John Lauer

John's career in broadcasting began over 50 years ago aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kearsarge, where he ran the ship's radio station KEAR and was the play-by-play announcer for many of the ship's sporting events.

He graduated from Syracuse University in 1956 with a major in Radio/TV. His career in the broadcasting business moved through some of the nation's most prestigious radio and TV stations. John was the production manager at WMBD-FM (Peoria, IL) and WDEL-AM (Wilmington, DL) and worked in sales for WSYR-TV and WSYR-FM (Syracuse, NY). From there, John went to WCAU-TV (Philadelphia) before being promoted to head up CBS Radio spot sales offices in Philadelphia and Chicago. In 1968, John was named General Sales Manager for WBBM-TV (Chicago). In 1972 he went to Atlanta to help lauch WPCH for Sudbrink Broadcasting. When Meredith acquired Peach in 1978, John became General Manager of both WPCH-TV and WGST-AM in the Atlanta market. He founded the Georgia Network in 1980 and was instrumental in moving WGST's frequency to 640 after Jacor acquired the station in 1985. Since leaving Jacor in 1992, John has headed a pay-per-view television company and served as manager of WMLB-AM (Atlanta) before selling the station for $10.5 million in 2004.

John is currently running three radio stations in North Georgia for A.D. Frasier, under the corporate name of Wolf Creek Broadcasting Network. John, an accomplished computer programmer, has written instantaneous statistic sports programs for the NFL, the NBA and more than 300 colleges who are still using his Statman software to provide information to broadcasters and sports media for football and basketball contests.