THE home for Rock 'n' Roll and Classic Soul
At Radio 2 5 2, we bring you a massive playlist of Rock 'n' Roll and Classic Soul from the 60's, 70's and 80's.
Don Flowers
6/23/20262 min read
The Radio 2 5 2 Story Begins in 2008
And continues in 1975.
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 The FM station, where I did weekday afternoons, was a trainwreck of mismanagement, sloppy programming, outdated equipment and some of the worst audio processing ever thrust upon the listening public.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 Rock and Roll we grew up with could live in harmony with today's Rock. I wanted to let eastern North Carolina know that this 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 shifting priorities and increasing music licensing costs brought the end to Radio 252 version 1 in 2015. 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 great 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 folks would say is the mid-late Seventies; "14 V O T" as it 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. I sent them all a copy of a history of WVOT, with instructions for them to edit, correct and add as they saw fit. Months later and crickets. No one responded.
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 a car hobbyist, you know the concept of the "resto-mod"; classic style with new tech. Radio 252 version 2 is a resto-modded WVOT.
Why did we name it "Radio 252"? Well, it sounds like a radio station (most of the time). It's located in and focused on eastern North Carolina, and conveniently, we already owned the domain name.
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.