GA Radio: Longtime Owner, GM Tom Ptak Sets Retirement

Tom Ptak

For the past 45 years, Tom Ptak has made a living managing various radio stations and making them profitable with his persuasive selling techniques to advertisers and his distinctive on-air voice.

And now the time to retire from the business that he has always been passionate about and loved is about just days away from becoming a reality. The 63-year-old former owner and now general manager of WMGZ 97.7 FM in Eatonton, GA will leave the radio business Friday.

Ptak remembers the start of his radio career as though it was yesterday.

It all started at radio station, WBLW in Royston.

“We signed it on the air for the very first time back in 1971,” Ptak recalled during an interview earlier this week with The Union-Recorder.

One of the biggest questions that he’s been asked of late is what he has planned in his retirement life.

“I’ve got a couple of projects around the house that I want to do first, things you just don’t have time to do when you’re working,” said Ptak.

“I was told they wouldn’t buy it if I didn’t stay on and run it, so I’ve been ever since,” Ptak said, noting that was the concession for the new owner to buy his radio station. “I sold it on a Friday and came to work here (as GM) on Monday for somebody else.”

“Every station I’ve ever done was a turn-around situation, which took a lot of energy,” Ptak said. “I did a turn-around at Royston, Augusta, Washington, Thomson and here. So, I’ve done five turn-around stations.”

Ptak said when he was younger that he had the fire in his belly to go out actually turn-around radio stations.

“Why is now the time to retire, because I still love radio and the excitement of radio, the young people, the creativity of it, but I just don’t have the fire in the belly to do it anymore,” Ptak lamented.

WMGZ 97.7 FM (8.5 Kw) Red=Local Coverage Area

He said the biggest challenge in the radio business is the same as it’s always been, even though technology has advanced so much further over the years and made things much easier.

“The big challenge is still trying to convince business owners and managers of the effectiveness of radio,” Ptak said.