The Hidden World of Radio Broadcasting

Southern Stone Communications in Daytona Beach, Florida encompasses multiple radio stations ranging from rock, country, R&B and hip hop, top hits, and news talk shows. They have been on-air dating back as far as 1947.

Simply passing by the Tomoka Commerce Center's sign, you would never know that multiple different radio stations lie within.

Located in Daytona Beach, Florida, the station spans much of Northeast Florida with over 34,000 unique listeners each month combined.

The team behind the station is vital - without the behind-the-scenes crew, there would be no music or shows to listen to every day!

Philip Kincaid, Executive Producer of WNDB, handles a lot of the production elements of putting shows together, including but not limited to booking guests, downloading shows, and ensuring the feed is live on-air.

Trei Johnson, News Director of WNDB, gathers news content for the hour live show, creates cut-ins for the 7 to 9 am show, and ensures the overall news product is relevant and local.

"Riggs" and "Intern Steve" are the morning show hosts of the rock station, WHOG, the most popular of Southern Stone's stations by far. They do the 5 to 10 am show, run through the recording to pick out the best clips, voice commercials, and program the rest of the day's pieces into the computer that runs the WHOG's feed.

Sean Mooney, Assignment Desk Manager and News Reporter for WNDB and the News Daytona Beach website, wears multiple hats at the station, including sports coordinator and producer. Sean also programs the morning shows and hourly reports for WNDB, and creates morning news reports for the other music-focused stations.

Chris Gollon, News Reporter at WNDB, monitors daily newsworthy events in Volusia and Flagler counties, creating concise reports to air on the station, as well as afternoon traffic and weather reports.

"The time you spend in the studio is half of it. The preparation and the time after the show that you have to spend doing other things that have nothing to do with the show," is the main thing Riggs from WHOG noted as something listeners may not realize. They may be live on air for 3 hours, but still have to spend time after the show preparing for the rest of the week's programming. "

"I don't know that people understand how long it actually takes to compile a newscast," Trei Johnson echoed. "I think they think, 'oh, she did that story, that story was 2 minutes long, it probably took her 30 minutes to do it' not knowing it could be something that took us weeks to do".

The WHOG will be covering "Welcome to Rockville", the massive rock music festival at Daytona International Speedway. With "5 days of 16 to 18 hour days, we won't be broadcasting the whole time but we will be working for sure," Riggs and Steve are sure to be tired, but thankful that they can meet the members of the community that recurringly listen to their show.

"Having to be ready at the drop of a hat, you can never really set any particular hours to be a news writer because things happen whenever they want to," Chris Gollon stated. Multiple times, Chris has been off the clock around town and passed by situations that he then looks into to find out what happened and if it may be worthy for the next day's news report.

Ever wonder how a radio station cues up music? This program for the WHOG is a color-coded lineup showing songs intercut with cutaways, as well as fitting in commercial breaks that highlight the station's sponsors.

Through the use of Adobe Audition, the station makes sure the clearest audio is sent through the airwaves with breaking news impacting the community.

"[We] play a pretty important role in news consumption in the area... it's really important for people to stay informed about what's going on," Chris stressed.

When asked if radio seems to be dying out, "I think it will always be here. There's always something going on with news and music. It's free, it's available, [but] it does need to change a little bit with stuff like podcasts," Philip Kincaid said.

"Being on the air is great. Working with people like the morning HOG crew... it's a chance for us to present lighter sides of the news and take a little bit of break from the serious hard-hitting news and [provide] some uplifting stuff, and maybe something funny," Sean said. "There's multiple sides to a reporter... it's nice to have that change," he admitted.

Listening to the station, you never know who you might hear. Exciting guests in the past have included former Florida governor Charlie Crist, NBA star Dennis Rodman, and actor-comedian Gilbert Gottfried just a few weeks before he passed away.

Live from Daytona Beach, its WNDB's traffic report at 5!

Empty offices, but the show continues to go on...