This was posted Wednesday, January 11, 2017 by Rodney Ho on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
The Georgia Radio Hall of Fame museum will be moving from a small room in St. Marys near the coast to Forest Park 260 miles away.
Retired radio veteran John Long, who has run the Hall of Fame the past decade, said he's been seeking a larger space for the past year. Forest Park was most amenable.
"There were about five other cities that had expressed interest," he said. "The people in Forest Park really came on board. They put on a full court press." He said they had a community center on main street with open space on the second floor that fit his needs perfectly. He isn't quite sure the square footage but it's significantly larger than what he has in St. Marys.
"We'll be able to put pictures up," he said. "We'll have more room to display antique radios. I have more than 200." And he owns a lot of vintage promotional materials from radio stations such as T-shirts, license plates and hats. He has an original paper mache tiger from top 40 station 790/AM WQXI-AM. "I have four storage areas full of stuff," he said.
He said he should be able to draw more visitors given the size of metro Atlanta and the history of radio in this region. Many of the inductees hail from the area, including V-103's Ryan Cameron, former Fox 97.1 morning show duo Randy Cook and Spiff Carner, recently retired country host Moby, the late traffic man Capt. Herb Emory and talk show hosts Neal Boortz and Clark Howard.
Long is moving back to the metro area from St. Marys to help manage the museum and hall of fame operation, which includes an annual ceremony to induct members. Last fall's 10th annual ceremony was held at the Strand in Marietta and inducted several Georgia radio people including News 95.5 and AM 750's Condace Pressley.
He's hoping to open the new version of the museum by Memorial Day weekend. He is also seeking donations to help fund the move. (You can do so here.)
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