Who's Who at WONN

Jim Campbell

Jim moved to Lakeland from Tennessee in 1966 with his wife and two young children, took a sales job and weekend air shift at WONN, and enrolled at Southeastern Bible College. He graduated a few years later with a bachelor’s degree in Bible and began serving as a youth minister and music director at First Assembly of God, the church on East Main Street that eventually grew into Carpenter’s Home Church.

In his role as music director there, Jim started three FM radio stations which were licensed to the church. Two of them were in Tampa Bay and Central Florida – Lakeland’s WCIE in 1976 (the first contemporary Christian radio station in the country) and Bradenton’s WJIS in 1986. He had been general manager of the Lakeland station until 1989 when he bought two of the three Carpenter’s Home stations and formed the Radio Training Network, a non-profit organization that trains high school and college students to enter Christian broadcasting. The Network facilitates internships for young people through 17 local Christian radio stations that it owns or operates in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Missouri, and the Carolinas. Programming on Bradenton’s WJIS (The Joy FM) is heard on 11 Florida stations and online. 

Today (2006), Jim is President and CEO of Radio Training Network, Inc.

Station History