Radio pioneer, longtime friend Davis Rankin enters retirement
I called my old radio buddy Davis Rankin the other day, but I can’t remember why I called.
“That’s because you’re losing your memory.”
Actually, I had a local politician tell me that exact thing a few years ago. He had dropped a political ad off at The Advance News office, but I told him that I needed to fact check the allegations in his ad before I ran it. Just because he claimed his political opponent was guilty of this or that didn’t make it so.
Plus, some people running for elected office think that because the ad they want to publish is political, truth doesn’t matter.
For some media outlets, that’s true; for others, it’s not.
Turns out, more than half of the allegations described as “facts” in the ad weren’t true, or certain factoids had been manipulated to make a small thing look worse than it actually was without knowing its context.
When I told this local politico that I couldn’t run his ad, he told me that I had promised I’d run it. “Not true,” said I. “It was contingent on the facts being legit.” We went back and forth before I finally said, “I’m not going to publish it.”
Another media outlet did, but that’s another story.
“That’s okay, Gregg,” he said in condescending fashion before hanging up. “You’re just getting old and losing your memory.”
Can’t remember the guy’s name. But it was during my recent phone call with Davis Rankin that I learned that he had retired from KURV AM Radio (710) this past March, and it got right by me. I still tune into KURV every now and then, but it’s gotten less frequent, and Davis is still doing some part-time work at the station.
Good Old Days
Rankin, McHi Class of 1971, is also co-founder of what was Futuro McAllen, now Futuro RGV, along with another old friend of mine, Nedra Kinerk, RIP.
Meaning, for the past 43 years that I’ve known him, I’d either hear him on the radio in the morning, or more recently, the drive home, or I’d bump into him at civic events.
When friends “retire,” it just makes all of us realize that none of us is getting any younger. The morning mirror never lies.
Davis’s time on KURV dates back to circa 1983, when he, his dad, local ag radio legend Charlie Rankin, and a handful of other investors bought KURV from former Edinburg Mayor Lloyd Hawkins.
That was also the era when Charlie Rankin would do his ag report during the early morning hours for the Valley farmers just waking up (also broadcast in Brownsville, KBOR, for the sake of farmers working the lower Valley) which was something he had been doing since the mid-1960s, and then after some news, Davis would come on and fill the 9-to-11 slot.
This was several years before Rush Limbaugh came along and revolutionized AM radio.
There was some eccentric guy who came on for an afternoon slot on KURV, and then when 5 p.m. rolled around, no drive-home news or talk radio — just those old classic radio shows like “The Shadow.” Growing up, listening to our parents’ generation talk about the early days of radio in an age before TV, when the only family broadcast entertainment were those old radio shows like The Shadow, The Whistler, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, etc., it was hard to imagine the attraction.
Then, when you listened to those old radio shows on KURV during the 1980s, it was easy to see the attraction and how an entire family could sit around a big radio and listen to the drama coming across the radio station. Now, anyone can go to Sirius XM, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts and find those same old radio shows now archived in digital fashion.
To show, too, that we have indeed come full circle, some of today’s most popular podcasts have to deal with true crime, and they are pure audio.
Meaning, once again, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Happy retirement, Davis.