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1979
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2002
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1979
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2002
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Steve Finnegan was born in Erie, Pennsylvania on a cold winter morning, January 7th, 1958. His first thirst for radio came in the seventh grade at St George's' Parochial school, on another visit to the Principals office of Sister Mary Lois (for not doing his homework... again). On the desk of the school secretary was a radio playing the local Easy Listening station, and after Percy Faith's "Theme from 'A Summer Place'" a smooth voice came on to tell them what they had heard and that days weather. Steve thought, "...everybody here is working and that guy is on the radio... Neat!". (Neat was OK, it was the 60's.)
During the summer of 1974, Steve's family moved to Roanoke, Virginia for his dad's job at GE. Steve attended Cave Spring High School for his senior year. This arena of education had a student-run closed-circuit radio station that played to the cafeteria during lunchtime. Here, he had his big break, the chance to read a fight summary of the previous nights Mohammed Ali-Joe Frazier bout. This led to him doing a regular show.
A year after graduation, he pursued a 'professional' career that began part-time on weekends ate easy-listening station WPVR-FM which, at the time, was located in The Hotel Roanoke. Here, Steve played Lawrence Welk, Mantovani and yes, Percy Faith. He worked in the Roanoke area at WYTI-AM in Rocky Mount, WLVA-AM in Lynchburg, and WFIR before moving to WROV in 1978. There, he acquired the nickname, The FINMAN.
In August 1980, he moved to Greensboro, NC and worked evenings at WRQK-FM (K-99). After being summarily fired for '...being more inane than we bargained for', he went to work at WSEZ-FM (Z-93). Over the next 5 years, Steve worked mostly 7pm to midnight. This also included a series of mid-day, afternoon and morning drive shifts, as well as Music Director and Production Director duties and spending 8 1/2 days on a station-owned billboard on the Hawthorne curve in Winston-Salem. In 1987 he moved to mid-days at WKZL-FM. This was also the first chance he had to do Triad traffic reports as 'Captain Triad'.
In April of 1995, Steve joined the WMAG family of stations at WFXF (The Fox) which would become the New Whistle 100 (WHSL-FM) in September of that year. He started as acting News Director, which would segue into supplying traffic reports for WHSL, WMAG, WMFR, WKZL and WKRR. In March of 1997 the legendary morning show host of WMAG, Bill Flynn, put in a request for a show producer and Steve was placed in this prestigious position.
In September of 1999 Steve became WMAG's afternoon drive personality from 2-7pm. He continued on afternoons until September of 2000 when he was ecstatic to announce he would be returning to the WMAG Morning Show as producer. He also hosted and produced the weekly retro program, Saturday Night at the Seventies through 2006. He then worked in Lexington, NC at WLXN though late 2013.
Steve then moved to 99.9 The ZOO in Asheboro, NC where he's been the Program Director and morning man since March, 2014. You can find out more about the station and listen to him live HERE.
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Steve Finnegan & Pat Garrett
As The World Burns March, 1981 (3.1M) |