From The Official Tennessee Radio Hall Of Fame Community

Glenn McNish is one of our nominees this year for the Career Class of 2022. McNish is considered one of the most recognizable voices in all of Loudon County. As the Voice of the Lenoir City Panthers on WLIL AM & FM, McNish was one of the longest tenured high school sports announcers in Tennessee. He called the action of Lenoir City games for 53 years from 1967-2019.

For his work as a broadcaster, Glenn was inducted into the Greater Knoxville Sports Hall of Fame and the Lenoir City Sport Hall of Fame, as well as being honored by the National Football Foundation. One of Glenn’s most memorable Lenoir City broadcasts came early in his tenure when he broadcast a football game at Kingston from atop a tree across from the Kingston field since the school would not allow him to broadcast from the stadium.

McNish began his broadcasting career as a student on Fulton High School’s WKCS-FM under the direction of Joanna Huffman. Owner George Mooney was the “Voice of the Vols” and got McNish interested in a career in sports broadcasting. He later moved to WGYW, and stayed with the station after it was sold to The Godfather of Soul James Brown. He accepted a position with Arthur Wilkerson on WLIL in Lenoir City in 1966 and stayed with WLIL until his retirement in 2019.

His broadcasts of Lenoir City Sports began in 1967, and Glenn eventually handled every position at the station from on-air to programming to sales. Glenn became the voice of WLIL Radio in the community as he hosted numerous radiothons, took calls on the Trading Post, reported election returns, and provided dramatic on the scene news coverage live from the Lenoir City Downtown Fire of 1998. He was named General Manager of the station in 1988 and stayed in that position during the ownership tenures of BP Broadcasters and Fowler’s Holdings.

His dedication to the station was the driving force in keeping the station on the air and under local ownership during this period. Glenn McNish’s career at WLIL is the epitome of what small market broadcasting should be.

This is Glenn's 1st Career nomination into the Tennessee Radio Hall of Fame*