Meet Tim Rose, Station Manager at WJBB FM 107.1 and current resident of Barrow County.
We wanted to build a community radio station. To be a voice of the community.
We’d like to thank Tim very much for sitting down with us to discuss his experience working in Barrow County.
The Love of the Game
I’ve been in the radio businesses since 2010. It was always a passion of mine. I graduated from high school in 1991 in Lexington, Kentucky, my hometown, and always kind of growing up I wanted to be the next Dick Vitale or calling the Final Four or the World Series or Super Bowl.
It was a passion.
Got into college and was a communications major, but they teach a lot of theory and not a lot of hands on stuff. So I just didn’t really pursue it. Then, I was a PA announcer at some high schools when I moved down to Georgia.
I was in software sales for several years out of college and then worked in the telecommunications industry in Georgia for about a decade and decided it was starting to slow down and thought to myself, what are your passionate about? What do you think you have a skill set in.
So I kind of looked back at broadcasting and took an eight week program at Complete Game Broadcasting in Atlanta in 2010 and I’ve been in the industry ever since.
The Barrow Broadcast Begins
I had an opportunity given to me by Jeff Batten, who owns Atlanta Broadcast Institute and Complete Game Broadcasting. I was working at a pretty big station in Senoia where I worked mostly in media sales.
This opportunity gave me an opportunity to combine having clients and also being on air. I could manage the day to day operations and put more of my personality and influence on the station.
So when I came up here in July 2014, I visited the area and liked the area. I thought it was a neat opportunity. I could tell that the station was important to the community. Gwinnett is part of the metro Atlanta area and they get all of that exposure and Athens gets plenty exposure within itself, so it was kind of like this area had been forgotten a bit.
We wanted to bring it back to the community and make them proud again.
Local Cheerleader
We always like partnering with the school system. The sheriff’s office, even before I got here, Sheriff Jud Smith came on every other Thursday. He would come and give us an update.
[Read Sheriff Jud Smith’s Interview Here]
We were AM at the time and didn’t have many listeners but my goal was to find influencers in the community and get them on the show.
We wanted this to be a people station where they felt part of it. We wanted to get everybody involved. My goal then in a real small level was that if we got somebody important in the community to come on the morning show and after having a positive experience, they’d tell several of their friends. Then we had a successful day.
We started barebones, grassroots.
I think when Jeff bought the station, he told me he inherited one client, so that wasn’t going to pay the bills.
Our goal was to put high school football on the air. Anybody in the South, in Georgia, knows that you’ve got to have high school football on the air.
So we wanted to really build a community radio station. Being a voice of the community and having the community involved was always our plan. We love feedback from listeners and running the station off their voice.
We love the pride in the community.
In other communities you just don’t get that feel. There’s always new construction and you just don’t have the tradition a lot of the time.
Out here, everybody’s passionate. They want to help each other. You don’t see rivals. I just love that community feel.
What you need to know about WJBB Radio
You can take us anywhere you go. If you can’t reach us on the radio, you can always listen to us online at www.wjbbradio.com.
We love promoting events. We have community calendar that we mention on air every morning on the Rude Awakening show at 8:20.
We also have a Facebook page.
We have questions of the day to kind of build that camaraderie with people. And we have a lot of prizes and giveaways as well.
We do an athlete of the week. We do a teacher of the week. We have those sponsored segments every week to promote people of the community.
Barrow County Eats
Smokin’ Po Boys is right up there.
I love Chris Humble at Casey’s.
[Read our interview with Chris and Suzy Humble of Casey’s Restaurant]
We love these mom and pops, which is really neat and I think we’re seeing more of these here. They have the ability and there’s potential here in Winder to open up a business with affordable rent.
Is there anybody you would nominate for this project?
There’s a lot of neat people here. Bill Ritter with State Farm. He has a great passion for the community.
Nelson Sanders, Nelson Sanders Portraits & Advertising. He is from New York just like Chris Humble. Another one with a passion for the community.
We hope you enjoyed learning about Tim and his story.
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