Radio icon Tedd Webb talks about getting up early, his evolving beliefs and life after quadruple bypass surgery.
By ERNEST HOOPER
Published June 13, 2003
Tedd Webb, 54, has been on Tampa radio for five decades. He started as a disc jockey in the late '60s, handled sports in the '70s and '80s and has been a morning news talk show co-host for the last 20 years.
These days, he shares his morning air time with Jack Harris and Sharon Taylor on WFLA-AM 970's AM Tampa Bay, the market's No. 3 morning program.
Over a lunch of chicken fricassee and plantains, we recently talked about rising before the sun and being Republican.
Pull up a chair and join us.
Ernest: You're on the air from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. every morning. What time do you get up to prepare for that broadcast?
Tedd: I get up at 2 o'clock every morning, which is crazy. You'd laugh at who I share the nest with. You stop to get gasoline, and it looks like the Star Wars bar.
So you get up and read several newspapers?
I get up and go to the Internet and dig up the stuff that's not news. Our news department does a great job of putting together the hard news. We get these quirky things that are hard to believe, but they're entertaining as hell. I leave the house at 4, get to the station at 4:30 and meet with Jack and Sharon. Our producer Jeff Fisher goes over who we're going to have on the show, gives us background and then we go do the show.
Do you like working with Jack and Sharon? You guys seem to get along pretty well.
Love it. They're super great people. I've known Jack since 1970 and I worked with Sharon for the first time in 1973, 30 years ago at WLCY.
Wow, Sharon looks a lot younger than that.
Uh-oh. I didn't say that. Well, she was just 3 years old when we worked together.
You used to be a Democrat; now you're a Republican. You used to be in sports; now you're in news. You used to be Catholic; now you're Lutheran. They say people never change, but you've been changing all your life.
I'm open-minded. I was raised in a very, very poor section of West Tampa. We didn't have a car growing up. We didn't have air conditioning. We didn't get our first TV until I was 10 or 11 years old. And it was a very strong Democratic house. At that time, I was told Republicans were nothing but rat b---- who only cared about big business and didn't give a damn about the little guy, the working guy.
Yeah, just like today.
No, no, no. But that's what I was until 1972. After the McGovern disaster, I noticed the party was changing a lot. It wasn't the same party that I remembered. In 1980, I didn't vote for Jimmy Carter, I voted for John Anderson. That was the first break. I was always petrified because everybody in my family was a yellow-dog Democrat. Here I was disagreeing with the stuff I was brought up on. Finally, I said, I gotta shave, I gotta vote my conscience. Democrats were insisting on taking more and more out of my paycheck. I didn't like it. I grew up poor, and I felt they were doing their best to keep me that way. One day, after interviewing (former Democratic U.S. Rep.) Sam Gibbons on the air in January of 1991, I got off the air, went down to the Supervisor of Elections Office and I made it official.
How did your family react?
It caused a great deal of turmoil with my sisters, who wouldn't speak to me for a while. And other members of my family. Everybody except (my cousin) Mark Beiro. He's as yellow dog as you get, but we never let politics come in the way of our love. There was a rumor that started a few years ago that I was going to run against Jim Davis. I don't know how it get started. We went to this family gathering and my wife jokingly asked my sister, "Is it all right if he hangs a sign in your yard for his run for Congress?" My sister bluntly said, "No, I'm a Democrat" and walked out of the room. She didn't talk to me for a week.
Where does your willingness to change come from?
I listen to you. If I do anything, when I talk to you, I listen. On occasion, somebody will say something and I'll say, "I'm wrong as hell." If the person has a point, I'll change my thinking based on their argument. There's some people who don't want to be confused with facts, so they never change.
You had a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery in 1999. How did that change your life?
I don't worry about anything anymore. I really don't. It's like it created an awareness that I'm just an actor in this play. I'm not directing this. I'm just reading from a script. It's going to have a happy ending or the director wouldn't have a job and the writer wouldn't have a job. It made me aware of a supreme being and I put everything in his hands. You go through a period after that surgery and things become a heckuva lot more apparent.
How long are you going to be doing this radio gig?
However long they want it. We're making some people smile, and we're informing them. As long as they like it, I got eyes for it. I like shelter, I like eating.
DESSERT:
A postscript from Ernest
Webb does a lot of the cooking around the house to help his wife, Trudy, who runs an interior decorating business. In addition to working at the radio station, Webb has his own photography business specializing in action youth sports.
- This interview was edited for brevity and clarity. A version of it appeared previously in a Brandon regional section of the St. Petersburg Times. Ernest Hooper also writes for the Tampa & State section.
