In the early 1960’s, a Royal 50 transistor pocket radio was it. That sleek design with a giant rotating dial, the way it fit right in your hand, the side volume control you could easily turn with your thumb and that cool, gold Zenith logo emblazoned on the front … it was enough to make a nine-year-old boy in Jasper, Alabama dream about becoming a broadcaster. Fifty-three years later we celebrate that dream and the illustrious career of one of Alabama’s veteran news anchors by inducting Dave Baird into the Alabama Broadcasting Association’s Halls of Fame.
“My grandmother gave me that radio. Every night going to sleep I listened to WSM, WLS … all those 50,000-watt stations. I was just fascinated by it,” says Baird. “When I was fifteen, a friend who worked at a local Jasper radio station invited me to come by and check it out. I walked in and I was captured. It was like magic.”
As soon as Baird turned sixteen, he went to Atlanta to take the third class radio operators’ test and quickly got his first broadcasting job at WWWB, working nights while he went to school. Later he worked for stations in both Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, loving every minute of it.
“When I was in Tuscaloosa in the ‘70’s, you know, we were twenty-something-year old kids and they pretty much gave us a radio station to program the way we wanted to. Those were exciting times,” says Baird. “We weren’t making any money, but we were having fun and learning a lot.” Even though Baird enjoyed radio, he made the switch to television in 1981.
“Once I decided to leave radio the doors opened with an opportunity to work at Channel 33. Then we got swept up in that whole ABC 3340 thing which is when, in 1996, they asked me to be an anchor,” says Baird. “That was all an amazing thing because startups are very difficult – no one expected that venture to be successful, but eventually we were number one in the market. I was there for 22 years and I’m very proud to have been part of that.”
In addition to his anchor duties, Baird was responsible for Matters of Faith, a popular, on-going series about how people in the area expressed their religion. He says it was an interesting journey to see how communities used their faith as a way to reach out to others to make a difference.
“News isn’t necessarily a perfect reflection of the world. There are so many people out there doing timely things to help each other, but they don’t get recorded,” he explains. “In trying to get the news on every night you can forget that there’s so much going on in our communities. The series highlighted what was really important and gave me a more balanced way to look at the world.”
Unlike most television news anchors who move across the country as they advance in their profession, Baird feels fortunate to have stayed in central Alabama throughout his 53-year broadcasting career.
“I’m proud that in all that time, I stayed within a fifty-mile circle of Jasper, Tuscaloosa and Birmingham,” he smiles. “I got to stay in central Alabama … I got to stay a home boy.”
Baird retired this past September; his last broadcast aired twenty-two years to the day of his very first. “I’m hoping I’ll be able to use my golden years as a chance to find the next thing, but whatever that is, it’s going to something that I really want to do,” he says.
Although he’s enjoying his much more relaxed schedule, others feel compelled to give him new career advice. “People keep asking me what I want to do next and suggest that I do this or do that,” he laughs. “I tell them I had the best job … my dream job … and I didn’t leave it to go look for another one!”
