Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05
January 11, 2007 issue
Radio Show Features Local Children as Co-Hosts
Story by Celeste von Mangan
The Young World Radio Show is all about empowering children and giving them a voice. For eight years, Sam Tate, host and creator of the weekly program, has worked with children in local schools to teach them a bit about radio broadcasting and oral presentation. And every year about this time, he focuses on the I Have A Dream Week events lineup, replete with a special double Saturday broadcast called I Have A Dream Special. Children write essays on What the Dream Means to Me, and the authors read them on The Young World Radio Show on Saturday, January 13, and Saturday, January 20, from 10:00 until 11:00 a.m. on WATA-AM 1450 and WXIT-AM 1200.
“The kids write and read the essays and we produce music that is appropriate for Martin Luther King,” said Tate. “Our regular show is the same time every Saturday and the kids are actually the co-hosts of the show. I go into the schools and sit down with the kids in a quiet room and help them come up with what they are going to say. Those kids who do not co-host, they do the dedications all throughout the show. It’s a family show and it’s really exciting. How many people get to hear themselves on radio? Not everyone can be a football star, but by the time these kids are heard on Saturday, these kids are local heroes. It is wonderful for their self-esteem.”
Tate knows something about radio broadcasting and how it can help a person both professionally and personally. He left the farm in Morganton for Greensboro in the early 1960s and worked his way through college with a job in radio.
“I may not have been a football or sports star in school,” said Tate, “but I was the radio cat ‘Sam the Sham’ and I had the opportunity to meet a lot of different people like Michael Jackson. In 1983 we got the license to start in Blowing Rock and we brought that station to town. It was WOIX and now it is WXIT. We started from scratch with it.”
Though Tate has worked in commercial aviation and with community colleges, his first love has always been radio. He is also host of the radio show Gospel Gems broadcast on Sundays from 7:00 until 8:00 a.m. on the local country station and aired from New York to Florida. His Young World Radio Show can now be heard across the nation and around the world.
“We’re streaming on the Web,” said Tate. “Listeners can pick up the show at www.booneweb.com. We have kids who have family out of the area, in St. Louis or elsewhere. People in Italy can listen to the show now.”