Press
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Jackson radio station changing frequencies
The Clarion-Ledger October 30, 2008
The station will switch from 103.7 FM to 100.1 FM.
The new frequency will provide listeners a clearer signal, station officials said.
WLEZ offers a format of timeless music, provocative talk and entertainment, and news, weather and sports.
WLEZ will continue to simulcast its broadcast signal on the Internet at wlezfm.com.
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Radio show offers a glimpse into Flowood
By Joshua Cogswell Managing Editor, The Rankin Ledger
One of the things I enjoy about my job is its unpredictability. Being a journalist, I often get to do stuff most folks don’t get to do.
I’ve been to a few murder scenes. I’ve interviewed folks whose homes were destroyed by a tornado. I went up in a Cessna to survey the damage a couple of days after Hurricane Katrina - and held the window open for our photographer.
Last week was another first for me. I appeared as a guest on the Focus on Flowood radio hour, Wednesdays at noon on WLEZ, 103.7 FM, last week.
It might not seem like a big deal, but I’m not exactly in love with my voice.
You know the old saying, “he’s got a face for radio”? I’ve got a voice for print.
To my ears, I sound like I suffer from a chronic sinus infection.
And so, it was with some trepidation that I accepted the invitation from the show’s hosts, Lois Lovelady and Mayor Gary Rhoads.
It wasn’t just my voice I was worried about, but also the prospect of being on the other end of the barbed questions we reporters so love to ask.
But, over a pre-interview sandwich of chicken salad with Gary, Lois and the Flowood Chamber Executive Director Rachel Lott, it became clear I didn’t have much to worry about.
The show was very cordial and upbeat, focused mostly on events coming up in the city and news surrounding the new developments coming to Flowood.
The final piece of the Lakeland/Old Fannin shopping complex - Market Street - is under construction, and the Town Center project is coming along, Rhoads reports.
And Mayor Rhoads and city leaders have a lot to crow about. His city’s population has more than doubled in his tenure as mayor.
The city has drawn major retail and other commercial developments, outpacing other cities in the metro area. With the addition of Market Street, the city’s sales tax collections could swell to more than $10 million a year in 2008.
All that new business has meant some amenities for the city’s residents.
This week’s guest was Parks and Recreation Director Greg Wilcox, who talked about some of the events that are becoming Flowood institutions.
The city’s Halloween celebration and the Lighting of the Park have become major events, drawing thousands from around the metro area.
And, Rhoads was quick to point out, the events are funded primarily by the business community. Through sponsorships and in-kind donations, Rhoads said, the city keeps taxpayer contributions to a bare minimum.
Boosting the quality of life without spending taxpayer money? I think I could get used to that.
That’s why, with minutes remaining in the program, I snuck in a question about when Flowood was going to annex my subdivision.
And, in nearly 20 years at the helm, Rhoads has done the city’s business without much scandal. No knocking down “crack houses” out here.
Of course, the journalist in me couldn’t resist asking about a recent flap over the mayor’s decision to take down the basketball rims at Winner’s Circle Park. The decision came because of some questionable language being used on the courts, Rhoads said.
After jokingly reminding me that I was supposed to be on the receiving end of the questions that day, Mayor Rhoads was a good sport.
While some critics questioned the mayor’s motives, saying the decision was racially motivated, Rhoads said it was all about trying to preserve the family-friendly atmosphere at the park.
In Flowood, he said, foul language will not be tolerated.
Having a 2-year-old repeat machine of my own, I can certainly appreciate that.
And frankly, if bad language on city basketball courts is your biggest worry, I think your city’s in pretty darn good shape.
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Sunday Morning with Edward St. Pe’
Brandon, 50, NWN Studios president, singer
Interview by Sid Salter
Clarion-Ledger Perspective Editor
I first want to wish a Happy Mother’s Day to all our moms. And to my own momma, let me say, I love you very much. Whatever I’ve worked on so far in life any accomplishment that I may have had or that I will have I owe to you, Ma.
NWN stands for National Weather Networks. We provide TV weathercasts for TV stations that don’t do their own weathercasts. There are FOX, WB, UPN, PBS and independent stations across the country that just have not been in the news business, so they did not have weather departments. NWN, or “WeatherVision,” as we are known around the country today, produces these stations’ local TV weathercast with the on-air meteorologist and shoots it to them on satellite. The station captures it and plays it back over their air. It is as local a forecast as if they shot it on location right there. We can get our product to any TV station in the United States instantly. When we first starting doing this in 1991, there were “naysayers” who said it couldn’t be done. These days, it’s taken for granted that it’s a neat way to get weathercasts to markets that otherwise would not have had them and give those stations a new saleable product to sell to sponsors who particularly desire being next to weather.
As a byproduct of our TV weathercasts via satellite, we also operate as “Jackson Teleport.” We are the “go to” private satellite uplink and studio in Jackson. For example, when you are watching an interview on ABC or FOX News and the anchor is on the set and introduces a guest from another city who joins the anchor on the set via a TV monitor on the set and the interview is conducted this way, well, the person in the TV monitor is being satellite-uplinked from somewhere. We are the facility in Jackson. We have worked with ABC, NBC, CNN, FOX, ESPN, all the majors and all the major shows since 1991.
We put on WLEZ FM about a year and a half ago. Of course, we play the old standards. It has been a labor of love for me and all of us here at NWN. It is a low-power FM, so we only reach out about 10 to 15 miles, but our listeners love us. We are non-commercial, so we don’t sell commercials, but instead have “underwriters.” For me to be close to this music all day long, well it makes every day a joy.
Mississippi gave me a chance a chance to be what I wanted. In the beginning at WLBT-Channel 3 in the early ‘80, they gave me a chance. I learned the value of starting at the bottom: You have nowhere to go but up! And being at the first-ever black-owned TV station in America, being hired by a black-managed organization, given a fair chance and a career, I got a unique perspective on things. Dr. Aaron Henry was there, and since I was the mail boy/delivery boy, I got to drive him around here and there every week. We were friends and I learned what the civil rights struggle was all about from one of its leaders. The management of WLBT-Channel 3 gave me the helping hand I needed. I will always be indebted to them for this and for teaching me that no matter what the short-term obstacles, all people can and must work together.
I am confounded by the differential in the national perception of the state and the perception of people who actually come here and experience the warmth of our people firsthand. There is a big gap between the two. To send the right message to the rest of the nation and the world, for that matter, we need to aggressively market “The New Mississippi” via every way and means ...and not be a well-kept secret anymore
At my momma’s parents’ dairy farm, I learned to love the woods and the countryside and the creatures in the woods. It was magical to me then and still is today. That’s why I still live in the woods. I equate it with freedom, being able to see nature up close. I love the city, too, but my heart will always be out in the country.
Growing up, I saw my uncles involved in music, one a jazz trumpet player playing gigs while in high school and college, and the other singing those great Otis Redding songs through college. And my momma had the Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett and Benny Goodman and Pete Fountian and Al Hirt records on the giant stereo in the living room. I got immersed in all of this even before I was in school. Then the Beatles came out and everything changed. But the standards and jazz in general are what I have in my heart. Music is what likely got me interested in media in the first place.
I left Southeastern University my junior year and went to Los Angeles, then to New York, to play music (sing). We played Max’s Kansas City and CBGB’s, but of course it didn’t pay the bills. I was involved in a New York City film school project, where I was basically a “grip” on various film and video shoots around New York City. After that project concluded, I found myself at NBC network in the master control room, keeping the commercial log. That was my first taste of TV and my first real job. In fact. the day I got hired on my way up on the elevator as I walked in there were Dan Akroyd and John Belushi. They were in the heyday of Saturday Night Live and they were cutting up all the way up, basically making fun of the stuffed suits filling up the elevator. Anyway, that’s how I first got exposed to TV.
My first brush with singing standards was in the mid ‘90s. The TV weather via satellite project was up and going and I just went ahead and did it and enjoyed it. Well, sometimes change comes into your life out of the blue, and around this time my wife got diagnosed with breast cancer. She died in 2000. For a long time, I think I just wandered around in a fog. How my business survived is a miracle. If not for good people on board here like Jason McCleeve, we would have failed. And, for sure, I was not able to sing. I thought that I would never sing again either. I was at a point where I sort of cloistered myself up and shut down. Then, in November of 2002, at a wedding reception, bumped into my old friend Cary Spence, who had for years been the manager of POET’S where I had once sung the old Sinatra songs. He asked me to consider singing for the month of December at the restaurant he was now managing, Huntington’s Grille, during the holiday season. I thought about it, and though I really wanted to do it; I just was not sure I could. Well, I tried it and it brought a joy I was missing back into my life. In fact, it was like therapy. When you sing, you are physically like a horn pushing out the sound. Now, mix that with the emotion of the song, the interpretation of the lyric and you’ve got a sort of metaphysical experience going! So, here we are two-and-a-half years later still going every Friday and Saturday night.
The shining moment of a career is realizing you’ve survived the ebb and flow of business, of life for that matter. That’s the accomplishment. To do your best at what you do well enough to be here again tomorrow to do it again. If you are here, then that means you are winning the battle. The longer you are here, hopefully the better you become at it and the wiser you become.
I think that the secret to success in life is to find and then follow your passion. When I worked in Shreveport as a TV weather-guy years ago and also did entertainment reporting, I did a backstage interview with the great big-band drummer Buddy Rich. Between sets backstage with my cameraman, I asked him what drove him to be out on the road at this point in his life. He looked at me squarely in the eye and said, “Son, I’m working at play. I could be home in Beverly Hills right now, but this is what I love.” Well, I never forgot that. If you are passionate about what you do, then it’s not work; it becomes your passion.
I have many heroes. One is Ted Turner. I learned from him my idea to create this TV weathercast syndication model. He had taken his independent Channel 17 and put it up on a satellite, creating the first “Superstation.” I have read everything I could find on him through the years and met him once at a commencement speech at Tougaloo College around the time I was building the satellite uplink. I think I’ve learned from his success and also from his missteps. I also admire Frank Sinatra. Yes, because he was a great singer, but moreso for being a man. He stuck by his guns. If he was in love, he was really in love. If he was down, he was really down, but not so down that he couldn’t scrape himself up and win an Academy Award. He got up. At a time when Sammy Davis Jr. could perform in Vegas but couldn’t stay in the hotel, Sinatra told them if Sammy couldn’t stay, he wouldn’t sing. That changed their minds quickly. It was his guts and integrity that I admire.
I am involved with the Salvation Army which is a great organization and with the Multiple Sclerosis Society. I’ve learned more about Multiple Sclerosis over the last year or two, how it strikes young adults right in the prime of life out of the blue. I would like to ask everyone reading this article to learn more about the disease and consider making a contribution to the MS Society of Mississippi, where the money goes toward helping young families stricken by this malady and toward finding a cure. If you and your family are well, that’s reason enough to help. The Multiple Sclerosis Society’s Web site is nationalmssociety.org.
