Garland Robinette Explained

Garland Robinette
Birth Name:Charles Garland Robinette
Birth Date: August 21, 1943
Birth Place:Boutte, Louisiana, U.S.
Field:Radio Host, Television news anchor, visual artist
Training:New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts
Spouse:

    Charles Garland Robinette (born August 21, 1943 in Boutte, Louisiana) is a journalist in the New Orleans area. He was recently the host of "The Think Tank" on New Orleans radio station WWL (AM).

    Robinette was a news anchor and investigative reporter on New Orleans TV station WWL-TV Channel 4 for twenty years (August 1970 until August 8, 1990). After leaving the TV station, Robinette served as head of public relations for Freeport-McMoRan in New Orleans before starting his own firm. He returned to the media in 2005 on WWL (AM) as a fill-in for David Tyree, a popular host stricken with cancer. The position became permanent when Tyree succumbed several weeks after Hurricane Katrina.

    Radio show

    Robinette came to national attention with Hurricane Katrina in 2005. As the storm made landfall radio station WWL was the only broadcast media in New Orleans able to continue operating during the disaster. Robinette was broadcasting from a hastily thrown together set-up in a closet of the WWL studios after the high rise building windows blew out. In the days between the time when the hurricane hit New Orleans and when outside help arrived, Robinette's broadcasts were an important information source for those able to hear radio broadcasts in the Greater New Orleans area. On September 2, 2005, Robinette conducted the famous interview with Mayor Ray Nagin where the mayor urged those in the Federal Government who had been promising but not delivering aid to "get off your asses".[1] [2]

    Robinette is one of the interview subjects in When the Levees Broke, the 2006 Spike Lee documentary about the effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. He also appears alongside Angela Hill, his former coanchor and ex-wife, in Hexing A Hurricane, a documentary about the first six months in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

    Garland Robinette retired from WWL radio in July 2017 after a 12-year run, to focus on painting.[3]

    Trivia

    External links

    Notes and References

    1. Web site: 'I need reinforcements'. 5 September 2005. Daily Star. 9 April 2010.
    2. News: Douglas . McCollam . A Man in Full: Four years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans broadcaster Garland Robinette is still fighting mad . July 17, 2009 . . 2013-08-11 . "Robinette’s performance during and after the storm has become a piece of Katrina legend. . . . At a time when cable television and even electricity were scarce, Robinette’s raspy voice was often all people had to steady them through the crisis. His interview with Mayor Ray Nagin a few days after the storm, in which the mayor aimed a profanity-laced stream of invective at the federal government’s failure to respond, went viral on the Internet and is considered, in retrospect, the turning point in getting the city help.".
    3. Web site: 'Garland decides it's time to paint, retires from radio'. 7 July 2017.
    4. http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/fact.aspx?&fid=10&ln=ROBINETTE&fn=&yr=1920
    5. Cf. Louisiana state elections, 2010#Lieutenant Governor.