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(bright music) - After 40 years in broadcasting, including 35 years as one of Wyoming's most familiar news radio voices, Bob Beck is retiring.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS.

We'll meet the long time news director at Wyoming Public Radio.

This is "Wyoming Chronicle."

(bright music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is made possible in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council, helping Wyoming take a closer look at life through the humanities, thinkwy.org, and by the members of the Wyoming PBS Foundation.

Thank you for your support.

- I wanted to ask you if you've noticed the propensity for many people to want to talk about their recollections, their memories, their sentiments, their anecdotes, their stories about listening to the radio when they were younger people, kids or teenagers.

- And I was one of those people, too.

I listened to WIND radio most nights before I went to bed, listening to Dave Bomb and listening to Larry Lujack on WLS and Steve Dahl on the Loop in Chicago.

So I was a avid radio listener growing up.

- It happens.

When I was, I think I maybe eight years old, my dad gave me a little transistor radio about that big, covered with what the comedian called genuine imitation leather.

And I took it to bed at night, and my brother was home for Christmas, so I got to sleep on the couch, and I'm listening there and tuned in radio stations from the West Coast, and KOMA Oklahoma City was a station that we listened to 'cause it played rock and roll, and the disc jockey was the ayatollah of rock and roll.

And the things you remember that, there's just something about radio, isn't there?

- Yeah, it is.

And it's very intimate.

I think it's much different than television.

And you're drivin' around.

People say it's like I'm in their car, listening to us.

And I feel the same way whenever I hear my friends.

I have colleagues all over the country who are regularly on NPR, and I said, "Oh, well Sarah's on today."

Or it's good to hear from Jim.

And so as you're driving around listening to those things, I think it's the intimacy that was always very cool to me.

- So you mentioned these stations you listened to and these people you listened to.

Where was that?

- That was in Chicago.

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, a town called Wheaton, Illinois.

I went to the same high school...

Here are three famous people for you, Jim and John Belushi.

Also Bob Woodward, from "All the President's Men" fame, and the Hubble Telescope, Edwin Hubble, went to my school.

So it was fun to grow up in the Chicago suburbs, listening to Cubs baseball on WGN radio in those days.

- Who was calling those games?

- Vince Lloyd and Lou Boudreau.

Lou Boudreau, the famous hall of famer.

And Vince Lloyd was a great broadcaster.

And then we had Jack Brickhouse on the television side before Harry Carey.

- Brickhouse was, "Hey hey," right?

- Yeah, that's right.

You got it right.

And he was very famous.

- A lot of people that get started in media, especially, at least in my experience, who become management level editors, or in your case news directors, have a sports background when they begin in media, and you did as well, right?

- That's actually why I went to college at Southern Illinois University, to become a radio television major, is I wanted to be a sportscaster, and I did that.

I got hired to be a sports broadcaster, DJ, and news person at a little station called WHPI.

The theme was what?

Whoopie Radio making whoopie 24 hours a day.

We had to- - With Bob Beck?

- Yeah, well it was a country radio station, and we had to answer the phone, "You're in Whoopie country."

My friends would call up just to hear me say that.

So, but WHPI was my first radio station.

I worked at a station in Benton, Illinois shortly thereafter, and I was the sports director, and so I did play by play of a number of schools.

I did SIU basketball, Southern Illinois.

- Is that the Salukis?

- That is the Salukis.

I did some basketball games with one of those stations, and then I was also the sports director at WSIU Radio, our public radio station there.

Which the amount of talent we had at that radio station...

There was one day I had won one of my Murrows that I had won, they had posted a thing of all the people who were alums that had won Murrows, and there was like 35 names there.

- Wow.

- And that just shows you what the- - Tell us quickly what the Murrow Award is.

- Oh, Edward R. Murrow Award is something from the, it's one of our big awards.

It's sort of a radio version of the Emmy, but the regional Murrows you compete against a number of states in your region and commercial radio stations as well as public stations, and we've won a bunch in our most recent years, and so I've picked up five myself, and it's really something you strive to get.

But yeah, it was all play by play, and that's how I kinda ended up in Wyoming.

They were looking for somebody to do news and play by play at KROE in Sheridan.

- You moved from job to job for a while, which is common for people beginning in the business.

What made you decide this would be the thing to do?

- It was funny, I had a couple of friends there.

I had a couple of classmates who were there.

It was funny, I was freaking out.

It had been a month since I graduated.

I didn't have a full-time job yet.

- A whole month.

- Yeah, an entire month, and I thought, well this is a failure.

Nobody's gonna hire me.

I was just chilling, and this job came up.

It was a chance to do play by play.

I was always told that being just a play-by-play announcer, by my college professors, was a hard gig.

You're gonna have to do somethin' else.

You'll either sell or do news, and doing news sounded better.

So I did the job, and I was promptly assigned to the beats that nobody else wanted to do, the city council, the school board, the evening meetings, that kinda thing, where everybody else did the fun stuff, the courts, that happened during the day.

But I loved my time doing Sheridan College basketball.

It was interesting to travel with that team on buses all over the region.

And I journal these days, but I didn't then, and I really regret it because there's a book that could come out of that, and you had African Americans facing racism right in front of you.

And it was an interesting, it was an interesting season.

- Yeah, I've always thought of what a challenge that was for those kids coming to, even the big towns in Wyoming are small.

The community colleges were very important, in that way, to the state, I've always thought.

Because they added a measure diversity that you just didn't see.

- It's an interesting point.

And I think that it was also good for these kids.

There was a kid from Brooklyn.

There was a kid from Seattle, Los Angeles, to get out and see the rest of the world a little bit.

- Well, that's what I was gonna say.

We've got you to Wyoming now, but the career move that became the reason we're talking to you here, that you've become a Wyoming institution, let's face it, that's what you are, came about how?

- Well I came to KOWB-KCGY, which is a commercial station here that was owned by Curt Gowdy, which was cool, and I got to meet him several times.

- Surely everyone in our listening audience or viewing audience knows who Curt Gowdy is, but just in case- - Our generation- - Who was he?

- He was the Joe Bock of broadcasters, but even more so.

He did every World Series.

He did every Final Four.

He did every other Super Bowl.

And so he was one of the biggest names in broadcasting at the time.

- And a Wyoming guy.

- Essentially from Cheyenne, went to the University of Wyoming, and played sports here, and went off and, shoot, almost right away became a Major League Baseball announcer.

I think he started with a Yankees, and then was with Red Sox forever.

And so just about as famous a guy as you could meet.

And so to meet him in person, and he...

I won an award through the Wyoming Association of Broadcasters one year, and he actually did a spot or commercial or a promo and just congratulating me and have his voice.

Did I save that?

Of course not, because I'm an idiot, but that was just amazing of Curt Gowdy saying, "Congratulations, Bob, from a very proud owner," and that was about as good as it got.

And I had a chance to do some stuff with the Wyoming Sports Network, which they had just taken over.

And then I did high school play by play for the Plainsman for four seasons.

And it was time to leave, it was time to find somethin' else to do, and a job fell on my lap, which was Wyoming Public Radio.

My friend Frank Emhoff, who I think was the news director six or seven years here, had recommended they hire me.

And Lyle Mettler was the general manager then.

I had known him.

My wife at the time was interested in getting a master's degree, and so we decided to stay for a couple of years.

This is in 1988.

And so I'm still here.

She passed away, but it's... She stayed for two masters and a doctorate, so it all worked out for her, so.

- And you made the transition then to full-time news.

You weren't involved in sports with KWR, correct?

- I haven't done a sports broadcast in probably 20 years or so, so it's been a while.

I do features once in a while, but, and I do cover the games, the football games in particular.

But yeah, I haven't done...

I don't know if I still can, Steve, we'll have to see.

Although, I suspect I could dust something off.

- How did you take to the transition to news?

Does it feel comfortable for you?

- It's not easy for me.

It's never been something that was just an easy transition.

I had to work a little harder at it just to get to where I wanted to be.

They had some part-timers who were I think grad students and a couple of students, but it was, I was the professional, and so I was the only one that was getting full-time pay to be there.

I did enjoy training people.

That part was a lot of fun.

So in '85 I had an opportunity to go cover the legislature for a couple of things.

And so I went over probably 15, 20 times that year, and actually for some stupid reason, really enjoyed it.

It was just fun, and it was the best thing going on in the state.

It was most interesting thing.

And I got to know Ed Herschler a little bit that year, and then covered the '86 campaign, which was a lot of fun, because that was when Pete Simpson faced off against Mike Sullivan, but it was Pete Simpson and every Republican big shot in the state running for that- - Big primary that year.

- Yeah, and I always think back on Bill Budd, who maybe didn't win the election, but became governor later in CJ Box novels, so I always thought that was interesting.

That maybe inspired me a little bit more in politics, too, to do some more things.

And so I was interested in maybe continuing that.

And they said okay, and I've gone most every day ever since then, unless the roads scare me.

- Well I think it's safe to say that you must be one of the two or three most expert observers of the legislature in Wyoming.

There's no other way to put it.

I know a lot about it, but I barely hold a tiny candle to you, because you've been there, you've seen it, you've met the people, you've consistently follow the issues from one session to the next, from one administration to the next, and you become an authority, don't you?

- Yeah, you do, and it's... Joan Barron is always gonna be the one at the top, as far as I'm concerned.

But there were a few of us who covered it a lot of years, Germaine Joel, who just recently passed away, was one of those too, and it's different, though.

I'll tell you what, there was, it was harder to cover it back then, because we didn't have the websites.

You didn't have the background information- - If you wanted to know what was goin' on at the committee meeting, you had to go.

- You had to go, and you couldn't Google other people's stories.

I mean you had to go to the library and maybe look at them for background, and so it was, I'm sure me a bunch of mistakes back then.

But it was a lot of fun.

There were some real characters in the legislature when I first started.

- Who stands out in your memory?

Who are a couple of 'em?

- Well, I liked...

I really liked Dave Nicholas, actually, who ran for governor.

He was actually a mentor of mine.

He was the senator from here in Albany County, and later led NATO for the U.S., and then was just a really smart and interesting guy.

Rick Tempest was one of my favorite people.

The representative Budd from Pinendale, Dan Budd, who was about as funny a character as we've ever had.

And he would go into these rants on the floor, and Clarene Law was also a really fun person to talk to.

And Eli Bebow was starting back then.

Hank Koh was starting, John Perry.

I mean we had some really great people.

Charlie Scott was still there, as he is now.

He's gonna outlast me.

I thought I could at least hang in there until he was done, but not... - It's an interesting news state, more interesting than people who don't live in Wyoming might realize.

There's so many competing interests related to industry and environment and land use and water and wildlife and politics altogether.

Great election state, typically.

So there's a lot to cover in Wyoming news, considering there's so few people here.

- Well, there is, and different corners of the state present some different things.

You have to know how to cover a lot of different things.

I've done stories on all those things, and I've always thought that it's made me a much more well-rounded individual because I understand ranching just enough to be dangerous and energy and, as I would interview people to work here for us they would come out with certain views on climate change.

And I would explain to them, "Well, energy is the leading business, "and so if some of these rules are proposed, "you could be seeing some communities go away.

"So how would you think about that?"

And so that's the thing you learn about in Wyoming is that there's, there's always another side to it.

You have to look at both sides of these energy issues.

You have to look... We've been talking about diversifying the economy since I was in my 20s, and it's not happened, and then it's not going to happen anytime soon.

And so that's our tax base.

So if you get rid of some of this stuff, as we've already seen from time to time, our tax base (indistinct) what are we gonna do about that?

And I see no interest in the majority party in this state on raising any taxes.

And so this is this conflict that is always part of Wyoming, which has made it interesting, wildlife issues.

Again, corridor matters that come up from time to time, that how do you address those properly and keep energy going.

And we've shown that we can do it, and you always know there's a solution.

I'm the same way.

If the FCC wants us to do extra stuff, I don't wanna do it.

- But you find a way.

- But you find a way eventually if you wanna operate, so there you go.

- You entered into management eventually with Wyoming Public Radio, and I think people who haven't been in management don't fully appreciate it until they're in it, that personnel is this overriding, never-ending challenge.

My observation has been that you've been able to keep a good-size staff and you've acquired excellence.

Here's another frustrating thing for small media personnel issues, at least I experienced it.

I always enjoyed the process of finding the best people I could find who would be willing to come and work in Wyoming, and enjoyed working with them for as long as they stayed, hated 'em for about a week when they left, because I wish they hadn't, but then looked on with great interest and almost sort of a fatherly pride to see where they ended up.

And you've experienced that a dozen times, I would think, at least.

- Yeah, and even started well back in the 90s.

We hired a young lady out of Greeley.

She was at Northern Colorado.

And her name was April Zesbaugh, and she was the best host I've ever had.

And she went on and worked at KOA in Denver for, just left, actually just retired early, and won all kinds of awards, and just really was a voice of Denver for many years.

And so it started there.

It really turned for us in the early 2000s.

We had good people always, but we had, were able to get a little bit more money, and part of that was the state was doing better, and so we were able to raise our salaries, and I developed this connection with Columbia University in New York through a freelancer that we had who highly recommended us to the professors there.

And so they got a bunch of their students to apply for an opening I had.

And we hired a woman named Kristin Espeland, and she had a classmate that she knew, Elsa Part.

And then Elsa went back and spoke to a class, and Peter O'Dowd, who's now on "Here and Now," he came, and Columbia University is obviously one of the top journalism broadcast schools in the country, but they also have public radio program.

Even on my staff right now, Will Walkie, who is our newest hire, and Camila Cadelska, both came from Columbia.

So we continued to have... Caroline Ballard who was here for a long time, she's a Columbia graduate.

And so we had this connection that really helped a lot getting some of the top young people in the country to Wyoming.

And because we had treated them well, because they had won awards, and because all of my employees would go back and they would speak to future classes, we just had this train rolling.

The other thing that we were able to do, I was smart enough to realize that NPR interns are probably pretty good.

And so I started fishing where there were NPR interns, and outta that group there was a woman named Addie Goss, who was one of my great hires.

We had both Tristan Ottome was both a Columbia graduate as well as an NPR intern.

So we had that connection, too.

So I was fishing where the fish are, if you don't mind the phrase.

And we were getting a lot of great people.

Then at the same time, we were getting our own people.

I had this woman that wrote me a letter, and ignored her for a while 'cause I was busy, and finally brought her in, and she was somebody I think had been doing the mom business and doing other things, running a business with her husband.

And she was here in Laramie and wanted to come in and volunteer.

And so we finally took (indistinct) brought her in, trained her a few things, and then she pushed me for a part-time job and got it.

Her name is Melodie Edwards.

And Melodie's been with me forever, and it's certainly one of the better known voices in the state.

An incredible voice.

She did not always sound like that, nor did I.

But she's worked extremely hard and had gotten into the podcast world and has won a boatload of awards over the things she did.

So we've created some of our own people.

Maggie Mullen, who is now with Wild File, but she started with us as an intern, and we've always had good luck with that, creating some people from within.

But in the early days they, we just didn't have jobs for them.

But lately we've been able to train some people, grow our own.

And Kate Lintana works for her now, was one of my colleague's interns, and she always wanted to come back, and she had been at West Virginia Public Radio, and now she's back working for us, and she's from Pinedale and wanted to live there.

And so it's great that we have somebody in the western part of the state that can do really good work.

- Well you've had to get creative, I know, in finding ways to pay these people.

That's part of- - Fundraising.

- Another thing you've become an expert in.

- Yes, you raise money, and that goes hand in hand with excellence.

We've won some awards.

Our show "Open Spaces" is highly regarded across the country, and luckily in the state as well.

- "Open Spaces" was a big initiative for you, I'm sure.

I mean you were at a stage in your career when you had a lot to do.

You demonstrated, proved mastery at most of it, could have stayed plenty busy without doing that, but decided to take this on.

Tell us what it is quickly and what was the process that led you to do it.

- It's a news magazine program.

I always wanted to do that show.

I did a daily talk show, which we all do in Wyoming.

That was what everybody did, and it wasn't very good.

I think twice a year we had the STD person come on the show talking about chlamydia at lunchtime.

It was wonderful.

So I wanted to do something a little more in depth, had good sound and that kinda thing, and so we created "Open Spaces," and then played with it for about a year.

But that very first year we entered it in a national competition and won first place.

And so we said, well this is good.

And it forces us to do long-form stories.

Not just do interviews.

Interviews are a big part of it, but doing in-depth stories about things that really matter in Wyoming.

I remember actually when we started at 2005, maybe, and it's just really worked out for us.

And it's won I think 11 awards itself, either first or second nationally against other public radio stations.

The idea is to have a very highly produced show about Wyoming.

- You've logged decades in broadcasting and radio and at your particular station.

Now you're leaving that, you're leaving the state to two time zones away.

It's a big life change.

How are you feeling about all that?

- Well, five years ago I had a life change already.

My wife died of cancer.

And you're numb for about a year in that regard.

From that time on, I was always kinda like, well, am I gonna stay here?

Am I gonna be by myself?

What's gonna happen?

And it's funny, we all went through the pandemic, and at the end of 2020 I was just sort of sick of it and got one of those dating apps, and met a woman in Laramie who was recently divorced within the previous two years, and we braved it and went out, and just really hit it off.

And she had an opportunity to become a Director of Admissions in New York, and she asked me if I'd be willing to go, and so we ended up getting engaged, got married this summer, and she's there now and she thought it might be nice if her husband lived in the same state with her, and I thought so, too.

And I realized life was short, and I just didn't wanna...

There's been a lot of late nights with the legislature, a lot of stressful days, and as we all have gone through in the media, and I was gonna probably try and figure somethin' else out.

And this just forced that a little bit and then sped it up.

And so yes, I'm gonna be moving to Central New York, just about 20 miles east of Syracuse.

And the future is a beautiful mystery.

- Not that there's anything wrong with playing golf or sitting in fishing boat.

- No.

- You don't see yourself in retirement as one of those guys.

- No, I see myself probably spending a couple hours workin' out a day and then riding my bike, and doing all those things initially, and then we'll just kinda see what happens.

It's possible that's all I'll do.

I might write a book, Steve, you never know.

- I know, I'm sure I speak for many in Wyoming who dislike the idea of not turning on the radio in the morning and hearing you there.

And this is the magic of radio that we've talked about.

I congratulate you on a fine career.

- Thank you.

- And thank you with really great appreciation and value for the way you kept showing up, the way you performed with excellence and did a service to the state of Wyoming, which we might not have necessarily felt we were entitled to, but were very fortunate to have had.

Thanks for your time and hope to bump into you now and again.

- Well, I'll be back once in a while, that's for sure.

(bright music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is made possible in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council, helping Wyoming take a closer look at life through the humanities, thinkwy.org, and by the members of the Wyoming PBS Foundation.

Thank you for your support.