Wayne Mulling

When did Hurricane Florence actually hit your markets?

The winds started up pretty heavily by Thursday evening. As we are much more inland than, say, Myrtle Beach, it took longer to hit us squarely. By Friday, the rains with winds were dead on to us.

Were you able to stay on the air 24/7?

We were. We started wall-to-wall broadcasting on Thursday night at 8p and continued the same till Saturday morning at 9a. Our TV partner had decided to do the same, so we followed suit, with the understanding that if, because of heavy flooding, they decide to go back to wall-to-wall, we will do the same as well.

All during the storm, we only lost two of our stations. One was only intermittent, and with our engineer's help, we were able to get it stabilized and continued broadcasting. That was our Rock station, WWBD. Our other big heavy hitter is Live95, WFRK Talk radio in Florence, with the former lieutenant Governor Ken Ard. Its tower is in Quimby SC, and that area totally lost power early on. We took one of our generators out to the tower and fired it up, and ran three days on the generator, which kept us on-air. Every eight hours, our OM had to go back out in the field, with a four-by-four, and gas it up to keep it on the air. We were the only company in the Pee Dee area [northeast corner of SC] broadcasting live-and-local updates, and carrying wall-to-wall coverage throughout the storm.

Did you experience any flooding in any of your offices/studios?

We have not thus far. In our Florence office, the ditches have all overflowed, and so has the adjacent field next to the station building. However, we had prepared well in advance for that, and had enough sandbags to shore up the doorways in the event that water rose that far. The same holds true for our Sumter stations as well. A number of our employees (sales, programming and production) all pitched in on Wednesday, and helped fill sandbags all day long. With the sand left over, we got on-air and offered it to the local residents. It was surprising at how few of the local communities had thought about offering sand to the residents till the last minute. So our offer was welcome.

So all the generators came through...

They did. We traded for a number of 6,500-watt portable generators over the past couple of years. We have at least two to three in each of our three markets in South Carolina. Also in Sumter, there is a wonderful Tool and Rental business that advertises with us, and every year when we need it, they give us two of their large generators on wheels that can be transported easily, for trade. They have been very good to us in that respect. And we always try to be the same in return.

In Florence we needed one more generator, and the local ACE Hardware store, which also advertises with us, gave us one in trade. With this plan, we are able to move generators around if more are needed in one area than others. Additionally, it has been my policy that if we don't need all the generators in one market location, I make them available to any employee who needs one.

Is it still raining there?

It is not. In fact, today we've had clear skies. What we are dealing with now is the flooding. Huge flooding in a number of areas in our broadcast range. In the photos, you can see what we are up against. Right now all of Florence County is under a Flood Watch; the same goes for Marion County and about eight others. Some of the dams in the area have already been breached, and others are close to it, at this writing.

Have you heard from listeners and/or advertisers during this ordeal?

Multiple dozens of them. Advertisers as well. Obviously, with us running commercial-free for a couple of days, we had a huge number of bumped spots that have all had to be made-good as of this morning; 99% of our advertisers were very understanding and supportive of the decision we made to run wall-to-wall.

As for our listeners, it's incredible the number of them who have called in to the stations to express their thanks for doing what we did. It really made us all feel great. Dozens and dozens of them have posted to Facebook as well, thanking us for carrying the news for them, and continuing to do so. Just this morning, you would be amazed at how many have asked us about school closings and work closings, etc. They depend us on to keep them updated at all times. This is a responsibility that I take very seriously.

Are all your staffers present and accounted for? Have they been able to check out their residences ... and you and yours?

They are. We are most grateful to God for his watching over us during this time, and that the impact of the storm itself was less than what was predicted. We had a couple who stayed at the stations in Florence and Sumter during the storm because of loss of power. There are at least a couple of others who are concerned because their houses are near rivers, ponds and creeks that are continually rising. And we had one employee who owns a home that caught fire during the storm. But all are safe, and we're working to get back to normalcy.

Are you mostly airing news and info and talking a lot of on-air calls?

We are not going wall-to-wall at this time. However, that is not to say that we won't revert back to that. A number of counties have been declared disaster areas, and it looks like that may increase as the rivers continue to rise, and more and more counties are flooding. When it makes sense to do so, we would of course reverts to wall-to-wall coverage, and so would our TV partner, WMBF in Myrtle Beach.

And yes, we are still doing on-air calls on our live shows in all three markets. Most of the talk today has been about nothing but this.

Our music stations have gone back to music programming, but of course with usual breaks, and during those breaks, the talk is all about the latest closings, the latest roads that are under water, the dams that are close to being breached, etc.

In regard to Talk stations, if you broadcast syndicated talkers, in your gut, do you feel that hosts talking about national politics and Beltway stuff is pretty much the last thing your listeners want to hear? If so, are you doing anything about it?

I do feel that way. In fact, on my two Talk stations, both of which are conservative Talk radio, with one of them hosted by former South Carolina Lieutenant Governor Ken Ard ... they have suspended politics for the moment, and are talking mostly about what is on people's minds... who is going to get their family out of a flooded hours; how to get to work now that the only road is washed out; when school is starting back; what stores are open, etc. Not much I can do about the syndicated shows we run, but I can make sure that the local shows are about what people need help with.

Incidentally, we have seven live, local shows M-F on my 14 signals in SC, and three on the weekends.

You mentioned the next big issue is flooding. Are you already planning on ways to get involved and if so, what are your plans?

We have offered our services to do anything and everything we can to personally help people with the flooding issues.

On an almost daily basis, we have the either the Police chief, the Sheriff, the State Police Major, the Mayor, the Emergency local people, the Duke Energy, or Pee Dee Electric reps here on-air with us, giving people instructions. Every one of our local officials know us on a first-name basis; we all have each other's cell numbers in our phones. This includes local and state politicians, and the Chamber of Commerce leaders, etc.

Last week I needed help for volunteers, and I made one phone call to the President of the Chamber, and he immediately sent out an e-mail to all Chamber members telling them what we needed their help with, and they responded in a big way.

We have done the same with our big hospital system in Florence as well ... McLeod Hospitals. We just finished a successful radiothon for them two weeks ago, raised over $115,000 in three days with my stations alone. So we have them on-air on a regular twice-monthly basis, and we work together hand in hand.

We want to be known as the "Instant Voice of the Pee Dee." On most days, if one of these leaders calls us with a message, I have at least one on-air person on the air, who will break in and make those announcements for them. We have gained a tremendous local reputation in the past 16 months here.

Waiting for and getting federal assistance for tragedies like this can become a massive headache. How can you help?

Probably the main thing we can do is to make people aware of the best contacts for filing for assistance -- and we have already started that, as a matter of fact. Communicating proper procedures to the listening audience is one thing we can do, and do well. Additionally, if you check our websites in SC, we have dozens of links directing people to the proper websites and phone numbers for contact.

It was interesting that last week in the midst of the storms, while four of our staff was on-air, a policeman walked in off the street, said he was just out checking on us to make sure that we would be able to continue doing what we were doing. Wow! We, of course, sat him down and put him on the air, and he started giving out phone numbers for people to call to get help if they were stuck somewhere, or if a tree had fallen on their house, for example. I don't even know this policeman's name, but what was a good feeling is that he knew he could come to Community Broadcasters, and we would put the message on the air.

I heard there were some fatalities in South Carolina. Have some of them impacted your market?

As of this moment, I believe that there are 25 fatalities; 19 of which are in NC and six are in SC. Most of those are in some area of our broadcast coverage.

When is the right time to send the sales force back out to the field to revive spot sales and promotions?

On Monday, we had a meeting early in the morning with all of our sales staff. We took an extra amount of time to let each tell stories with the rest of the team. We took extra time from that to express thanks to each one for all they had done to help during the storm. We reassured them that if anyone of them needed help with anything at all, we were there to help. For at least two of them, I am stepping in to get them some help this week. We are a family.

As of log closing time, we have already have a several-thousand-dollar day today. We are reaching out to all types of recovery businesses, such as trees service, plumbers, roofers, cleanup specialists, and insurance companies to give them a package we have put together that afford them the opportunity to get their message on the air by tomorrow morning.

Can you see a time in the future when things will go back to "business as usual," or is it too soon to consider that ... or are you considering the notion that it may never be "business as usual?"

We will probably go back to BAU sooner than you think. Remember that this area has been hit with two other hurricanes just in the past four to five years. People who have lived here for several years know what to expect, and start early preparing for it. When I managed a cluster of stations in Louisiana, we endured the same situation. People in hurricane paths, most generally don't take it lightly. Of course, people will always remember. And I, for one, think that is a good thing.

Finally, usually during these type of events, things happen that you learn from to put into plans for future incidents. Have you learned anything new this time that you will incorporate in the future?

Oh, absolutely. First, I would line up two TV media partners to work with. Maybe it's anathema to say this, but I want to be able to have a choice that if my TV partner decides to stop wall-to-wall news broadcasting, and I don't agree with that decision, I would like to have another media partner we could switch to in that event.

Secondly, in the event of a huge storm like this, I might also consider doing a "one voice across all stations" -- not only in Florence, but also in Sumter, and utilize the on-air crew to take shifts as the Florence crew did, and do much more of our own local voice, and not as much of the TV partner.

Thirdly, I would provide sand, sand bags and water for people to come and get at all of our stations much earlier. In some cases, we were having to go 20 miles away to find sand, sand bags, and water. I have a huge warehouse in Florence; I would start filling that up early. We have some great relationships with beverage companies here, and would utilize that partnership to help remedy the situation