After nearly 40 years on air, WPTF’s gentle but confident voice retires
Tom Kearney never shouted on the air, never called anyone a nasty name, never pointed fingers, cast blame, spoke ugly or touted his own intelligence — resisting the screaming chamber of talk radio.
For almost 40 years at WPTF, he spoke in a gentle but confident voice starting weeknights at 9 p.m., leading his listeners down a folksy discussion of how long a drought might last to why astronomers had demoted Pluto as a planet.
On his first show as a full-time host in 1988, he hit the airwaves on the day after Christmas and had no guest for his two-hour slot. So he invited listeners to call in and discuss their family’s Christmas decorations, noting that newlyweds might potentially clash over tradition.
“That’s the first chance for a collision right there,” he recalled on his Thursday-night show. “Do you really have to have the little marshmallows in the candied yams and that sort of thing?”
WPTF airs its last broadcast of the “Tom Kearney Show” on Friday, July 16, ending one of its longest-running programs. Kearney, who joined the station in 1982, told listeners Thursday that he no longer gets around as well after nearly four decades.
“I think I still have my wits about me,” he said on Thursday’s show, “and we do pretty well along those lines.”
Kearney started full-time shortly after Rush Limbaugh got national syndication, and he decided right off to veer away from politics and vitriol.
He chose a folksier path: garden chats, computer repair tips, stamp collecting, Friday night trivia. He picked guests who could pass on something useful: the astronomer who explained Pluto’s non-planetary status, or the assistant attorney general who offered advice on fighting elder fraud.
“Those people who call you up and try to sell you stuff and it isn’t what you want it to be,” he told listeners in his Thursday nostalgia show, “and those people used to call my mother, and of course my mother was the sweetest person on Earth and she thought everybody was honest, and I had to finally tell her, ‘No no no, you do not have to listen to those people. You don’t have to buy what they’re selling. You can buy it if you want to, but you don’t have to.”
Rick Martinez, vice president of content for WPTF, said Kearney’s secret is his curiosity.
“Whether he’s talking to a political leader or an auto mechanic,” Martinez said, “Tom always seems to know what questions the listeners want answered. Tom has always put the listener first.”
In a 2013 Our State magazine profile, Kearney recalled asking for one gift on his 6th birthday: being able to turn on the family radio all by himself.
He earned an amateur radio license and learned Morse Code, his first broadcasts, and followed the electronic spark that lit his imagination well into his late 70s — long past the era when much on talk radio could be described as a chat.
After 10,000 hours on the air, his audience consists of old friends: Lou from Rocky Mount or “Mary from Cary — it rhymes.”
But Friday’s show, which broadcasts from 9 to 10 p.m., will be no bitter goodbye.
“When I was 10 years old, I wanted to be a radio person,” he told listeners, “and here 68 years later I’m doing exactly what I wanted to do.”