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Cloudy this morning with thunderstorms developing this afternoon. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. High 77F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..
Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers overnight. Low 58F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Updated: May 18, 2024 @ 11:32 am
Buddy Poole is both a morning announcer at WSAT radio in Salisbury and the general manager. Poole has been in radio for 60 years, including a stint in Burlington.
Buddy Poole interviews singer Loretta Lynn while working for WTIK, a country music station in Durham.
Buddy Poole still remembers that day in 1964 when he walked into a radio station as a 17-year-old kid and told the owner he’d like a job as a radio announcer.
The owner had seen overzealous teenagers like this before, and he had a surefire technique for getting rid of them. He looked Poole in the eye and said, “Well, son, if you want to be a radio announcer, you’ve got to be able to sell advertising.”
Poole just grinned and accepted the challenge.
“In my first eight or 10 days, I sold $800 — that was a lot of money back then,” he said, explaining that his sales earned him a $200 commission. “I guess I got pretty good at it.”
He also got the job, and today — some 60 years later — he’s still in radio. In fact, the 77-year-old Salisbury native has come full circle, now serving as general manager and morning announcer at WSAT, the same Salisbury station he started at in 1964.
During those 60 years, though, Poole also worked radio jobs in the Army, in Durham, in Burlington, and in High Point and Thomasville.
“Sixty years is a long time, so I’ve certainly been blessed,” Poole said. “I’ve had a lot of good people in my life who encouraged me and mentored me.”
Much of Poole’s success, however, is due to his salesmanship skills — not just selling ads but selling himself. Listen to him share his career path for an hour or so and you’ll hear multiple stories of how he refused to take no for an answer.
Take that first job at WSAT, for example. The owner figured Poole would balk at selling ads, and Poole proved him wrong. That led to him doing short sportscasts, Sunday on-air shifts, and an evening request show called “Buddy’s Beats.”
When Poole enlisted in the Army, planning to attend the Defense Department’s broadcasting school, he was turned down because he had a Southern accent. He went straight to the commandant and pointed out that most of the Army’s bases were in the South.
“You don’t think they have Southern accents at those bases?” he asked.
That got Poole into the school, and before long he was stationed in Nuremberg, Germany, broadcasting to soldiers through the American Forces Network.
After getting out of the Army, Poole joined WTIK in Durham, a country music station where he got to hobnob with such country stars as Loretta Lynn, Faron Young and Dolly Parton, and where he became general manager at 26. From there, he became general manager at WPCM, a 100,000-watt country station in Burlington.
In 1984 Poole and some business partners bought WTNC and WIST-FM in Thomasville and promptly changed the call letters to WTHP (for Thomasville and High Point).
One of WTHP’s highlights was when Poole and nationally renowned deejay Wolfman Jack did several days of live broadcasts from the Universal Furniture showroom during High Point’s international furniture market.
In the early 1990s, Poole helped launch WFAZ — aka “The Family Station” — a station with a contemporary Christian format that listeners were hungry for.
“When we went on the air, the phones rang nonstop for two hours because people were so thrilled to get this station,” Poole said.
The station lasted several years, until it was sold and the new owner changed the format.
In 2002, Poole returned to Salisbury and bought WSAT from the same family that owned the station when he started there in 1964. Poole eventually sold the station to Salisbury attorney Bill Graham in 2015, but he remains the general manager and morning announcer.
He’s on the air from 6 to 9 a.m. weekdays and can be heard on 101.7 FM and 1280 AM. The signal can’t be picked up much farther northwest than High Point but can be heard live online at https://1280wsat.com/
Even at 77, Poole said, he has no plans to retire. Not even open-heart surgery 11 years ago could keep him away from his love affair with broadcasting.
“I tell people I’ll quit when I start sounding old,” he said. “I’ve been blessed so far. It could happen tomorrow, but I’m not there yet, so I’ll keep going for now.”
