Jack Harris (broadcaster)
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William H Harris, Jr., better known as Jack Harris, a veteran broadcaster and radio personality, was born in Logan, West Virginia on September 18, 1941. Harris is noted for being the most recognized radio and television personality in the Tampa Bay broadcast area for more than 35 years, according to Arbitron broadcast rating service.
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[edit] The early years
His early years as a toddler were spent in Japan, before returning with his parents to Logan before age 5. Harris also spent a few years in Slabtown, a couple of miles from Logan. As a child, he gained the nickname "Bucky," a name he has been able to shake over the years. Following a brief stint delivering papers before attending seventh grade classes each day at Logan Junior High, he became a bagger at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store. Later he was a janitor at a local church, where he became interested in Religious studies and aspired to become a minister.
His first job as a disc jockey was at WVOW in Logan. He attended Davidson College for a year, then transferred to West Virginia University in Morgantown and graduated with a degree in History, which he never really has used to this day. He soon got a job at WAJR in Morgantown where he became the local celebrity. He then spent time with the US Air Force serving in Vietnam, among other places, for about a year before returning home.
[edit] Beginnings in Tampa
In 1970, he moved to Tampa where he had lined up a job at WFLA Radio. He became famous for writing and producing paradies about local political and broadcast figures with the help of colleague Beecher Martin. Harris adopted a fictional character, "Moose," who often paid unannounced visits to his show and always slammed the door on the way out. Harris is famous for his personal discovery of a special use for the Richard Harris (no relation to Jack) version of Jimmy Webb's "MacArthur Park", which ran over five minutes long and was perfect for him to play while he ran down the hall to the bathroom. It became apparent that listeners caught on to that after a while but the song became generally accepted as a "go-to-the-bathroom" standard play in the industry for years after Jack's discovery.
His morning program at WFLA (AM) Radio quickly became number one in the ratings and was boosted even further when Tony Zappone joined him in 1974 as the station's first "official" traffic reporter, replacing Sergeant Sandy who sat in as an informal relayer of whatever traffic information she could scrounge from various ground sources, according to Harris. That was a difficult year for the station's music format because the NBC Radio Network, with which WFLA Radio was affiliated, was constantly interrupting local programing with news bulletins relating to the Watergate scandal, subsequent Senate hearings and the eventual downfall of the Nixon administration.
[edit] The call to Washington, D.C. radio
In 1975, the call came from NBC-owned WRC Radio in Washington, D.C. They needed a morning man and somehow a Jack Harris aircheck mysteriously appeared on the program director's desk at just the right time. Jack took a year's leave from Tampa radio to take the job and quickly rose to great popularity, working alongside such luminaries as Willard Scott. The times were hard, gasoline had just gone from 30 cents to a dollar a gallon, President Richard Nixon had resigned in disgrace and Jack was just what the shaken nation's capital needed at the time to give morale a boost in the mornings. President Gerald Ford so recognized his mass approval that he named Harris to the WIN (Whip Inflation Now) Committee to look into ways of slowing the runaway inflation that plagued the times, according to newspaper reports at the time.
[edit] A grand plan gone bad
Harris returned to his popular morning show on WFLA in 1976. He was responsible that year for one of broadcasting's most haunting experiments, the celebration of "LEON" on June 25. "'LEON' is Noël spelled backwards, exactly midway between last Christmas and next Christmas," Harris explained to his audience. That hot June morning, he played nothing but Christmas carols until his last listener called just before 8 a.m. to declare he, too, was changing stations. Harris recalls that he resumed his regular middle-of-the-road music format and never celebrated LEON again.
The adventurous and free spirited DJ sported a broken arm the following Christmas after accepting a challenge to arm wrestle from the wrong person at a pub, the Damshanty, near the station. He hasn't arm wrestled since then.
[edit] Moving into sports and television
In the next two decades he would broadcast for a number of Tampa sports teams including the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, beginning in their early days (NFL), the Tampa Bay Bandits (USFL), USF Bulls football, and in the 90's and 2000's, the Tampa Bay Storm (Arena Football).
He began his television career in 1976 doing a gig on NBC affiliate WFLA-TV's 1p.m. newscast called the "Uncommentary." It consisted of a daily live essay on current affairs or life in the Tampa Bay area. Though it took on the air of an editorial, it was clearly satire.
After leaving WFLA Radio in the early 80's, he went on to co-hosting the legendary Q Morning Zoo on Q-105, one of the most highly rated and talked about morning shows in the country. In the late-80s, he began a very successful job co-hosting mornings on The Power Pig, Tampa's 93.3 (WFLZ), not long after it had been converted from the old WFLA-FM elevator music format following a buyout of the station. He was able to unseat the Q-Zoo as the undisputed champion of Bay Area radio.
In 1984 he hosted the top rated noon news/talk show, "Pulse Plus", on Tampa's then CBS affiliate WTVT, a job he kept for more than five years. In 1989, he returned to affiliate WFLA-TV more than a decade after his television debut to co-host NewsWatch 8 at Noon.
[edit] Harris' talk show premiers
His afternoon talk show, Harris & Company, premiered on WFLA-TV in 1992. It later became Harris Live and then Harris & Company before ending in 2000. The popular program featured numerous cooking segments as well as interviews with top personalities such as Cindy Crawford, Britney Spears, and Mickey Rooney who were visiting the area. It originally broadcast from Tampa's Busch Gardens and later moved on to a huge local shopping mall after the Gardens booted him out for need of the auditorium. Once again, he was always guaranteed a large and enthusiastic live audience.
Since then, he's done restaurant reviews on Tampa's Bay News 9 and the "hot topic" on WFTS ABC Action News at 5. His current gig is host of the number one morning radio program, AM Tampa Bay, on NewsRadio 970 WFLA with Tedd Webb and Sharon Taylor. Additionally, he has been hosting "The Mayor's Hour," a monthly informational program on the local government cable channel featuring the current mayor, for more than a decade.
[edit] Publishing an "almost" bestseller
In 2005, he released his first book, "Jack Harris Unwrapped", which sold well to his fans, friends and family but fell a few books short of the New York Times bestseller list. It contained essays about his childhood, career, encounters with the rich and famous, recipes as well as photographs of him with some of the world's top entertainers.
He lives in Tampa with his wife, Joy, and his son, Jackson, 15.
