If you wake up with the Worldwide News Network, you’re likely to hear Michael Wallace. Launching in May of this year, Wallace told Barrett Media the whole thing came together in a matter of weeks, all thanks to Radio Hall of Famer Lee Harris.
“He got this whole thing up and running in about three weeks. They gave him the keys and said, ‘OK, we’re going to pay for this. You start it.'”
With 35 years in the business, including time at both WCBS and CBS News Radio as they shuttered the mics, Wallace had no trepidation about taking to the mic once more at a startup network.
Wallace was one of Harris’s first hires, and within three weeks, the network went live with a full staff. “[Lee Harris is] just a radio genius,” Wallace affirmed. “So I knew when they appointed him to run this new network — and, more importantly, to launch it — that he knew what he was doing, and I had full trust that he was going to be able to pull this off.”
Launching a New Radio Network
Calling the launch “really exciting and kind of scary,” Wallace, who was once Harris’s morning show competitor (Wallace on WCBS and Harris on 1010 WINS) for a decade, was elated to be the first anchor to go on air for the network’s launch.
“We went on the air May 23rd at midnight. He wanted me to anchor the first cast. I think I got in there at nine o’clock that night, and I hadn’t even seen the setup, the computer, or the board we were using,” Wallace recalled. “So I had to learn all of that real quick.”
The Worldwide News Network is live 24/7, meaning it is almost always the first to break news from across the world, including the death of Senator Lindsey Graham and the catastrophic flooding that hit Pakistan. “This is a global network. It’s not just the U.S. and Canada, like most of the other radio networks are.”
Wallace went on to note, “The whole world is a really big thing to cram into just three minutes at the top of that cast. There’s a lot of decision-making that has to happen about what we’re covering and how much time we’re giving to each story, because you don’t have a whole lot of time to do it. But that’s kind of the fun part of it.”
Straight News, No Opinion
Most importantly, Wallace stressed there is no opinion on the network. “We’re just giving you a very comprehensive view of what’s going on in the world. As Lee Harris is fond of saying, no opinion. We’re not like some of these other networks that have a slant or a bias. We’re just giving it to you straight, and I think a lot of people appreciate that.”
This may have been his first launch, but it’s not Wallace’s first radio rodeo. From listening to WBZ and WRKO in Boston, he went on to work at legendary stations like KTRH in Houston, WDBO in Orlando, the Wall Street Journal radio network, WCBS in New York, and CBS News Radio.
Of course, that meant learning to drop all the New England “R’s” along the way. “That was not easy. It’s funny — I have some tapes from my early college radio years, and we dug some up a few years ago when we were moving boxes around. I popped in a cassette and played it just to see what was on it,” Wallace recalled. “My wife kind of chuckled and said, ‘Oh, my God, listen to that Boston accent! Who was that?’ And I said, ‘That’s me!'”
From a Kid with a Tape Recorder to the Mic
Long before Michael Wallace had to tweak his accent, he was just Mike Wallace, a 10-year-old kid from Boston with a dream and a tape recorder. “I think it was my ninth or tenth birthday, and my parents got me a tape recorder, so for fun, I started walking around and interviewing people.”
It wasn’t until Wallace arrived in Houston that his news director asked him to go by Michael instead of Mike. “Even as Michael Wallace, when I would call people as a reporter at the time and ask to interview them, people would hang up on me — they still thought I was the tough-guy Mike Wallace, and they didn’t want anything to do with that.”
There is no relation between the two newsmen, and while they never met in person, Wallace was able to build a great rapport with the famed 60 Minutes anchor via email. “When I was at WCBS, I used to get his email all the time,” Wallace recalled. “The standard email at CBS was, you know, first name dot last name at CBS dot com. So that was my email. His email was MW at CBS dot com.”
Most people who were trying to reach the Wallace of 60 Minutes didn’t know about the mix-up. “Sometimes I would get his email, and I’d have to forward it to him. He would reply, ‘Thank you.'” Wallace added, “He was a good sport about it.”
Looking Toward the Future
After all this time, Wallace is still a big believer in the medium. “A lot of people say it’s dying and it’s gone, and they’ve been saying that ever since I joined the business.” He elaborated, “I’ve been doing news radio now for 35 years, and 35 years ago, people were saying people aren’t listening to radio that much. But we’re still going. There are still millions of people who listen to the radio every day, and some young people, too. I think you just can’t beat the immediacy of radio, especially for news.”
For young people who have caught the radio bug, Wallace truly believes, “Radio is here to stay in some way, shape, or form, whether it’s on AM or FM or in some sort of stream or on the internet. There’s always going to be demand for audio content.”
He believes the most important thing for success in radio is to “write, write, write.” He added, “You’ve got to work on your writing — make sure it’s quick, accurate, and concise.” If you have the ability to write well, Wallace believes there will always “be plenty of outlets and opportunities.”
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Krystina Alarcon Carroll contributes features and columns for Barrett Media. She has experience in almost every facet of the industry including: digital and print news; live, streamed, and syndicated TV; documentary and film productions. Her prior employers have included NY1 and Fox News Digital and the Law & Crime Network. You can find Krystina on X (formerly twitter) @KrystinaAlaCarr.