Dilworth, Northeast Georgia icon, bows out

TOCCOA - When Billy Dilworth started broadcasting from WNEG, Northeast Georgians didn't see much on TV they could identify with.

Life in Toccoa, Athens and Franklin Springs was and is different than life in Atlanta.

Even if a household had a good enough antenna to pick up stations from Atlanta, there was a good chance that the news and talk shows never mentioned the local town or the happenings there.

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"The Billy Dilworth Show" - broadcast first in the 1970s and early 1980s from Spartanburg, and then from Toccoa's WNEG starting in 1985 - was different.

Dilworth's local call-in talk show format made him a member of viewers' families.

"He's an icon in Stephens and Franklin counties," said Boyce Bell, who grew up in Toccoa seeing his parents watch Dilworth every Saturday night.

Dilworth, 75, taped the final episode of his show surrounded by friends and relatives at WNEG's Toccoa studio Saturday night. He announced in January that he would retire and turn the reins of the show over to longtime co-host Michelle Austin and producer David Austin.

"It feels like it used to when we went for three hours because of the crowd here tonight," she said during the two-hour live broadcast.

"There would have been more here, but they couldn't get tickets," Dilworth joked about the small Toccoa studio. "We have a full house."

Dilworth brought his television show to WNEG in 1985, but he had been a Saturday night fixture in Northeast Georgia and upstate South Carolina for years. By the time he appeared on television, he already was well-known as the host of "The Billy Dilworth Country Music Party" on local radio.

He still remembers the callers' regular requests.

"I remember (your father) used to call all the time and request that Kendall's song 'Heaven's Just a Sin Away,' " he told Stephens County Sheriff Randy Shirley, a guest on his final show.

Shirley's father requested the song nearly every week during the 1970s, Dilworth said.

The final show included several live and telephone guests, all of whom who played a part in Dilworth's long career in newspap

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