{"id":437397,"date":"2026-05-20T22:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T22:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/437397\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T22:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T22:42:08","slug":"wemb-radio-named-tennessees-legendary-station-of-the-year-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/437397\/","title":{"rendered":"WEMB Radio Named Tennessee\u2019s \u2018Legendary Station Of The Year.\u2019 | Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An Erwin, TN radio station destroyed by flooding during Hurricane Helene has been named \u201cLegendary Station of the Year\u201d by the Tennessee Radio Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n<p>Jet Broadcasting\u2019s news\/talk WEMB (1420) announced the honor on social media this week and said the award will be presented during the Hall of Fame\u2019s annual ceremony in July.<\/p>\n<p>The station suffered major damage during Hurricane Helene, which devastated parts of Unicoi County, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wbir.com\/article\/news\/local\/erwin-radio-station-swept-away-hurricane-helene-now-named-legendary-station-of-the-year\/51-ab45bbf2-2d55-4290-a108-0437d4e61d32\" target=\"_Blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">reports WBIR-TV<\/a>. Floodwaters destroyed the studio and damaged the station\u2019s radio tower, knocking WEMB off the air.<\/p>\n<p>In the aftermath of the storm, Jet Broadcasting GM Maria True continued sharing information with residents through social media. WEMB and its sister station were Erwin\u2019s only locally owned radio stations and also carried local high school sports broadcasts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI did go on our social media and did live feeds and let people know where to get water, where to get shelter, where to get hay, where to get free food,\u201d True said in December 2024. \u201cI did a lot of live interviews to let people know what was accessible to them and I want to continue to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The station returned to the air about a year later with the help of a donated radio tower.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen the actual radio studio was destroyed and washed away during Hurricane Helene, most people would have given up,\u201d Bob Kesling, the President of the Tennessee Radio Hall of Fame, says in a release announcing the award. \u201cWhat Maria True and her staff did was what radio people do, they used everything within their power to inform the people in Erwin what was going on during those difficult days. It\u2019s an example all radio stations should follow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Tennessee Radio Hall of Fame awards ceremony is scheduled for July 25 at Battle Ground Academy in Franklin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Erwin, TN radio station destroyed by flooding during Hurricane Helene has been named \u201cLegendary Station of the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,4975,157,111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-437397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-free","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}