Mark McGgee

I grew up in Pinellas County in Dunedin and wanted to do radio from the moment I saw the inside of WAZE as a child. I grew up in the late 50s and early 60s listening to all the great jocks on WALT and WLCY radio and watching the wonderful news anchors and reporters on WTVT, WFLA and WLCY TV. I was privileged to work in Tampa Bay area radio from 1967 - 1973 and had some great times with wonderful people who taught me a lot about broadcasting and journalism.

Thanks to Jay Black and Paul Hayes with the St. Pete School of Broadcasting (Bixby Business College) for teaching me how to do radio news, music and production. Thanks to Paul for later giving me the chance to do some voice work with him. Thanks to WTRL for hiring me out of college with no real experience and letting me do a little of everything on air. Thanks to Hugh Brown at WSUN for hiring a young guy with less than a year's experience and giving me the chance to cover news where I grew up. Thanks to Burl McCarty for the internship and both Burl and Ed Ripley for giving me the opportunity a couple of years later to learn from them every day and to meet and work with Bob

This Was Mark At WINQ In 1970

Rourk. What a great experience to ride in the WDAE News wagon with Burl in Tampa parades. Everybody loved him. We all grew up watching Captain Mac. Burl was a jewel. Thanks to Dan Johnson and Pepper Lypsinx for hiring me at WFSO and giving me my first opportunity to learn about being a news dir-ector. The music was very heavy and the concerts were fun to MC. Thanks to Bob Rourke at WINQ for hiring me to do news and talk. We had a lot of fun together at WDAE and even more at WINQ. I learned a lot about investigative journalism from Bob. He was a great mentor and friend. Thanks to Mel Berman for his wonderful guidance when he became GM after Bob left WINQ. I learned so much from Mel about big city talk radio.

I produced syndicated radio programs for several years until moving to Georgia and getting back into radio news. I also reported for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution for a few years and apprecate that medium of journalism. I made the jump to television news in 1981 as a reporter, then assignment editor and eventually news director at stations in GA & AL. We decided to return home and I've been working as an executive producer at Bay News 9 since May 2002. I also teach health and fitness classes for the Tampa YMCA. It's so great to be back home.

• St. Pete Jr. College Radio/TV Program - 1966-67
• St. Pete School of Broadcasting - 1967 (student of Jay Black and Paul Hayes)
• WDAE Radio - 1967 (Internship with Burl McCarty)
• WTRL Radio - 1968 (News-music-production-talk)
• WSUN Radio/TV 38 - 1968-69 (News-music-production) (Hugh Brown ND)
• WDAE Radio - 1969 (News, production, Gary Nelson music show) (Burl McCarty ND, Ed Ripley PD, Bob Rourke talkshow host)
• WFSO Radio - 1969-70 (News Director, Weird Beard music show, Concert MC) (Pepper Lypsinx PD)
• WINQ Radio - 1970-71 (Talk, News, Operations Mgr) (Bob Rourke GM, Mel Berman GM) (Dave McKay, Howard Hewes, Bob Waugh and other great guys doing all talk and news)
• WTRL Radio - 1972 (News-music-production)
• WQSR Radio - 1973 (News-music-production)