680 KFEQ’s Barry Birr is closing the book on a full-time career in radio after more than 50 years, 31 of which in St. Joseph.
“When I first came here I brought a manual typewriter along that I had used at KMOX and I still used it once in awhile when we had a problem,” Birr said. “We had turntables here when I first started that played records, you know those flat vinyl things. Then we went from that to cassettes, then from cassettes to CDs. Now everything is digital and it’s on the computer.”
Birr is officially retiring as KFEQ’s News Director effective Dec. 31, 2015.
“Time to spend more time with my wife and be a little less tired because I won’t be getting up so early in the morning,” he said.
But he hopes to continue to host his morning talk show, The Hotline which he started on KFEQ in 1992.
“The program is really a news driven program. We talk about what’s going on in the news, wither it’s local or state or national. Everyone’s opinion is welcome. It’s a community forum. It’s an opportunity for people to call in voice their opinions, share their ideas and even if they don’t find others who really agree with them to have a say and not be ridiculed for it,” Birr said. “We’re looking at continuing with the Hotline and having me continue with the Hotline.”
He has covered many major events that have taken place in the community over the years and said the flood of 93′ is one that really sticks out in his mind.
“Coming a year after the start of the Hotline it was kind of the perfect test of the Hotline,” Birr said. “It gave people a chance to talk with each other about what was happening to them. It was such a big flood, such a big deal that it was on everybody’s minds even if they were not directly impacted by the flood.”
Birr was also there for the Ice Storm of 2007.
“We had people who didn’t have power in their homes for about five days afterwords and it knocked out all of the radio stations except for ours, KFEQ,” Birr said. “On the Hotline and elsewhere on our air we opened it up and took calls from people. We brought in power company officials and others to answer questions…What was really kind of neat was people would call in and say they knew where to get this or that, things people needed. They also gave us updates on ‘I got my power back, I got my power back,’ and we could almost plot it on a map. In some cases it was being restored house by house.”
He said as much as technology has changed how news is delivered, the basic concepts have stayed the same.
“Everything has changed but the real important things haven’t,” Birr said. “The important things are letting people know what’s going on, telling them the truth and leaving it at that so that they can make up their own minds about what to do.”