Station: WOPI  Bristol, Tennessee On The Air: 1937 Off The Air: 1939 Ernie cut his teeth on the radio business at WOPI, the local station in his home town of Bristol,  Tennessee. "Working in radio was the furthest thing from my mind", Ernie once recalled. "For a kid trying to find work in the Depression, it seemed like the easiest thing I'd ever done in my life. And they were paying me $17.50 a week to do it!"

Station: WATL Atlanta, Georgia On The Air: November, 1939 Off The Air: January, 1941 After leaving the Cincinnati Conservatory in 1939, Ernie took a job at Atlanta's WATL, where he went by the studio name of "Bob Carroll". It was salad days for a year..."In addition to my regular announcing chores, I got the "Miss Atlanta Contest" that year", Ernie recalled. I had to interview about ten girls a day. And I got paid for it!"

Station: WORL  Knoxville, Tennessee On The Air: January, 1941 Off The Air: December, 1941 Tuning Ernie in on a drive through Atlanta, WORL's Program Director offered Ernie $3.00 a week more to come to work in Knoxville as a staff announcer. "Don't get me wrong", Ernie once said. "$23 a week was lot of money...but it was a chance to be closer to home. So I took the job." Working the board on December 7, 1941, Ernie ripped the AP story of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and gave the first news flash in Knoxville of the beginning of WWII.

Station: KFXMSan Bernardino, CA On The Air: March, 1946 Off The Air: November, 1947 During the war, while he was stationed at Victorville, Ernie was a almost a regular on KFXM, doing special service programs. So when he applied in March of 1946, he was hired immediately as a staff announcer. While only on the air for a little more than a year, it was an auspicious period; KFXM was the site of Ernie's wild and crazy show, "Dude Ranch Party", and his first debut on the air as "Tennessee Ernie".

Station:KXLA  Pasadena,CA On The Air: September, 1947 Off The Air: July, 1951 Within days after his first week on the job at Pasadena's giant KXLA, Ernie's life and career changed forever when he met another of KXLA's  personalities by the name of Cliffie Stone, host of the popular afternoon show, "Hometown Jamboree". Cliffie soon asked Ernie to join the Hometown cast, and the rest is show business history...it was on the same show that Ernie met another cast member by the name of Merle Travis, composer of "Sixteen Tons".

Show: "Tennessee Ernie Time!" Station: KABC  Hollywood On The Air: 1952 Off The Air: 1953 Following his last stint on the boards at KXLA, Ernie's popularity as a radio personality continued to rise. Knowing a good thing when they heard it, ABC hired Ernie in 1952 to host a daily music and celebrity interview show syndicated not only nationally, but to AFRS (Armed Forces Radio Service) beacons around the world.

Show: "The Tennessee Ernie Show" Station: Syndicated Coast-To-Coast  From Hollywood Date: 1953 By 1953, Ernie was on his way to becoming one of the country's biggest stars, and "Sixteen Tons" was still more than two years away! Still a radio ham at heart, when the chance came to host his own daily syndicated show coast-to-coast, Ernie jumped at it. Ernie hosted 260 15-minute shows in all for the series, each show featuring  CliffieStone's incredible band, one of Capitol's shining new female artists as Ernie's guest, and a volume of music that ranks today as among the greatest he ever recorded.

Show: 'The Ford Road Show' Station: CBS Radio Coast-To-Coast On The Air: Summer, 1958 Reeling from the success of NBC's prime-time hit, 'The Ford Show', Ford Motor Company put Ernie at bat during the summer of 1958 with their CBS national radio show, "The Ford Road Show". Recorded at CBS studios in Hollywood, it featured many of Ernie's cast and crew from his first NBC daily television show; including bandleader Jack Fascinato, singers Doris Drew and Skip Farrell, and Molly Bee, (shown in this pic). Ernie's last national radio show.