Talk radio station WBT made this announcement yesterday about radio host and Creative Loafing columnist Tara Servatius:

Tara Servatius Named New Afternoon Host at WBT AM & FM

Charlotte, NC (December 1, 2008): Greater Media announces Tara Servatius has been named the new Monday through Friday, 3pm – 6pm afternoon drive on-air host at WBT AM & FM in Charlotte, North Carolina. She will begin her new on-air duties on Monday, December 8th, 2008.

Servatius has been the host of The Tara Servatius Show on weekdays from 9pm to midnight on NewsTalk1110 WBT. The program is a mixture of local and national commentary, interviews and forensic journalism from the perspective of a life-long Charlottean.

She has won more than two dozen state and national journalism awards for column writing and investigative reporting while she was a reporter in the Charlotte market for The Leader and Creative Loafing newspapers. Among her most recent was a first place news enterprise reporting award from the North Carolina Press Association about the weaknesses in Charlotte's overburdened court system. Servatius also recently won a national first place award for column writing from The Society of Professional Journalists. The Charlotte native is a graduate of Charlotte Catholic High School and UNC Chapel Hill's School of Journalism.

"Tara has increasingly proven to be a superstar in waiting," said Greater Media Charlotte Vice President and Market Manager Rick Jackson. "Her show is less about politics and more about a journalistic view of how local government operates. She's a brilliant investigative reporter and effectively constructs her views based on real case studies and supporting data."

Rick Jackson and WBT Program Director Bill White will be on air Tuesday, December 2nd at 3pm to discuss the programming change and answer listener questions.

WBT AM & FM is owned by Greater Media Charlotte, Inc., and is a subsidiary of Greater Media, Inc., the parent company of 23 AM and FM radio stations in the Boston, Charlotte, Detroit, New Jersey and Philadelphia markets. It also owns a group of weekly newspapers in central New Jersey as well as several telecommunications towers located throughout the United States.

Congrats to Tara! More on this later ...