PEORIA MAGAZINE November 2023

S P O T L I G H T

THE END OF AN ERA IN PEORIA BROADCAST JOURNALISM After 35 years as host of At Issue on WTVP, H Wayne Wilson – make that just H – is riding off into the sunset

BY PHIL LUCIANO

A fter arriving in Peoria, H Wayne Wilson didn’t plan on sticking around long. Almost a half-century later, he’s still here. “I planned to leave,” he said. “But I came to like Peoria. And I came to like the jobs I had in Peoria.” He especially enjoyed 35 years as host of the show he created, WTVP’s At Issue . H — he is known simply as “H,” never Wilson or otherwise — retired from the program in August. “I’ve been very lucky as a broadcaster,” the 75-year-old said. “Where else in American could a guy … decide the topic, decide who the guests will be, tape the show and not have interference?” GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM H grew up in Libertyville, a north suburb of Chicago. After high school, he went to the Illinois Institute of Tech nology in Chicago, planning to become

a civil engineer. But as a freshman, he was invited by a friend to check out the college television station, where on a whim he was invited to do an on-air tryout. He got hired immediately. “I was hooked,” he said. For three years, he worked for the station. He then left school to work at an electronics firm, no longer interested in engineering but not sure of a career. “I knew I’d go back to school,” he said. But that path took a detour in 1970, when he was drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War. He figured the Army might put his electronics and engineering training to use. In stead, noting his eight years of studying French, the Army assigned him to learn Vietnamese. A year later, he was shipped off to a U.S. air base in Thailand, where he intercepted and translated North Vietnamese radio messages. The base frequently was targeted by mortar shells aimed at U.S. aircraft.

“I was fortunate,” he said. “I came back OK.” AT ISSUE IS BORN After three years of duty, he returned to Illinois and enrolled at Southern Illi nois University, graduating in 1974 with a degree in broadcast management. Not long afterward, he accepted a job at WMBD-AM in Peoria, then moved to WCBU-FM. He later took a job at WHOI-TV, rising to assistant news di rector by 1988. Meantime, since 1975, he had been volunteering at WTVP. There, an interview program ended upon the host’s departure in 1988. So, H proposed an in-depth news show that each week would focus on one issue. “I wanted to do something that was news-oriented, that was being overlooked by the other stations,” he said. WTVP agreed, and thus was born At Issue . But H declined a full-time job offer, preferring to produce and host

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