In June of 2008, I had been given the opportunity to work in a little AM/FM cluster of radio stations in eastern North Carolina. In radio-speak, a "cluster" is a group of co-owned radio stations, usually in a single building. The FM station, where I did weekday afternoons, was a trainwreck of mismanagement, sloppy programming, outdated equipment and some of the worst audio processing ever thrust upon the ears of the listening public. Needless to say, we were not very successful and the FM switched formats 6 months after my arrival. I was unceremoniously returned to listener status, along with 3 others. The termination was a blessing.
During this time, drawing upon 15+ years of working in broadcasting, plus listening to what others were doing, I pondered that maybe, just maybe, the "classic" Rock and Roll we grew up with could live in harmony on the same station with today's Rock. I wanted to let eastern North Carolina know that this new radio station was a gift to them, so I coined it "Radio 2 5 2". The numbers 2,5 and 2 are eastern NC's local area code.
This first iteration of Radio 2 5 2 (pronounced "two five two) ran successfully for 7 years, then in 2015, shifting priorities and increasing music licensing costs brought the end to the first version of Radio 252. I made a lot of new friends across the globe and had great fun with that station.
Fast forward to 2025. I was feeling nostalgic for WVOT-AM in Wilson, North Carolina. I had worked at WVOT in the mid-late 80's and again briefly in the early 90's. What a great little hometown station! They played a fun mix of contemporary and oldies music, had talented on-air personalities, local news and sports, and they were hyper-focused on the local community. WVOT eventually went through a series of format changes and new owners, each one successively worse than the one before, until they finally shut down, losing their FCC license in 2017.
I thought it would be fun to launch a new streaming radio station in homage to WVOT. We would accumulate vintage audio of past announcers, jingles, sports events, etc. and play music from the 'glory days' of WVOT, which most of the local Wilson natives would say was the mid-late Seventies; "Fourteen V O T" as it was called back then. I set out to locate and contact every former 'VOT staffer I could, then sent letters asking if they wished to participate. Almost all of them very enthusiastically said 'YES". I thought we were off to the races. We needed to build, as much as practical, a comprehensive history of the station in order to begin the programming process. I sent them all a copy of a history of WVOT, with instructions for them to edit, correct and add their experiences as they saw fit. Months later and crickets. No one responded. So much for their enthusiasm!
Not completely discouraged, I dropped the WVOT idea and decided to go it alone. I figured if I can't resurrect WVOT, the next best thing would be to birth a new station that kinda-sorta sounded like WVOT. We'd play the music that WVOT would have played had it lived on with the old format. If you're familiar with the classic car hobby, you know the concept of the "resto-mod"; classic style with new tech. The new Radio 252 is a resto-modded WVOT.
Radio 2 5 2, while playing music from the 60's, 70's and 80's, is firmly committed to being the station with one foot in the past and ten fingers clinging desperately to the window ledge of the future. With pigeons.
Irregularly Yours, Don Flowers
The Journey Begins in 2008
And continues somewhere in 1975.