WXRC indie owner is still a voice in Charlotte radio.

• Position: Dave Lingafelt - Interview - Statistical Data Included

Dave Lingafelt, 52 loves to flaunt his status as one of a handful of owners of independent commercial 100,000-watt FM radio stations in North Carolina. Like when his WXRC-FM brought shock jock Howard Stem to church-going, corporate Charlotte back in 1997.

WXRC, which plays rock music, was 14th in listeners, out of 25 stations measured in the market this spring. But Lingafelt says Stern was consistently first or second in his time slot among men ages 18-34. The problem, as it often is for Stern, was controversy-shy advertisers. Lingafelt dropped the show in April. Notoriety alone isn't worth paying $500,000 a year; a program has to get ads, too.

He insists he didn't lose money on Stern and believes he loosened up a stuffy market. "We're attracting people who don't want to be in that 'Have you met your quota?' rat race and believe that radio ought to be fun."

Radio has been Lingafelt's passion since he begged a deejay job at WMNC-AM/FM as a junior at Morganton High School in 1966. He went to Elkins Institute, an Atlanta school for radio engineering, then to a station in Gretna, Va. In 1976, he bought WNNC-AM in Newton, with two partners. Within three years, Lingafelt bought them out. He bought WIRC-AM in 1994 and WXRC in 1995. The purchase price for WXRC was $3.2 million. It could be worth 10 times that now.

Lingafelt says he's planning neither to buy new stations nor sell WXRC, the only independent 100,000-watt station in Charlotte. He won't disclose revenues, but ad sales are off more than 10% from 2000.

He lives in Newton and gets up at 3:30 to be part of the WIRC/WNNC morning team and give news updates on WXRC. "I'm just one of those-radio freaks. It's about making money, because we all have to do that, but it's also more than that. When I punch that button, it's got to sound great."

Shutterbug snaps up his own business

John Daughtry, president of Charlotte's LOF Productions Inc. (formerly KPC Photography), has spent much of his life peering through cameras, but he didn't need a telephoto lens to see trouble coming his way. When the chafrman of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain, the parent company of KPC and The Charlotte Observer, promised shareholders a 20% margin, despite a slowing economy, Daughtry knew to expect changes for the commercial photography business he had managed since 1980.

He figured the company would have to cut costs, and some units would close. So he wasn't surprised when Knight Publishing Co., Knight-Ridder's...