Conservative Chris Stigall makes waves at WPHT
BY CHUCK DARROW
Philadelphia Daily News
September 6, 2011
Relaxing with an early-afternoon stogie at Mahogany on Walnut, a Center City cigar bar, the genial, chrome-domed 34-year-old chuckled at the memories. Exhaling a plume of milky smoke, he marveled at how off-base all the well-intentioned hand-wringing turned out to be.
"Everybody said, 'The city's so parochial; they'll never welcome you. You're not from here; you'll never understand,' " Stigall (pronounced sti-GOLL) recalled with a smile. "I have not found that to be remotely the case. As long as you're honest with Philadelphians, they're gonna be great."
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Sept. 11, 2001, began as just another day for Stigall, as it did for most of us. But by the time he concluded his air shift, hijacked airplanes had hit the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, and crashed in a Pennsylvania field. Nothing would ever be the same.
"I'm on a classic-rock radio station trying to be the wacky, irreverent FM guy, and all that had to stop because you couldn't be wacky," he recalled.
"We had meetings every day to try to figure out how to be entertaining in that environment. Nobody knew if they ever could be again, or whether it would be appropriate again. And I started to have real feelings - 'I have things to say about this. I'm frustrated, I'm angry, I'm scared. I want to know how this happened, why this happened.'
"I became more curious and wanted to speak more freely and do more editorial comment, and my bosses just hated it. They said, 'Shut up and keep playing music.' And I just kept saying, 'No. I don't wanna shut up. I have things to say.' "
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