Farhat Munir, Jadetimes Staff
Farhat Munir is a Jadetimes news reporter covering Political News
Melanie Miller, a Pampa native who led radio newsrooms in her fatherland and Lubbock earlier than catapulting a Houston news station to the pinnacle of the country-wide ratings, can be inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame Saturday.
Miller is considered one of 20 broadcasters out of 200 nominees to be inducted into the corridor Saturday at the Texas Broadcast Museum in Kilgore. She was elected to the hall in a ballot of her peers, which included earlier Texas Radio Hall of Fame inductees and the company's voting individuals.
She'll be honored for her pioneering career in information radio, which spanned 8 stations from the late 1970s to the early '90s and broke glass ceilings within the broadcast enterprise.
"To be voted into the Radio Hall of Fame, after more than two hundred (nominees) and handiest 20 were given in, is simply truely candy. It's icing on the cake," Miller stated.
After interning at KUT-FM in Austin while a student at the University of Texas, Miller started her profession in earnest in 1980. She returned to her hometown of Pampa to take over news operations at KPDN-AM. Family connections landed her the job, Miller stated.
"The best cause I was given the job there is the proprietor of the radio station bumped into my godfather at Rotary Club and noted that he wanted any person at the station," Miller said. "My godfather knew that I became searching and he called me my dad. My dad yelled down the steps and stated, 'Missy, I was given a process for you!'"
In Pampa, Miller was a "one-female band," anchoring a dozen daily newscasts, web hosting a morning speak show, protecting breaking news and producing documentary collection and features. Her paintings earned a Best Documentary award from Texas Associated Press Broadcasters, the station’s first information award in twenty years.
While in Pampa, Miller additionally worked as a stringer, reporting Pampa news for Amarillo radio stations KGNC-AM and KIXZ-AM and TV station KAMR-TV. "The excellent aspect about Pampa is I was the only character within the information recreation," Miller said. "It created a without a doubt remarkable foundation."
Miller left Pampa in 1983 to join KWAZ-AM in Lubbock. A few months later, the station changed its name sign to KTLK-AM and reformatted, becoming the primary news-communicate station at the South Plains. Miller have become the station's information director amid the exchange.
"The information director who hired me had a heart assault about 4 months when I began. He by no means got here back, so I got promoted to news director by default," Miller stated.
At KTLK, Miller led a five-person information group, anchored newscasts, produced series initiatives and collaborated with CNN Radio and ABC Radio. She received Texas Associated Press Broadcasters awards for her spot information coverage and radio documentaries - firsts for the station.
"Over time, I took on programming responsibilities and manufacturing, and a few merchandising, and that is due to Jerry Hudson, who became the chairman of the broadcast journalism department at Texas Tech," Miller said. "He was closely concerned in KTLK, and he gave me a variety of possibilities. He said, 'Go do it, do this, do that,' and it was terrific."
She recalled protecting a severe flash flooding occasion at some point of her time in Lubbock, circa 1984.
"It became simply one of those weird early spring storms in reality, and no one became prepared for it. It turned into a one-day flood, and anyone was saying, 'Man, we never get rain like this.' Instead of getting dirt that yr, we got rain, and it had quite a few impact." Miller said. "I ended up doing a mini-collection about what the metropolis discovered as a result of that flood, and I won a kingdom award for it."
From Lubbock, Miller moved to Houston's 50,000-watt KTRH-AM, running element time at the weekend table. She labored her way as much as morning editor — she was on duty whilst the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986 — and less than 4 years after she started at KTRH, became promoted to information director.
At KTRH, Miller supervised a 32-man or woman newsroom and 7 outside news bureaus, and beneath her management the station topped the Arbitron rankings for information radio stations nationally.
"The basis that the Panhandle and the South Plains gave me, with the human beings there who had been willing to paintings with me and give me a danger, actually set the inspiration and made it a definitely robust, strong one," Miller stated. "So I ought to leapfrog into the principal market to a station that without a doubt had a popularity."
Miller's adventure to the top of the U.S. News radio enterprise became fraught with misogyny, she said, but she kept proving herself a skilled broadcaster to overcome limitations and become the primary female information director at more than half of the stations in which she worked.
"In the late '70s and early '80s, there weren't several girls in broadcasting," Miller said. "I saved walking into, I hate to mention it, however guys who could say, 'No, we don't put girls or women on our radio station.'
"I stored pushing. I kept getting interviews. I stored speaking. And I continually discovered a man who might say, 'Yes, come on in, allow's talk,' after which hire me," Miller stated. "That came about not best in Pampa but also in Amarillo, Lubbock, and Houston."
After leaving radio in 1991, Miller became president of Media Consultants, a Sugar Land-based crisis communications employer. She and her husband Chuck Wolf, former information director of Houston’s KIKK Radio, sold the firm in 2018.
Today, Miller resides in Sugar Land and writes fiction and nonfiction under the nom de plume Melanie Ormand. Her debut novel is nearing its final touches.
