Cromwell Media, Bud Walters, to speak at Hancock County Chamber Breakfast

Bayard “Bud” Walters started WKCM in Hawesville 50 years ago and will be coming to speak at the Hancock County Chamber of Commerce Breakfast on Tuesday, November 8. He said he plans to speak about Hancock County planning and zoning in the 1970s – something he learned a lot about in his venture to start WKCM as well as the initiatives he made with the late County Attorney Harold Wayne Newton to start Great Country Farmstead subdivision near Vastwood.

Bud built WKCM – Western Kentucky Country Music Radio station from scratch in our community in 1972, and now owns 31 stations – 8 in the Owensboro area, 18 in Nashville and 5 in Illinois. He was named number one leader in radio in Radio Ink Magazine by his peers on its 2021 Top 20 Leaders List.

“Honestly, had I not come to Hancock County I would not have had the career that I’ve had. It’s been wonderful,” he said. “The station (WKCM) actually signed on the air November 7, 1972, which was election day and the Chamber is having its breakfast November 8 this year, which is election day. For me, the 50 years celebration is really on election day.”

Bud, originally from Henderson, said that building the radio station in Hawesville was an arduous process. There were federal approvals they needed and at that time there were only about 4,000-5,000 radio stations in America, most of which were AM stations.

“To be able to start a new one from scratch was a really big deal,” he said. “I was a young man and the community was very supportive. I applied to build the radio station in 1969 when I was in graduate school. I knew that the FCC was going to take a long time to approve it. So, I ended up getting a job in Chicago with an advertising agency to wait it out and also have some money to pay all the bills with lawyers and things to make everything happen.”

After the FCC approved it in early 1972, he moved to Hawesville and with the help of engineers, built WKCM radio station. “We built a dike around the building and everybody thought we were crazy because the field flooded but hadn’t gotten up to the road since around 1937,” he said. “The dike protected us for a number of years until the early 90’s when the water got over the dike and into our building and then it became unsafe and we had to tear the building down. We built a small one back to put our transmitter on.” The transmitter in Hawesville can still be broadcasted from when other stations aren’t available.

Bud said that when WKCM got started it was one of the “most fun times” he ever had in his life, mainly because the people he worked with here were “such nice people.”

After a couple of years, he moved on to Nashville to get back into the advertising business and has continued to build radio stations. He’s built 16 of them from scratch because of how he learned to do it in Hancock County, he said.

“The Hawesville application occurred because one of the courses I took (Broadcast Communications) was on FCC law and it involved filling out an FCC application. Everybody in the class did a dummy application and I did a real one,” he said.

He was earning his Bachelor’s Degree at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana and was involved in the college radio station which was one of the first college radio stations in America.

“When WKCM was built, my professor at DePauw, Betty Turnell, had retired and said she’d come down and help start the station,” Bud said. “She came down and lived in Hancock County. We had a couple of her other former students and they helped as well.”

He said that while living in Hancock County, Turnell was “instrumental” in helping to start the Hancock County Historical Society and the Senior Citizen Center. “She made a difference while she was there. A couple of years after I left, she moved to Decatur, Illinois where her family lived. In 1990 we started a radio station in Decatur and we named it for her and it’s called WEJT – her name was Elizabeth J. Turnell. So, a little bit of Hawesville went to Decatur, Illinois. We had a big event when the station signed on the air with all her friends and community representatives. She deserved to be honored and she made a difference in Hancock County. So, for this fiftieth anniversary we are really honoring her.”

Bud is still currently directly involved with the stations on a regular basis. “The nice thing is most of our stations were built in the last couple of years. Now WKCM has an FM on 92.1 and we also own WTCJ in Tell City and after that I bought 106.7 and those have been built within the last couple of years. You can listen to WKCM really anywhere you want to. You can listen to HCHS sports anywhere in the world because we stream it on the internet. You can listen over the air in your car or on the radio, at home or in your office, but you can also listen on the internet wherever you are in the world.”

Bud served in the United States Air Force for 4 years. He earned his Bachelor’s of Arts from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana and a Master’s in Business at Indiana University.

He and his wife Rosemary Lab Walters have been married for nearly 30 years. She is a retired neurological nurse. They have one son who lives in Seattle and 2 grandchildren.

“We are spoiled because we live in Nashville and there is so much music here,” he said. “There’s lots of free music and I know a lot of people from Hancock County come to Nashville for the weekend and they’re always welcome.”

By Jennifer Wimmer