Charlotte Radio: ND Jim Barroll Found A Home At WBT

WBT 1110 AM / 99.3 FM news director Jim Barroll, who marks 30 years in Charlotte broadcasting this month, used radio as a teenager to get his bearings, reports the Charlotte Observer.

Barroll was the son of a college English professor who frequently moved to new campuses. Growing up, he lived in Austin, Texas; Pasadena, Calif.; Nashville, Tenn.; Cincinnati; Toronto and spent a year in England.

“I got a handle on the local culture through radio,” says Barroll, 62, who went to five different high schools. “I would tune in to get my bearings on what the community was about.”

He enrolled at the University of South Carolina to study journalism when his father was teaching there and in the ’70s landed a part-time night job at WIS 1320 AM in Columbia. There was a flurry of sudden turnover, and Barroll was thrust into a talk-show role that launched his career in news.

In 1983, after a short-time in Orlando, he got a job offer at WBT.

Barroll spent about a year doing newscasts on the “John Boy and Billy” show before it became big. It was then carried on WBT’s sister station WBCY-FM, which became WLNK-FM (“Link” 107.9).

Barroll did lots of street reporting when that was the best way to get the story.

“Nowadays, with the Internet, you can sit at your work station and get 80 percent of what you used to have to go out and get,” Barroll says. “It’s a lot more sophisticated and easier.”

When he arrived at WBT, there was a rudimentary computer system. Now he’s tied into the world and feeds the station’s Web operation.

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