Ludlow

Atlanta lost a radio legend recently with the death of Bobby Hanson, better known as Ludlow Porch.

There are millions of things that made Hanson special but the most important is he didn’t start out as a disc jockey. He did not go to the Connecticut School of Broadcasting or major in Broadcasting in college. He was a guy that went into The Marines then went to work after discharge. He obtained his college degree taking night courses and went in the exciting field of …insurance.

Then one day in 1972 an article written by Ron Fimrite about “Trivia” appeared in Sports Illustrated and this one paragraph started what became an Atlanta radio phenomenon named Ludlow Porch.

“ Trivia player Bob Hanson of Atlanta is a genial "independent insurance adjuster" who writes mocking crank letters to racist politicians and carries a business card identifying him as a purveyor of "land, whiskey, manure, nails, flyswatters, racing forms and bongos." Hanson's reputation as a trivialist is such that he is frequently called upon—usually at odd hours—to settle arguments of a familiar nature. It is Hanson, answering his bedroom phone, who will inform reveling friends downtown that Ken Maynard's horse was named Tarzan, not Topper, which, of course, was Hopalong Cassidy's steed.”

Hanson was a regular caller to a new radio station in Atlanta known as WRNG (Ring Radio). The station owners had Hanson come on for a week under his alias, Ludlow Porch (as he would sign his “crank letters”) and from that time in 1972 Hanson became a radio fixture.

In 1977, his step-brother who had alerted Fimrite to his Trivia prowess moved back to Atlanta after an unhappy stint in Chicago. That step-brother was Lewis Grizzard and together they shaped Southern humor. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover Jeff Foxworthy to be a secret Hanson love child.

In his days at WRNG, radio suffered under a malady known as “The Fairness Doctrine” which mandated that radio stations give “both sides” (liberal and conservative) equal amount of air time. WRNG had all sorts of hosts: a John Bircher named Harry Davey; two women libbers named Miki and Teddi and a young Libertarian named Neal Boortz. Hanson did not need “The Fairness Doctrine” because he rarely got political. Unlike today, where talk show hosts (liberal or conservative) will start their program off with a diatribe about whatever is wrong in the country, Hanson would have a topic, like “Favorite Cartoons” or “Radio Shows You Miss”.


He somehow enabled some regular people to take up aliases like he did and call and produce some of the funniest amateur radio in Atlanta. He had a guy named “M.T. Head”, a jovial mechanic. One lady was “Kitty Litter” from Tucker who once gave this sage advice: “Never trust a red headed woman wearing a black brassiere”. There were a million others and a million wannabes.

You can’t talk about Hanson without talking about his “bits”. Like the one where he interviewed a “government official” who said there was no Montana. He did another where he interviewed a Southern writer named “Homer Southwell” who wrote a book called Yankee, Go Home. This man called Northern women ugly, etc, typical Southern trash talk humor. The next year Homer Southwell appeared promoting his new book, And Stay There.

You could tell in his voice Hanson knew he had it made. He got to interview big time stars. He met Godfrey Cambridge (became friends), Lee Majors (didn’t like him), Don Knotts (liked him), Andy Griffith (was over served at a bar before the interview) and others and you never felt the he lost his sense of awe about being around a celebrity.

The owners of WRNG sold the station and it became WCNN, which is now a sports talk station. Hanson moved to WSB which for some reason put him in the late night slot until they became all talk and switched him to his traditional lunch time spot. Then the winds of change came and WSB decided they needed something edgier than Ludlow Porch and getting squirrels out of your attic. Hanson left WSB and built a small radio syndication, but was never on again in the Atlanta area except for a brief moment in time in 1997-98. His market got smaller and smaller, and soon he was on just a hand full of stations. He retired a few months ago.

Hanson’s story was so American. A guy armed with only lot of useless facts and a good sense of humor becomes a radio legend. It is kind of sad that there is nobody out there like him anymore. Everybody is yelling and fussing and nobody has any idea what to do about these squirrels in the attic.