By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
KFEQ Hotline host Barry Birr announced his retirement this morning.
Birr, a staple of KFEQ programming for decades, made the announcement during the opening of his show.
“It’s kind of a long time coming,” Birr told his audience. “I did semi-retirement at the end of 2015 and continued on a part-time basis until now. And my last day here at 680 KFEQ is going to be on Friday, the 28th of March.”
Birr came to KFEQ in 1984 to serve as news director. Though he retired as news director in 2015, Birr continued to host the KFEQ Hotline between 8am and 10am each morning.
“It’s been a huge, huge part of my life. You’ve been a huge part of my life and a part of my life that has (been) among the very highlights of my life,” Birr told listeners. “And so, I deeply appreciate all the help that you’ve given me doing this program; the help being listening and calling in.”
Birr thanked his callers for their participation over the years.
“We’ve just been blessed with magnificent callers over the years, the 33-some-odd years that I’ve been doing this program,” Birr said. “And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.”
With that, Birr began the open-line portion of the Hotline, discussing the day’s current events, just as he has since 1992.
Birr created the KFEQ Hotline shortly after KFEQ became a Rush Limbaugh affiliate. Birr discussed his motivation during the celebration of KFEQ’s 100th anniversary in 2023.
“That’s a national program.,” Birr said during an interview on the radio stations’ centennial. “What if we had a local program that addressed issues in the news and took calls?”
The Hotline proved its worth a year after it began, expanding programming nearly non-stop to cover the 1993 Missouri River flood. It became a vital communication link with a city and a region coping with devastating flooding that also wiped out the St. Joseph water plant, leaving the community without drinkable water for a nearly a week.
The KFEQ Hotline again served as a vital community link during another natural disaster in 2007. An ice storm that winter knocked out other radio stations and the city’s only television station. KFEQ kept on the air with a generator and listeners could tune in with a battery-powered radio.
“For quite a while we were the only broadcast facility that was operating,” Birr said during an anniversary celebration interview.
Soon after the storm created widespread power outages, it became apparent to Birr and others KFEQ needed to expand the Hotline and serve the community more directly.
“This became a kind of place where ideas were exchanged,” Birr said. “People would share information about, well you can get water here; different things at different places. And here’s what it’s like in my neighborhood.”
Other special celebrations are planned before Birr retires at the end of the month.
You can follow Brent on X @GBrentKFEQ and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.
