On The Record: Chuck Boozer
Chuck Boozer was 18 years old when he landed his first radio job in Phoenix, Arizona. The year was 1973, minimum wage was $1.10 an hour, and he was getting paid to sit behind a microphone and play oldies.
More than 50 years later, he’s still doing radio.
Boozer got his start through a Junior Achievement program that introduced young people to broadcasting. At the end of the summer, he was offered a job. What began as an opportunity for a teenager turned into a career that would take him to radio stations around the country and eventually make him a familiar voice in the Carolinas.
Along the way, Boozer worked at WQXI in Atlanta, where he says he learned the ropes of doing a morning radio show. He came to Charlotte in 1984 and would spend much of his career playing music and entertaining listeners.
He stepped away from music radio in 2009, but he wasn’t finished with broadcasting. In 2011, he made the move into talk radio, where the conversation became the focus instead of the music.
His latest chapter began in 2024 with WHKY 1290 AM and 102.3 FM in Hickory.
Boozer says it started over lunch with Tom Long, whose family owns the station. Long asked if he’d be interested in hosting a show from 9 a.m. until noon. The answer was yes, and today Boozer hosts On Second Thought with Chuck Boozer every weekday.
He doesn’t have to make the drive to Hickory every morning to do it. Boozer lives in McConnells, South Carolina, and says WHKY built a private studio for him in Rock Hill. He does the show there, and it’s sent to WHKY in Hickory as it happens.
WHKY leans conservative, but Boozer says On Second Thought isn’t simply three hours of politics. He describes it as a variety show with a little bit of everything, including plenty of local news and information.
As for what he hopes someone gets out of listening, he keeps it pretty simple.
“The thing I would like listeners to take away is just be entertained,” Boozer said.
He knows people have enough to deal with in their everyday lives. He’s trying to get through the day just like everyone else, and if his show can give somebody “a little kind distraction,” he’s happy with that.
Boozer has also been around long enough to hear plenty of predictions about the death of radio. He doesn’t see it that way. With national shows heard on stations across the country and music available anytime on a phone, he believes local news, information and personalities still give radio something people can’t get everywhere else.
But simply being on the radio isn’t enough anymore.
“Bad radio is dead, but good radio is still popular,” Boozer said. “You gotta be good these days more than ever.”
There’s another part of the job that means something to him. WHKY has remained with the same family for generations, something that’s become increasingly unusual in radio. Boozer says he thinks about that history every time he goes on the air.
“I represent every member of this family each time I open the mic,” he said. “That’s a responsibility I don’t take lightly.”
Radio certainly isn’t the same business Boozer entered as an 18-year-old in 1973. Back then, if you wanted to hear your favorite song, the radio might have been where you waited to hear it. Today, just about any song is a few taps away. Podcasts, streaming services and countless other choices are competing for the same person’s time.
Through all of those changes, Boozer is still sitting down in front of a microphone for three hours every weekday.
And he still loves it.
He calls himself “the luckiest guy on the planet” to still be making a living doing something he started more than half a century ago. He feels pretty fortunate away from the radio, too. Boozer says he and his wife have been married for 44 years.
After more than 50 years in a business that never seems to stop changing, Boozer’s idea of what makes good radio work hasn’t become complicated.
Be interesting. Be local. Give people a reason to listen.
And, maybe most importantly, make their day a little better.
