Most people know Wayne Dowdy for his career in law and politics, but long before he became a lawyer, McComb’s former mayor and a U.S. congressman, he was — and still is — a broadcaster.
Dowdy and his wife Susan own Southwest Broadcasting, which operates five stations in Southwest Mississippi and six from Hammond to Slidell in Louisiana.
The Pike County Chamber of Commerce recently named Southwest Broadcasting its Business of the Month for July.
Dowdy said he got into the business “through my growing up.”
“My mom and dad bought a radio station in Gulfport and we moved there and I worked at the family radio station as a teenager,” he said.
He’s been an announcer on the radio since he was 12, although his time on the air now is mostly limited to occasionally covering local elections.
“That’s about the only time they allow me to do it anymore,” Dowdy quipped.
Broadcasting a had a huge impact on the trajectory of Dowdy’s legal career and life in Southwest Mississippi.
He worked in radio while attending college, then at WJTV in Jackson while attending law school at night.
One day a politician came to the TV station and changed Dowdy’s life.
“That’s where I met Judge Joe Pigott,” Dowdy said. “I worked at Channel 12 and he came in and he was running for Congress. He found out I was going to night law school. He was the first person to mention, ‘You ought to come to McComb and work in my law office.’ ”
After graduating from law school, Dowdy took Pigott up on his offer and moved to McComb.
While Pigott never won his congressional race, Dowdy did in a special election in 1981 and served four terms.
In 1974, he was in a small group of people that built WAKK-AM in 1974, which became the third radio station in McComb, joining other AM stations WHNY and WAPF.
Dowdy applied for a license to operate an FM radio station in 1979, which is what led to the creation of K106.
“There were people in broadcasting back then that were interesting and colorful people,” Dowdy said of local radio personalities and managers Philip Brady, Maureen Clark, Carroll Hines, Agnes Louise McGehee.
One aspect of the broadcasting industry that has changed since then is media ownership.
“At the time when we started you could only own one per market and now that’s been relaxed,” Dowdy said of radio stations.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 paved the way for massive companies to buy up radio stations across the country, leading to homogenized media markets and playlists.
“Back then you were limited to national ownership of seven radio stations and now some of these companies own hundreds and hundreds of them,” Dowdy said.
He said local media ownership is a good thing because it makes those connecting with the community have a bigger stake in its success.
Dowdy said the broadcast business is still strong, mainly because radios are still in cars, noting that the automotive industry’s inclusion of FM radios as standard equipment helped those stations grow.
He’s seen a lot of changes in the industry.
“I started in radio when we played 78 rpm records and then we went to 45s,” he said.
The turntables quit spinning a long time ago, and the AM dial is all but forgotten.
Dowdy said every now and then he will listen to AM stations from Chicago, Nashville and St. Louis at night, when sound waves travel farther and clearer.
In a way, it’s like stepping back into a memory.
