Ted Randall, founder of American shortwave radio's only commercially supported music channel, dies at 73
Most of you might not recognize the name. Shortwave is, of course, very much a niche following. But among shortwave operators, Randall was one of the most important of the modern era.
The year was 2010. Randall was a radio engineer and ham radio operator in Tennessee. He was approached by someone launching a shortwave radio station. An exchange was offered: Randall would offer his services for free, in exchange for getting the right to use one of the new station's channels for programming as he saw fit, since the new station had another entity leasing out the main channels and paying the bills. It started out innocuously enough, with talk shows like Dave Ramsey and Art Bell, and a ham radio show. By the late 2010s, Randall was playing oldies at night, and he began bringing on other veteran jockeys who were willing to host for free simply for being able to provide something of value to the shortwave band. I discovered the station in the early 2020s while bandscanning with a new shortwave radio I had bought.
Eventually, one night in 2022, things between Randall and the Tennessee station's chairman, along with its financial backers, fell out. Fortunately, a few days later, WRMI, a station in south Florida, agreed to offer Randall one of its many channels for a few hours each night. Thus was born
WRMI Legends. If you tune to 5050 in the evening on a shortwave radio, you'll still hear that station. On a band known for its fringe kooks, pre-recorded preachers and increasing irrelevance, WRMI Legends provided an oasis of old school rock and roll, complete with commercial sponsors (mostly for ham radio equipment).
Randall was an irascible personality but a devout Christian. He had suffered some health problems in the last year of his life and, fittingly for a ham radio enthusiast, died at the age of 73--a common ham code used as a closing salutation.
