WJBO’s free speech free-for-all

From 5:30 to 9 a.m. each weekday Damon Sunde, producer of WJBO’s Morning News with Matt Kennedy and Kevin Meeks, takes each and every phone call and the caller’s name. But there is one exception—“Free Speech Friday,” when all five lines light up on Sunde’s desk and Kennedy and Meeks seemingly relinquish control of their own show to anonymous callers who can say “one sentence and one sentence only,” as Kennedy reminds the audience each week.

Kennedy and Meeks have been on air together for 13 years, but “Free Speech Friday” began before their time when former WJBO morning host David Tyree would do his show remotely from the LSU campus and put people onair in the infamous “Free Speech Alley” during the early 1990s.

Random quotes from a recent broadcast:

“Barack loves me, this I know. For Pelosi tells me so…”

(to the tune of “Jesus Loves Me”)

“We don’t need no education!”

(to the tune of “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2” by Pink Floyd)

“Da-duh-duh-dum!”

(to the tune of “Pregame” by the LSU Tiger Marching Band)

“Meeeeooooowwww!”

“Someone needs to wake up Willie Graves and ask him who killed Matthew Populis.”

“Someone needs to wake up Pastor Tommy Middleton and ask him who lost Sharkmen Cox.”

“Someone needs to investigate Addis Police Chief Ricky Anderson and his relative employees.”

“Matt Kennedy sings along with the [Aflac] duck!”

“There are areas of our city falling apart with crime and decay…say no to ‘Kipland.’”

After Tyree moved to New Orleans, Kennedy and Meeks took over the slot in 1996. They adapted Tyree’s weekly concept into a say-what-you-want call-in segment from the WJBO studio.

“Any topic, as long as it’s not perverted, is fair game,” Kennedy says. “It’s totally anonymous, and it is amazing what some people will say under the cloak of anonymity.”

With frankness, Meeks says some of the racially charged comments intended as jokes by the callers are sad and pathetic. Occasionally, when comments are consistently inane or offensive, or if it has been a slow news week, the hosts will shorten the segment. Beginning after 8 a.m., Free Speech Friday can run anywhere from 20 minutes to almost a full hour, a weekly check of the pulse of the city.

But Meeks cautions not to equate these callers specifically with the mood or opinion of the general population. “I think it is a true sampling of our audience, not necessarily of Baton Rouge,” Meeks says.

Their favorite calls are the songs, which they allow to go longer than one sentence. Both Kennedy and Meeks remember a caller named Chris Daniels and his once-frequent tunes, including a remake of Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” that became “The Wreck of the Whiskey Bay Trucker,” topically inspired by Gov. Mike Foster’s 2003 speed limit reduction on Interstate 10.

“The only safeguard we have is a 7-second delay so if someone curses we can bleep it out,” Kennedy says. “You always listen in case you miss something.” wjbo.com, 1050 AM.