I've been on the news staff at WTAM 1100 since January of 1995, when we were still known as WWWE or "3WE". Hard to believe I've been here so long!
The Cliff's Notes version of my story: I've been in radio over 30 years, and have lived in a number of places, but I've been a Clevelander the majority of my career.
Now, the slightly more detailed version:
Radio has been my passion since I was a kid. I fell asleep every night listening to the radio. My radio career started in 1974 at Central Michigan University, where nearly every year since 2000, I've been involved in the annual Alumni Takeover of our old student station. I also serve on the alumni advisory board for the School of Broadcast and Cinematic Arts at CMU.
The first ten years of my radio career took me through Michigan, Delaware and Maryland. Then in the fall of 1987, I suddenly had the desire to look for work in Cleveland. Cleveland? The town they called the "mistake on the lake?" The town with a tower that's Terminal, a lake that's Erie and roads that are Marginal? At the time, I had my reasons for coming here, but I'm glad I stayed.
My first job in Greater Cleveland was a year spent as news director of the former WBKC in Painesville. From 1988 to 1993 I was an anchor and reporter at WERE until the one-time home of "People Power" abandoned local news and broke up its award-winning news department. In between WERE and WWWE/WTAM, I spent a couple of years as public information director for the non-profit Substance Abuse Initiative of Greater Cleveland, a drug abuse prevention agency (if the timeline doesn't match up, I joined 3WE part-time while still doing my PR duties).
I'm married to Karen, a native Clevelander. I'm an active member of St. Angela Merici church in Fairview Park as a lector and PSR teacher. My musical passion is 50s and 60s oldies, such as the ones played on iHeartRadio.com's Real Oldies channel. The music file on my Android phone is filled with oldies from that era, including a lot of "one hit wonders" like "Michael (The Lover)" by The C.O.D's, "May I" by Bill Deal and the Rhondels, and "The Cheater" by Bob Kuban and the In-Men. Songs that truly fit the definition of "moldy oldie."
My favorite food is steamed Chesapeake Bay blue crabs, best served "all you can eat" at my favorite crab houses near Salisbury, Maryland, the Old Mill in Delmar, Delaware, and the Red Roost in Whitehaven, Maryland. If your travels take you to the Delmarva Peninsula, here's a lesson in how to properly pick crabs, so that you can look and act like a local. Sounding like a local out there is a different story. My wife says that when we visit Delmarva, my accent changes, but it goes away when we get back to Cleveland.
I love baseball. My philosphy about the game is best summed up in the speech by James Earl Jones near the end of "Field of Dreams":
You can't say that about football or basketball, but when it comes to football, I am very passionate about my Central Michigan University Chippewas.
Since I was a kid, I have loved reading newspapers, and I mean the real kind made from paper and ink. At this link, you can see PDF files of today's newspaper front pages from all across the nation and around the world, courtesy of the Newseum in Washington, DC. It's a fascinating way to look at how local news coverage is done in other cities.
I have enjoyed meeting and interviewing celebrities, including Bob Hope, Charlton Heston, James Brown and Chuck Berry, and even Lorain native Don Novello as Father Guido Sarducci. The funniest interview I ever did was with perennial presidential candidate, comedian Pat Paulsen. If there was one interviewee over whom I gushed, it was Bob Keeshan, who I grew up watching as "Captain Kangaroo."
Other highlights of my career: I broadcast emergency information about Hurricane Gloria in 1985 to the Delmarva Peninsula, and information about the Blizzard of '78 to listeners in Southern Michigan. I described the beauty of dozens of tall ships as they passed up the Delaware River to Philadelphia, and I broadcast live from the "Ground Zero" of a locked down, downtown Cleveland, as the KKK ralled on the same day as the first game at the new Browns Stadium. Making "lemonade out of lemons", I once did an award-winning series about car theft prevention, after my own car was stolen.
I have been honored by the Ohio Associated Press Broadcasters and the Society of Professional Journalists as the state's best large market radio news anchor. I have also won the Achievement In Radio (A.I.R.) Award as Cleveland's best radio news anchor. In addition, I have won the Press Club of Cleveland's award for doing Ohio's best radio newscast.
Here are answers to a couple questions about me. I'm not really "five-foot-four" as WTAM 1100's Mike Trivisonno nicknamed me years ago ("Five-foot-four Tommy Moore"). I'm really closer to five-foot-seven, but that doesn't rhyme. As for the deliberate "I'm Tom Moore," in newscasts, it started when our newscasts ended with the anchor saying "I'm (anchor name) on Cleveland's only Newsradio..." I decided to deliberately separate "Moore" from "on," as my mother didn't raise a moron.
By the way, I LOVE to keep up old blog entries. They were once in chronological order, starting with the newest. That was until late January of 2011, when corporate decided that no copyrighted photos could be posted on any web site. As a result, photos were taken off my blog, unless they were ones that I took myself, and that changed the dates everything was posted, and mixed up the order.
Enough about me. I'd like to hear from you. E-mail me at tommoore@wtam.com.
So, When Am I On The Air?
These days, you'll hear me on WTAM 1100 mostly at 5:30 and 6 p.m. I spend the rest of my day anchoring newscasts for our sister stations, Newstalk 570 WKBN in Youngstown, and FM Newstalk 104.7 in Pittsburgh.
There are news stories you usually don't hear on WTAM 1100 that have to be shared, because they are so totally unusual. Take the case of a Pittsburgh-area couple charged with child endangering, because the let their daughter ride in a dog cage in the back of a pickup truck on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
I had seen another version of the story, where the girl's grandmother -- the mother's mother -- was interviewed. She was quite sorry for what happened, and she was very well-spoken.
Then, there's the mom and stepfather. Why did they let the little girl ride in the dog cage? Because the dog was whining and they didn't want to be charged with animal abuse.
Would the little girl have been hurt? They weren't going that fast, they say. (On the turnpike?)
I present, for your consideration, these parents, courtesy of KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh.
It’s something we take for granted, and it’s hard to think they didn’t exist until 40 years ago today. It was on April 3, 1973 that Motorola engineer Martin Cooper walked out onto a New York City sidewalk and placed the first cellular telephone call. Ironically, he made it to a rival engineer at Bell Labs.
When you think about the smartphones that we use today, think about from where they started.
According to marketwatch.com, Cooper’s phone weighed 2.5 pounds, and was 9 inches long by 5 inches deep by 1.75 inches wide. You could make a phone call on it. That’s it. No texting. No email. No videos. No Angry Birds.
Really want to see how far the cellular phone has come? Take a look at this video from the 1980s. It’s a Motorola promotional video for some of the first commercially-available cellular phones. What was the cost? A staggering $3,995. Think about that next time you complain about the cost of an iPhone5 or a Galaxy S III.
It's an April Fools' gag, but it makes you think. What would this world be like without a way to post videos of cute cats and people doing stupid stuff?
This will be hard for die-hard Clevelanders to swallow, but a new worldwide survey says the top city in which to live in the U.S. is...
Pittsburgh.
Yes, THAT Pittsburgh. The one where the Steelers have won seven more Super Bowls than the Browns have even played in. The one that gave the world sandwiches with the French fries and cole slaw embedded inside. The one where they say words like "yinz" and "slippy."
The study comes from the Economist Intelligence Unit, which does worldwide studies on the economy. You can read about it by clicking here.
If you're wondering why Pittsburgh received such honors, it's because the folks at EIU ranked cities on factors including healthcare, culture and environment, and education and personal safety.
I think that Cleveland has better health care when you compare Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals with Pittsburgh's UPMC. Our culture is tops, especially when you think of the Cleveland Orchestra and PlayhouseSquare. The environments are about equal. So are the education and personal safety, but I do think the University of Pittsburgh campus is kind of neat, especially their Cathedral of Learning building.
What really makes Pittsburgh better than Cleveland? They've gone further ahead when it comes to recovery from the days in which steel was king. Pittsburgh seems to have done a better job of embracing 21st century technology than has Cleveland.
If there's one thing in which Clevelanders can take heart, it's that Pittsburgh may be the #1 U.S. city in the rankings, but only #29 in the world. Number one overall is Vancouver. Of the top ten cities in the world, seven are in Canada and Australia.
The real question is, what are those other English-speaking countries doing right that we Americans aren't?
T.J. Lane will be remembered for wearing a t-shirt to his sentencing that had the word "killer" written on it with a Sharpie marker, for smirking and smiling throughout the whole proceeding, and for, in his final statement, flipping the bird to the families of his victims and saying to them, "F**k you." He said more than that, but it was so graphic, it's not worth dignifying Lane by repeating it.
Let's forget about him.
Let's remember Demetrius Hewlin, Russell King Jr. and Daniel Parmertor, whose lives ended on February 27, 2012 in the Chardon High School cafeteria.
Let's remember Joy Rickers, Nick Walczak and Nate Mueller, all of whom had their lives changed by being wounded that day -- Walczak unable to walk because of his injuries.
Let's remember Chardon. Until February 27th, 2012, it was the town known for huge snowfalls and maple syrup.
That day, it was changed because of one sick kid.
Let's forget about him, and remember those whose lives were changed.
I'm a serious news person, but every once in a while, I come across something that just makes me laugh. In this case, it must be the ten-year-old in me that's laughing.
A boy from suburban Detroit has been told he can't take part in his school's talent show because his talent is...making farting noises.
One thing I got out of watching this report from Detroit's Fox 2. This kid's mom is awfully proud of his ability to make fart noises.
She sure wants her kid to aim high in life, doesn't she?
Who needs to hold a news conference? In this day and age, all an overpaid athlete needs to do to say goodbye to the town in which he'd been playing -- and the team that had paid him a princely sum, but not the wages of a king -- is to post on social media.
Browns wide reciever and kickoff returner Josh Cribbs shows one thing with this post on his Instagram account. Maybe he has a future career as a graphic designer. As to being part of this community, he's saying, "I'll do all this stuff for the team that will pay me the most."
