Just who was watching all those years?

Conventional wisdom suggests the viewers of FTR were old white folk. Really! That's how some people imagined the audience of the show! White senior citizens were there, of course, but every other day or so during the eleven years I've been hosting FTR someone would stop me on the street to talk and they would defy the model. Case in point, a young African-American family in a Montgomery store parking lot today. They actually remembered me from radio days up there (so they weren't all that young!). The fact that that they were viewers didn't surprise me. It was a reminder of all those who took the time to come up and say hi over the years. A multi-cultural crowd in race, age, gender, political leaning and more. On this week's show, Bob Martin mentioned how many legislators commented about the demise of FTR at State Sen. Pat Lindsey's funeral...and you would expect the program would be popular with the Statehouse crowd. But for every elected official, there were dozens of just plain folk on the other side of the camera. For their viewership I am sincerely grateful.