Radio Listener Helps Find Missing Boy

I often get teased, by well meaning friends, that radio is a dying format.  How can it continue to compete with the Internet, mobile phones, and more recently Twitter? they ask. With the multitude of layoffs at our station recently, I was beginning to contemplate that myself. And I didn't really have an answer - until now.

The other night at work, the RCMP called us with information about a missing 10 year old boy. It was about midnight, and the boy hadn't been seen since 3pm that afternoon.
We immediately aired the story, with a description of the boy, and where he was last seen. We continued to run and update the story throughout the wee hours of the morning as a full scale search was launched.

Later that day, the boy was found. He got lost trying to find a relative, who he thought had left the house. He wandered around an unfamiliar neighbourhood before walking over 10km in 30'C heat to a friends house.

Later, the RCMP called our station to say that it was a listener who had heard our story, and remembered seeing  a boy matching the description, and called police.

That made me smile - alot.

There is nothing - almost nothing, like the immediacy of local radio.

And I believe, even with the new technological ways of getting our news, there is still a place for radio.

A big acknowledgement to my colleagues at News1130  www.news1130.com    for their efforts on this story.
Cheers.