pull this off and be successful. I knew that if I wanted a LIVE, Bible-based, call in Q & A program, that I would need to recruit somebody to work with me that could command an audience and communicate at a “Bruce Williams level.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Williams_(talk_radio_host) 
 
The only person that I thought of that could speak extemporaneously that clearly and eloquently was the preacher at my new church, Leon Barnes.  I approached Leon with my idea.  I had to explain it several times and how everything would be produced and sold.  I’m sure he didn’t have a lot more band width to talk on another project, but I convinced him that I would do all the radio production and sales and all he had to do was show up, teach a short lesson, and ten take minutes of questions.  I don’t know if anything every came so natural to somebody as his teaching and communicating Biblical lessons. He said, “Yes,” and I got started with all the back-end work and negotiations that needed to be done.
 
Leon and I became good friends.  Even though he was only eight years older than me it seemed that his knowledge and maturity made me feel like I was a much younger man that needed a big-brother mentor type person to move forward in life. Over the next few years, we worked and served together in everything from preaching at small area churches, Toastmasters International, to our live, radio Bible question call-in program I had been dreaming about.
 
I wrote up a formal request for program on a radio station and headed off to pitch my idea.  I was going to go to as many radio stations as it took to get my show on the air.  The first station I went to, K-A-A-Y, made me an offer, although it was not the offer I was expecting. 
 
I was pitching a “I’ll do this… (we produce, and host the show), and you KAAY, sell the commercials for the show, from which we each draw our monthly share of the proceeds?  Whadda ya think?”
 
They laughed at me and said, “That’s not the way this works son! We own the radio station; you own the show.”
 
Then they came back with, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do for YOU, we’ll sell you and your friend a time slot on our radio station, and YOU sell, produce, and run the commercials during your show, and YOU keep ALL the sales proceeds!” 
 
Hmmm, I thought, they get their money regardless, and I do all the work?  Then I thought, “what if I don’t sell enough commercials to cover the cost of the show?” But it only took me a nano-second to respond, stuck out my handshake and said, “I accept that offer!”  When I walked out of there, I had a Sunday night, 30-minute program slot on K-A-A-Y, “The Mouth of the South,” “The Mighty 1090” and I was stoked!  But I also realized pretty quickly that I had a lot of work to do; selling commercial sponsorship, writing and producing the spots, as well as plan and produce a radio show that was going to air once a week, and the start date was the first of the next month!
 
The first Sunday of the next month, and every Sunday evening thereafter, I attended the 6:00 p.m. service at Levy Church of Christ where Leon was the preacher. After the worship service as over we grabbed a bite to eat and headed to the radio station for our live broadcast. 

The radio show was called, Searching for a Better Way. It was intended to be a non-denominational, Bible based call in question-and-answer program, with no direct connection to any group or church… just open the Bible and let’s talk. After a produced open I would announce “Live from K-Double – A – Y,” and then introduced a selected topic, let Leon teach about the topic for a few minutes, take a commercial break, and come back to live questions coming from the listening audience. The topics were pre-selected and prepared, but the questions and answers were organic.
 
It was a cutting-edge idea, one that had not been tried before, at least as far as I knew.  I did know that it was the first program of this type in the Little Rock market. The fact is, we had very few comments each week and some weeks we were filing the gap by ourselves.  But it was being broadcast, and we heard from many throughout the week they were listening. We did that for about three years, from early 1982-until sometime in late 1984.
 
By 1985 we were both moving on with our lives and went different directions, in ministry and locations. I moved to Clarksville, Ark., where I accepted a job as the Director of Public Relations for the University of the Ozarks.  A few years later I was on my way to my hometown area, Chicago, to take on a marketing sales position that was more aligned with my college degree training. I also continued to preach at small churches who needed fill in preaching from time-to-time, (where I often, by the way, used Leon's sermon notes to preach).  Leon moved on to a large church in the Memphis area and then back to Central Arkansas a few years later.
 
I didn’t see much of Leon for many years, but one of my favorite memories of Leon was when my family was traveling from Chicago to central Arkansas to visit family, when we stopped in Memphis to hear him preach at a Germantown, Tenn. church.  We met up with him and his wife Linda before service and exchanged warm greeting and hugs all around.  I naturally wanted to know what he was planning to preach about that morning so I asked him. It was a pretty routine question and answer, until he got up to preach and he spoke on something totality different that what he had told me.  I was a bit confused but settled back and heard my old friend give his vintage style sermon.
 
On the way out we needed to hit the road, but I was anxious to ask him about the different topic.  He explained by saying, “Yeah, I had planned to speak on that, but the young boy assigned to read the scripture, (probably 10 or 11 years old), read the wrong passage.  I didn’t want to embarrass him, so I just preached on the scripture that he read.  I was still in awe that somebody could do that so effortlessly. I also admired him for doing that as much as not wanting to embarrass the young  scripture reader!
 
I always loved and admired the way he mentored me to be a better servant and student of God’s word. His influence has always led me in every part of my life.
 
In 2022, 45 years later from when we first met, Donna and I made our way to the church in Lonoke, Ark. to hear him teach and preach, have lunch with him and his wife Linda, and simply catch up! We ate together, laughed together, and hugged each other like it was 1977!
 
Everybody should have a mentor like I’ve had in Leon. I have been so blessed.

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