'Calls From Home': How one Kentucky radio station connects inmates and families
As the last notes of Childish Gambino’s “Me And Your Mama” fade to silence, Tom Sexton leans forward into a microphone.
“Coming up by request,” he says in a softened-for-radio Appalachian drawl, “going out to Sporty Black from his wife, this is Kendrick Lamar with ‘LOVE.’ ”
The melodic R&B track then begins to emanate from the heart of this small eastern Kentucky town, across the ice-clad mountains of central Appalachia. Close to 100,000 people could be tuning in, but tonight’s shows are targeted for a very specific audience. People like “Sporty Black.”
