R.I.P.: Memphis Broadcaster John Powell Was 83

John Powell, a radio and television pioneer whom many of you saw on WREG Channel 3 and heard on WREC 600 AM from the 1950s through the 1990s, passed away December 24, 2012, according to the memphisdailynews.com.  He was 83.

Powell and Cook

At a time when “talk shows” were the Tonight Show on television and the Sunday morning public affairs programs, Powell teamed with Fred Cook for a talk show much different than the newstalk format of the last 30 or so years.

Powell was also the news director of what is now News Channel 3 and like Cook anchored newscasts at a time when the anchor did sports and weather too.

Powell retired in the mid 1990s and moved to West Plains  in the Ozarks in SW Missouri.

“The Zero Hour” radio program on WREC was the result of a 1962 fire at The Peabody Hotel where the radio and television station.

The hotel was evacuated, but WREC stayed on the air. Powell was teamed with Cook. Cook and Powell had chemistry and timing and the show was a great success in a style that probably wouldn’t be considered a format today. It was innately Memphis.

They talked and if they felt like they had run out of things to say, they played a record by Frank Sinatra or the Ray Coniff Singers or something in a similar musical vein which was just as much a part of the station’s identity. And a news organization that did its own original reporting was part of the mix along with CBS radio news.

They had a few ground rules. They didn’t talk about political beliefs or religion and they didn’t take themselves too seriously on any other topic.

On air, Powell was the more easy going of the two. Cook was the more curmudgeonly of the two. But the boundaries weren’t etched into a formula. Off air they tended to swap the roles mainly because Powell’s off air duties included production work – the ads that are a vital part of making a radio station profitable.

Read More Now.