Today’s interviewee is Ken Brady, the play-by-play announcer for Stephens County football for 27 seasons and a co-host and producer of WNEG Radio’s “Crunch Time,” a Thursday night show during the high school football season that has aired since 2000 with the same three hosts – Brady, Mack Poss and Ted Taylor. Brady will be calling Friday night’s home game against North Murray in the Class 2A playoffs.
1. How did you get involved in doing play by play for the Indians? “I grew up listening to Lynn Pitts, legendary high school sports announcer in Northeast Georgia in the ‘60s through the early ‘80s, and he could really paint the picture in the mind of listeners of what he was seeing on the field. In high school, I was the guy who would write the story on the games for the school newspaper and occasionally the local town paper. But my love was radio, and as a senior in high school, I was hired at WNEG Radio here in Toccoa. I continued to work there part-time as I went to college, but since it was a daytime-only AM station, we were not able to do high school sports at night. I came on full-time at WNEG in 1981, and in 1984, WNEG started a full-power TV station. They would go out on Friday nights and videotape a local game and play it back on Tuesday nights. On a Friday night in 1987, Mack Poss, who was doing color with play-by-play announcer Charles Head, could not do the game because his wife was close to delivering his baby daughter. So they came over to the radio side of the building and asked me if I could step in at the last minute. I guess I did a pretty good job because I was the substitute for Mack and Charles for several seasons. In 1992, I was asked to take the play-by-play position on a regular basis. After a couple of years, the TV station decided to stop doing high school football, but WNEG Radio and TV station owner, Roy Gaines, graciously gave me permission to do play by play on Friday nights for a small station in neighboring Franklin County since we were still daytime-only AM. After three years, WNEG got night-time clearance and started broadcasting all of Stephens County’s games. So I’ve been the football play-by-play announcer for the Indians since 1998.”
2. What keeps you in it after 33 years? What do you enjoy most about it? “I have been very blessed to broadcast high school sports and witness the Friday night excitement – the competition of the young men on the field, the cheerleaders on the sideline raising the spirit of the fans and the marching band both on the field and in the stands playing the music that makes for a great atmosphere that can really bring a community together for an enjoyable night of entertainment. When listeners tell me they feel like they are at the game with me, then I have done my job. It is especially gratifying when a parent, grandparent or other relative of a player thanks us for broadcasting the games when they can’t be there themselves.”
3. What style of announcer are you? “Being born and raised in Toccoa/Stephens County and living here all my life, except when I was at college, you could say I am a homer for sure. But I want to make sure through my excitement of calling a big play that you can clearly understand what is happening. Whether it is a Stephens County player or a player for the opponent, me and my broadcast partner, Buzz Tatham – we are also in our 25th season together – want to make sure we give them credit for good play. But also when a high school player makes a personal foul or other mistake, we will not call that player’s name out. It is not our place to embarrass any player or team. We try to emphasize the positive.”
4. What is Crunch Time? And what do you enjoy about that? “‘Crunch Time’ is an hour program we do from a local restaurant each Thursday from 6 to 7 p.m. One of my co-hosts is Mack Poss, who as I mentioned earlier did color on the old TV-32 game of the week. He is a former assistant football coach, varsity girls and boys basketball coach at Stephens County and was co-host of the TV-32 ‘Friday Night Under the Lights’ high school football scoreboard and video recap of the games, and was for many years the color analyst for the University of Georgia Lady Bulldogs basketball broadcasts. Ted Taylor is my other co-host. He was host of the ‘High School Football Scoreboard Show’ on the old WLET-FM in Toccoa and later on WCON-FM in Cornelia – a total of for 34 years. He also still does home Stephens County basketball and baseball games for us on the radio. We’ll talk about the Stephens County game, but we also preview the other games in the area. We also have a special guest each week, such as ‘Mr. College Football’ Tony Barnhart, five-time Olympian basketball player Teresa Edwards, former Georgia Tech and NFL [and Stephens County] great Pat Swilling and Pro Football Hall of Famer, the late Billy Shaw. ‘Crunch Time’ is just three guys that love to talk sports. Mack seems to know everyone in the northern part of the state and has great stories to tell, Ted has great knowledge of all sports since he has been broadcasting them over 50 years, and I run the equipment and bring each show segment on the air and try to keep us on time so we can get all the commercials played. But beyond us three co-hosting the show together for this our 25th season, we are all good friends and enjoy being with each other. That is the true pleasure I get out of doing ‘Crunch Time,’ and we hope the listeners that tune in can hear that.”
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