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WGTK’s Joey Hudson Strives to Connect With His Audience

WGTK’s Joey Hudson said he strives to connect with his audience and also realizes he’s been extremely fortunate in his career.

Jim Cryns

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Joey Hudson would have made a great Realtor. He made Upstate South Carolina sound so pleasant, historic, and homey. I’m calling Century 21 (If they’re still a thing.)

Hudson lives in Greenville, about an hour and a half from Columbia, South Carolina, and has for his entire life. On the phone, he has that ‘southern gentleman’ thing working, although he admits he’s not certain if that is still a thing.

“I’m not sure the days of ‘southern gentlemen’ are as prevalent as they once were,” Hudson said. “But there certainly was at one point. There are a lot of what I would call ‘Old South Families.’”

He and a friend would journey to Fripp Island where they’d occasionally run into legendary southern author Pat Conroy. “I think Pat captured the flavor of southern life very well,” Hudson explained.

You can listen to this southern gent on 94-5 WGTK The Answer, 6 am-9 am Monday through Friday. 

The Greenville area seems to be growing quickly. The North American BMW headquarters in Spartanburg, Michelin North America is in Greenville, and folks are migrating to the area.

“A lot of people from around the world have moved here in the last couple of decades, essentially changing the entire place,” Hudson said. “It’s still sort of like a small town that has an international flavor.”

Hudson is fine with the influx of people as he’s seen what it has done for the area. 

“We used to be an exclusively textile area and that eventually died,” Hudson said. “My elementary school was associated with a textile mill. Seeing people we knew lose their jobs as the textiles were leaving was difficult. Fifteen or 20 years ago, there was no reason to visit downtown Greenville. There was nothing there. It’s all changed now.”

Hudson attended Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina, a smaller school where he studied political science. “I always loved history and politics,” he said. 

While in graduate school at the University of South Carolina, and working part-time for a state senator conducting research, Hudson still had one eye on becoming a lawyer. That’s when he met a lobbyist for Nationwide Insurance who suggested he look into the trade.

“I ended up working with Nationwide for 35 years,” Hudson said. “It was the right choice for me. It gave me a lot of freedom. I worked extremely hard for a lot of years, but I was able to dedicate time to other interests as my career progressed.”

His office was in Travelers Rest, at the foot of the mountains. Hudson said the town got its name as it was a regular resting spot for folks going to and from Charleston. 

A self-confessed political junky, Hudson said his first paying political job was working for Senator Strom Thurmond. 

“I worked with Lee Atwater, who was the Senator’s campaign manager and strategist for the Republican Party,” Hudson said. Atwater was an adviser to US presidents, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and chairman of the Republican National Committee. He worked for Atwater during Thurmond’s last contested campaign. 

“He was already pretty old by that point,” Hudson said. “I think there was a concerted effort to appeal to younger people. The whole idea was to get young people involved in the campaign. It solidified my conservatism and strengthened my interest in politics. From there forward, I served on local Republican campaigns.”

Hudson said he got to know Senator Thurmond pretty well.  “As well as any 18-year-old could, I imagine,” Hudson said. Thurmond was running in 1978 against Charles D. Ravenel. This was the first threat Senator Thurmond had in years. Ravenel was trying to make Thurmond’s age an issue, and he was in his late 70s. But he also had a young wife and three young children. 

“My job was to drive the Strom RV around the state to family-type events,” Hudson said. “It was a great gig and that’s where I got to know Lee Atwater pretty well.”

It was a wild ride.

Through the 70s, Hudson listened to some talk radio, but Rush was just getting started, and it too wasn’t really a thing. Hudson was involved in student government at school. But radio had much more to offer Hudson. He met Peg, his wife, while she was a sales rep at WFBC. 

“I had never done radio before. They knew I was interested in politics. The station also hired Mike Gallagher,” Hudson said. “We all became good friends. Then Mike moved on to New York and became nationally syndicated. He hired Peg to sell his show nationally.”

Hudson helped start and is executive director of Gallagher’s Heroes Fallen Officer and First Responder Fund, based in New York. The foundation was founded by Mike Gallagher and inspired by the giving spirit of his late wife, Denise Gallagher, to meet the immediate needs of U.S. police officer families when an officer has been killed in the line of duty. 

The fund provides financial assistance to officer families when they need it most, as soon as a tragedy happens, without having to wait for weeks or months for other more formal assistance to become available, and without the interference of bureaucracy and red tape that often exists.

“Mike is a good guy, a talented broadcaster,” Hudson said. “He brings a lot of life to radio, and I learned a great deal from him. I’ve been on remote broadcasts with Mike around the world. Helped him with thousands of broadcasts before I did my own solo show.”

Hudson said he strives to connect with his audience. He also realizes he’s been extremely fortunate. 

“As someone who didn’t start out in broadcasting, I think I’m living a dream at a 100,000-watt station in my hometown. Our signal is huge. You can hear us in about half of South Carolina down to Columbia. Then across state lines to Asheville, North Carolina. It feels great to have that kind of reach. I’m lucky to know I can touch so many lives. It feels like an extended family.” 

Hudson said he gets up every morning and is never quite sure where everything will lead. 

“I’m prepping for my show all the time. I get alerts on my phone. I think I have a general idea as to what I’ll talk about. Then a caller can change that direction in an instant. A certain response can take the show somewhere else. I know some talk show hosts like to believe the audience is there to listen to them, that they just want to hear the host. I think listeners like to hear other viewpoints. When my phone lines light up, when my text line gets busy, that’s what I love to see.”

Hudson receives a lot of texts every day from people he said wouldn’t consider calling in. He thinks he gets a different perspective on a topic from emails and texts than he does on calls. 

“A lot of people want to think talk radio is just an older audience,” he said. “I’m getting a good bit of feedback from younger listeners, particularly on the text lines.”

His spirituality is as much a part of who he is as anything else. According to Hudson, he’s exactly where God has always wanted him to be. From the first moment he met the insurance lobbyist, it was God putting him in the right place. 

“If I’d gone on to law school, I think I would have been miserable,” Hudson said. “ As it turned out I was a small business owner and able to be a part of a charitable organization. If I was a lawyer I think I’d just be busy billing hours.

I’d like to be remembered as someone who cared about the community and the people who live here.”

He will fill in for Mike Gallagher when needed, either from home or the station. 

“I learned a lot of the mechanics from Mike. He’s been a great mentor. Phil Boyce with Salem has been a great mentor as well. I end my show every day saying, ‘God is in control,’” Hudson said. “At the end of every third hour. God prepares us and gives us the skills to help one another. That’s what I love about my work with Mike’s foundation. We publish and distribute Bibles to first responders.”

In the back of the Bibles are a series of Bible studies compiled by chaplains from around the country who speak to the emotions and rigors first responders face. 

“People may not understand the stress they’re constantly under,” Hudson said. “Police officers never know if this will be their last day on earth. They could pull someone over for running a red light and be shot and killed.”

With South Carolina in the thick of political discussions this week, Hudson said he’s had some nice dealings with Herschel Walker. 

“He’s a nice man, and wants to serve the people of Georgia,” Hudson said. “I’ve had him on a few times. I think he’s been thrust into a position and maybe politics is a bit harder than he thought it would be. When he decided to run I didn’t know a lot about him except he was a good football player. At South Carolina, we faced Georgia a lot of times.”

Next week Hudson is traveling to Toccoa, Georgia to help get out the vote. 

“I’m not sure which way the election is going to go. I know we’ll be going to Toccoa, Georgia reminding people to vote.”

Another South Carolina politician, Lindsay Graham, is someone Hudson sees the best in the man’s numerous sides.

“He can be unpredictable at times, but I think he really does what he thinks is in the best interest of South Carolina,” Hudson said. He told me Graham is from a small place called Central, South Carolina.  

“Graham had an unlikely path to the senate,” Hudson said. “He grew up in the back of his parents’ pool hall. His mom and dad owned a small bar and grill, the Sanitary Cafe, in Central. It isn’t all that much today, even less so then.” 

When he gets a few spare minutes, he likes to read James Patterson. 

“It allows me to slow down my mind,” Hudson said. “In this business I’m always talking, constantly watching news, reading news, listening to news. I have to do that to be able to talk intelligently. I’m constantly researching.”

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BNM Writers

Dagen McDowell Is Ready For A New Adventure With Fox Business

“Every decision in America is born of policy, On the show, we bring that to our show. Talk about the news of the day.”

Jim Cryns

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To know Dagen McDowell, you must understand what she comes from, where she comes from. You won’t know her until you know the lessons, kindness, and determination set forth by her parents.

Her parents operated a small grocery store, LW Roark and Company. Charles and Joyce McDowell were high school sweethearts and both went to college but decided to go back home and open a business. “This is in the middle of nowhere,” McDowell said. “It was a wholesale grocery store. They sold it in the late 90s.”

She said her parents were smart, encouraging, and took every opportunity to teach McDowell and her brother.

“They’d constantly talk up people who came into the store. Both of them have and had an insatiable curiosity about everything. They felt they learned things through their customers. It was more fun to learn about things from other people.”

McDowell’s parents never took a week off work. Never. The family took no vacations as most families would. Once while McDowell was in college at Wake Forest University, the family visited the Air and Space Museum on the Mall in D.C.

“Both of my parents were very interested in architecture and landscapes. We’d go to Williamsburg and just look at the buildings.”

McDowell joined FOX News Channel in 2003 and helped launch FOX Business Network as a founding anchor in 2007.

Her mother passed away three years ago and her father is still very much a part of her life. Her father was a constant teacher.

“One time my father, who we called Dowell McDowell, was putting up an outbuilding and asked me how long one line should be if the other line was such and such. He taught me the Pythagorean theorem when I was about 4 years old.”

McDowell was nurtured by parents with endless curiosity.

“I was raised by parents who would always debate and converse around the dinner table. We shared breakfast and dinner together every day. They loved learning, were always inquisitive, never afraid to ask a question. My parents shared a fearlessness and passed that on to me. I’ve never been embarrassed to ask people questions. I love talking to people and finding out about things.”

For a long time, McDowell had no idea what she wanted to do for a living. She knew if she worked at different jobs she’d eventually figure out what she was good at.

“I knew I was a decent writer, but I always tried to get information out of people, what they were doing. Ask if they were fulfilled and happy.”

At Wake, Forest McDowell majored in art history and had every intention of working in a museum, possibly as a curator.

“I interned at the Center for Contemporary Arts. I lived in Venice, Italy for a while. Wake Forest owns a house in Venice.”

After that it was Colorado. She moved back to New York during the recession of 1991 with a duffel bag. She took the Amtrak to New York City and sublet an apartment for six months.

“I had no TV, just a radio. I knew I could find something good to do in New York, there were so many jobs. I always wanted to live in the city. Either the city or way out in the country. Nowhere in between.”

She said being in New York made her feel anything was possible. This was January in 1994 when job ads were still in the physical newspaper, like the New York Times. McDowell interviewed at Institutional Investor through a referral from a friend.

“It was a brilliant magazine with terrific writing,” McDowell explained. “Very prominent in the industry. They were looking for someone to work with the newsletter written for the financial community.”

She’d cover topics like the bond business, Wall Street, and money management. The magazine made her take a reporting test where you’d make up a story and write it. She was offered a job and worked there for three years.

“I learned to be a journalist there,” McDowell said. “I could write but I became a better journalist. We’d break news, create our sources, and learn more and more about finance. People love to talk about what they do if you show interest.”

The next big job was SmartMoney.com, a resource and web newspaper for private investors. There McDowell wrote a personal finance column. She started doing commentary on television shows, the way a lot of people in different professions tend to do. “Then I started making more appearances on weekend financial or business shows,” McDowell said.

She got a call from Neil Cavuto about 20 years ago and he told McDowell, ‘Kid, you want a job? I know you don’t have much professional TV experience. We’ll give you some training and you’ll figure it out. If you do, you stay. If not, you go.’

McDowell said she was glad she was a writer first before she arrived at Fox. She writes her own scripts and has a background in finance and business writing.

“Before the business network was launched, they had only one business reporter and two senior business correspondents,” she said. “I’ve gotten to do so many different jobs, use different muscles, so to speak. As the years have passed I’ve discovered other talents I may have and I’m incredibly grateful for that.”

There’s a new show in town. McDowell and Sean Duffy will co-host The Bottom Line which will air on weeknights from 6-7:00 PM ET.

McDowell said she and Duffy come from extremely similar backgrounds. Duffy is from rural Wisconsin and McDowell is from Virginia.

“We know what small-town living is like, “McDowell said. “I might live in New York City but where I grew up affects the way I view the world. I’m still grounded in my hometown. On the show, we look south and west with everything we cover. You have to think of your audience. Rather than talking about them, we talk with them. That’s our shared background and vision. Sean is extremely down to earth and generous.”

McDowell said the show is not financially based, but steeped in business.

She said Duffy’s experience as a former U.S. Congressman, he understands policy as well as financial matters.

“Every decision in America is born of policy,” she said. “On the show, we bring that to our show. Talk about the news of the day.”

This is different from anything McDowell has done in the past.

“It’s a two-anchor show in the evening,” she explained. “This is not taking place during market hours. We tie all the business happenings together from the day. Again, it’s not about Washington or New York. It’s about the people we grew up with. We talk to them. Build a relationship with them on the air. For me, this is not just sitting in front of a camera. I can run off at the mouth as well as anyone, hang in there with the filibuster.”

McDowell says she is blunt, but hopes she isn’t rude. During a recent interview for the new show she used the terms ‘pig potatoes’ and ‘chapped backsides.’

“Those are terms I just made up,” she said. “I make up a lot of phrases and don’t always know what they mean. I have an entire repertoire of those kinds of phrases.”

Duffy assumed they were southern phrases he had to learn from McDowell, but she assured him she’d never heard them anywhere else.

“I’m just making stuff up,” McDowell said. “You can’t curse. Can’t say BS. At least you shouldn’t say BS on television. You don’t want to say manure. You never want to say something that makes people wince or evokes a smell.”

Dealing with people directly and bluntly seems to come from her mother.

“My mother had grit,” McDowell said. “She was also very kind, never syrupy. I used to say she had no magnolia-mouth.

That’s got to be a southern phrase.

McDowell said her mother was not a servile flatterer, but she was kind. Always there when somebody was in need.

“She had real grit. She’d stand and fight for her friends and family members.”

Her mother passed away after being diagnosed with stage-four cancer.

“She went through unimaginable pain,” McDowell said of her mother. “For nearly six years. You want to talk about somebody who was tough. There was nobody more pugnacious than my mother.”

She explained even with her illness, her mother was always on the go. Continuing to live her life. When questioned about being so active while she was ill, her mother continued to show grit.

“My mother would say she didn’t want to walk around looking like she had cancer. She asked, ‘What choice do I have? I could lay in bed and wait to die, or I can get up and do what I can .’”

McDowell said her mother’s illness taught her to be a caregiver in ways she never could have imagined. Her mother taught her to find moments of joy every single day, in the smallest of things.

“It can be as simple as telling a stranger to have a great day. Treat a perfect stranger with kindness. I do it all day long. I know it sounds corny, but I want to be known as a person who brings a casserole to a friend when they’re ill.”

A one-sheet from Fox tells you McDowell and the culmination of her background is perfect for The Bottom Line. The fact is, it’s true.

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Airing The Tyre Nichols Video Was A Necessity

There were hard moments to watch in those videos, hard sounds to hear. But they aired.

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Far be it for me not to address this outrageous and embarrassing instance in humanity. After the videos of Memphis police brutally beating Tyre Nichols were shown on television there really seemed to be more outrage emerging from society this time than from the media, for a change. One would think that’s how we wish things to be.

In instances like this, where the video and audio images are far from brief but are instead chaptered as they unfold, there are few options other than to let them run their course. Clocks — breaks hard and soft — are out the window, just as in live coverage.

Because that’s what this was, only the live this time was us, and as we all absorbed and reacted to actions disapprovingly familiar yet somehow foreign at the same time, the impact was still becoming apparent even though we already knew the outcome.

It’s happened before.

Not always like this but we’ve seen it before, police encounters shown on the news overtakes and become the news.

It takes effect as the sights and sounds are digested, dissected, and discussed, often before their potential impact could really be imagined.

In 1991, when the Handycam footage crossed screens for the first time and we learned Rodney King’s name, we didn’t know then but we had a feeling.

We were on the right track, though as newsrooms evolved and street reporting incorporated a different type of storytelling.

I was a cop in 1991. Changes came. Some.

It’s 2023, I’m no longer a cop. Changes will come again. Some.

Turning points — or the overused watershed moments — mean just as much to the news media as they do to law enforcement.

The “why’s” that make this a turning point are more society and community based this time around than they were in 1991.

At least I think so. And I don’t think it makes a bit of difference who’s involved this time.

There were hard moments to watch in those videos, and hard sounds to hear. But they aired. Where they couldn’t air, they were described in great detail; descriptions sometimes can be worse than the real thing. Sometimes, not this time.

And they should air, they shouldn’t stop airing. This is what happened and this is what people need to see and hear and this is exactly why we are here.

Warn them, provide them with a heads up that they’re not going to like what happens next. It’s life and we show life, and we show what some of us do with it when it’s someone else’s.

Overall, I would say the news platforms held their composure, even after the videos were released. I saw, read, and heard some refreshingly neutral coverage, even from outlets where I expected hard turns into the lanes on either side of the road.

Legitimate questions were asked by anchors and reporters and much of the time, the off-balance issues were raised more by those on the sidewalks and those on the other side of the cameras and microphones.

As much as I find myself in disagreement with what I often see on the cable networks — all the cable networks — I did find a sense of symmetry watching CNN’s Don Lemon speak with Memphis City Council Chair Martavius Jones in the hours after the videos were released.

Regular protocols be damned, Lemon and producers lingered patiently as Jones, visibly overcome by emotion, struggled to regain breath and composure enough to be able to speak. Rather than cut away or move to other elements, they stood fast and it became an example of what often requires no words.

There were fewer punches pulled on other platforms as well.

The sounds of the screams, the impacts, and the hate-filled commands were broadcast through car radios.

As were Tyre Nichol’s calls for his mom. They aired. They had to.

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Does the Republican Establishment Get It?

For many it seemed that the Republican establishment stood idly by as Democrats changed the rules and worked behind the scenes to alter elections.

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In a move that seemed to go against the wishes of the patriotic American grassroots, the Republican party on Friday re-elected RNC Chairperson Ronna McDaniel. 

The media immediately took notice, as many on television and radio are now wondering why the party would re-elect a chairperson who has been so unpopular with the base of its party. 

Grant Stinchfield discussed this issue Friday night on his program, Stinchfield Tonight, which airs on Real America’s Voice network.

“Ronna McDaniel holds on to her chairmanship of the Republican Party. By a whopping total of — what were the numbers– 111 to 54. Harmeet Dhillon only received 54 votes. Mike Lindell 4 votes. This is proof to me that the Republican establishment is dug in,” Stinchfield — formerly of Newsmax — said. “Don’t tell me they’re out of touch. See, you tell me they’re out of touch, that implies ignorance. They’re not ignorant about anything.”

As sentiment for Dhillon grew in the days leading up to Friday’s vote, many influential politicians and party donors publicly offered her their support and endorsement. These included Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), as well as donors Mike Rydin, Dick Uihlein, and Bernie Marcus.

Also on board were musician and outspoken conservative John Rich, along with the state GOP of Nebraska and Washington State. Countless journalists and media personalities, such as Charlie Kirk, Miranda Divine, and Lou Dobbs, also came out publicly in support of Dhillon. Former President Donald Trump remained neutral, not making a public choice of either of the three candidates.

For many of Dhillon’s supporters, the deciding factor was public sentiment across the party’s base.

“They’re reading the same chat boards. They’re getting the same emails I’m reading. I will literally post something about this race when I was supporting Harmeet Dhillon. There was not one comment – not one – that supported Ronna McDaniel. Everyone wanted change,” Stinchfield said, noting that the party elite saw the same groundswell of support for change.

“Now, nobody has an issue as Ronna McDaniel is some evil kind of person. I don’t believe she is. I believe, though, that she is part of the establishment. She’s been around too long as far as the establishment goes. And she’s been ingrained in doing business as usual. It’s not working.”

In making their choices known, many Dhillon supporters simply pointed to the scoreboard during McDaniel’s reign.

“Think about where we are. 2018, we lost the House. 2020, we lost everything. 2022, we won the House, but we should have really steamrolled the House and we should have taken back the Senate, which we didn’t do,” Stinchfield said. “That means we’re on a real losing track since she took over. I don’t like being on a losing track. I like being on a winning track.

“Something has got to change when you talk about all of this. So how does Ronna McDaniel get 111 votes and Harmeet Dhillon only get 54 votes, when everyone, every Republican voter I talk to said it was time for change?” pondered Stinchfield.

And even more than the losses, for many it seemed that the Republican establishment stood idly by as Democrats changed the rules and worked behind the scenes to alter elections. The most recent example of which came in Arizona, where presumptive gubernatorial favorite, Kari Lake, was “defeated” when countless voting irregularities occurred in some of the state’s most deep-red areas.

“Under her watch, Democrats instituted a mail-in ballot scheme. That may be even worse than losing, when you talk about the House and the Senate and all these things. The fact that we now have a junk mail-in ballot scheme across the country under Ronna McDaniel’s watch is serious trouble. Very serious trouble,” Stinchfield said on Friday. “And so the reason it is is because the Democrats are rigging the system.”

For years – until Donald Trump descended the golden escalator and took the world by storm – the Republican party had the reputation of being the party of the rich. Rush Limbaugh used to refer to this wing of Republicans as “the country club crowd.” President Donald Trump flipped the narrative completely, offering a clear vision of hope and patriotism to working-class America.

Reputable polling — such as Richard Baris’ Big Data Poll — consistently showed Trump running well ahead of almost every Republican candidate during the 2022 mid-term election cycle. In other words, Trump still maintains considerably more support across the country than most of the individual Senate or House candidates experienced.

Many experts believe this is because voters still view Trump as an outsider, while they view the Republican party much less favorably.

“Let’s tell you how out of touch they are, how elitist they are,” Stinchfield said, calling out the GOP establishment. “This meeting that went on, do you know where it is? It’s at the Waldorf Astoria Monarch in California. One of the most expensive resorts in America. You’re lucky if you get a room for a thousand dollars a night down there on Dana Point. Now, it’s a beautiful hotel, but why is the Republican Party holding an event there? Then I went back and I looked at what RedState did. RedState went back and looked at some of the expenses that the Republican Party under Ronna McDaniel’s leadership was spending money on.

“Take a look at this. $3.1 million on private jets. $1.3 million on limousine and chauffeur services. $17.1 million on donor mementos. $750,000 on floral arrangements. Now you compare this to the Democrats. The Democrats spent $35,000 on private airfare. A thousand dollars on floral arrangements. A thousand. Not $750,000. A thousand. And the $17.1 million they spent on donor mementos, the Democrats spent $1.5 million.

“Democrats know where to put the money. It’s not giving donors gifts. Donors shouldn’t want gifts. If you give money, give money. You don’t need the fancy pin to put on your lapel.”

Following her loss, Dhillon warned her party that it must listen to the base, saying, “if we ignore this message, I think it’s at our peril. It’s at our peril personally, as party leaders and it’s at our peril for our party in general.”

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