Radio Personality Visits New Seymour Business

By Brooke Stevenson
brooke@seymourherald.com
    Phil Williams of News Talk 100 made an appearance at the newly opened Computer Depot in Seymour.
    Computer Depot opened this week in the Kroger Shopping Center and President Thomas Hill said he is very happy with his decision to open the store in the area.
    “We have had a lot of foot traffic already,” he said. “We hope to fill a niche in this market.”
    Williams, who was broadcasting his radio show live from the store, was raised in Sevier County and went to high school in Sevier County before briefly attending the University of Tennessee.
    He then decided to get into radio and in the late 1970s he became an engineer for a radio station.
    “One day a guy was sick and I went behind the mic and then I signed onto a little radio station up in Kentucky,” Williams said. “Then I started moving around and I have been here for a long time doing this.”
    Williams didn’t start in talk radio however. He worked in music radio, specifically rock radio, for several years.
    “I was tired of playing the same five stale songs over and over,” he said, “and a few years ago they asked me if I would be interested in doing a talk show.
    “At the time I was a single dad and I said yeah. It was like a gift from God so I’ve been here and it has been great.”
   Williams said he doesn’t have one favorite topic to talk about in particular, but some can be more humorous than others.
    “I like to talk about everything from home remedies, to ‘I saw and alien’, then there are the mispronunciations of words,” said Williams.
    He added that people call in with all types of stories, some humorous and some more on the serious side.
    “Obviously sometimes you have to play politics, but like we say on the Phil Show, there are no walls,” he said. “Sometimes we have to get serious, but we have a lot of fun, and I definitely try not to get too serious.”
    When he compares music and talk radio he said he enjoys the freedom of his current position.
    “I don’t have somebody over my shoulder saying you’ve talked enough, play the next stale song that everybody had already heard 800 times,” he said. “It is a lot of fun.
    “It takes all kinds, and sometimes you have to hit the button that cuts them off if they go on to long, but that is part of freedom of speech and that is what it is all about.”
    He added that his radio show gives a forum for listeners and callers to voice out about what they believe is right or wrong.
    “It’s a civics lesson sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes you can get things changed.”
    For more information about Computer Depot call the new Seymour office at (865) 577-4775.