New Orleans Radio Station Becomes Lifeline

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MADELEINE BRAND, host:

This is DAY TO DAY. I'm Madeleine Brand.

Immediately after Hurricane Katrina battered New Orleans, residents often had no information source, other than their battery-powered radios. The whole city came to rely on talk radio from a consortium of 15 radio stations, the majority of them owned by the conglomerate Clear Channel Communications. NPR's Mike Pesca reports.

MIKE PESCA reporting:

Two weeks ago the studios of WWL New Orleans news-talk radio had a great view of the big story. And then, like everything else in their city, it all went to hell. Dave Cohen is WWL's news director.

Mr. DAVE COHEN (News Director, WWL): We had a beautiful picture window in our news studio and our talk studio as well that overlooks the Superdome, and those windows have been destroyed. They blew out while we were on the air. So our host had to retreat.

PESCA: For the next 24 hours a skeleton crew worked around the clock. Deejays acted as gophers when not on the air. The program director fielded calls. No one slept. The station opened the phone lines and helped however they could. Then Dave Cohen found himself in a situation that went from bad to unfathomable.

Mr. COHEN: After the levee break when the water was rising, we had calls from people trapped in their attics. We had calls from a woman standing in chest-deep water holding a two-month-old, who just had its last bottle of formula she had. And she's asking me, live on the radio, `What should I do?' And I said, `Well, you've got to get out.' She said, `Well, the water's eight feet deep outside my house. My house is raised. We can't stand. It's too deep.' And so here I am faced with, `OK, I'm talking to a woman who could very well be dead in just a few minutes.' So I just told this woman, `OK, open the window, stand on the windowsill. Can you reach the roof? Can you get close? Can you have these two men boost you onto the roof and then hand you the children?' And that's how we left it, and I don't know if she made it or not. I don't know if her children made it or not. I don't know.

PESCA: Cohen fielded a call from a stranded blind man, children separated from parents and so many calls for the missing.

(Soundbites of several radio phone calls)

Unidentified Woman #1: I've lost my daughter. I don't know where she is. She was in the New Orleans area the last time I had heard.

GRANDMA PAM: Let them call their grandmother. This is Grandma Pam.

Unidentified Woman #2: All right.

GRANDMA PAM: And you're calling at Ms. State's(ph) house 'cause we had to evacuate to Monroe.

Unidentified Woman #2: OK. Grandma Pam, do they have...

Unidentified Woman #3: My brother is still missing. If he's listening to this, I have a phone number, (504)...

Unidentified Man #1: We're looking for my mother and father.

Unidentified Woman #4: Ooh, that's important.

Unidentified Man #1: They're from St. Bernard Parish, and we're pretty sure they evacuated.

PESCA: Soon the station's staff had to flee the city for Baton Rouge. WWL's corporate parent, Entercom, struck a deal with Clear Channel, which owns a half-dozen stations in the area, and they merged staff and signals. Sports, gospel, news talk and rock stations were all now working together. There was only one format: Katrina. As united radio broadcasters of New Orleans, they opened their phones to citizens and officials. They aired press conferences and a few ads, mostly utility companies and insurers offering information. In general, here's how things worked. Someone would call in...

(Soundbite from radio program)

Unidentified Man #2: I think things are getting through, but then today a friend of mine tells me they heard somewhere on WWL that an evacuation's being called for. Now please tell me that's not true. I want to dispel that 'cause evidently...

PESCA: A few minutes later an official would call to clarify. Their open-phones format did foment rumors. Some were wild, like this woman's allegations about FEMA.

(Soundbite from radio program)

Unidentified Woman #5: They changed their company in June to a Fortune 500 company. So this is a whole new group of people. They relocated to Florida, and they've become a Fortune 500 company.

Unidentified Man #3: No, FEMA's a government agency, though. How did it become a private company?

Unidentified Woman #5: A Fortune 500.

Unidentified Man #3: But...

Unidentified Woman #5: You need to check that if you don't believe me.

PESCA: He thanked her for the call. Some rumors were more pernicious. Reports of widespread mayhem in Baton Rouge went on the air before the mayor could tamp them down. But there was some violence, and officials like Slidell Mayor Ben Morris used the airwaves to address potential troublemakers.

Mayor BEN MORRIS (Slidell, Louisiana): I just got in a contingent of 400 Marines. And if you're on the street at night, you're going to be greeted rather rudely and most probably looking down the barrel of a gun.

PESCA: In the dozen days since Katrina hit, the chaos at the radio station hasn't subsided. Kat Kadulari(ph), usually a rock jock, but now she uses her smoky voice not to intro a Grand Funk Railroad twofer but to calm callers, about half of whom don't want to be on the air but need phone numbers and answers from the only news source they have.

Radio is an auditory medium, of course, but this station's story is summed up with a visual. In the station's main hallway, where a gospel deejay might have to squeeze past the rotund shock jock, there's a sign. It was once a bit of corporate motivation. Printed up top is the Clear Channel name and logo. Below that are the words: Make Budget And Then Beat Market. Someone's crossed them out with a red pen and instead written: Help Humanity. Mike Pesca, NPR News, Baton Rouge.

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