The death on Sunday of longtime WTVN morning radio host Bob Conners brought back memories of my own time as an intern and stringer at the radio station roughly three decades ago. Conners, who lived not far from where I grew up and went to the church at the end of the street, was not a gregarious backslapper off air, at least not as far as I observed. But I always found him to be very professional in his dealings with others at the station.
When I was at 'TVN, the station was located downtown in the Buckeye Federal Building (now a Residence Inn by Marriott) and the station was one of seven commercial radio stations in Columbus having a working newsroom with multiple reporters. The station was owned by Taft Broadcasting under the old, restrictive rules for media ownership.
Before the consolidation brought about by changes in the ownership rules, radio stations carried little debt and engaged in fierce competition, which made working in radio challenging and exciting. And Bob Conners was one of the great communicators in the medium — my friend Jon Belmont rightfully compared him in a tweet to the legendary Detroit radio host J. P. McCarthy.
Conners' successor, Joel Riley, has noticeably assumed some of Conners' style after taking over the shift, fortunately maintaining the calm professionalism that was once the hallmark of most morning radio hosts.