In the 6 years since we started a podcast, there has been a total of one (1) request for a transcription of an episode. That was the Natasha Gargiulo episode back in 2018, and the person asking was hearing impaired. Natasha has a very large Canadian following, and I would have been more than happy to help out one of her followers. Sadly, at the time, I was largely clueless on how to do this. Today, I am happy to report that I know a little more on the topic. At Podcast Movement last month, the Live New Media show with Todd Cochrane and Rob Greenlee had Andy Bowers, Rachael King and James Cridland on as guests, and the subject of transcription came up. I have to admit that after dabbling with the offerings from Headliner, Descript, and the Microsoft offering in my subscription, I was largely underwhelmed with its efficiency and honestly questioned its necessity. After a brief Twitter exchange, I pivoted positions; providing a transcription is the right thing to do for your show. There are some SEO benefits, and it adds a nice dimension to your website content. But these questions were still burning: -Why is it the responsibility of the content creator to provide them? -Why would I want someone reading the show when I want them listening to it? (I get paid in downloads, you know.) -Why should I pay for this? It’s expensive. I think I can answer these. Companies like Amazon, Google, Spotify, and Apple all have the technology to do this. But there is nothing in it for them. In fact, all it takes is a few mis-transcribed words to launch them into a lawsuit. As for people reading the show rather than downloading it, that might happen- and if the person doing so is hearing impaired, that should make you feel good. But here’s a side marketing bonus you probably didn’t consider: Bloggers and writers can easily cut and paste quotes from you and your guests, and credit your podcast. This recently happened to one of my older episodes, and it led to a few more followers. Sometimes it’s the things that you didn’t plan for that make it all worthwhile. As for justifying the price, that’s going to have to be a personal decision. It’s more than the subscription cost- it’s also spending the time after the transcription has been made to verify spelling and oddly pronounced words. It will likely take you even longer If your podcast is about something scientific or medical, or cities in Wales. As it stands now, some transcripts refer to me as Mad Kendall which I am considering adopting as my new wrestling name. And for networks who manage podcasts, between paying the humans reviewing the shows and paying for the subscriptions, the costs add up. One of the big reasons podcasters get involved with transcription is for the SEO. However, there are some who believe that simply attaching a transcription to the bottom of the episode page on your website will result in Google judging the page to be too long for ideal consumption. My thanks to James Cridland for the suggestion of finding a sponsor to assist with the payment of the podcast transcription costs. Your podcast is more than just pre-rolls and mid-rolls. Look for newer episodes of the Sound Off Podcast to contain transcriptions of each episode via Poddin.io. We decided to partner with Poddin because of its efficiency and its downloadable player, ease of use, and now with the ability to pull from your podcast’s RSS feed. Here are some of the other services we tried and largely liked. Choose wisely. Headliner, Descript, Microsoft, AWS, Trint Transcription: Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:00 One of the questions I get asked a lot is, should you transcribe your podcast? And I'm here to tell you, maybe. Tara Sands (VO) 00:00:09 The The Sound Off Podcast. The Podcast about broadcast with Matt Cundill.... Starts Now. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:18 In the six years since we started The Sound Off Podcast, there has been a total of one request for a transcription of an episode. I think back to the episode I did with Natasha Guard Julie back in 2018, and one of her fans was hearing impaired and asked, Can I get a transcript of the show? And I have to admit, I was a little bit lost about how I would handle this. Most services asked for money, and I really wasn't in a position to buy a transcript for one person. Yes, sadly, at the time I was largely clueless on how to do this. But today I'm happy to report that I know a lot more about the subject at Podcast movement. Back in March, the new media show Todd Cochrane and Rob Greenley. If you listen to them on a regular basis, they say that you'll have a PhD in podcasting. I'm still waiting for them to send me one in the mail. Anyhow, their guests were Rachel King and Andy Bowers and James Cridland. And the subject of transcription came up and it got me thinking about the offerings out there from Headliner, which I subscribe to Description, which I've tried out, and the Microsoft offering in my subscription, which James Cridland told me I could access for free if I've got the subscription, which I do. So I was largely overwhelmed with the efficiency of that one. The other two are pretty good. And then I got into the Twitter exchange with them. I explained that with transcription services only being about 85, 90, 93% efficient, you still got to pay somebody to go through and correct it, or you could do it yourself. But again, time is money, and I'm aware that there are some SEO benefits to having a transcription on your website. It's a nice offer as well. But here are the questions I still have burning in my mind. Why is it the responsibility of the content creator to provide them? Why would I want somebody reading my show when I really want them listening to it? After all, there are ads in this podcast and this guy right here gets paid by the download. And then the other thing is the expense. Why am I paying for this? Who am I making happy? And could I be doing something else in the interim? I think I can answer some of these. So companies like Amazon, Google, Spotify and Apple all have the technology to do this, but when you think about it, there's really nothing in it for them. In fact, all it takes is a mistranscribed word or two, and then you, the content creator would go back and take them to court. As to those people who like to read the show rather than downloading it. Well, that might happen. And if the person doing so is hearing impaired, that should make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. But here's a side marketing bonus that you probably didn't consider. Bloggers and writers can easily cut and paste quotes from you and your guests and credit your podcast. That actually happened to me with one of my episodes a few weeks ago. This recently happened to me in one of my older episodes, and it led to a few more followers. Sometimes it's the things in life that you didn't plan for that make it all worthwhile. As for justifying the price, that's going to have to be a personal decision on your part. It's more the subscription cost, and it's also spending time after the transcription has been made to verify the spelling and oddly pronounced words. It will likely also take you even longer if your podcast is something scientific or medical, or deals with cities in Wales. And what if you have an accent, say, Scottish or from Newfoundland? As it stands now, some transcripts refer to me as Mad Kendall, which I'm considering adopting as my new wrestling name. And as for the networks who manage podcasts, they're going to be paying humans to review the transcripts as well as paying subscriptions to get the transcripts. Those costs add up, and you'll have to pass those on to your client. One of the big reasons podcasters get involved with transcription is for the SEO. However, there are some who believe that simply attaching a transcription to the bottom of your episode page on your website is just going to result in Google judging the page to be too long for ideal consumption. So tread carefully and this is where you bring in the SEO expert to double check your results. So my thanks to James Cridland for the suggestion of finding a sponsor to assist with the payment of podcast transcription costs. One of the things I have to remind myself the podcast is more than just pre rolls and mid rolls. There's other parts of inventory that can be bought or sold. So for instance.... Sarah Burke (VO) 00:04:37 Transcription for the Sound Off Podcast is powered by Poddin.io. Your podcast is an SEO goldmine. We help you to dig out start your free trial now at Poddin.io Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:48 We will make an attempt to go back and transcribe some of the more popular episodes of the Sound Off podcast. We're so happy to have partnered with them because of its efficiency and its downloadable player, the ease of use. And we'd also like to point out how it can maneuver accents, whether it be Scottish, English, Australian or Canadian. We also have a few other things that you can check out and make decisions on your own. Headliner descript Microsoft. If you have a subscription, AWS has one, and you can also check out Trent. For more, you can go to Soundopodcast.com and check out the transcription of this episode. See what I did there. Tara Sands (VO) 00:06:23 The Sound Off Podcast with Matt Cundill. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:06:27 Okay, so a brand new podcast is coming out. You've heard me talk about the podcast Super Friends in the past. Johnny Peterson from Straight Up Podcasts, John Gay from Jagging Detroit Podcasts, Katherine O'Brien from Branch Out Programs, David Yaz from the Boston Podcast Network and myself, we form the podcast Super Friends. Every month we get together and we talk about the issues around making a better podcast, whether that's marketing or content creation. Where to Put Your podcast even transcribing your podcast. Much like the conversation I've just had here today, we stream it live and all the connection points are in the show notes of this episode. If you would like to connect to it, we're really excited to be sharing some of the information about the podcast space with you and feel free to connect with any one of them. If you're ever thinking about starting a podcast. Tara Sands (VO) 00:07:14 The Sound Off Podcast written And hosted by Matt Cundill produced by Evan Surminski, Social Media by Courtney Krebsbach another great creation from the The Soundoff Media Company. There's always more at soundoffpodcast.com.

We're finally at the big 300, an episode years in the making. As it's tradition for podcasters to do something special for milestones like this, I thought it would be the perfect time to look back on how exactly we got here: Where we started, the mistakes we've had to correct, the ways the show has evolved since 2016, and most importantly, the people who helped us get here, and continue to help today. And yes, of course that includes all our loyal listeners as well. If you are a returning listener, consider this episode a heartfelt thank you note, and also an anniversary gift of sorts. You'll hear mention of a huge number of other podcasts and podcasting resources for you to check out- or you could go back and listen to some of the old episodes we've recorded with these honoured guests. The list is exceptionally long, and if there's anyone whose name was left out, I'm sincerely sorry. Please know that we deeply appreciate everyone who's helped with the show over the years, not just those who are mentioned in this episode. With that said, here are some links to check out everyone and everything mentioned in this episode, in order of appearance: Larry Gifford: When Life Gives You Parkinson's NLogic ART19 Promosuite Jessica Binstock Amanda Logan Tara Sands Jacobs Media Signal Hill Insights Amplify Media Podnews.net Barrett Sports Media Core Image Studios Megatrax Jamie's CHR Prep Sheet Broadcast Dialogue's Newsletter Sign-up Puget Sound Radio 26 Projects Transcription: Tara Sands (VO) 00:00:01 The Sound Off Podcast. The podcast about broadcast with Matt Cundill starts now. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:11 This week, we have landed on episode 300. I think a lot of podcasters feel compelled to do something special when you get to a nice round number. For 100, I did a three hour show with my former co-host at the Bear in Edmonton, Jake Daniels. I did nothing for 200. And here we are at 300, and as I write and record this, I'm somewhere between Cordoba and Granada, Spain, where I've have spent the better part of the last month. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:11 But trying to have it sound like radio was another mistake I made. Podcasts and radio are wildly different, and it took conversation with former KFOG imaging producer Jeff Schultz to say, "Hey. The sound of your podcast? It’s a little obnoxious to the ears. Why don't you back it off a bit?" I think that was around episode 111 or 112, and we made a commitment to make it sound more podcast. A couple of things began to happen around episode 20. Mark Ramsey was a guest on the show, and off air we started to talk about how shitty Soundcloud was. How the stats are bullshit, and it’s full of bots. And a second thing happened that same month. David Phillips from Nlogic wanted to partner up, and do some stuff together. So we did an episode. And then he bought some ads. Now if you're in American radio and you're hearing an Nlogic ad, it's really a bit of a waste, because Nlogic is built for Canadian radio. Enter Sean and Roddy from ART19, who showed me the power of dynamic ad insertion. Now the Nlogic ads can run in Canada, and I could re-sell the other ad space to an Amercian client- which is what happened next. Promosuite came on board, and have been with us since 2017. By the way- did you know the ad copy is different in both countries? See, this dynamic ad thing? It's pretty cool. So this is where I say to you that if you're into podcast ads, and you want your podcast ads to update through all the episodes and target them into regions- you can reach out to Roddy at Art19. Oh and by the way, I know a lot of people say Dynamic Ad Insertion. It's really dynamic audio insertion. Y'see, if you want to make an update, it doesn't have to be an ad. it can just be about the show itself. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:11 The Sound Off Podcast has indeed evolved. We have used features, and that was stupid. Features are for radio. Podcasts do well when they are about stories. And there are a number of episodes where there were tears, or revelations, or moments of personal truth. So thanks Bob Harris, Mary Anne Ivison, Terry Dimonte, Sue Tyler, Gruff Grushnowski, Zenga McCurdy, Shannon Burns, for shedding a tear or revealing your personal side. Much like radio, we evolved the imaging with different voices like Jessica Binstock, Amanda Logan and now Tara Sands. We continue to work on our sound. And yes, I have my favourite episodes… I think the ones I like the most are the ones where the podcast introduced me to someone I have followed for years but have never spoken to. Broadway Bill Lee, Art Vuolo who does those Vuolo video air checks that I grew up watching and admiring. Lisa Guerrero from Inside Edition, who I used to watch on Fox Sports and Monday Night Football. Terry O’Reilly, who I've listened to for years on Under the Influence on the CBC, which- by the way- is a show that works as well on radio as it does as a podcast. And Christopher Ward and Stu Jefferies who I watched on Much Music and Good Rocking Tonight respectively. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:11 The Sound Off Podcast allowed us to build a podcast company. We work with a ful range of podcasts that reside over at Soundoff.network. You can check that out, by the way, on the internet. And aside from all of our awesome clients, some of the people I work with on an ongoing basis in the podcast community deserve a little thanks too. In 2017, I met Katherine O'Brien from Branch Out programs in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and I never would have guessed that we would be working together and sharing ideas in the Podcast Superfriends group alongside John Gay from JAG in Detroit Podcasts, Johnny Peterson from Straight Up Podcasts in Dallas, and David Yaz from the 617 Pod Network in Boston. Same thing goes with our partners at DeanBlundell.com. Dean, along with Chris Rook and George Arabian, are great to work with- This podcast basically brought us all together. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:11 There are also a collection of people we bring back on a regular basis, because their work is relevant to the entire broadcast industry. The team at Jacobs Media, Paul, Fred, Seth Ressler. Jeff Vidler at Signal Hill Insights, Steve Goldstein from Amplify Media, James Cridland from Podnews.net and Jason Barrett from Barrett Sports Media have all taken time from their work to come on the show and share what they know in the name of making your broadcast product better. We have had some great supporters over the years too. Justin Dove at Core Image Studio. And I mentioned Promosuite, like Rocco and Rachel, and CJ, who's actually moved on from Promosuite now, but say hi to Dean who's in there now. We've also mentioned the people at Nlogic. And hi to Ilyana at Megatrax- that’s the company we use for music beds. And a hello to our latest client: Jamie at ProdJamie.com, who has the very affordable CHR prep sheet. By the way, you can get it now at prodjamie.com. Also a big thank you to the people who share the show weekly. Shawn Smith and Connie Tiesen from Broadcast Dialogue, you've been awesome to put the player into your weekly newsletter. And if you're listening to this and you're not signed up for their newsletter, you can find that in the show notes of this episode as well. Also thanks a lot to Michael Easton at Puget Sound Radio, who posts the show on his site. Your support is greatly appreciated. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:11 It takes about 15 hours to put together every episode. Between recording, producing, marketing, writing, scripting, voicing and getting together all the marketing assets, and now posting a transcription. It takes a long time to do this well. Which brings me to the people who help me do this every week. Evan Surminski, Courtney Krebsbach for marketing assets, Taylor MacLean for the editing, Aidan Glassey for the transcription review and other marketing assets. And over the years, there have been two people who have really set the tone for what the marketing would look and feel like. Lauren Siddall was our first hire, and she did some of the best marketing pieces from scratch. She is now working at 26 Projects in Winnipeg, and if I had a plate of carbonara that I needed photographed, I would totally hire her to do it. She is an awesome food photographer and really set the bar high for the marketing of this podcast. Kendra Magnusson came in after, and was a big help in driving what the show needed in terms of targeting guests, and getting the show in front of different broadcast audiences, and marketing right into the broadcast space. She is hopefully listening to us from Australia, where she is enjoying life in Sydney. Marketing is such big part of any podcast’s success, and in the coming weeks, I hope to publish a blog about why the marketing for this podcast has worked- and maybe a few things that have not worked. Namely Facebook ads. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:11 And finally, thank you to you. The listener. For the social media, the shares, the word of mouth and the recommends, and for subscribing to the newsletter. For hitting "Follow" or "Subscribe" on your favourite podcast app. Are there another 300 episodes still in me? Yeah, I think so. Sara (VO) 00:07:37 Transcription for The Sound Off Podcast is powered by Poddin. Your podcast is an SEO goldmine. We help you to dig out. Start your free trial now at Poddin.io. Tara Sands (VO) 00:07:47 The Sound Off Podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill. Produced by Evan Surminski. Social media by Courtney Krebsbach. Another great creation from The Soundoff Media Company. There's always more at soundoffpodcast.com.

Before starting this episode, I want you to imagine the program director of a radio station. You're probably picturing someone around my age, or maybe a bit older, depending on the station. A mature man or woman, with over a decade of experience in broadcasting, who can use that experience to run things smoothly and professionally. What you're probably not picturing is a 26-year-old Pro Tools aficionado and part-time radio host who's handling a station for the first time. But that's exactly the position Brady Kingsbury found himself in, and he nailed it. If nothing else, Brady's history in broadcasting is a testament to the value of playing to your strengths, while also doing everything you can to lengthen the list of things you can call "strengths." As he says in this episode, he's never been afraid to get tossed into the deep end. It just gives him a chance to show you how well he can swim. In this episode, I talk to Brady about how he went from working at a mall to programming Jack FM in London, Ontario in only 7 years. We dive into his love of audio editing, the process of learning Pro Tools, and the great friends he made along the way who helped jumpstart his career- including Jeff Lumby and Scott Tucker. If you want to stay caught up with Brady, drop him a follow on Twitter: You can listen to Brady on 96.7 CHYM in Kitchener, weekday mornings starting at 5am. Listen to some clips from the show here. Transcript: Tara Sands (VO) 00:00:01 The Sound Off Podcast. The podcast about broadcast with Matt Cundill... Starts now. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:11 Today on the show marks a milestone, and I know what you're thinking. 299 episodes without a cease and desist order. Truth be told, I've received one from Bell and one from Corus. Both were ironed out with a phone call, but today marks the first time both a first and second generation broadcaster have appeared on the show. To hear dad, you're going to have to scroll all the way back to episode 128 and check out the great conversation I had with Danny Kingsbury. However, today you get to listen to Brady. Brady Kingsbury joins me from Kitchener, Ontario. You're all set up. You've got Apple Watch on the go, and you've got your Blue Jays hat. You're ready for baseball this year? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:00:55 Yeah. Who's not? I mean, we need something to look forward to. And the Jays are looking really good this year, too. If every game is like the past four, they've already played? Hoo. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:05 I can't count the number of times I've done a podcast with a second generation radio personality, because the interviews- I think it needs to be different. The first question of this podcast is generally what led you to radio, but it's more obvious when you have radio in the house. And I had to ask this to Jesse Tieman and TJ Connors, and eventually we'll get around asking it to Carly Myers and others. So what's it like growing up with radio in the house? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:01:33 Well, I don't know anything different. It was regular life for us, where it just seemed that the music was always on in our house. The radio was always on from morning, noon, to night, just music was part of our lives. The genres changed and the music changed a little bit throughout the years. As you know, he went from station to station and worked at a rock and roll station or a country station or whatever it may be, hot AC. The music changed a little, but that's the one thing it was always on. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:02:05 So when dad says we're moving to Ottawa or Toronto, what goes through your mind? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:02:11 Well, luckily for myself, there was only one move that really affected me. I was probably 12 or 13. That was the one move that I was like, I don't want to move. I'm just in the 6th grade. I got all my friends here in Burlington. And then, that's when we moved to Ottawa. And now that I'm an adult and I have kids and I can imagine how hard of a decision that would have been to pick up and move your family and go somewhere. But I get it now. Back then, I didn't like it at all, but it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to our family. So it was tough for a little while. But yeah, you get used to it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:02:45 I had the same experience, actually. My dad was a broker, and we moved to Ottawa and it was the 6th grade. And I don't want to say the experience was traumatic, but you have all these friendships and you're 12. This is the time when you're getting your best friends, or you've made some best friends, and you're going to become a teenager. Was it hard to make friends when you moved? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:03:04 No, it wasn't at all. Kids are kids and at that age you get into the class, you end up making friends. And Ironically enough, I'm still best friends with my friends from Burlington when I moved. Like that core group of guys that I met in Burlington, those are still my best friends. I still talk to them more than I even talked to friends that I met in Ottawa. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:03:23 At what age do you say, yeah, I want to do what dad does a little bit, or I want to be part of the business that he's a part of? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:03:30 I always kind of had that as a back. I had no idea what I wanted to do in high school. When people were planning on going to this University or I'm going to this College, that wasn't even on my mind. It's just- I wanted high school to be done and then kind of try being adult for a little while. So I ended up just working. I had a job at a mall. I was pretty happy. I was managing a retail store. I was 19. Living at home, was living the dream. And then I realized the next year, I'm like, I should probably think of something to do. And I was always into video production and I loved DJing and I was in bands, so music was definitely- I wanted to do something, but I didn't know how. Before I even was thinking about taking a school course, like a radio broadcasting program or something like that. One of my dad's friends had a morning show in Cambridge, Ontario and called me and said, hey, I'm looking for a morning show producer. I know you are into the whole production and senior stuff. I like it. You're into it. I want someone who's going to want to learn. And his name was Jeff Lumby, and I ended up being the morning show producer for Jeff Lumby. And it was that opportunity where it's like, all right, I'll take this chance. I'm working a mall job right now. I got nothing to lose. I'm young. Let's give it a shot. I moved out of the house when I was 20 and never went back. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:44 Jeff Lumby is somebody that I had the chance to grow up listening to for a few years because he was working at FM96 in Montreal and then shortly after he transitioned back to Ontario. What was it like working with Jeff? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:04:57 It was awesome. I learned a lot in the short amount of time that I worked with him. He was such a content driven guy with that show. What a first show to start off on. He wanted a heavy production show. Every sound bite you could think of on a hockey page. He did all the characters, all of the accents. The impressions was unbelievable. So we were producing things every single day, and that's what I got to learn first and foremost. And I learned throughout the years. It's like not every morning show is like that. They don't have that talent at your fingertips. And I learned a lot from him in a very short amount of time. So I'll always be grateful for, A, that he got me into the business and B, that I did learn so much from him. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:05:39 And where did you go after Cambridge? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:05:41 So I stayed in Kitchener/Waterloo for Chorus, because Jeffrey ended up leaving that station. So I think I worked for maybe eight months on that show with him. And then they said, hey, okay, we're changing up the show. We still want to keep you around. Unfortunately, your full time position isn't around, but we can get you on as a part time. You can be a promo assistant and go do remotes and those kinds of things. And I was really into production, and I just kept showing up every day. I wasn't getting paid, but I wanted to learn Pro Tools, and I wanted to learn the ins and outs of production. And their names were Jay Tufford and Johnny Q were producers there, and they taught me everything about Pro Tools, and I just absorbed it. I wanted to be the biggest sponge that I could be. I never touched Pro Tools the year before, but I'm like, I love this thing. How does it work? So then I ended up being kind of like a part time producer after that and made all the commercials. When they were on vacation, I stepped in and I did all the imaging for them, and I did that for a couple of years, and it was great. And then a full time commercial production job ended up opening in London, and I moved to London, and I was a fulltime commercial producer for a couple of years. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:06:45 It's amazing to hear that, because it's really become a more valuable position in the companies over the years. So you picked up Pro Tools? Good for you for doing that. I'm always worried that if I had to learn that stuff, I'd have to go and sign up for a course to really understand it. When I started this podcast in 2014, I don't think I'd ever edited anything digitally. And so everything I had to learn again, that was on my own. But when it comes to mixing, I'm not mixing this podcast. I have no idea how to put two sounds together. I did it one time, and somebody wrote back and it said, It sounds like a train collision. Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:07:20 It can easily happen. There's a lot going on, and I probably know 10% of that program right? There's so much you could learn about that. But I wanted to literally learn every skill there was in this business, and I wanted to get as good as I could at it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:07:36 I really think that that position where you're making the audio, you're really at the center of everything. So that includes the morning show. That includes every piece of audio that goes out over 60 minutes. I mean, there's one thing that's guaranteed on a radio station every day, and that's 60 minutes every hour. And generally, most of the audio has been created somewhere in the line, in the chain of command of the company. So you got pro tools down. What's another skill or two that you picked up along the way? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:08:05 So then when I was working at Corus London, I met my now good, still good friend Scott Tucker, who was doing mornings at FM96 in London. And I was his production guy. I was doing commercials, but he would come in and say, hey, I want a bit for the show. I want to do this parody song or whatever it may be. And then me and him got really close, and he started a new morning show across the street in London, and he said, I'm looking for a morning show producer personality. Would you want to come and do that show with me? I said, yeah, I've been making commercials for a long time. I'm ready for a little bit of a change. This is new. It's exciting. A format flip, a new station and a new city. It was all very exciting. So I went with him, and that was probably the next skill I learned was the on air part of the job, which was kind of being a personality and then an announcer. Once again, another position that I didn't think I was ever going to do. But when I started to have bits on the show and fill in when they were on vacation, same kind of thing, I didn't know what I was doing, but you just keep doing it more and more and more and you realize, hey, this is pretty fun. And with the right coaching and the right people, you can get good at this. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:09:09 I would have called Scott Tucker to ask for a little background check had I known that part. But I think if memory serves me right, he had just gotten a radio divorce from Taz. And is this when he crosses the street and you get to work with him? So you're working with a divorcee, and here you are launching this show, and I'm imagining this scenario where it's like he wants to put his stamp and his vision into this particular show. And so what are the first 100 days of working on that show? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:09:40 Like, they were incredible. I still look back at those times as some of my favorite times in this business where I didn't really have anything to lose. I knew I was good at what I was good at, which was Pro Tools. I was in a closet for years making stuff, but now it was on demand. So he's such a creative guy. He can think of something on the spot. If here's a new story at 05:00 A.m., he's like, hey, I want a parody bit intro that will go into this new story for six. I'll be like, yeah, no problem. And I could do that stuff with my eyes closed very quickly. And that's not something he had at his other position either. So we just had so much fun. He's got so many great ideas with games and angles. And I still- if he's listening, I know he'll laugh, but I just saw him last week, and every time we are together, it's just laugh after laugh after laugh after laugh. No one can make me laugh as much as that guy. So it was just so much fun. That was the first opportunity to where we were doing broadcast at Sandals Resorts and stuff like that. So here I am, this 20 something year old kid who was making commercials in a closet. So now I'm in Jamaica taking videos and doing all that stuff. So it was a lot at once, and I just tried to absorb it all in. And the first 100 days were great because I don't think anyone really knew what was going to happen with that station. And then book after book, it just started climbing and climbing and climbing. And it was a lot of fun. Only great memories there. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:11:06 I guess it really speaks to the relationship between a creative or a creator. And if you can give that idea to somebody who's got Pro Tools and who can turn it around quickly and get it to air quickly or that day you guys become brothers. I know that relationship. I've seen that happen before. Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:11:24 It was sometimes instantaneously, right where it's, hey, I need this cool done. And then it became a point where if I knew he was going to be talking about something, I had all of the clips or whatever ready that he needed to play. So it became an unspoken thing where I knew what he needed in those moments. And yeah, it was a really great partnership. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:11:45 So what came first? Was it his departure to Toronto or was it your departure from the station? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:11:52 I went after a totally different job. And here's the huge climb, right? So I went from morning show producer, commercial producer, back to kind of morning show personality to program director was my next job after that because there was a Rogers station in London who was Jack FM, and they were looking for a program director. And I applied for it and had the conversations and had the meetings and sold my goods. And I got that job. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:12:21 So you're crossing the street? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:12:22 I did. I left. I mean, it's a better job. I had a young family. I just had a baby. I was married. You always think of what's the next job, and sometimes, you know, it happens and something pops up or a job gets open and one thing after another happens. And look at that. You've made a change, so you never know when it's going to happen, but when it does, you got to take advantage of it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:12:46 Why did you get hired? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:12:48 It's a great question. I mean, I like to think that I brought a lot to the table. I was young. There's no question about that. I think I got that job when I was 26 years old, and I had every skill that radio could offer other than kind of programming. And I loved it. I had so much passion for it. And I think they were looking for someone new and young, and fresh ideas, and not- this is the way we always do things. And yeah, I got good references. I didn't just get given the job either. I had to work for that, too. And I don't know, maybe I was what they were looking for at the time. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:13:23 One of the things that people who work in production and Pro Tools and morning show production, anything involving that, I was actually looking for the word organized, being organized and being able to manage files, bits, shows, people, everything you've sort of done up to that point really does lead to leading a team. I marvel at the amount of organization required to manage radio imaging and production and the production studio. And I think that's a real feather in your cap to be able to have gotten that down. Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:13:57 Well, you have to, too. Right? And I'm still kind of that way with a lot of things where I could pull a bit from September 2019 at 820 and show you exactly what it is. I do have that organization. I'm still a disaster in other parts of my life. But when it comes to, where can I find- what did we talk about November 20? I have all of that stuff together still. So, yes, I care about the little stuff and I just love it. So when I had the opportunity to go to Jack and just be a radio manager for the first time and be the music director and I also did my own afternoon show at that station as well. I've always been considered pretty okay at a lot of things, and that's what that station needed at the time, was someone who could do a little bit of everything. And I wasn't the best at each part of it when I got there. But I thought it was the perfect station and the perfect market and the perfect team to kind of even build those skills up more and more and more. And once again, there are some amazing people in that building. And I had some great times at Jack in London. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:14:55 So one of the risks you have going in to do this job, the way you describe it- and pardon the pun, it's intended- but you could become the Jack of all trades but the master of none. So when you're doing it, what was your 1st 100 days or first few months of that? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:15:11 Like, I'm a big workplace guy. You hear this term culture, culture, culture, culture, culture, culture, culture. And I do believe that, where I wanted people to enjoy coming into this building and have fun while doing this job, because sometimes we forget how fun of a job this is compared to other things we could be doing. So the first couple of days, we're definitely trying to get the team together. And I mean, they probably had their doubts. How could they not? This 26 year old kid coming in here who's a morning show producer, you're going to take this station to where it needs to be. And I said, give me a shot. Yes, I might not know everything, but together, you're good at that. You're good at that. You're good at that. I can see that you're good at that. So let's do this together. And then, yeah, you're right. Things kind of fall by the wayside because you can't do everything. I mean, if you've got music, you've got an afternoon show, if you got to manage a morning team, you got to help out with promotions. All of that stuff makes for a busy day. So you've got to be good at organizing, as you said, and kind of scheduling of what is important when. But I got thrown into the deep end in that one. And that's how I like it. Throw me in. I'll show you what I can do, and then we'll go from there. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:16:24 In just a second, more with Brady, including work-life balance. And that includes family. Also the Olympics. You know, it's a family affair. I asked dad about it. Now I'm going to ask son about it. And what happens when you become program director at 26? Simple. Everyone in the hallway questions you. There's more. There's always more at soundoffpodcast.com. Mary Anne Ivison (VO) 00:16:52 Transcription for The Sound Off Podcast is powered by Poddin. Your podcast is an SEO gold mine. We help you to dig out. Start your free trial now at Poddin.io. Tara Sands (VO) 00:17:03 The Sound Off Podcast. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:17:03 It's not unheard of to be a program director at 26. Maybe back in the 80s, it was a lot more common when there's a lot more ownership, more diversity in the ownership out there. Mike Bendixon was 26 years old when he came into CJAD in Montreal, and there was a comment in the hallway. Somebody remarked that I've got wine older than the program director. Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:17:25 I've heard it all, I get- Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:17:26 And you proved them wrong, right? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:17:28 Yeah, I think so. And I'm still in touch with all those people that work there. And once again, I've been so lucky to work in buildings where we've gotten along with the people you work for, and that is so important. Yes, it's a job, and this is a profession, and you have to be professional. But truly, truly liking each other is something I've been really gifted with over the past few years. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:17:54 And I want to jump ahead right to March 2020 because you touched on workplace culture. So now there's no more workplace culture that sort of happens in one building. Tell me about the effects of that in and around you for your show, for the workplace, for the station. Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:18:13 Yeah. It was weird. Where I am now, there are three radio stations and three morning shows. So at first, anyone that does mornings in a station that has other morning shows, you know, you're kind of like the morning crew. You're all in it at the same time. You're all tired, you're all groggy. You're all talking about coffee. What's the hottest news story? What are you talking about? What's on the show today? That crew has always been pretty tight between the three stations here. And then, you know, the culture started after the show, which that's always the weird dynamic between morning teams and people who work during the day where it's you're seeing us kind of at the end of the show and we're seeing you at the beginning of your day, but we miss that. We miss seeing people in the building. I go back to I love going into our office and just chatting with the promo team or the sales manager or whoever it may be. And for that to just disappear was weird, but it's scary how quickly you can get used to things, too. And before you know it, we were just this, like, coveted morning team where we came in, we were doing our thing, and we were in it together, and we had no idea what was happening, but we all went through it at the same time. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:19:20 How did you get to Chime? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:19:22 So once again, it just kind of happened. Wendy Duff called me and said, hey, we're looking for a program director at Chime. And I've been at Jack for a few years now and kind of knew whatever my next step would be, I don't know. And then she said, we're looking for a program director at Chime. Are you interested? I'm like, interesting. And she's like, and it's going to be a morning show host job. So I said, okay, mornings and PD, okay, that's a big job, is what was my concern at the beginning. That's a lot to do. But I knew before I even worked in Rogers that Chime was a big station. It's a big station in Kitchener/Waterloo. And I knew how important of an opportunity that was to give it a try. And I never thought I was going to be hosting a morning show. That was not on my plan or trajectory of what to do. But that was the job that's what was open. It was program director with morning show. And I said, yeah, let's do it. And that's how I got it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:20:23 Do you remember when we first met? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:20:24 I do. It was Canadian Music Week. As you meet pretty much everyone across the company, I'm going to say Sheraton lobby bar. I believe I was with Scott Tucker at the time. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:20:35 Oh, that's right. Yeah. That's the trouble we were going to get into. And I said, in that time, I'm going to have both of you on my podcast. And since that time in 2018, I've had neither of you on the podcast until today. Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:20:48 Until now. Well, I'm honored that you sent me the invite. I follow you on Instagram, and I always see the shows that you post and the people you interview. And I'm a fan of the podcast, so it's cool to be on it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:20:59 Tell everybody about Chime because they might not know the importance of the radio station in the Kitchener Waterloo area. A lot of people go to Toronto, but Kitchener is, I think, like ten in terms of size of market in Canada, punches above its weight class, high income, lots of tech in the area. And the radio station is super important. Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:21:21 Yeah, it's been a top tier radio station for decades. And it's been a number one radio station for so long. And it's so important to this community where we have been just ingrained in it from forever. And I knew it was big before I came here. But you don't really know how big it is until you are in the monster that is Chime. It's just one of those stations where I've never been anywhere, where just everyone knows it. Everyone knows Chime. And I can't even begin to talk about just the size of it and the importance of it. As you said, it's about the 10th largest market in Canada. And there's about, I think, close to 700,000 people in the three cities that are around here. So it's a big radio market and it's competitive as well where there's a ton of great radio stations in the city with some great personalities. But Chime, we're so lucky that we are able to do great contests and we have great partnerships with people in our community that we do great events. And it's kind of taken a little bit of a backseat over the past couple of years where we haven't been able to do our huge events that we normally do. But I think we're getting close to being able to do those again. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:22:37 Just thinking back to the pandemic as we talk, more and more things are coming back to my mind, and I sort of ripped apart the numbers post pandemic. Remember, we went a long time without any radio data because of people not being able to get ballots and stuff like that. And finally, when all the numbers were crunched, I looked at a market like Winnipeg and atrocious numbers, many stations down by 20, 30%. If you'd put a little effort into it, it was down by 15 to percent 18. But then I looked at a similar market, which was Kitchener, and you didn't lose that much. You went in with a strategy to reconnect with an audience that had been sent home. You only lost I think it was like 10% of the audience. But those who decided to stay listened a lot longer. Your TSL time spent listening shot up. So what was your strategy to handle the pandemic on the morning show and the station in general. Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:23:30 Not change a thing where continue to do exactly what we've been doing is I could use all of the cliche radio terms that you've heard, but they're important. And specifically with AC radio to where we are your companion, we are your friend. And at a time where everything was so unknown that they could go to a place where they knew exactly what they were getting when they turned on the radio specifically for our morning show. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:23:56 Too, were we scared? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:23:58 For sure. We weren't going to let anyone know that, though. We were going to do the show that people wanted to hear when they turned on Chime. We wanted to have be a little bit of an escape from all the crazy news that they've been hearing. And then we just kept doing it every single day. That's what's important is to create a good brand and to create a good show and to create something that people know what they're going to get. It's consistency. And that was our plan for Mornings. And we didn't change a thing. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:24:23 We just kept doing what we were doing be that warm blanket every day for everyone. Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:24:29 That's what we were trying to do. As I said, it's kind of cheesy and cliche as that sounds. And the amount of feedback you got from listeners of like, I don't know what's going on right now, but you're the best part of my day, and it's the thing that I know that is going to be there when I'm in the car or I'm at home and I turn on the radio. Brady and Terry are going to be there. And it's little things like that that really make a difference and make us kind of energized to be like, okay, well, for all the 03:00 a.m. Wake ups and scraping your car and as you know how much of a grind morning it's are, getting little notes and messages like that makes it easy to keep going and keep doing what you're doing. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:25:03 We started this conversation talking about family and your dad, but you're a dad now, so what's your formula for some awesome work life balance between a hectic radio show and being a dad? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:25:17 I don't have an answer for that. I mean, I'm a very kind of go with the flow guy. The Mornings on its own are a rough schedule. For anyone. You're up at 300 in the morning and in the summertime you're in bed when the sun is still up and then you add on two kids on top of that. And now my kids are six and eight, so they're at that age where starting to become a little self sufficient. You don't have to worry about them too much. But at the beginning, when it was a two and a four year old, I was working mornings and doing music and being the program director, that was a lot. It really was a lot because you have this morning show and then I'm at work for probably the afternoon. Twelve, 01:00, I get home, they're ready to see dad. They want to play with dad, and I'm exhausted, so I don't really know what I did. The only thing that kept me going is that I knew I had to do it. And you're there, you're present when you can be. I have a very supportive partner where my wife would let me sleep when I could. And you need to have a good team. I have a great team at home where I got some amazing kids and a great wife. And that made it a lot easier. Okay. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:26:24 Because what I did, I had three under the age of two when I was offered to do mornings in Edmonton where the sun sets just a little bit later in the summer and doesn't even arrive till 09:00 in the winter. And I said, that's nice. I'm going to be a program director. Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:26:40 Yeah, it's not for everyone. It's not for everyone. I mean, the schedule I chose for myself, though, and now that I'm in the routine, I love routine. Some people don't like it, but I've definitely become a fan of it. Where I got a great routine now. And yeah, the hours are still I mean, you'll ask Tara, who's my co host, and I love her to death. She's been doing this for 26 years now and she's like, yeah, it never gets easier. It's still a. 03:00 a.m. Alarm. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:27:06 Yeah, it's early. Holy smokes. You've got Olympics in the family. You've traveled to see the Olympics. Tell me about your Olympic experience and what you saw when you traveled. Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:27:17 So my brother, who was always the academic in the family, he was the one that went to University. And when he was in his 10th year of school, I'm like ten years of school. That is not for me. But now I've always looked up to him and I really admire what he's been doing now. So he got into psychology and then he's a huge avid golfer, always has been. And then he got into kind of a little bit of sports psychology, dealing with some golfers, to which then as he got a little bit more into the position in the role, realizing the similarities of golf to curling, and ended up getting really into curling and dealing with curlers and being on curling teams. And he ended up being a sports psychologist coach for the number one women's team in the world at the time, which was Rachel homeland, and he became their coach. They went to the Scotty's Tournament of Hearts. My first curling team I ever went to was the Scotty's Tournament of Hearts. I've never been to a curling match ever in my life. So that would have been 2017, February 2017. And I fell in love with the sport. To the fans, the culture of it, it was just awesome. And the game. And then they ended up they just kept winning everything they went to. They went to the worlds in China. They ended up winning that. They went to the Olympic trials. They won that. So then they were going to the Olympics, and they were taking my brother as the coach of the women's curling team. So I texted my dad. When they won that, I said, Are we going to South Korea? I've always loved the Olympics as a kid. I love the Olympics so much. And for the opportunity to go see one in person, it was like a no brainer. So we ended up getting plane tickets. We went to South Korea, had no idea what we were in for. I've never traveled to anywhere further than, as I was telling you, the tropical island or something like that. So I've never been to across the world. 16 hours, plane ride later, nonstop. We landed in South Korea, and we were at the Olympics, which was probably everything you think it was. Everyone in their country's gear and jackets. And we were decked out in Team Canada gear, and we went to as many events as you could and hung out at Canada House. And you saw Olympians. You saw Scott Moore there. There's Tesla Virtue, just sitting Besides you at Canada House. The arcades were there, which I thought was very cool. And yeah, and then you get to watch amazing sports. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:29:41 How do the arcades get to go everywhere? Whether it's the great Cop or the Olympics, how does that happen? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:29:47 People like them. They make good music, they're good on social media, and the rest just kind of happens. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:29:52 Are you good on social media? Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:29:54 No, I don't think I am. Well, comparatively, I'm not as good as other people are at social media. I mean, I have one. I have an Instagram. I got listeners on there that can get in touch with me and send me messages and I post pictures of my kids or I'm at a concert or something funny in the studio. So I'm not amazing at it, but it's there. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:30:15 What do you see for the rest of 2022 in terms of the show? Something you want to do with the show to evolve it forward. Anything you thought about what if you think about it in the context of a post pandemic show. Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:30:26 A post pandemic show, I want to start seeing more people. We have the station in this giant shopping Plaza is where we are so surrounded in us as a bus terminal and Walmart and Lowe's and a movie theater and a Gym. We're just in the middle of a shopping Plaza, which is gold for, oh, let's go ask people something where we would just go to the bus stop and do fun videos or go record some audio. And I think people are now starting to slowly but surely be comfortable with Strangers approaching them Again, which they didn't really like it before the pandemic approaching strangers and saying like, hey, can I ask you a question? Or, hey, can I tell you a joke? Or, hey, can you be on camera here? It's always weird asking strangers to help you out with Things. It never gets more comfortable to go ask strangers to do things. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:31:13 But I don't know. Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:31:14 I'd like to do that more. I love hosting things. I love hosting golf tournaments and doing remotes and all of that stuff that you kind of took for granted prepandemic with radio and you go, oh, yeah, that was great because we do this and we're able to do this because of the people that listen. And that's what it comes down to is we got to serve those people continually and surprisingly, they want to see you and they want to talk to you, and that's the benefit of social media where they can reach out to me and they can see what we do in the studio and they have a question for me. I'll respond to it on DM almost immediately. So to be able to do that in person Again would be nice. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:31:50 But I'd like to see you again in person, Too. It's been four years. Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:31:53 Yeah, look at that. There's been no Canadian music week and no one's been able to gather and do the fun things together that me personally took for granted where it's just like, oh, yeah, we'll see you next year. Oh, yeah, we'll do this and then snap of a finger. I mean, that's the same case for everyone, but it really puts things into Perspective. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:09 Brady, thanks for doing this, man. Brady Kingsbury (Guest) 00:32:11 Hey, my pleasure. Thanks for asking me, Matt. This is a lot of fun, and maybe you'll call Scott Tucker next time and he'll do a much better job than me. Tara Sands (VO) 00:32:18 The Sound Off Podcast is written And Hosted by Matt Cundill. Produced by Evan Surminski. Social media by Courtney Krebsbach. Another great creation from the Soundoff Media Company. There's always more at soundoffpodcast.com.

Every year since 2013, I have loaded up the car for a football trip to see the Green Bay Packers. The team has a special relationship with the town that is unlike any other in sports. That extends to its local radio partner which clearly doesn’t behave like other radio stations in a medium or small market. WIXX 101.1 is staffed 24/7 with live personalities. The program director is Corey Carter who also pulls the 1-3pm shift on air. He spoke to me about his employer, Midwest Communications, the relationships developed with team members, the team, and the formula that has kept the station at number one since 1977. In this episode, we spoke about the difficulty in getting a decent hotel on game days. We solved that problem this year by staying with Kirsten and Gary. Sadly, the Packers lost the game to the Eagles. We attained a new hate for Eagles fans who rank alongside with the Raiders for the worst fans in the NFL. There is no number three in that category. Preview Transcript: Amanda Logan (VO) 00:00:01 This is the Podcast for Broadcast. The Sound Off Podcast with Matt Cundill. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:08 What if I told you there was a radio station that played top 40 and was staffed with live jocks 24/7? You'd think it was located in New York or LA. In a city that, say, never sleeps. But I doubt that Green Bay, Wisconsin, would come to mind. WIXX has been doing things a particular way since 1977. A lot of that is credited to their owner, Duke Wright, who thinks full service and is clearly community-minded. Duke lives a few miles from Lambeau Field. He bought his first station in Wassau, Wisconsin WRIG 1400 AM in 1958. That station has now moved to 1390AM and is a Fox Sports affiliate. Now, full disclosure on my relationship with Green Bay. Every year I get in the car with Avery, who, after ten years together, is well beyond just a passing love interest. I took her to Green Bay for a weekend football getaway in 2013. The trip was 13 hours by car and we passed the former Stadium of the Minnesota Vikings. You might remember it as the Hubert H. Humphrey Metro Dome, which I affectionately called the Humptydump. Avery asked why we weren't seeing that team, and I said, when you see Lambeau, you'll know why. We've pretty much gone every year since and made a few friends in the area along the way. Now, who best to tell the story of radio and Green Bay than the program director of WIXX 101.1, Corey Carter? The station's durability is unmatched in that they have been number one or two since forever, and Murphy in the Morning has been on the air for 28 years now. One final note. Fred Jacobs of Jacobs Media wrote a really cool blog about the Green Bay Packers and how they're venturing into digital TV. You can find a link to that in the show notes of this episode. For now, though, I reached out to Corey to talk about radio in Green Bay and the station's relationship with the Green Bay Packers. So tell me a little bit about yourself. Where did you grow up and what's that moment that you thought that radio was the greatest invention ever? Corey Carter (Guest) 00:02:08 I grew up in Northern Minnesota, outside of Duluth, Minnesota, and I would say I kind of had that radio moment, probably, when I was in College. I remember listening to the radio and calling in for requests and recording the Top Nine at Nine countdown when I was younger. But I didn't have a super big interest in it until I started in College, and I started with a broadcast journalism degree. I wanted to be a sports reporter or a sports announcer, and that kind of just morphs its way into doing commercial radio and music radio. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:02:38 So where did you go to College? Corey Carter (Guest) 00:02:39 UW Superior. It's part of the Wisconsin- University of Wisconsin system, and they have a campus FM stereo 100,000 Watt radio station that runs a statewide public talk show network during most hours. But at night we got to play, the students got to play. So there was a jazz show. And then I actually was the, I guess, program director of the hip hop show that ran a few nights a week. So I kind of got my first taste of top 40 radio, at least from a hands on perspective, doing that, which I still have very fond memories of. That was 20, 21, 22 years ago, but just great times there. Learning and being able to emulate the things you heard on some of the big top 40 stations that I followed, KDWB at the time from Minneapolis was one that I was just in love with. So I would hear how they did things, and I would try to emulate that on my College hip hop show at night. And I just had a blast doing it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:03:36 Where does hockey fit in for you? Because that's hockey territory where you grew up. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:03:40 It is definitely hockey territory. Minnesota Duluth is a huge division one hockey power. And I will tell you this, that my whole life, even up to now, I've been a basketball player. That's where hockey fits. And I was on the opposite end of that. UW Superior actually had a really good division three hockey team when I was there. They won the National Championships, and I played on the basketball team. And yeah, you know, we were there, too, but it was certainly nowhere near the prestige or the fandom that came with hockey in that area. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:11 How tall are you? Corey Carter (Guest) 00:04:13 Six foot five. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:14 And you wear a size 15 shoe? Corey Carter (Guest) 00:04:17 I do, yes. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:18 Do you have trouble buying shoes or finding them? Corey Carter (Guest) 00:04:21 Well, the funny part is I had size 15 when I was in 9th grade, which was about 1992 or so. And back then you couldn't find basketball shoes. We had to special order them and look in catalogs and stuff before online. Well, now I think there's just more big people in the world. So it's not the easiest to find size 15, but you can certainly find them in stores where back then you just couldn't find them anywhere. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:42 If you become friends with somebody at the Green Bay Packers, maybe they can provide you with hand me downs. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:04:47 They would probably have some. We have quite a few connections over there. I've never asked, but yes, I'm sure they would have some that would fit me over there. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:56 The station has only had one owner in about 42 years, and that's Duke Wright. Now, I got turned on to Duke Wright when I met him at the Conclave, and I had no idea about the history and the company he runs and what it's all about. So can you fill us in? Corey Carter (Guest) 00:05:12 Yeah, it's a pretty special company. So Duke Wright started these radio stations, which is now Midwest Communications owned stations. Gosh, I had lost track. How many States? Six, seven states now with one radio station back in 1958, and it was an AM station in Wassau, Wisconsin, and his parents owned a music store in town. And actually, Duke was a pretty esteemed polka player up until relatively recently in his career, he played polka. So anyway, he had his musical background. He purchased this radio station, or his parents, I think, helped him through their business, purchase the radio station, and at a young age, he was the owner of this radio station, and I believe it's still around to this day. It's an AM station that he still owns Wassau. But yeah, he started it then and he grew it in Wassau and then grew it in the Green Bay Appleton markets. And it's kind of just grown ever since. He's a very, very smart businessman who is still, from what I understand, on the lookout for radio stations that makes sense to add to the portfolio. But he's also not just into it for gobbling up as many stations as he wants. He has kind of a thing he looks for in these markets that he goes into to try to buy radio stations, and he makes sure that they're going to make him money and they make sure that they're going to be successful in the community. And he continues to do that. We just purchased stations in Peoria, Illinois, earlier this year, I believe so he's still on the hunt, and that's kind of what motivates him every day. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:06:44 How shocked are people when you tell them that you program a radio station in Green Bay, Wisconsin, that has staffing 24 hours a day? Corey Carter (Guest) 00:06:53 It's pretty surprising and we don't know this for sure, but I'm almost positive there may be a station in Milwaukee that also does it. But I know obviously we're one of very few stations in Wisconsin that are live 24/7, and it's an awesome thing. We work our butts off to make sure that stays that way. Unfortunately, in this day and age, trying to find part timers to do overnight shifts on weekends isn't quite as easy. We've had a couple of people that have been here for many years dedicated. They wouldn't fit your mold of what a Top 40 radio Jock would be at all. But they're reliable, they're dedicated, they sound okay on the air, and we're happy to have them. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:07:34 So tell me why you have to staff it 24 hours a day. What's the reasoning behind it? Because most people who would look from the outside say, is that really necessary in this day and age? But I believe in Green Bay. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:07:45 It is well, and we think it is, too. And that goes back to Duke. Duke really believes strongly in being connected with the community and being there when the community needs you. I think that's first and foremost the most important reason why we do it. And I know it was the summer of 2014 and we had a severe storm run through about 1230 in the morning. And we had our live overnight Jock on and she was providing updates. She was sending out text messages to our severe database. And the next morning it turned out and actually over the course of the next week, it turned out that there were seven tornadoes that touched down that night in our listening area and not one alarm went off. It was actually a pretty big news story in this area that the alarm system in one of the counties was malfunctioning and they found out the hard way. But we were the ones giving people updates. And the next morning on the morning show, people were calling in with reports of how they couldn't get out of their house because the trees were down on their streets, but also telling us that a text message from our live overnight personality to our severe weather database woke them up in the middle of the night. They went down in the basement and listened to us who were giving them updates and they were thanking us. And just like moments like that where we potentially could have saved lives in this market, I don't think we necessarily did that in that stance because the tornadoes weren't I think there were E zeros or E one tornadoes. But just knowing that we have that ability to serve the community in times of need really is what drives that, making sure we're here 24/7. And there have certainly been times when, from a management perspective, I've wanted to throw the towel in and probably could have as far as trying to staff it because it does get challenging holidays and overnights, but we just do everything we possibly can to keep that going. We're just afraid that even if we voice track one overnight shift in an emergency situation, that we're just afraid that that's a slippery slope, that you never know what other influences might factor in and all of a sudden we become voice tracked. So we've done our extreme best to try to keep that thing alive and local all the time. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:09:54 I haven't spent a long time in Green Bay beyond getting to town, taking in a football game and leaving. Tell me a little bit about the weather in the area, because you're by the Lake and all sorts of stuff can roll in. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:10:06 Yeah. The weather usually kicks in from west to east or from southwest to northeast. The Lake doesn't really protect us as much as you might think it does. I know coming from Duluth, Minnesota, usually Lake Superior being such a cold mass of water, a massive body of water that kind of shielded that area from any kind of like tornadoes per se. We'd still get severe thunderstorms here. It's not so much like that. I mean, in fact, just over the summer, there was the first tornado that officially touched down inside the city of Green Bay. In fact, it went like a block away from my house. Luckily, it was just a small one and it just blew over a couple of trees. That was pretty much in downtown residential Green Bay that a tornado moved through. It's rare, but it does happen. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:10:52 What's 100,000 Watts get you from Green Bay? Corey Carter (Guest) 00:10:56 It's actually pretty amazing. It's cool just because of the geographic location. For any listener that doesn't know exactly where we're at. We're about 20 miles west of Lake Michigan, on the Northern side of Lake Michigan, and we can actually oftentimes we'll get text messages from Luddington, Michigan, which is on the other side in the lower part of the state, saying they're hearing us across the Lake. So the signal will shoot across the Lake. But north and South, I mean, this station on this frequency, we can get an enormous coverage area. I mean, sometimes we're 2 hours out listening in vehicles and people are texting in from the suburbs of Milwaukee. In fact, there's been times and maybe it's with atmospheric conditions, but there have been times when people have been like, yeah, we're listening to you guys, and we're tailgating at Miller Park in Milwaukee, and we got you on the radio, and we're like, what? So at times it travels that far, but at least it gets an hour, hour and a half out. This area isn't that big as far as market size. If you look at market size, the Green Bay market is separate from the Appleton, Oshkosh market, and each market is in latter 100s as far as market size. But when you combine them, along with all of our area that we cover, we reach about 900,000 people. So it's a lot bigger of a market than it looks like on paper. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:12:14 You get to be rather old school when it comes to air checking. You've got a lot more people to air check. So how do you work it in remind us how we used to do it. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:12:23 Yeah, it is tough, and we try to get you that's. One thing that we've tried to emphasize more here in the last year or two is trying to get those weekend air checks in, and it is tough because most of the weekenders are doing this as a hobby. We obviously pay them, but they're not making a fortune working for us. They just like to be the prestige of being on Wixx and having a radio job and being associated with winning radio station. So to get those guys in here during the week, it's a little bit challenging sometimes. But like I said, we have a pretty good staff and people are leaving and we're hiring new people all the time. But we really just try to make sure that they have the basics down and then kind of grow them beyond that based on their skill set. But I have a weekend part timer coming in right after this, and we're going to sit down and do an air check. Actually, today. So it's certainly been more of a point, but it is challenging. I always tell them that this radio station in this market is all about serving the community and especially during times of severe weather. For example, we have to go through this whole training that I've kind of put together where I tell the jocks in the weekend, look, if there's severe weather, it's not about what's happening with the Kardashians. It's not about you sounding like a hot Top 40 Jock ramping a song. It's about getting the information out there and getting it out there in a calm, concise manner that will alert the public of what's going on. Like we drop off formatics during those type of situations. And a station as broad, as broad of the demos Wixx has, we can pretty much talk about anything, and it fits to a degree. Duke Wright always tells me he's like, you guys aren't a Top 40 radio station. You guys are a full service radio station that happens to play Top 40 music. And he's right, which is really cool because I'm kind of a news and weather geek. I don't know if you could pick that up quite yet on this interview, but I really enjoy that part of it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:14:24 Tell me about how you pick the music for the station, because it is Top 40, but you can still draw from alternative or from high AC and AC. It's a wonderful coalition on the planet. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:14:37 It is. And one of the reasons, I guess I'll try to take a couple of steps back to answer your question. So Wifxx, for the people that don't know, has been the same frequency, the same call letters, the same logo since 1977 in this market. And it's been either the number one or number two radio station in this market ever since 1977 consecutively. So it's got this giant base of people who grew up with it. And to be honest, now it's a generational radio station where we have women that were listening back in the late Seventies and early 80s, who are now grandmothers, are in their 60s and their 70s, and their kids are listening and their kids kids are listening. It's amazing the amount of people that still listen to this radio station that you wouldn't think listen based on the music that we play. So when we pick the music on this station, we're basically a Top 40 station with an AC audience. Our biggest demo is 25 to 34 year old women. After that, it's 35 to 44 year old women, and after that, it's 45 to 54 women. The last ratings book, we were number one in the market, 35 plus women. And we still do well with the teams. It's just it really is. It's an anomaly. The radio stations ratings are just an anomaly. So when it comes to picking music, it is a challenge in a way that we can go really broad. But at the same time we got to be hip to the kids and not scary to the older demos because we don't necessarily want to lose them either. Like you said, we can draw from a lot of different genres, and we've had success. A lot of our success comes with some of these songs that are outliers that most Top 40 radio stations are either slow to add or slow to get research back on some of the top songs over the years that we've had. A lot of times, AC based songs, slow pop ballads, do really well on this radio station. We just moved that new why don't we song up to power this week based on our weekly online research, because it was testing so well, and we kind of knew that going in that song would do well for us because we've had so much success with songs like that in the past. So we can draw from that. This radio station was really in the 80s and 90s. It was big with the hair bands Bon Jovi. I mean, we have a Bon Jovi Gold song that we still play. It's My Life from 2000 that still tests when we do our online library tests. Back in the day, it was Def Leppard and Bon Jovi, and then it was Nickelback and Daughtry and Theory of a Dead Man and Shine Down in those type of bands that did well. So we've kind of always been like a weird combination of Top 40 rock and AC, and it's always worked kind of fun actually to be able to be that wide of a radio station. And it's just a mass appeal radio station. It really is. And we have a direct competitor in the market that's a straightforward Top 40 radio station, and they're not bad radio station when it comes to music. But when you listen to us and you listen to them, you can definitely tell the difference, that we're just a much wider radio station. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:17:31 And you have the packers. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:17:35 Every game day. We run 8 hours of packers programming without a single song. We are the home of the Packers Radio Network in Green Bay, and Duke's philosophy on that is that, look, if you want to be number one in Green Bay, you're the packers radio station. And that has been a huge part of our brand. We are the packers radio station not only in airing the games, but having this connection with the team and promotional things that the team does around the team and around Lambo. Like, we're the station that's there. We're the station that promotes it. We're the station that is like the connection to the packers. And it's really kind of a cool thing to have that kind of relationship with the professional sports team and especially on a Top 40 radio station. Mike McCarthy, the former coach of the packers. It was draft day. I want to say it was either 2017 or 2018, so it was in April during the offseason, but still, the NFL draft is a big deal. He would interview with our morning show as part of our contract with the packers games every week. So our morning show kind of got to know them beyond just the XS and OS part. They'd give each other crap on the radio, and he would call in, and before they would even air the interview, they talked for 510 minutes off the air, all three of them just BS shooting the breeze and really off the cuff. He trusted them a lot with telling them what was really happening behind the scenes. And those things always didn't make it to the interviews, but it was the morning of the draft, and all of a sudden they get a call and they're like, hey, it's coach. And they're like, oh, hey, coach, what are you up to? Getting ready for the draft. He's like, I'm at your back door. I got coffee. And they're like, what? And there he is standing at the back door with Starbucks for a morning show. And he walks into the studio and he hangs out with him for like an hour on the air, totally unsolicited. And it was just one of those cool moments where you realize that this radio station has a connection with not only the community, but the team and just the fabric of the culture here that is almost impossible to duplicate in this market and certainly would be a position that a lot of radio stations in this country would want to be in. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:19:37 I want to say that he was a Starbucks because he used to get at about 530 or six in the morning. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:19:42 Yes, that was the time he came in. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:19:45 And I only know that because I saw the Super Bowl 2010 documentary on NFL Network. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:19:52 Okay, I haven't seen that yet. It's probably the Starbucks you went to back then. VO 00:19:58 It's kind of a morning routine that I go through and get up early. Green Baysie. I'm metropolis here. So we have three Starbucks in town, and it opens at 530. And I get the venti, a skinny vanilla latte, no foam. Because when you pay over $4 for a cup of coffee and they fill up with half foam, I struggle with that a little bit. I just go through the things I have in front of me, spend ten to 15 minutes drinking a cup of coffee and just getting myself ready for the day. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:20:31 Yep. Memory of an elephant. More with Corey in just a second. We're going to do a deep dive into their relationship with the Green Bay Packers and find out about some of the programming and content opportunities that arise from it. So 8 hours of programming, how much of that is yours or does that come off the network? Corey Carter (Guest) 00:20:50 It all comes off the network. And it's kind of a weird thing, us being 7 miles away from Lambo or whatever. We are here 5 miles. We're not the flagship of the packers. It's WTMJ in Milwaukee, the Am station. And to be honest, I really don't know why that is. It's kind of always been like that. So we are just a network affiliate of the packers. But yeah, we're the packers radio station in Green Bay. We're the only one in the Green Bay market that carries the games well. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:21:16 It'S much better to absorb the production costs and actually be responsible for it all Well. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:21:20 I think that's probably a reason why we continue to not be the flagship, to be honest. I think it's just that we can be the flagship. We can make money selling ads during the games and we don't have to worry about all that other technical stuff right. Selling it and the cost of it and everything. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:21:35 What's the relationship like between your staff and the team? And you're probably also going to have to speak to the relationship between anybody on the street in Green Bay who meets someone from the team because I know a lot of people ask about it. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:21:49 It is unique. It's not uncommon for you to see well, for instance, I'll give you an example. Last year my kids were playing YMCA flag football and I noticed that standing about 10ft away from me watching his kids play football was Mike Daniels, the starting nose tackle for the team, who had a kid my age and everybody was just another parent there. And it was a pretty big deal here. He was a very good defense alignment and one of the best in the NFL for a while and he was out just doing his thing. And I'd play YMCA pickup basketball and Time Montgomery would show up when he was here and just be one of the guys and play and it was not a big deal. And you hear those type of stories quite a bit from this community. So I think that's kind of a unique thing in the market. Now, granted, I've never lived in another NFL market, but you see him at the grocery store, people live near them, they see him driving to work in the morning. Aaron Rogers was at Starbucks today because everybody's posting about it on their Instagram and trying to sneak pictures, silly things like that that happened. So it is kind of unique in that way. And as far as our jocks relationship with the team, we've had kind of a long standing relationship. We used to have a show called Breakfast with the Boys, which then morphed one on one with the boys. But basically every Thursday during the football season for 25 plus years, we dedicated an hour to basically a sit down talk show with our morning show. Even when it was on during the afternoon drive or morning show would come back. We'd have a Packer player and a guest come in, a Packer guest come in and we would do our long talk show in front of a live studio audience. The studio audience would only be able to win their way into the show by winning tickets on the radio station. They would get a picture, an autograph with each of the players. And we had Aaron Rogers, we had Breadfire, we had down the Driver. All the packers were in our atrium in our Studios doing this show in front of this audience with our morning show. So they all kind of get to know each other. And I know when Coach McCarthy was there, our morning show guy, Murphy, was asked to be like the MC at some team building thing that happened at McCarthy's house. They set up something one day instead of doing practice. And Murphy was invited over there to kind of like make announcements and stuff. So we just have this connection with the team that again, I think we're in a very fortunate situation to be in, and a lot of stations would love to be in that situation. And for us, it's just we're part of it. It's really an awesome position to be in. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:24:23 So every year I do go down to a game. I'm actually a Buffalo Bills fan, but I have to wear the Greenbased stuff. That's my adopted team. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:24:32 Sure. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:24:33 Because I married into that. We go down to a restaurant every year, and we have this wonderful meal, but we sit right next to David bacteria every year. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:24:42 Sure. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:24:43 And I say, there's David bacteria. What do we do? Corey Carter (Guest) 00:24:46 We do nothing. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:24:47 We play it cool. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:24:49 Yeah, exactly. You play it cool. This is kind of a neat story, actually. Most David Bachelor. So it was right around Thanksgiving last year, and I was on a late Sunday afternoon, and there was, like a Whole Foods type. There's a store called Fresh Time Here that's kind of like a Whole Foods type store. And my wife and I and my kids were shopping, and all of a sudden we look up and there's David Bacieri and his girlfriend walking in, and we're like, oh, that's pretty positive. It's David Bakari as he walks by. You're like, that's definitely him. He's huge. And then later on, I'm getting nuts. So we're getting pecans for some baking something we were going to Bake for Thanksgiving. And I look over to my left, and I'm like, that person looks familiar. I didn't want to stare. And so I went to my wife. I'm like, I think that. And she said, yeah, I'm pretty sure it is. And it was Danica Patrick. She's there buying nuts with me at Fresh Time. And unfortunately, there's two aisles of nuts. I had to go to the opposite aisle to find the pecans I was looking for. But there were none of those little plastic Baggies left. So then I had to go back near Danica and reach around her to get the Baggies because there were no Baggies in my aisle. So she probably thought I was trying to get close to her and sneak a peek or whatever, and her cart was just overflowing with organic foods. But I was like, wow, I just ran into Danica Patrick shopping at the grocery store. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:26:14 It's kind of funny what happens to the ratings numbers when the game is on. What's the share? Corey Carter (Guest) 00:26:20 It's really hard to tell. That's a good question because we're still in a diary market. We're not in a Ppm market. It would be interesting to see with Ppm what would happen, although the sample size would probably be super small. But with a diary market, it's really hard to drill down. You can drill down to days, but with the games now being different days and different times, it's really hard for us to tell. I know that when you go around town on a packers day, the people that aren't at home watching it on TV, I mean, you pull into any gas station, any store, and the game audio is on. And more times than not, it's the radio broadcast from Wixx. I have it streaming through the grocery store. And no matter where you go to the grocery store, you're hearing the booming broadcast of our broadcast, which is pretty cool. So I know it's certainly listened to I really don't know the numbers, so I would imagine they're big because I know our sales Department gets pretty high rates for the ads during those games. Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:27:19 I forgot how hard it is to track sports when you're in a diary market. I was tracking the Winnipeg Jets for many years, and I can only really sort of count on Tuesday being a consistent night when they would play. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:27:31 Sure. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:27:31 You've got the packers who are on prime time, so sometimes it goes Sunday night and then it's Thursday and then Monday, and you can't do consecutive Sundays because they're not always doing Sunday. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:27:41 Yeah, right. Exactly. And then you start drilling it down per day and you're trying to look at demos and pretty soon you're looking at 13 people. So it's harder to say that. But I will say that if for nothing else, I think one of the big reasons why we do this and have the packers on is, again, just for the image and the brand that we are associated. We're the big station in town and the big station has the packers because the packers are the biggest brand in the town and in the state. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:28:10 What's a tip for anybody who's coming from the outside on getting a hotel in Green Bay for a game. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:28:15 Oh, boy. Be prepared to pay. I don't know. I think most of them do two to three night minimums, and they Jack up the rates, I think. What did they say the economic impact of a packers game here was it was either like $11 million to the local economy or like maybe it was eleven and 19 might be a little high. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:28:35 But actually, Cory is right on both accounts. I did a little fact checking. Packer game day brings in $12.3 million in the market, and there's an additional $7 million brought in through people coming to watch training camps. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:28:50 It's just an exorbitant amount of money that comes into the community for the packers games. And one thing that I think a lot of people don't understand, because I didn't understand this until I moved here is that Green Bay is a small blue collar town. It really is. That happens to have a professional football team. I came from Duluth, Minnesota, which is a very blue collar town. And this is really not that much bigger than Duluth. I mean, the Metro area of Green Bay is maybe $250,000, and that's it. So it's really not a big town. And it's surprising because you just think with the packers, you just think it's a little smaller than Minneapolis. Well, no, it's a lot smaller. It's totally a different landscape in Minneapolis. It's completely different area. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:29:33 I drive it from Minneapolis to Green Bay. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:29:35 Sure. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:29:36 I can't believe that a Stadium just pops up out of nowhere after 3 hours of dairy farms. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:29:40 Oh, I know. Yeah. And then that drive across the state is like the worst. I make that to go back home to Duluth multiple times a year. And yeah, that gets to be a long drive. But yeah, you're just driving and you get into Green Bay and you're in a residential area, and then you look up and boom, it's Lambo sitting right there. Actually, it's a little bit sad because when you first move here, you're in awe that the first year you drive by, you're like, boy, that's cool. And then, like everything else, you get used to it and you don't even notice it after a while. But then when friends come into town or family that have never been here, they're like, Whoa, that's Lambo. And you're like, yeah, it's pretty cool. It's just like right there in the middle of everything. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:30:16 So the answer to the earlier question about the hotels was Airbnb. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:30:20 Yeah, I was going to say that was my other suggestion. Yes, Airbnb. I also have a double bed in my basement. So if any radio geeks have listened this far into the podcast and want to reach out to me, maybe I'll wrench in my basement. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:30:33 I'd like to file a complaint because I didn't get to hear one of my favorite bits. Which one the day after they played the Eagles, which was a Friday morning, Murphy in the morning. Don't they do a bit called Get It Together, Lambo? Corey Carter (Guest) 00:30:46 Oh, my God. Yes, they do. They say Get it together, Lambeau. And yeah, I really should have those guys podcast that separate because they podcast the entire show. You have to dig through it a little bit. But so what they do is they take the police scanner, squat, talk, I guess. I don't know what you could call it, but it's the police blotter. Of all of the events that happen at Lambeau the day before and night games are usually the best because people have had all day to drink. Usually Sunday night games are a total mess because people are just lit up by the time the game starts and they read through them and they do it to the it's my favorite. They have that. I don't even know what the name of the song is. Now it's Shots by LMFAO and Little John, the East Side boy. And if you listen to it, it's just this kind of like party rock ads, except more just about getting drunk and wasted and crazy and they're just reading the police water up. VO 00:31:41 Speaking of Lambeau, busy day once again for law enforcement yesterday at Lambeau Field. It always is on game day. And that's why we present to you, ladies and gentlemen, Get it together Lambeau on WIXX. VO 00:32:07 10:20 a.m. Group that smelled of THC walked past officers. Officers were not able to catch up to them and lost sight of them in the parking lot. VO 00:32:15 11:19 A.m. Oneida at Armed Forces person fell needs medical assistance. 11:43 A.m. Associated banking 200 and 07:00 P.m.. Ejection. Section 124, 126 Upper 200 and 13:00 P.m.. VO 00:32:28 Male was ejected earlier from Shopgo gate for intoxication. He is now Oneida gate trying to get back into the game because his father is still inside. VO 00:32:39 02:17 P.m.. Ejection. Section 637. Edward K Born 1987 alcohol related at 02:24 P.m.. Ejection. VO 00:32:48 Female ejected out of Fleet Farm gate after disturbance. Two officers are currently out with her. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:32:52 But the way they deliver it and the way they read it is just hilarious. And it's so funny that it's just such a shit show. And even though the vast majority of the 80,000 people at Lambeau are fine, I mean, there's just always a few idiots that are just drunk and out of line. And it makes just for a fun radio bit that people really look forward to the day after home games here. It's been a fun bit that they came up with and yeah, like you said, you heard it. So it's just unbelievable sometimes some of the things you hear through that. And I give credit to our law enforcement because I imagine that game days for them is probably one of their least favorite days of the week. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:30 I listened to it after a Sunday night or it went seven minutes after the Seahawks were in town and I was still laughing in Shawano. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:33:39 Yeah, it is quite a bit that they have come across, but yeah, I mean, hey, what an awesome way to not really do any work other than just read what's provided for us. Thank you, Green Bay and Drunk Packer fans for giving us awesome show content. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:59 What did you learn from your first job at Hardies? Corey Carter (Guest) 00:34:04 Well, my mom told me about my mom told me that I needed to work because the car insurance was going to go up regardless or not if I even got a car, which I didn't at 16. So I would need to cover that, which sucked at the time. But looking back on it, it was a good life lesson. And she always told me, she said, every other job you have after this will be better. And I was a burger flipper, and it was the worst job there. And she was right. Every other job has been better than that. And I will still say for some reason, someday I'm going to lay down on the couch and figure out the answer to this. But I still have dreams semi regularly, maybe a couple of times a year that I go back to work there and I'm where I'm at now. But I go back to work at Hardy's, and I'm on a shift and I'm doing the same things I did at Hardy's in the back, grilling burgers and grilling buns and all that stuff that I did that I hated. It must have affected me deeply psychologically. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:34:56 How do you feel when you're flipping the burgers in your dream? Corey Carter (Guest) 00:34:58 Well, it's always like a weird thing. I'm always like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe I'm going back to working at Hardies. This is unbelievable. But then in my mind, I remember exactly how to do it and the procedure you had to do back there to make the perfect burger. And they had it all down. And the order of which you did things and how much every topping you put on the burger, like it's still all in my brain from 20 some years ago. So it comes back subconsciously in those dreams. It's kind of weird. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:25 I'm not sure. And by the way, I analyze dreams, not professionally, but just for fun. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:35:30 Well, give it to me. What does that mean? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:31 I just don't know if it somewhere lands between you trying to get organization. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:35:36 Okay, sure. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:38 Order of operation, as we like to sort of look at it, because there's an order of operation to that. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:35:44 Okay. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:45 I also wonder if it might be a little bit of job insecurity, perhaps, but I would tend to lean, I think, towards just getting organized. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:35:52 Okay, yeah, that probably is because every two weeks I have to kind of, like, clean my desk off because it just gets to be a mass of random pieces of paper that people have left here and that I've left here. So that may be it. I'll have to see if there's any correlation with that. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:36:06 No, I can tell you. Actually, it is because knowing what you've told me about how you do your job, you've got a lot of air checks, you've got a lot of things on your mind. You've got a lot of programming to take care of. So it's really about am I organized? Do I have all the condiments in place to make this burger? I mean, essentially what you're doing every day is you're making the Wi xx burger. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:36:23 Right yeah, that's true. Hey, there we go. I'm going to tell my wife that she's going to be impressed. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:36:28 Now that you've solved the dream it will likely go away. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:36:31 Okay. Yeah, that's interesting. Very interesting. Thank you. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:36:35 That's free of charge. I don't charge for that. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:36:37 Yeah. Maybe you should start. You might be able to make a little side money. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:36:40 That'd be horrifying. Bonus question. What makes your French toast better than mine oh, I don't know. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:36:49 I put a little vanilla in there. A little cinnamon. My kids say I make the best French toast. I don't know I don't make much I'm not a Cook at all but that is my one specialty because it's one of my favorite foods. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:37:02 By the way, next time I'm down in green Bay I will leave you some Maple syrup from my mom's farm to put on that French toast. I will leave that for you. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:37:11 That would be amazing. Please do. Yeah, next time you're here. Certainly. Let's get together. That'd be great. I'd love to show you around a little bit. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:37:18 Thanks. I'm there once a year so I'll see you next year. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:37:20 Yeah, sounds good man. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:37:22 Thanks a lot for taking the time being on the podcast and go Packers I appreciate it, man. Corey Carter (Guest) 00:37:26 Take care, man. Amanda Logan (VO) 00:37:27 Thanks for listening to the Sound Off Podcast. Find us online at soundoffpodcast.com, and connect with us with wherever great social media is housed. The show is imaged using the sounds from Core Image Studios. Written and hosted by Matt Cundill. A production of the Soundoff Media company.

Terry O'Reilly is a radio guy. He will tell you on the show that he is an ad guy - and that might be partially true. However, it is apparent that when you listen to his take on the world of media, advertising, marketing and radio, that he is grounded in radio. His show, Under the Influence, which grew from its previous incarnation of The Age of Persuasion (2006-2011) and O'Reilly on Advertising (2005). The show is now in its eighth season on CBC Radio and has expanded further into the podcast world. Terry and his wife Debbie, along with daughters Callie, Shea and Sidney work on the program year round to create some of the most amazing audio about marketing. The show has developed a loyal following from countless Canadians and listeners around the world. Here are some things in the show we learned: The show's idea came about over beers one day which involved Larry McInnis who was the creative director at CHUM in Toronto. As a complete aside, Larry is a graduate of Acadia University which is where I went to school. :) There is a Beatles reference in every show. That information lives on the Wikipedia page but Terry confirmed that he is a big fan and in his most recent episode spoke about how John Lennon was the best marketer amongst the Beatles. Terry is starting a company for podcasters... details will be announced soon but we were stoked that he announced that on our podcast. As we mentioned at the outset, Terry is a radio guy. When I asked him to come on the podcast he was aware of the show and had taken in a few episodes. High praise! Podcast aficionados will love hearing how Terry has embraced podcasting. The entire back catalogue of Under The Influence is now available in Podcast form. Connect to it here. Terry has three books and is working on a 4th this summer. Connect to all things Terry here. Transcript: Amanda Logan (VO) 00:00:01 This is the podcast for broadcast. The Sound Off podcast with Matt Cundill. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:01 This episode is being released on Canada Day weekend, 2019. And this week we have the host of one of Canada biggest podcasts and radio shows, Terry O'Reilly, who is the host of Under The Influence on the CBC. Two of the things I really, really like about this show first is the music. The theme song is so well matched to the show. And also there's Terry's voice. You know who it is when you hear it. The stories about advertising and marketing he tells along with the production make for one of the best audio experiences available. Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:00:50 The Jump the Shark episode has gone down in history as the moment when Happy Days storylines took a dive and never recovered. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:04 Under The Influence is a family affair. Most of the writing and organization of Under The Influence is created along with his wife Debbie and daughter Sydney and Callie. Terry O'Reilly spoke to me from the Tearstream Mobile studio, which goes where Terry goes, so he can record anywhere. You know, this marks the second show in a row that we've had a Ryerson grad appear. So, Terry, how did you get from Sudbury to Ryerson? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:01:32 There's a good story. Well, you know what? I was very lucky because I grew up in Sudbury. I went to Sudbury Secondary High School, and one of the courses, Matt, in that school was a film and television course. We had our own studio equipment, cameras, lighting with the full studio accoutrement. And I was able to- for five years, from grades 9 to 13, I studied film and television, which is an amazing thing in a small Northern town, right? So I fell in love with it. Of all the courses I took, that was my favorite by far. So when it came time to decide on a University, I wanted to study radio- I wanted to study television, actually, not radio, which is the ironic part of this story. And I applied to Ryerson in Toronto and went down for an interview. And I think the reason I got in, Matt, wasn't so much that my marks were that great. I mean, I was kind of an average student, but I had a reel. I brought a reel with me of television shows I produced that had aired across Northern Ontario. And so I think it was really that that got me into Ryerson. So with that, I became a student of radio and television arts at Ryerson. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:02:49 So what was your first job after Ryerson, and was it in advertising or was it in television? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:02:55 Well, the interesting part about that was, at that time, there were really no advertising courses to be had. I don't think any universities or colleges in this country, anyway, in this province, maybe Ontario, offered those courses. And I didn't know anything really about advertising. But every Wednesday morning we would have a lecture class at Ryerson at RTA, where someone from the industry would come in and talk to us. So it would mean maybe a journalist or maybe an anchorman or maybe a documentary filmmaker. And one day, two people from the advertising industry came in to talk to us, and talked about their industry, and talked about selling ideas and strategy and creativity and working with clients and deadlines and studios and actors. And I sat in the back of that room absolutely thrilled, and I saw my future. There it was. It was just in a lecture class that I found where in the broadcasting world I could end up. So when I got out of Ryerson, I started to look for a job as a copywriter, an ad writer in an advertising agency, sent out 60 resumes across the country. And this is the funny part, got back 61 rejection letters. One place rejected me twice, and nobody would have me in an advertising agency because I had no experience. But I ended up getting a job as a copywriter at a small radio station in Burlington, Ontario, called FM 108. And that was the start of my career. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:26 What were those first few days of watching television like for you? Because you said you wanted to be in TV, there must have been some TV shows that influenced your decision to move towards TV. Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:04:35 Radio wasn't a big factor in Sudbury because there were only two radio stations at that time. Because Sudbury is surrounded by rock, hence the nickel mining. Radio signals didn't bounce into the city. All those romantic stories you hear about people listening to far off radio signals at night and becoming passionate about radio. That wasn't my experience because we couldn't get any of those signals. So television really was my portal. So I was a child of the 60s and 70s, so I loved comedy. So my dad and I would watch The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres and Gilligan's Islands and all those sitcoms and The Dean Martin Show and The Dean Martin Roasts. And comedy was really a big thing in my house. My dad loved it. He loved to laugh. I love sitting in the living room with him watching those shows. So television and movies, I have to say, when movies came to town, too, it was the visual aspect of television and movies that initially I loved. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:05:37 You get your first job at FM 108. The signal, by the way, is still there in the region. Did you have to write commercials a little bit differently for FM radio? Because the regulations were different and the product was so different as well? Between Am and FM? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:05:52 I would say no, Matt. First of all, it was baptism by fire for me because I was the only writer, so the creative Department comprised of me. So I got out of Briarson and then got a job, and I had to run a creative Department in a radio station, and I didn't know what I was doing. And we had 150 ongoing retail clients in any given time. So I was writing probably between ten and 20 commercials a day. And I think that baptism by fire really made me fall in love with radio and that job, which I really didn't want because I wanted to be in an advertising agency. That job really influenced the trajectory of my career. As it turned out that radio would become my career down the road, and it was because I fell in love with it at that small radio station. So I learned how to craft radio commercials there because I had to do a lot of them. I got to try a lot of things because I didn't have to answer to anybody but the clients. I had no creative director. I was the creative director, so I got to experiment and I got to try things. I got to fail a lot. I had some successes and I really became confident in the media. So when I eventually got a job with a big Toronto advertising agency a couple of years later, radio was really my strength, and that was the one thing most advertising agencies lacked were writers that understood the medium. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:07:22 What was the first agency that you worked at? Was it straight after FM 108? Did you go straight to the agency after that? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:07:28 No. I had a job at a small ad agency in Burlington, which was more of a radio and a little bit of print, so I was there for two years, but I really wanted to get back to Toronto into a big agency. So I worked on a portfolio at night of ideas, and then when I felt my portfolio was ready, I called up various creative directors in Toronto begging for an interview, and I got one with this flamboyant South African creative director named Trevor Goodgall at an agency called Campbell Ewald. And he liked my book and took me on, and that was my first shot at the big time. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:08:07 Why is marketing such a mystery? It seems like when we finish the commercial or we finish our piece of marketing, we feel very satisfied and we feel it's going to be successful. But really whether it becomes successful or it's a failure is really up to the masses. Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:08:22 It is. I say that marketing is like staring at a 500 piece puzzle all sky, and it's a lot of mystery and it's a very difficult thing because there are so many factors where it can go wrong. You need a great strategy to begin with. You need a great selling strategy, and from that Springs the creative. The creative is just an expression, a creative expression of the strategy. So if you haven't got a great strategy at the beginning, the chances of the ads working are pretty slim. And I think that's where most advertising falls down is there isn't great strategy underpinning it, and then you need a great selling idea and you need a great execution of that idea and then you need the right media buy. So the right people hear that idea, and then you've got to cross your fingers that everything in the marketplace is going to go right because you can't control how easy the product is for people to find or where it is on the shelf, or is there a competitive product right beside it that's cheaper, that even though you drove the person to the grocery store, they're going to pick the product beside it because there's so many factors in whether or not a marketing campaign will work. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:09:31 So what's the most pivotal point in the process of putting together a piece of marketing where you see it could go off the rails at maybe the production part, or it can go off the rails and you've got too many people involved with the project. What's the most critical part of the entire process? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:09:47 Well, that's a hard question to answer, Matt. As you said, it's also interdependent. I would say the strategy is the most critical part, believe it or not. I mean, I spent my life as a creative guy, but I relied so heavily on the strategy to be right and insightful. And you can never be greater than the strategy. The creative idea can really never. It's pretty rare for a creative idea to be greater than the basic strategy it's based on. So when I go to speak to young people and universities now, marketing courses, I always say to them, the industry has a lot of great creative people in it right now, but what we're starved for is great strategic thinkers. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:10:32 When did the idea of doing a marketing show on radio come to fruition? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:10:37 So I co founded Pirate Radio and Television in 1990. And every year for many years, I would stage a creative radio seminar. So I would rent a big theater in downtown Toronto. I would invite 200 young green copywriters from across the country. I would feed them breakfast, lunch, and an open bar at the end of the day. And I would stand on that stage, Matt, and I would teach for 7 hours. I would stand on that stage and I would teach them how to create effective radio. It was script structure, humor versus drama, 30 verse 62nd commercials, casting, use of music, studio protocol, how to present radio. I would play 70 great radio commercials from around the world. So I would do that every year. And one summer I was out to lunch with a few radio friends of mine. We're having some beards in the Sunshine. And one of those people, Larry McGinnis, used to be the creative director of Chum, said to me, you know that radio seminar you do every year? And I said, yes. He said that would make a great radio show. And I said, who would ever run that? And you thought for a moment and he said, the CBC. And I said, the advertising free CBC would run a show on advertising. And he said, I think they'd run that show. So we laughed about that and we had a couple more beers and then I went home and I couldn't get that idea out of my mind. And Mike Pence, who was also at that lunch, called me up and said, I think what Larry's idea is really interesting. He said, do you want to team up and go pitch that idea to CBC? And I said, yeah, let's do that. So we walked in with a one page pitch, and it was a really simple pitch. We said, Advertising is kind of like architecture. It's everywhere in your life. And most people hate it and they despise it and they wish it would disappear. But in reality, it is one of the most fascinating industries out there because it's the study of human nature. Mike Tenant and I, we said, we're not journalists, we're not academics. We're working admin in the trenches. We have experience and we have access. And we want to take people on a backstage pass, give them a backstage pass to the closed world of advertising. And Chris Boyce, the head of CBC Radio, sat there and he said, we'll take it. And then Mike and I had to figure out how to Mount a radio show, and that's how that started. That was 2005. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:13:12 So at that point, are you recording down at the CDC or are you recording in your own studio? And how did the first season go? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:13:20 We recorded everything at Pirate, our Studios. By the way, we're an outside production, so neither Mike and I work for CBC. So we licensed the show to CBC, which continues to this day. Mike is not a part of the show anymore, but we license the show to CBC. The first season was interesting. Cbc said to us, we'll take you on as a summer replacement series. So for July and August, when one of our bigger shows goes on hiatus, we'll air your show. And we were thrilled at that. We were just thrilled at the opportunity. So we recorded our shows. And when the first one hit the air, Mike and I braced ourselves because we really anticipated a lot of blowback from CBC listeners because people do tune into CBC, many of them, to escape the commercial radio world. And we wondered how they would take to a show about advertising. So we braced ourselves and the feedback was instantaneous and it was wonderful. People were warm and intrigued and curious. They said, we love the show. Tell us more. The feedback was so overwhelmingly positive that CBC kept us on as a permanent show before we'd even finished our run of eight weeks. So it was a pretty wonderful start. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:14:42 So that started in 2005, ran to about 2011. But the show was called The Age of Persuasion, correct? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:14:49 That's right. Well, the first season, Matt was O'Reilly on advertising and that was just going to be that summer show. And then when we realized they were going to keep us on the next season, we kind of really retooled the show, gave it some structure, looked at the long term, and called it The Age of Persuasion. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:07 Mike left the show in 2011, and then it became under the Influence, correct? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:15:11 That's right. So Mike wanted to go and pursue other show ideas he had because he had a lot of cachet with the CBC by that point. So that left me. I had to kind of rebuild the show without my partner. So a lot of change that was like from 2005 to 2011. I mean, there were no smartphones when we started. There was no Facebook, no YouTube. Maybe YouTube was a couple of months old. I mean, all of social media did not exist. Podcasting really didn't exist when we started the show. So when it came time for me to kind of retool the show again, I took that into consideration. So I expanded the focus of the show from just advertising, which Age of Persuasion was, to marketing, which is what under the influence is advertising is just one tendril of marketing. And I wanted to reflect the changes in the whole zeitgeist that it was really moving from an industry of persuasion more to an industry of influence. So I retooled the show, I renamed the show, and I broadened the scope of the show, and that became under the Influence. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:16:21 I actually have that down as a question. Did social media marketing have a lot to do with the retooling of the whole thing? So I just wanted to give myself a little check Mark. Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:16:30 Yeah, and it did, because the digital world really turned the advertising world upside down, and it changed everything. Suddenly, consumers had a direct line to advertisers. It became a two way conversation for the first time in advertising history, which is huge. We had front row seats suddenly to see how an Advertiser dealt with their customers, how they dealt with complaints. The transparency was huge all of a sudden. And I wanted to reflect that in the show because, like I said, it changed everything. And as you saw the legacy mediums like newspapers, etc. E started to struggle. I mean, it was a sea change in my business. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:17:19 When you look at radio today, do you see radio going through the same struggles, or is radio as vibrant as ever? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:17:25 That's a good question. I'm always trying to discern that because I'm such a big fan of radio. When I look at the data, it looks like radio is contracting a little bit every year. But I think podcasting is kind of rescuing radio, that people can listen to their favorite radio shows on their own time, kind of like Netflix. You can choose when to listen to a show instead of missing a show or having to sit down in front of your radio at 1130 on a Thursday morning. You can catch it whenever you want. I think podcasting has gone a long way to rescuing radio. I also had this ongoing problem with commercial radio that I don't think it's that interesting these days. It's not that creative. And I was hoping that when satellite radio appeared that it would kind of jolt commercial radio into just kind of rebooting itself. But I don't think that really happened. And when I look at my three daughters who are now in their 20s, they don't listen to radio. They listen to a lot of music, but they don't do it on radio. And I don't think radio courted them, if you know what I mean. I don't think radio in this digital age thought themselves. We really should try and figure out a way to retain our young listeners so they stick with us. And I don't think radio really did that because my daughters, as a prime example, never listen to radio. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:18:50 Well, I go to the radio conferences and the conversation does come up. How do we engage and how do we do this? And I think they know they have to do it, but there's a huge knowing doing gap that's been going on. Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:19:02 I think that's right, Matt, and I think it's been going on for a long time. I don't know if there has to be a generational change in the ownership of those stations for them to realize or to really bring some new thinking to it. But remember, back in the 60s, radio was so interesting and so dangerous, and the disk jockeys had a lot of freedom, and there was so much great, exciting, interesting radio happening. And it's been a long time. I mean, maybe you could point to Howard Stern as the one standout example of doing something differently, but I mean, it's been a long time since we've had some really interesting, dangerous radio out there. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:19:39 In just a second, I'm going to ask Terry more about the podcast monetizing, the content, music rights, and how long does it take Terry and his team to create the show and what other subtle intricacies go into making this successful audio? And now, in an ironic twist, our personal quest to monetize podcasts with some mid role marketing. You mentioned that commercial radio doesn't feel very creative. One of the things I notice is how little writing goes into commercial radio programs. But your show, you've got 40 hours of research every week that goes into every episode. It takes about three days to write, 12 hours to record in the studio, and that's every episode. Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:20:25 I call it joyful stress. Matt. I love doing the show, but it is a lot of work, depending on the topic. It's about 30 to 40 hours of research split between my researchers and me. And then it takes me about three days to write the show. My daughter co writes it with me now and then it takes, as you said, 12 hours to record and mix the show because there's a lot going on in my show because I always believed that a great podcast shouldn't just have great content, but it should be sonically interesting. So we make use of the FM spectrum. So we mix left to right if you hear the footsteps of somebody who will move from your left speaker to your right speaker. We have sound effects, we have commercials, we have music, we have news clips. Sometimes I invite actors to come in and do funny little bits for me. So it's quite an ambitious 27 minutes and the music that goes into it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:21:21 I believe there's a Winnipeg connection with the music. Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:21:25 That's right. Ari Posner. Yes. Ari Posner and Ian La Fever co wrote the theme music for the show right from the beginning, from 2005. We've updated it over the years, but it's the same theme. And so, yeah, I love that theme. I have to say I've always loved it. So that came from Rene. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:21:44 So do you have a podcast or do you have a radio show? How do you explain it to people? Because you seem very ingrained in podcast, but it's still an incredibly popular radio show. So do you just call it audio? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:21:55 Yeah. Well, that's an interesting question. I've noticed recently in the award shows around the world that the categories called Now Radio and Audio, which is very interesting to me. The last time I judged the London International Awards, I want to say that was maybe eight years ago. I said to the founder of the award show I was judging the radio category. I said you have to change the radio category. There's so much happening in radio that are not 30 or 60 seconds anymore. So you have to really expand the criteria for your award shows. So that was really eight years ago, me seeing that sea change happening, that there was big ideas happening that weren't just confined to a radio dial. So when I look at our show, I think of it as a radio show on the air and as a podcast. But I have to say that the podcast side of it is growing immensely. We've had probably close to 12 million downloads since January 1. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:22:53 Of the businesses I started to get into over the last ten years was voiceover. And of course, you being an advertising, you've worked with so many voiceover people. One of my favorite episodes from the previous year was Living to Tell the Tales and you got to tell the story of Alan Arkin and the Moose Head ad. And so when you look at voiceover, what about the changes that are going over in that industry? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:23:14 For the past 25 years? Until 2012, I was a commercial director. So pirate, that was really our stock and trade was producing radio commercials in the sound for television. So my job was to work with actors every single day just to give you a sense of how many actors I would work within a year. I would direct over 500 commercials a year. And I did it tally once that I probably directed close to I think it was 13,000 commercials, and most commercials have two to three actors or more in them. So you can do the math there. Casting was always incredibly important to me and to Pirate. I think that if you ask people who worked with Pirate, they would tell you that one of the big reasons they chose to work with us was because of our eye forecasting, because I always searched long and hard to find just the right actors for every role. And that has changed, too, because back in the day, you would have to bring in actors and do auditions, which still happens, of course. But then as technology improved and the digital world appeared, you could audition actors over the Internet and you could listen to reels over the Internet. You weren't just pulling cassettes and real to real tape anymore. And then we could patch. And then what happened then, probably in the early 90s, Matt, was I could have an actor in Los Angeles and an actor in Toronto, and I could be directing the spot, and they're having the dialogue. So suddenly that opened up my casting opportunities to cast from around the world. I would work with actors in London, England, and then La and New York and Vancouver and Montreal and all from our Toronto Studios. So the technology really changed the world of radio. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:25:00 When you think back to that first meeting with Chris Boyce at the CBC, did you ever think that how fortunate it was that you were going to be producing and licensing this show to CBC? Because a lot of people, starting from about 2006, right up to 2012, they would just let a network do the whole show. Do you ever think back to how fortunate you were to keep it? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:25:24 I do. And I have to tell you something. It was naivete. So when it came time to negotiate the contract with CBC, I just assumed that it would be as a licensing situation where I would license the show to CBC. I didn't know any different. So when I proposed that to CBC, they kind of hesitated for a moment and said, oh, okay, well, let's talk about that. And then we hammered out a contract. It wasn't any negotiating genius on my behalf. I thought that was the way it went. But when I look back on it, we're so fortunate because we really do have entire control of our show. And CBC, God bless them. I have to tell you, they have been so good to us over 14 years. They have never interfered with the show. Every year they give us lots of feedback on ratings and how we're doing. But when it comes to contract time, they always say, we love what you do, keep on doing what you're doing. So when do you ever have that much freedom in your professional life? It's quite astounding. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:26:28 And as you see the changes in audio going forward, when did you know that podcast would become such an intricate part of under the influence? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:26:36 When we started seeing the numbers, when we started seeing so CBC is really great for giving us every week like pages of feedback, how many people are tuning into our show for how many minutes, how many downloads, how many page views we get all of that incredible audience measurement back. And we started to see about, I would say five years ago, this incredible bump in the podcasting numbers. And for many years, we were the number one podcast in Canada, if you looked at the itunes charts. And before that, it became a 7000 podcast world on itunes. We're still very high up on the charts. But anyway, we saw this number growing in leaps and bounds every week, so that's when we knew something big was happening in podcasting. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:27:25 And then I think there were some ideas about how you could monetize the show, because I saw the show being sold on CDs, and then I saw it being sold on itunes. And were you happy with the way that worked out? And did you have any luck in trying to monetize it from that side? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:27:41 This is a big area of interest for me is how to monetize podcasts. So just to address those three beats you mentioned, we put together a CD box set many years ago of the ten best episodes from our very first season. So from O'Reilly on Advertising 2005, we put together a ten episode CD box set, and we just made that available many years ago. I'm trying to guess what year now, maybe 20, 12, 20, 13. Cbc wanted to put our archives behind a paywall and I think they wanted to experiment with our show because we are an outside show and they wanted to see how much push back they would get from listeners for charging for archives. So they put us behind a paywall that generated revenue. But I wouldn't say it generated a ton of revenue in the last two years. We've had lots of talks with CBC and we said we'd like to come out from behind the pay wall. We want to make our archives available to listeners at no charge because we want to increase our listenership on podcasts. And let's see if we can insert advertising into the podcast. So that's where we're at now. Cbc finds advertisers and search them into our podcast, but the podcasts are now free and we're releasing them slowly so we don't overwhelm our listeners, but we're releasing all of our archives slowly as time goes on. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:29:05 So you have a show about advertising, which is now taking on a little bit of advertising. And I did see some Twitter blowback on. I think you read a pre roll very simple preroll just on the podcast. And then I saw some blowback. And it may not be just blowback for your show, but for the entire CBC, which doesn't always have a lot of advertising. Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:29:27 Yeah. I mean, the thing that I understand the blowback the blowback is we pay our tax dollars paid for the CBC. Why are we having to insert advertising in it? But here's the thing. I mean, the CBC suffers from incredible cutbacks. And I mean, just every year, with the exception of Trudeau kind of reinvesting in the CDC, every government, Liberal or conservative, has just chipped away hundreds of millions of dollars of drastic cuts to budget. And CBC needs to find ways to generate revenue. That's just the way it is. And your tax dollars, by the way, it's $34 of your taxes go to CBC every year. $34. That's a pretty good bargain. I would say that's like two or three Starbucks coffees and you get all the programming for CBC. So I would say that's a bargain. Anyway. You look at it in other countries, Matt, the UK, I think it's over $100. In Australia, it's over $100. Only $34 of your tax dollars goes to support the CBC. And you look at all the great programming from CBC. So I say if they need to generate revenue from advertising podcasts, I say go for it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:30:39 Are you aware that your show is a gateway drug for podcasting? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:30:44 Well, I love to hear that. That's music to my ears. Well, like I say, that's high praise. If you say that we've been podcasting a long time now. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:30:53 I'll tell you the story is every time I tell people about podcasting and what I do, they say, well, I only like to listen to Terry O'Reilly. And I said, well, give me your phone and I show them the purple app. And I say, look, here's Terry, he lives right here on your phone. And that's their first podcast, by the way, for demographics purposes, it's women 25 to 44 who will often hook in right there. Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:31:19 Well, I love to hear that. We're actually going to launch a podcast company soon, which is kind of an announcement that I haven't really made yet. But that's how much we believe in podcasting is. We're going to start we're starting my family. It's a family business. We're starting a podcasting company. We will be creating original podcasts. But part of our marketing has always been Matt to market the show as a whole, to market each episode as they come out. But the third leg on that stool is to make sure people know how to download a podcast. So we will often use social media to say, hey, if you've never downloaded a podcast before, here's the four easy steps to do that. And here's how you'll find our show. So we never assume that everybody on social media is a podcast listener. So we will even do that kind of basic marketing to get people to tune into our show. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:14 Are you frustrated that it's so hard to have music commercial music played on a podcast? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:32:18 It drives me crazy. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:20 Do you have any ideas to solve that? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:32:22 I don't, because it involves the music unions, the publishing houses and broadcasters to come to some kind of royalty agreement. It seems to exist in the States. I hear a lot of original needle drop music on podcasts in the States, but you can't do it here. And I always warn young podcasters not to put needle drop music in their shows because every piece of music is coded. That's how Shazam works, right? And if they were to create a royalty agreement, you never know if it's going to be retroactive. You never know if Sony Music is just cataloging all the music they're hearing on podcasts and then come at you for royalties. For three years worth of royalties, you could be in a lot of deep trouble. So it's an enduring and ongoing frustration for me because we have to build two versions of our show, one for broadcast and one for podcast, where we'll take out all the needle drop music and replace it with licensed music. And when I do music shows, it's really frustrating when I'm talking about music marketing or talking about a band or something to do with music, where I have to kind of skirt around it. In podcasting, it's annoying. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:32 But you can still manage to slip in a Beatles reference every show. Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:33:35 Well, only loyal listeners would know that. So I'm the world's biggest Beetle fan. So in every single episode on air on CBC, not on podcast, but in every single episode on the air, I have one Beatle reference in every single show. It could be a piece of music, it could be a verbal reference. But there's one Easter egg hidden in every show. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:55 As we record this, we're moving towards July. Where are we in the cycle of the year for under the Influence, for moving into summer. What are you going to be doing this summer? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:34:04 Well, our last show airs on Saturday for the season. That's the end of the 2019 season. Normally we take July and August off to recuperate because it really is not a seven day week proposition. This show just if you did the math on it. Right, all the research, three days of writing, another day to record it's really seven days to put the show together. So we take July and August off, and then we'll start researching in September. We'll start writing and recording in October, and I try to have eight to ten episodes recorded and in the bank by the time we return to air in January. I'm writing a book this summer, so that will be my task. This summer is really getting my book underway. So that'll be what I'll be noodling over July and August. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:34:52 When do you decide that it's time to write a book? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:34:54 Well, the first book that Mike and I wrote together called The Age of Persuasion, we got a great call from a great editor in the city and said, I'm a fan of the show. Would you be interested in writing a book? And we said, we would love to write a book. So that's how the first book came. The second one called this I know marketing Lessons from under the Influence was a book I wanted to write for a long time. It was a book aimed at entrepreneurs and small to medium businesses who didn't have an advertising agency on speed dial. So I wanted to bring all my knowledge of marketing to advertisers who wouldn't have access to that kind of thinking otherwise. So that was the case there. And this third book, I was approached by a publisher with an idea and said, would you be interested in writing this book to this idea? And I love their idea. So I said, yeah, I'll do it. So that's what I'm doing. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:44 Now, you've never had a guest on the show, but you do have people calling into the show and leaving messages. But you've never had a call from Terry O'Reilly? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:35:56 Well, yes, it's true. I'm the only person on the show, really. I have actors, as I said earlier, come in and do little bits for me occasionally, but I do not do interviews on the show. I did that for a reason, by the way. Two reasons, really. One was every show on CBC is an interview show. So I wanted to zig. Well, everybody else zigged. And I didn't want to be hostage to chasing down interviews or finding the best person in the world on a certain subject who also happens to be the worst radio voice in the world. You know how sometimes you have the foremost expert on something, but they make for bad radio? So I never wanted to be hostage to that. So that's the two reasons why I don't do interviews on the show. I did always try and get Terry O'Reilly, the hockey player, because, of course, I've been plagued with that my whole life. Whenever I call up to make a restaurant reservation or something, the next question always is, are you Terry O'Reilly, the hockey player? I thought it'd be really funny to get him on the show just to leave a little message or just he and I have a little moment. I had no luck. And then Matt, I tried everything. I have connections at the Hockey Hall of Fame. I went through the Bruins Alumni Association. He just will not play with me. So I haven't succeeded in that yet. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:37:12 If you could have one guest on your show, would you actually have that one guest on your show? Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:37:16 No. If you're asking me for a dream guest, it wouldn't be good old Terry O'Reilly. As much as I would love that, if you're asking me one of those dead or alive questions I would probably love to have had either David Ogilvy or Bill Burnback the two really Legends of the advertising business on the show. That would have been a dream come true for me. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:37:40 Terry, thanks so much for being a part of this podcast and telling me your podcast and radio story. It's truly fascinating. There are listeners all over the world who love this show. I love it and I listen all the time. Thank you. Terry O'Reilly (Guest) 00:37:52 Thanks, Matt. I really enjoyed talking to you. Those are really great questions. I enjoyed that. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:37:57 Thanks for listening to the Sound Off podcast. Find us online at soundoffpodcast.com, and connect with us wherever great social media is housed. The show is imaged using the sounds from Core Image Studios. Written and hosted by Matt Cundill. A production of the Soundoff Media Company.

Alan Cross loves music. Over the last few months we have done a few episodes discussing radio on a pandemic planet. But what about the music industry? What about the business side of music? It is especially curious given that music's entire business model has been turned on its head since 1999. Income has shifted from selling physical music to subscriptions and live touring; the latter of which is now effectively cancelled for this year, and possibly next year. In this episode, Alan talks about the latest round of RIAA takedowns to hit podcasting and how it's problematic for podcasters who violate copyright but also for musicians who are essentially leaving money on the table. We discussed the durability of the Ongoing History of New Music and how it has transitioned into becoming one of the planet' most downloaded podcast. We talked about the impact the pandemic is having on the music industry, how musicians are reverting to new marketing strategies and how concert promoters like Live Nation are handling the severe downturn in business. Alan is also the host of the Geek and Beats podcast and also manages a music blog called A Journal of Musical Things. Early in this episode, we spoke about podcasts getting takedown notices because they had music in the show. Here's an interesting article about a podcaster who is now going to throw in the towel. Alan spoke in 2016 about the future of radio to students at Ryerson University in Toronto. Transcript: Amanda Logan (VO) 00:00:01 This is the podcast for broadcast. The Sound Off Podcast with Matt Cundill. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:01 This week, I'm speaking with Alan Cross. He's been the host of the ongoing History of New Music, which has now morphed into one one of the largest podcasts on the planet while still having a strong presence on radio. He's also the host of the Geeks and Beats podcast as an author, creator and musicologist. It's been over three years since he was on this show, and the timing is perfect to talk about what's going on with the music industry with regards to podcasts touring and the pandemic, Alan Cross joins me from his home office in Toronto. So through the whole pandemic and the COVID, what do you miss the most? Alan Cross (Guest) 00:00:43 People. I miss interacting with people. When you work at home by yourself, it's nice because you don't have to deal with awful humans, but at the same time, you miss that outside stimulation. And if you're working alone, you're always the smartest person in the room. And that's not good, because you need to be surrounded by smart people. You need to be surrounded by people who know things that you don't know so you can learn from them. And the pandemic, despite Zoom and Skype and SquadCast and all the other ways that we've been managing to connect, it's just not the same as being in a room, shooting the breeze with people and just jamming on certain things or even just picking up on things that are floating through the air. It's just a bit- Well, it's isolating. It's alienating. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:36 Hold on, Alan. I'm just going to make a technical change. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:01:39 Well, this is one of the things that we're learning at home is to become our own IT departments. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:44 I've been my own IT Department for about six years now, and also accounting and traffic and sales and programming and janitorial. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:01:56 Yeah, that's pretty much me, too. I have a box next to me called a Genie tie line, which allows me to go on the air with radio stations anywhere. However, what happened was one of the Bull terriers got underneath the console and started chewing the USB connections, and that has basically shut the whole thing down. So I had to go out and get a new computer, and now I'm going to have to figure out exactly how to attach this thing to this tie line box, because it uses a whole bunch of separate IP addresses to function. So, yeah, I'm becoming my own IT Department, too. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:02:30 What is your role with radio right now? Alan Cross (Guest) 00:02:32 I am an independent contractor. My biggest client is Corus. I continue to do a lot of stuff for Corus radio in general, but most of it is with Q107, 102.1 The Edge, both in Toronto and then some stuff with Global News. I'm a contributor to that. And then whenever any of the talk stations require a talking head to talk about something about music, they call me. So I've got something, for example, later on this afternoon with CJOB that I'm going to do now. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:03:02 A lot of people know you from The Ongoing History of New Music that has undergone some transformation over the years, and is now- I sort of know it more as a podcast more than anything, as one of Canada's most successful podcasts. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:03:15 It is apparently the number four music podcast in the world. I found that out last week, which is cool, 8.6 million downloads of all the episodes that we've got up there, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 220, 250. And yeah, it has evolved from appointment listening on the radio to something that you listen to on demand online. And I'm getting so much more traction with the radio program as a podcast than I am as a radio program. For example, today, just before we signed on here, I had to answer a fan mail email from Singapore, which is really kind of cool. And if you go into the analytics and you see where people are downloading the show, there are three countries in the world that I don't think- that have been immune to my charm so far. Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone and North Korea. Oh, and South Sudan is also part of it. Otherwise, the show has been downloaded in every other country around the world, which is really cool. Now, when we started the program, what we did was we syndicated it in a usual sort of way. We charge stations X number of dollars per month based on their market size. And that worked out very well, because it defrauded the cost of creating the program. Now, though, we're beginning to realize, well, maybe we should just give away the radio program for free because that drives people to the podcast, which has a very healthy revenue stream right now. So why are we holding ourselves back by charging radio stations for a radio program? And let's face it, radio stations are not buying radio programs the way they used to. Just give it away, drive everybody else to the website and to the podcast and we'll make some money. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:03:15 That feels very much like the NPR model. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:03:15 It does. The problem is that you have to convince a certain amount of people on the return on investment for this. First of all, the idea of doing a podcast version of this program was met with skepticism on two levels. First of all, you can't include any music. You just can't. There are many falsehoods and many misunderstandings about music and podcast. You cannot include any music. That's just the way it is worldwide. So that was one the second, and this applies largely to any sort of on demand programming is that, well, this is going to cannibalize our on air product. If people can get what they want whenever they want, they're not going to tune into the radio. And I think people have finally gotten over that because they know that they figured out a way to monetize the on demand stuff online, and they realize that radio is not the appointment listening thing that it used to be. Nothing is. So you have to just change with the times. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:06:09 And one of the things I found out is that it doesn't cannibalize. You're taking from two different bins. One bin is the on demand bin, and the other one that's live to air and happening now. And people don't treat it the same at all. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:06:23 No, they don't. And it also expands your international reach because of geotargeting and a lot of other things that happen with online streaming of some radio broadcasts. I mean, I'm reaching far more people than I ever did before, although for the people who are selling ad time, the only thing that really matters are people listening in Canada, there is no real model yet for global advertising, unless you get a I don't know, I guess a Coca Cola or Microsoft or something like that. But that hasn't quite happened yet. It might. Well, you have Apple Music, for example, has their radio program, their radio streams, and that kind of is global. But I don't know how many people are listening. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:07:11 Doesn't that kind of summarize, though, the problem with podcasting in Canada, is that if you're only going to monetize what's in Canada and you're getting the bulk of your downloads in the United States, there's a lot of unsold inventory in there. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:07:25 There is. We use dynamic programming insertion that only really works in Canada. And one of the things I think we really have to be Proactive about is that the biggest podcasting market right now is the United States. It's going to be a billion plus market, billion dollar plus market by the end of this year. If you look at the most popular podcasts in the world, they're all coming out of the United States. We're facing a situation as much as we did back in the early 19s, 70s when there was no Canadian music industry to speak of. What we got was basically we were treated as branch plants of labels in the United States and the UK. And domestic product was not really a concern, not really a priority with anybody. We were happy with the American stuff, we were happy with British stuff, and that was it. And one of the things I mentioned in a podcasting conference a couple of years ago was that we really have to start flying the flag here so that our podcasting universe in Canada doesn't get overwhelmed by foreign broadcasting. I mean, we have it, and it's a terrible situation with film. It's a terrible situation with television on many levels. Radio has managed to hold its own because of the Canadian content rules. What do we do about creating a strong and vibrant and profitable and powerful podcasting industry within this country? We have to do something domestically to spread our wings worldwide. Now, we used to be about four, five years behind the United States and developing our podcasting networks. We're probably one or two years behind now. So we've made some great strides. It's just a matter of time. And I think with Kobe 19, a lot of things that would have happened over the course of three or four, five or six years are being accelerated. So they're manifesting themselves in months rather than years. So if you look at the rate of uptake on podcasts, it has actually exploded. Now more podcasts are being made because people have more time to make them. But the popular podcasts are seeing an increase in engagement, which is good. There's a silver lining to Kobe 19. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:09:37 Which is good for you because you've got a popular podcast, right? Alan Cross (Guest) 00:09:41 Well, yeah, I think it was really important to get in early because otherwise somebody else would have come in and taking up that real estate. And where would you be? It's easy if you were an early adopter, an incumbent. It's tougher if you're getting into it now, because what does Apple have in terms of podcasts? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:10:01 Different 1.3 million, and they've added 325,000 in the last 90 days. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:10:07 So that's a lot of competition. And if you're not at the top of that pile, it's going to be hard to rise above the noise. It's like streaming, right? I mean, the early streamers were Drake and Bieber and all those RnB and hip hop artists, and now try to dislodge them from the top of the streaming charts. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:10:29 So we talked about Canada catching up, and you pointed out the last three years, you hinted that Canada might be one year behind. I think the latest Edison research actually had us even in terms of listing with the United States. But when we look at the last three years, I remember 2016, I got some calls, what's going on in Canada with podcasting? And I said, well, not a lot, but since then, the changes that I saw included radio companies like Rogers and Chorus getting into podcasting. They started to promote podcasting. They started to create podcasts. And so people started listening for the Canadian content. And then the radio groups got in and started to promote the hell out of them. And that really lifted the listenership. I mean, there was no Canadian stuff to listen to other than Canada and ongoing history of new music for many years. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:11:19 And now we are creating some really good stuff, especially the news talk radio stations who are doing true crime. They're doing in depth news, they're doing political discussions. They're doing historical discussions. There's some really good stuff coming out of Canada. And we have a number of networks that I guess you could say are competing against each other, but not really because we're working towards the same goal. And we have organizations like the Podcast Exchange that are doing very well, selling ad time within podcast to more than just antivirus companies and mattress companies. I have a big, long list of sponsors for my program and commercials that I voice for other podcasts. We're still at the very beginning of all this, but it is really cool to watch it accelerate. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:12:17 So you mentioned dynamic ad insertion, and I know people who do listen to this podcast might be going, okay, well, what is that by example? So in this podcast, when you listen to the ads, if you're in Canada, you're going to get an ad for N Logic, who are the people who do the ratings. But elsewhere in the United States, you're not going to get that ad because the people at and Logic don't need people in the United States buying their products any more than in Canada. We would need to buy anything from Stamps.com because we don't need American stamps. If you're in Canada, say, yeah. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:12:50 I remember this being the same sort of problem in the old days of radio when we used to get syndicated programs out of the United States, and they were either on tape or they were on really cheap vinyl records, and there would be a countdown of some sort or a special from King Biscuit Flower or something, and they would embed the commercials on the record. So there would be a commercial for sign up for the US Army in the middle of this Canadian broadcast of an American show, and it just didn't sound right. So we've avoided that now by having dynamic ad insertion and you can target things based on geography. Geography would be the big one, but you can get really granular in your targeting. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:13:30 Tell me a little bit about when you took the ongoing history of new music from radio into podcast and the work that had to be done in order to make it podcast friendly. And there was no music in there. You could talk about tapes, mode and the violator album, but you couldn't play the music. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:13:47 Yeah. So what we have done is cut everything down to about 15 seconds. And the number of podcasts that include some kind of music, I have been told, is around 17% worldwide. So far, there hasn't been a massive crackdown on podcasters using full songs, although I'm hearing more and more people saying, hey, you have to take your podcast down because you're using copyrighted material. You're distributing copyrighted material with downloads of every download of your podcast. They have not come after people who are using clips. It's not really in their interests. And I read something just this morning, as a matter of fact, about another lament from somebody within the music industry saying, look, we got to get our act together so that we can create a global licensing scheme for music in podcasts so that we can make some money from this, because right now, the bigger podcasting becomes, the bigger music based podcasting becomes, the more money is being lost. And the problem with trying to create a blanket license for global music downloads and podcasts. They seem at the moment insurmountable. It's all about tracking, but somebody is going to have to do something because there's just too much money to be made from it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:11 Now on, the last time we got together, I asked you the question, how does it all work? Alan Cross (Guest) 00:15:15 Or what are the rules? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:16 You took a big sigh and it's like you had to repeat it one more time about. So I'll just do my best to sort of summarize the whole thing and just say that if you wanted to use a 15 2nd clip, a policy of truth from deposit Mode's violator, you essentially would have to fill out a form for every country that your podcast is downloaded in and get it cleared and checked off and then pay checks to all these people. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:15:39 Correct? We don't do that. Nobody does that because there's no form to fill out and there's no place to send that form and there's no place to send a check for the use of the music. There isn't. There is no blanket licensing scheme that covers everything. So we've been hedging our bets and a lot of other NPR, all the iHeartRadio broadcasts. I mean, everybody has been hedging their best playing little tiny snippets that have not been too injurious to the artist, the Copyright holder, the publisher, or the record label. It is different. However, if you decide to post your podcast on YouTube because they have their algorithm sniffing around and they will take you down. I mean, my Geeks and Beats podcast, for example, we put, I don't know, 30, 35 seconds of a song up one time, and it took 20 minutes for the YouTube algorithm to sniff it out and declare a Copyright violation. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:16:45 The people who run Blueberry Lipson captivate are all reporting a spike in RIAA take down notices in the last couple of weeks. And my guess is that the music industry is not doing a whole heck of a lot these days, and they decided to send some letters, I guess, to generate a little bit of revenue. So there has been a small uptick. Again, I don't have any idea if that those are clips, those are full songs or what they are just I've noticed that the takedowns have started to come. They do have the ability to send the crawlers down through the podcast stream to find us. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:17:24 It's using a hammer to kill a fly. If you are, for example, doing your own top 40 countdown and you're running through all 40 songs in your podcast, well, you know what? You got a problem there because you're not paying for the rights to use that music. If you're using a ten or 15 2nd clip, you don't have the right to use that. But it's not like I said injurious you've made the acknowledgement that you can't use the whole song and that if people want to hear the whole song. Well, then you should be providing a playlist on some kind of website where people can go and listen to it through Spotify or Apple Music or whatever. I've been watching these takedowns. I've been watching these takedowns come out, too, and you look at them and go, okay, please don't bugger anything up for me. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:18:19 Please tell me a little bit about the Geeks and Beats podcast, because I sort of was ongoing history of new music. But this one, you did it for a while. It stopped for a bit and it's come back. Yeah. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:18:30 There's 370 episodes I do with Michael Hayesworth, who used to work for BNN as a business reporter. He is now doing stuff on his own. And we basically use Geeks and Beats as a calling card. This is what we can do. This is the kind of production that we can do. This is the kind of reach we can offer. It's all supported by Patreon donations. We have a little revenue stream that comes and basically defers all our costs. And let's call it extracurricular professional development. And so far it's been I'm surprised the audience is not as big as ongoing history podcasts, but they're extraordinarily loyal and they listen all the way through each episode. So that's cool. We're going to have to decide where we're going to take this podcast, because we've probably taken it to Boat as far as we can using Patreon. And if we want to, our costs continue to go up because our production costs continue to go up. For example, we had to find a sponsor to take us to CES this year, and we did a very big CES presentation over the course of a couple of programs. But that cost a lot of money with airfare and hotel and all the rest of it. And if we want to do more stuff like that, we're going to have to find more robust revenue streams. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:19:52 Okay, so back me up. Why are you going to CES? Alan Cross (Guest) 00:19:54 Well, we were going to CES because Geeks and Beats is a program that deals with the intersection of music and technology. So a lot of gadget stuff, a lot of music technology stuff. We talk about things like headphones and all these other things. So CES was a logical place for us to go. We went for a couple of years. We won't be going next year because it was announced this week that CES is going all virtual. So it's just another example of how much the world has changed so very quickly if something like CES gets canceled. I mean, that is such a huge, very important event for people in the technology space for them to go virtual and to admit that they can't do it this year. Wow. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:20:42 Fred Jacobs goes every year. He loves it. He sees the future when he goes. And so I go to that show through Fred, who has a wonderful presentation. Usually once a year that I'll catch up with what we learned at CES. But I get the feeling that one of these days I am going to have to go to it. It's sort of an inconvenient time of year. January 6, we're just coming off the Christmas thing, and then you go to Vegas, and then there's 175,000 people or whatever that show up. Every hotel is gone, and you're not going to be able to take the whole thing. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:21:12 You can't. Not only is there CES, but there are a couple of other events that piggyback on top of it at other hotels. So the Las Vegas Convention Center is all CES. But if you go to the Mirage, but if you go to MGM, there's other tech events happening there, not necessarily on the same days, maybe a couple of days leading up to it, but there's even more stuff there for people who don't want to pay the big CES registration Bucks. So you are exhausted by the time you go home. There's something called the CES flu because you're down there going 18 hours a day, mixed in with people from all over the world, and you always come home from CES with some kind of respiratory issue, which explains why there's not going to be one in 2021. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:22:02 Okay. Be it resolved that I will attend the CES before the next decade is out. In just a second, Alan and I get down to the business of music. What are the labels thinking? Touring Indies. And Allen gives us a little intel into a new project all about Toronto, CFNY, the spirit of radio. And by the way, here are those dynamically inserted ads we were talking about earlier looking at the music industry. And this is actually why I wanted to bring you on the show the most, because these are the most burning questions I have. We hear about radio, and I've had people on this podcast talk about radio and managing the pandemic. But we haven't really spoken about the music industry. It's big, the music industry. And so I'll start with obviously, live touring is gone. How does a company like Live Nation stay afloat? Alan Cross (Guest) 00:22:54 They can issue more shares and raise more capital through debt offerings. That's one thing. Same thing with AEG and the other big promoters. The smaller ones don't have pockets that deep. They're in trouble. They're also not really sure where they're going to be able to put shows when things ease up a little bit, because a lot of these venues are going out of business every day you read something about the Troubador, for example, famous place in La. It doesn't know whether it will ever reopen. And we hear problems with venues in Toronto, venues in Vancouver, they've closed or they have no plans to reopen. It's ugly right now, and if we don't have some kind of coordinated support mechanism, we're going to see the live industry really devastated, even if it does come back a couple of things. First of all, there's going to be additional costs. You're going to have to have people policing fans who come in. So that means you're going to need hand sanitizers. You need extra security people. You're going to have to have people who make sure that everybody's wearing masks and social distancing. You're going to have to watch and make sure that people don't congregate in the bathroom or in the smoking areas or at the bar or any of those things. How many people are you going to be allowed to admit in the first place? It's going to be 25% capacity, 50% capacity. If that's the case, your margins shrink by 75 or 50%, so that's a problem. And then you got the PTSD. I've done a number of polls on this matter. If you could go to a show today, would you go? And most people say no way. Ain't going to rub up against sweaty strangers for a long time until there's some sort of therapeutic treatment or some kind of vaccine. Mark Geiger, who was a co founder of Lola Paluza, was on Bob Lustat's podcast the other day. He says, we're not going to see concerts really come back until 2022, so that's 18 months. How are some of these people going to hang on? How are the musicians going to hang on? How are the venues going to hang on? How are the road crews going to hang on? How are the equipment rental places going to hang on? You realize that once you stop live music, there's this trickle down effect that's more like an avalanche. And you have so many people who are basically sidelined until things get worked out. I think what we need to do, one of the things we need to do is get a bunch of Canadians, we go to the border and we just scream collectively for America to get it shit together. You see what's going on in America. It's just if they could get their virus under control or at least begin to get it under control, then the rest of the world would have an opportunity to make plans going forward. But right now we don't things like international touring, Australia, I mean, they don't have no idea what they're going to do with international touring just yet. If you look at where Americans are accepted during the pandemic, you see they're basically pariahs in most of the world. But you can go if you're an American, you can go to Albania, you can go to North Macedonia, you can go to Tunisia, but you can't go to Canada. You can't go to anywhere in the European Union, you can't go to the UK. So, I mean, that seizes up everything. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:26:24 It's pretty astounding to think that the whole marketing strategy for a band. Let's say you can get into the studio, you can record something, you can get the product to radio. But the idea of touring which is a big part of the marketing is now gone. Have you come across any bands that have sort of had to look at their marketing plan? Alan Cross (Guest) 00:26:44 Everybody's looking at their marketing plans. Because it used to be that you would have this 13 week lead up to the release of an album. You would release a single, release a single, you would maybe have some interviews in the can and so on. You can still do a lot of that. But then the album comes out and albums are basically one or two week splashes and then they disappear underneath all the other stuff that's coming behind it. You need to go out on the road and you need to make these personal appearances, whether it be on television or in an arena, to sustain the lifespan of that album. And for example, today is the 31 July 11th Morris. It has her first album in eight years out today. Normally she would be on the road for two reasons. Number 120, 5th anniversary of Jagged Little Pill. That was going to be a tour with Liz Fare and Garbage and also this new album. So it was planned a year ago that this summer this record was going to come out. This new record was going to come out in addition to the 25th anniversary of Jagged Little Pill. And that was going to sustain her and her people over the course of a number of months worldwide. Now not happening. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:27:58 So if I look back to the evolution of the music industry, which used to be sort of a relationship between radio and CDs, selling hard copies and promotion. And the concerts were sort of like a bit of an add on for some money. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:28:12 The concerts were an excuse. Touring was an excuse to go out on the road, to play in front of people and to promote the fact that you had a new record, which is where you were making all your money, that's completely flipped. Now you record an album that kind of gives you an excuse to go do something. But the money that you're making is on the road. Tours used to be a lost leader. Now they're where all your money is made. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:28:35 And now going out of the road is gone. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:28:38 Yeah, now it's gone for everybody. If you're the guy who plays in the coffee house for $50 a night, that's gone. But if you're the Eagles, if you're Guns and Roses, if you're Fleet with Mac, if you're Paul McCartney, that's also gone for you too. The only band that's really selling well in terms of catalog at the moment are the Beatles. Everybody else's catalog material is not selling. If you look at streaming, the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac and so on, they're not making a lot of money despite the fact that they've got this rich catalog. It used to be back in the day that you would see The Doors. Every single Doors album would go platinum every year because people bought the album. Then they bought the CD. Every year. The Beastie Boys would sell 2 million copies of License to Ill every year, how many people would buy a copy of the Eagle's Greatest hits. And every year these acts could go to the mailbox every six months and they would get a very fat check from Cadillac sales. Those sales began dropped to the point where they are almost nonexistent in so many levels right now. And the only way to replace that revenue stream was to go out on the road for big guarantees, 1 million a night, 2 million a night, 5 million a night. And companies like AEG and Live Nation were only too happy to provide these big guarantees because they needed to fill these amphitheaters that they owned or had very tight licensing agreements with. So Don Henley says gets another big offer from Live Nation. Of course they're going to take it because that's the only way that they're making any kind of money these days. Now we have these heritage acts, these legacy artists who were in their late 60s, early 70s, high risk groups in the COVID-19 world. And you got to wonder, are we ever going to see them on the road ever again? I mean, if you're Paul McCartney and you're 77 or 78 years old, are you going to want to risk dying on the road with Kova 19? It's scary. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:30:47 And then I look at things like Spotify and Apple music, and a lot of people stayed inside and did a lot of streaming because a lot of those bands that you mentioned, those are the COVID Comfort bands. And they're not pulling a big check from Apple and Spotify. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:31:01 Now they're seeing an increased amount of money from Apple and Spotify, but it certainly doesn't replace those royalty checks that they used to get every six months. And it doesn't even come close to the kind of guarantee money that they would get going on the road. I mean, Mac was making so much money touring with close to their original line up. Guns and Roses was making tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars. But if you looked at how much music they were selling, it's less than a million Bucks over the course of that entire tour. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:31:38 You speak to the head of labels often, whether it's Canada or the United States. What are they saying to you? Alan Cross (Guest) 00:31:44 They're hunkering down. They're doubling down on streaming because they're making between 50 and 65% of their revenue from streaming. Right now, they're fishing where the fish are, which is R, amp, B and hip hop. And any money that is left over will go to rock and EDM and country and any of the other genres. So right now they're okay. They're happy. If you look at some of the quarterly results from Sony and Warner and Universal, they're very profitable. They're not quite as profitable as they were, let's say, at the end of the 90s, but they're certainly way more profitable than they were in 20. 06. 20. 07 before streaming came along. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:21 Much like we spoke a little bit earlier about, the smaller venues are going to be the ones that really suffer. Is it going to be the same for indie labels? Alan Cross (Guest) 00:32:30 Yeah, I would imagine so. Because if you're an indie label, you're already operating on very tiny margins. And if you can't get your artists out there and remember, indie labels often, if not exclusively, have 360 deals with their artists, which means they get a piece of the action from touring, from merchandise and everything else that they do. If your artist is completely sidelined, you're not making any money either. You're not selling anything, you're not streaming anything, you're not selling any T shirts, you're not getting any concert revenue money. You might be able to get some sync money from being in music, TV and movies, but a lot of TV and movie production has stopped, so there's nothing to sink to. The deeper you get into it, the more dire you realize the situation is. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:18 Do you think a lot of artists are holding music back and waiting for the pandemic to end before releasing it? Alan Cross (Guest) 00:33:24 Here's what's happening. Artists are creating art. That's what they do. They've got all kinds of time to muse about what they're feeling and how to change those feelings, how to transmit those feelings into music. I have heard from people down in Los Angeles that a lot of recording Studios are being booked up very solidly towards the end of this year and the early part of next year in anticipation for all these artists coming out of quarantine and needing to record music in a proper environment. So there is a possibility that come 2021, we will be deluged with new music from all quarters, including a number of big artists who have had nothing better to do and maybe have their own recording Studios at home. For example, the Foo Fighters, Dave Girls got all the resources he possibly needs to do anything he wants on his own. And he's a guy that doesn't want to sit around and do nothing. He needs to keep busy. So you can just imagine that what's going to come out of that. Artists, like I said, create art. You can't stop them from doing that. And at some point, a lot of this art is going to need to come out. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:34:42 Speaking of those, like, rich catalogs and things from the past and radio stations as well, which delivered all that great music you were talking about, they have this wonderful past and heritage, and you'll let it leak with Humble and Fred and you didn't think I was going to come and but you're working on something involving radio stations and CFNY and some of the early days. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:35:06 Yeah, we have a group put together that is going to try to finance a documentary on the spirit of radio years, which ran from 1977 to 1991. Very interesting golden era of alternative radio all over North America and see if Andy was part of that in a very big way. The trick is proving to get funding for this sort of thing, and that's what it all comes down to. This is a Canadian story, and it's not going to be sold in Japan. It is not going to be a documentary film that does well at Sundance or something like that. So the challenge is going to be working out funding for it and then putting it together. I mean, putting it together is not going to be a problem because a lot of the people that figured into those stories from that era are still around. They're still with us. But time is running out. We want to be able to get it done as soon as possible. So we have some calls next week, and we're hoping that we can sort out the funding issues so we can get to work on this. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:36:07 But inside that funding issue you're talking about, well, this is going to be a Canadian story only, so it can't just be CFNY. Is there going to be a little bit more added onto it? Alan Cross (Guest) 00:36:18 There may have to be. There may have to be to make it salable in the United States. If we want to get this on Netflix, if we want to get this on a channel like Epics or Reals or some of these other channels down the States, yes, we are going to have to do something to expand the nature of the focus of the programming. So that may be bringing in K, rock and La, W FNS in Washington, WLI R in Long Island, WFNS in Boston, and so on. But we'll see we're pretty committed to it. And as long as we can get enough money to get started, we'll make it happen. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:36:58 A lot of radio stations are coming to grips with their heritage and their past, but we don't see a lot of them celebrating it on the air. The 25th anniversary can go by. There are some exceptions, like shown did a pretty decent 50th. I think KQRS and Minneapolis did a pretty decent 50th. They're tough to do. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:37:21 Yeah. If you're a current based radio station, you don't really want to bring attention to your past because that makes you old. So alternative stations that focus on new music, Top 40 stations that focus on new music, you don't really spend a lot of time celebrating your past. If you're a classic rock station, it's all about your past. It's all about your history and your legacy and your heritage. You will have these arguments with people who, let's say, run a long term legacy Top 40 station or an alternative station. You'll have discussions with programming and ownership saying we should celebrate this, but then it all comes back. We're a radio station that focuses on 18 to 34s. Those people have no memory of what we used to be. They have no connection with the music that we played back in those days. Best to leave it alone. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:38:09 They should do a podcast. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:38:11 Well, they should do a podcast. Yeah. Well, we'll see. One of the things that I would have loved to be able to do. It's not a thing right now, but I would have loved to, for example, 2.1 The Edge in Toronto. I would have loved to have a Heritage HD channel, but HD is dead. It's just not going to happen. And it's too bad. But that would have been a really cool way to offer alternate real time programming. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:38:38 I'm going to ask you to make one prediction, because it just seems to be a good way to sort of wrap up any conversation. What do you think your first conference or convention is going to be? Alan Cross (Guest) 00:38:54 I think it will be a year from September, and it will be the Music Matters conference in Singapore. I used to go to that every single year because not only did it bring in people from North America, it also brought in people from Asia and Australia. And you got a completely different viewpoint of how the music industry works, because if you spend your time in Canada, all you see is what's happening in Canada, in the United States, you don't even get a really good clue of what's happening in the UK a little in Europe. But I really enjoyed learning about how they do things in Japan, China and Thailand and the Philippines and India because they have a different history. You can learn things from people who have gone through different experiences. They haven't canceled, I don't think, this year yet, but I'm not going to go. But September 2021, I think, will be the next time I go to a music conference. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:39:58 So you Jarred something loose in my mind. And that's your time in Singapore and the food you eat? Yes. The restaurant you go to, I think you've got a couple of favorite restaurants. Tell me what you're eating and why you like it. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:40:11 The place I hang out the most is called Newton Food Center, which is an outdoor food court. There is a particular stall there called Denmark Seafood. I don't know why it has nothing to do with Denmark, but they have some very good food, and you just eat out under the sun, under the stars. And I really like chili Stingray, oyster omelets and something called carrot cake, which is not made of carrots. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:40:38 That's awesome. I don't get vividly upset with somebody enjoying their trip until they start posting the food pictures. I want to be invited. Oh, chili crab. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:40:48 That's another one. You got to have some chili crab or pepper crab. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:40:52 Allen, thanks so much for digging in. We haven't had a chance to speak with anybody who could tell us really about where the music industry is going to go because we've been very focused on radio but a lot of people have been asking me where the music industry is going to go and I really don't know. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:41:04 We can make some educated guesses. This whole story is still playing itself out. We have not seen this is not peaked nor have we come up with any solutions yet, but we need to follow things along day by day so we can move as quickly, as efficiently and as safely as possible back to some sense of normality when it comes to gigs. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:41:25 Thanks so much for doing this. Alan Cross (Guest) 00:41:26 I really appreciate it. Anytime you know where I am. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:41:29 Thanks for listening to the Sound Off podcast. Find us online@soundoffpodcast.com and connect with us with our great social Media's house. The show is imaged using the sounds from Core Image Studios written and hosted by Matt Khan's a production of the Sound Off Media company.

If you're a Gen Xer, you likely know Stu Jefferies. He was the host of the venerable CBC TV show Good Rockin' Tonight which ran from 1983 to 1993. The Canadian reply to NBC's Friday Night Videos carried it's weight and powered the Cancon to kids whose parents were too cheap to spring for MuchMusic. Yes... this was a thing. If all you know about Stu is his stint on TV, then here is the rest of the radio story. It all started in Winnipeg, went to Saskatchewan, Vancouver, Edmonton, and then back to Vancouver, Burlington, and finally Toronto. There was some country thrown in, some Country television, and finally he landed at what became Boom. In this episode you'll get your fill of Winnipeg and what it mean to grow up on the legendary radio in the city that sprung the Guess Who, Randy Bachman and Neil Young. You'll also hear how he led a hectic travel schedule to accommodate working on television. And finally, with the pandemic in full swing, we discuss what it is like to work from home doing radio with podcasting's most popular tool, the Rodecaster Pro. (Yes, Stu even provides a review) Here's a promo from Good Rockin' Tonight from 1989. Here's an excerpt from Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg which we spoke about. If you heard our bit our MST3K and don't know what it's all about - here's a sample from the legendary 1990 TV show. And I touched on the Tom Joyner "The Fly Jock" and what will historically be the craziest radio schedule anyone ever worked. Transcript: Amanda Logan (VO) 00:00:01 This is the podcast for broadcast. The Sound off Podcast with Matt Cundill. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:08 Stu Jeffries is the morning host at Boom 97.3 in Toronto. The station is now consistently at the top of the the radio heap, but it wasn't always that way for the station or for Stu. You'll hear him a few times in this episode say that his end goal was to work in Toronto on the air during mornings. It took over 20 years for him to get there and another half dozen to ascend to the top in Canada's largest market. Many Gen-Xers across Canada might know Stu Jefferies from his time at Good Rockin' Tonight. The national CBC show that played videos had him hosting it from 1985 to 1993. And if that's all you know, we'll fill in the rest. Stu Jefferies joins me from his basement studio, which is behind a wall under the basement stairs. He's got a Rocaster Pro and a microphone. How are you? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:00:59 I'm real well, thank you. How are you? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:01 We've never met. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:01:02 No, I see your tweets all the time. But no, we never met. And is it really funny when you finally come face to face with somebody that follows you or you follow them or whatever? It's kind of like, oh, wow, there's a real person behind in the tweets. That's kind of cool. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:13 I've been in the room with you, though. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:01:13 Whereabouts? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:13 Canadian Music Week. I think last year, back in the day when we could get together and do things, you were hosting that mess of a panel about adding the songs where there's like 25 people on stage. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:01:29 Yeah. What it takes to- what you're looking for, or what you're marketing, or whatever the hell that was. Yeah. That's a gig. Nobody wants those gigs. Nobody wants the gigs in front of their peers. Nobody wants to do that because, you know, they're all judging you. They're all saying "You did a great job" and, in fact, it was brutal. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:46 But you managed to keep control of the situation and work in some humor. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:01:50 Yeah. And a minimum. Right. Because as soon as you start thinking you're funny, you're toast. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:55 Did you grow up in Winnipeg? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:01:57 I did, yeah. I was born in Richmond, BC, just outside of Vancouver. I was raised in Winnipeg. My parents divorced when I was four. I think something. I got three or four. My mother's mother and father, my grandparents lived in Winnipeg, so she moved us all there. Have vague memories of taking the train. And then I stayed there for 17 or 18 years and then left in 79 to start my broadcasting career. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:02:20 So where was high school? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:02:21 High school was Vincent Massey and Viscount Alexander. I think Viscount Alexander now is a French immersion school or something like that. And Oakenwald Elementary. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:02:31 Did you live? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:02:31 Fortunately, yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:02:32 So did you live down in the Wildwood area? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:02:35 No, the Wildwood area is for the rich kids. I was in Fort Gary, kind of the sort of falling apart area of Fort Gary. I don't get back to Winnipeg anywhere near as much as I want to. I love it there, and I love the people. I just love that city to pieces. When I do go back, I always go by the old 'hood and the house is still standing, and I'm looking at it going, You've got to be kidding me. That was ready to fall when I was leaving, and it's still there and still kind of holding its own. And what I love about the neighborhood is that it hasn't really changed. No new houses. Everything is kind of the same. It just kind of takes you right back. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:03:08 And how did you find your way to Saskatchewan? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:03:12 I took a broadcasting course in Winnipeg, at the National Institute of Broadcasting. And there was this little place on Furby. I remember when I first saw it, I had this impression that I was going to this massive high tech school, and it would look like there's an alley entrance, and it was really kind of seedy a couple of rooms. And I took the course, though, and then they helped you put a bunch of tapes together. It was unreal to real. And I had about a dozen mini tapes sent into every small market I could that was kind of in the area. I got rejection letters everywhere. Yorkton was the only one that hired me. And it was because I found out later Gary Lawrence, who I love, who is the program director there? He said, Look, I'll be honest with you. The reason why you're here is I just fired somebody and your tape was on my desk. So you're the next in line. Let's go. Yeah. That began in 79, June the 79th. So I'm in my 41st or 42nd year now. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:01 I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that you grew up then around Winnipeg radio, which has an incredible I mean, what did it sound like back in the 70s? Because I hear stories of brother Jake Edwards and I hear stories from Terry Damonte and I'll hear them from Randy Renault, and I'll hear them about from Sharon Taylor and CKY. What was it like? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:04:24 I'm so glad you asked that. I wasn't a CKY guy. I was a CFRW guy. And from what I remember, my friends were either in one camp or another. I mean, you're either listening to Percy in the Morning or it's Ron Abel or Dick Reeves at CFRW. And I was totally CFRW. I can't begin to describe how exciting it was, particularly if you're passionate about this job and you wanted to do it. To listen to those jobs. I listened to mention Dick Reeves. Lee Marshall was doing middays. He later went on to become the voice of CTV for years and years. Casey Fox or Jack Casey in Vancouver, Casey Fox was doing drive, Broadway, Bobby Day was doing evenings. So Steve Ferguson was doing overnights, and he had bed check going on. It was like everyone had their show and it was so unique to them. All the business was conducted over the intros of records. It's like Drake format in full effect, right? It's like you guys get to stop down, but not for long. You get to commercials and get your butts back out into music and you got 17 seconds over, blah, blah, blah. What are you going to do with it? And really the art form was, of course, hitting posts like crazy and being high energy. But it was just magical. Again, if you love the medium, it was magical to hear that and to be able to take that with me at the beginning of my career, as opposed to when A. M. Started dying off and it became sort of oldies and talk. That to me was like everything. And I have it with me today. It is still in me today, as powerful as ever. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:05:49 What do you think it is about Winnipeg that had so much not only great radio people coming through here, but also great musicians. Neil Young, guess who? Bachmann Turner overdrive. What is it about the city that lent itself to all that in that era. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:06:04 I think, for musicians. And I don't mean this to be I'm not trying to be funny. I think it's true. It's winter. It's so cold in Winnipeg in the winter, and it is I don't know if you saw that documentary by Winnipeg. I can't remember who did it now, and he's a big documentary filmmaker, and I forgot his name. Way to go. It paints this picture in the winter of Winnipeg, and everything is shutting down. There's so much time to spend indoors and jam right? There's so much time to get together. You're always getting together in somebody's house, in the basement, in the Rec room, and you're doing something, and if you've got a guitar, then you are jamming. And I think that and this thriving music scene. And I think the openness, too, of the time of radio to play new music from its own hometown. Winnipeg has this pride that I haven't sensed in other cities that I've been in. People are proud of the city they live in, but Winnipeg has got this thing. It's a vibe. It's a feel. You're from Winnipeg and you meet a fellow Winnipeg-er, and it's like the chest comes out a little bit. It's hard to describe. But for the musicians, I say the winter and the cold and just for the general feeling in the city in terms of what it turns out, I think it's pride. It's based on pride. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:07:12 I think you were thinking of Guy Madden and My Winnipeg. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:07:15 Yes. Thank you. Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:07:17 I love that. I watched it when it came out, and I still go by 800 Ellis Avenue, which is, I think, where he set the thing, where he grew up at the time, and it's now a tailor. But I look at it all the time and a lot of it was about sleepwalking through winter. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:07:34 Yes. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:07:35 And I think there's also a lot of myths about that movie because I think some of the stuff was made up. Is it true that there are two taxi cabs companies in the city and one company got to drive down the laneways and the other one got to use the streets? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:07:49 Yes, that's right. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:07:51 Is it really true that all the female streets are named after the hookers who occupy the end of each street? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:07:59 Yeah, that's right, I had forgotten about that. That, maybe not. But, boy, the picture that he paints of the alleyways right of the back lanes, and the footprints in the snow, and this sort of barrenness that it seems like it's midnight yet it's only seven in the evening. Everybody's gone, right? Oh, God, it was so enjoyable to watch. And the fact that he lived upstairs in the hair salon. Right? And he was constantly breathing in the smell of hairspray and all of that stuff, it's just great. I loved it. Yeah, you're right. I got halfway through it. I'm going, okay, this is kind of dark. And then he got alignmented up with those stories, which I really dig. And again, if you're from Winnipeg, tell me you weren't watching that and the chest wasn't coming out a little bit. It's your town, right? It's where you're from. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:08:41 I walk through the streets of Barcelona and I'll see somebody with a Winnipeg Jets shirt on. And I'll go, hey. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:08:48 That is it! In Bayview in Toronto, I'm walking down the street and no lie. This is prepandemic. I'm walking down the street and I'm walking my dog and I've got a Winnipeg Jets Tucson. And the guy comes out of this neat place called Cumbrae's, and he's with his wife or girlfriend. And he stops. He goes, Where are you from? I said, Fort Gary, you. And he says, St. Charles or something like that, or no, Charleswood. And then his wife said, what is it with you people? Amanda Logan (VO) 00:09:15 Sorry, man, it's in the blood. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:09:17 But it's in the blood. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:09:18 And I only found out just before today that you actually grew up in Winnipeg, but you did make it to Saskatchewan. And I always associated you with the Saskatchewan for, I guess, the obvious reason we're going to talk about here. And that's because I guess went from Yorkton and then you found your way to Regina, right? Amanda Logan (VO) 00:09:34 Yeah. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:09:34 So Yorkton and 79 until 81. And then Regina. Oh, yeah. And come on. As a Winnipeg Blue Bomber fan, born and raised, that was the hardest thing of all was I don't think I really thought about it all that much in terms of sports. I got the job in Yorkshire, and I was so excited. And then I realized as I'm doing scores, I got to talk about the Rough Riders, and I got to sound like I like them, and this is going to be tougher than anything I ever imagined. And then in Regina, of course, that's the home of the team. And they smell a rat a mile away. And as soon as they smell Winnipeg on you, you've got no friends, man. But yeah, I spent six years at CJME, a year and a half at Cjgx, and then it was off to Vancouver from there. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:10:15 The Good Rockin Tonight thing, though, what year did that start? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:10:18 Was that? 82, 383 when Mulley was there, Terry did with Mulligan, he did it till 85, and so he did it for a year and a half, and then I did it for seven and a half and a half. So it went for ten seasons. And it came almost, I guess, in year six when I was at CJME. And it was just one of those really weird things that happened. I'll never forget this. I'm in the staff room at CJME and they got a bulletin board and there's all kinds of announcements. And CDC Virginia had put up an announcement saying they're looking for a host for a national show. If you're interested in auditioning, come on down. So I'm reading it. And Dave Mitchell, who was doing afternoons at CJME at the time, walked by and he said, Are you going to go? And I said, no. And then he said, Look, I'm going. And if I'm going, you got to go. Come on. So it was sort of like, okay, sure, fine. And we went there and it was an audition for the Fame Game, which was a battle of the bands that CBC hosted in all the capital cities across Canada. And they were looking for a host. And so I remember going into this audition sort of booth, and there was the production assistant there with a stopwatch camera microphone. And she said, Stare down the lens and talk for five minutes and don't stop. And it doesn't matter what you want to talk about. So I went, okay, sure. And I talked about radio, I guess, how I got into it, the job or whatever. And then I said, and I guess that's about it. And then she stopped the stopwatch. I'll never forget that. She went, wow, four minutes, 57 seconds. Well done. So I'm like, okay, great. And I didn't know anything about the show, but the producer of the show, Steve Glassman, who is Humble Howard Glassman's brother, loved it and told me the next day and he said, the job is yours. And I still, again didn't really know exactly what I was auditioning for. So there I was hosting a national show out of Vagina. It was going across Canada. And the producer of Good Rock. And tonight in Vancouver, Ken Gibson, had hung onto those shows. He liked what he saw in me and asked me if I would be interested in auditioning. When Terry David Mulligan said he was going out the door. So again, you're young, stupid. I've said this so many times, you don't really know. You're just all in. You're not getting anything a second thought. I have no TV experience except for the show I hosted. I can't whatever. And I went and auditioned and got the gig and then that sort of shifted the career gear like a 180. Now I'm going in this direction. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:12:27 But you were PD and mid days and then you were doing the Good Rockin tonight as well. Were you flying back and forth for a while? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:12:33 I was, yeah. And I'm glad you brought up the PD thing. I was never a program director. That's a Wikipedia mistake I keep trying to update. And somehow it went from Wikipedia to all sources that I was programmed director in Vagina. And I have no business being a programmer and it's an insult to program directors everywhere. Harry Decker was program director when I left. Jeff Steele was my PD when I worked there, and he was absolutely wonderful. These guys are so good. I'm sorry, Matt. I was still being concentrating on the correction. What did you ask me? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:13:00 What was it like? Were you flying back and forth from Vancouver? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:13:03 Yeah, I was. And I wanted to keep my radio gig and the pay at Good Rockin was great and it was like I was making money now and it's exciting and I'm flying back and forth and it's kind of a jetset life. And I'm young and it seemed really awesome till about week four or five. And I would leave Saturday morning, rehearse Saturday afternoon, record Sunday. Then I'd hop on a plane and go back again. And then it was back to Monday to Friday at CGM. And then I just couldn't do it anymore. It was just too tiring. So I moved out to Vancouver and tried to get into radio there and I couldn't. And looking back on it now, I realize I wasn't ready to be in Vancouver radio yet, but I still wanted to do that because the Good rocking tonight job is awesome. As it was, they were only giving us 13 week contracts, so you can't really hang your hat on that. And so I wanted to have radio to stand by and be able to go there in case the show falls apart. But they started liking what we were doing and started offering us a year contract. So things got better. And then I got a call from Edmonton at K 97 wondering to know if I would be interested in doing mornings there. And I was so itching to get back into radio. So I said yes. And now here I am again flying back and forth. I do mornings, K 97, Monday to Friday, Friday afternoon, go to the airport Saturday, Good Rock and Sunday switch back, get back on the plane and go do it all over again. So that lasted for about a year and a half before I finally went back to Vancouver and said, I'm good. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:14:22 You just mentioned Switchback because you just switched back the TV show, which was out of Calgary. Right. But you got a different version of Switchback wherever you were in the country, or was that sort of a conglomeration of everybody? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:14:33 Yeah, it was weird. Initially, I think each capital city had a Switchback live kids show, and they all did it differently. The show was really different formats in each one of the cities, and then cut backs came. So we did switch back out of Vancouver, and it covered Vancouver and Alberta, and then Winnipeg covered Saskatchewan or Saskatchewan covered whatever. So they all kind of sort of merged a little bit, and it lasted a few seasons. That show that was a live kid show, and that show was crazy fun, but exhausting. So I'm recording good Rocking on Saturday night, and then I'm doing this live 90 minutes. Oh, my God. Moving from start to finish and then getting on a plane and going back. It was just okay, I'm good. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:17 You know, I really want to feel sorry for you with the plane thing, but one of these days we got to tell the full story of the fly Jock who went Chicago to Dallas every day. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:15:27 Yes, of course. Everybody tells it, right? It's like romantic. It's got a good vibe to it. Right? It's like, are you kidding me? You're that good and you're jet setting. That must be awesome. Fact is, there's nothing else about it. After a while, you start resenting airports, resenting food, resenting everything. People want to talk to you and you're like, I know that I really should be friendly to this person that I don't know, but I really don't want to. I just want to go to bed. So, yeah, it's good for a while. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:55 And then, yeah, I'm curious that the Vancouver radio station wouldn't want to hire somebody who's already got a known face and doing Good Rocking tonight. Speaker 4 00:16:03 Yeah. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:16:04 You know what? As I say, I wasn't very good. I should say Don Shafer in Vancouver gave me a break, and again, I wasn't ready for it. I guess what I was doing was still some pretty amateur stuff. And you don't know, in my mind, I'm sounding great. But when I think about some of the shows that I put together there, you've got to let it go. You've got to forgive yourself. And that I think too, there was probably a little resentment within not only that city, but pretty much everybody that auditioned for that good Rock and tonight job. Here's another thing. I had no idea there were tons of people that went out for that gig. Like tons. And I had no idea. So I think a lot of it was, who's this kid from Regina. Why are they hiring some kid from Regina? So I'm sure there was a lot of that. I don't know about enough resentment to say, no, we're not going to hire him. But I think enough of that to say, you've got a TV gig national. Boy, you work it out yourself. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:17:01 Yeah. He's not one of us. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:17:03 Yeah, exactly. And every radio guy in the world wanted at least one shot of television, want at least one shot at being on TV doing something. And this is something that I came to realize as the years went by. I guess that would be me, too. I mean, here I got a TV opportunity and it's national. Are you kidding me? But there is something about and it's why I still do it today. Radio, to me, is the ultimate connector, that show good rocking and switchback. I love the legacy of it. And I'm only finding out about it as the years go by. People say, Man, I set my VHS recorded to that. If I wasn't going to be home on Friday night, I was going to tape it. And then as soon as I got home, I would watch videos and interviews. And you were part of my life. And it was the only music we got where I lived. And you just feel like, oh, my God, because you're in it, you don't think about it. But then afterwards, when people tell you how important it was, you're like, wow. And radio does that to me still to this day, when people say, I heard what you said and I felt this and you're like, I don't even know you. And I made you feel that way to me. That's what's so magic about this. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:18:05 And VTV after Good Rocking Tonight Goes Away, which was about 1993. I want to be careful how I phrase this here, but is this a time when you really do connect with radio at a different level? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:18:17 Yeah. I launched sort of right into a talk format in Vancouver at LG. They had gone from hits to sort of I forget it was a poor plan. It sounded intriguing. They started to do modern talk. I was launched right into connecting with people on that level, like right away. And the one thing that I appreciated and didn't really know how much I missed was the camaraderie behind the scenes. But the live it's done, it's over and you got to move on. There's no. Okay, that was great. Let's do it again. Or I like that. But we can change this and this in radio, there is none of that. It's like you do it, you put it out there and it's done. And it made me appreciate prep that much more. And what goes into a show and into a proper show and how you've got to be ready for absolutely anything doing a music thing prior to that, like a midday show in Vagina or a morning show in Evanston. It was music intensive, high energy, lots of that stuff. But then you go into talk and it's a whole different ballgame. So, yeah, I mean, I appreciated radio for more than just a job at that time. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:19:23 How did you find yourself getting to Hamilton? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:19:26 What happened there is 97 Burlington. Initially, energy went away in Burlington, which is outside of Toronto, had an opening looking for a new morning show, and Cortis had just bought the station. I think that's what happened. And I was working for Cortis in Vancouver, and I went to my general manager, Chris Pandoff, at the time, and I said, Would you mind if I looked into this? And he goes, no, we're all one big happy family. And anybody that knows me and knows me to this day knows that's all I ever wanted to do. I wanted to be in Toronto. I wanted to be working there, and I wanted to do the morning show in Toronto. And then I wanted to be successful. That was the goal. It always has been, always will be. And he said, I know that. Go ahead. The general manager of the station is Dean Sinclair. And I thought, oh, my God, Dean Sinclair. I trained Dean Sinclair in Yorkton. He came just shortly after me, which is I love about radio, these weird things. So he was a Jock, and then he got into management and programming and stuff and was a very good programmer and then got into he was a general manager and he was general managing the station. So Dean and I are back together again. So I went, yeah, I'll take it. Amanda Logan (VO) 00:20:25 Let's go. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:20:25 And then that led to a move from Burlington to the buildings in Hamilton. Once Y 95 and CHML were purchased by chorus, and then everybody moved into the building. So Hamilton there for a while. Why went away after a frequency change, and then an opportunity to do country came up, and it was in Toronto Studios, but the station is still based in Hamilton. And I thought Toronto Studios. I'm getting closer. I'm getting closer. And country, to me was country to me was it opened up another door. Country was like a club that was always out there that I wasn't invited to. And when I got in, it was, oh, my God, this is such a great place. Three years of doing that with Colleen Rush home, and then another three years at Easy Rock in Toronto, and then things really took a shift. And you talk about those moments in your career where you'll look back and go, okay, I didn't see that coming. I wasn't happy at the time, but I'm glad that I went through it because it's made me a little bit better. My contract wasn't renewed. And so there was a time that it was pretty quiet. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:21:27 What about the four A in the country? Because I think which came first, the radio or the country music television? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:21:33 Oh, that came as sort of part of it. You know what? It's so funny, Matt. I keep forgetting about CMT. I was doing CMT work before country. I was doing it when I went out to space out of Calgary, and I was flying to Calgary every odd weekend to tape a whole bunch of shows, CMT Central or whatever it was called. And then I would go back to Vancouver when the opportunity came in Toronto to do a country station. Then it just melded perfectly, and they were moving the facilities to Toronto. We could do the show out of Toronto. So the show became more of a thing, more of it happening. So I do the morning show with Colleen, and then eventually Colleen would get on board on CMT Central as well, and we would do that show together. I still got to keep a little hand in TV, which was nice. But again, that whole country was just I talked about people smelling a rat when they know when you're a Winnipegor and you're trying to be a Saskatchewan fan. Boy, country folk, what I love about them, country fans, they smell fraud a mile away. If you don't know your country, they know it right off the bat. And I remember the first experience I had. So I'm dealing with rock and roll all my life, right? And rock artists are like, it's a crap shoot. Sometimes you get them in a good mood, sometimes you don't. Sometimes it's a great interview, and other times they're just not into it. And there's always this attitude with rock, with country. I remember I had an interview with Vince Gilbert and I phoned him or, no, he was supposed to phone me, and it just never happened. And I'm used to that. So it didn't really phase me. The next morning I came into work, I checked my voicemail and says, hey, Stew, buddy, it's Vince Gill. I am so sorry I missed that call. Here's my home phone number. Give me a call. Amanda Logan (VO) 00:22:59 I'm like, oh, my God, who does that? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:23:01 And that was the opening to me to say, yeah, this is a different and when you interview them, it's like, what do you want for me? What can I give you? I'll give you anything. You want me to sing 18 songs? I'll sing 18 songs. Do you want me to talk about the most touchy subject in the world? I'm here for you. Like, they are your friends, and they know that community is the most important, certainly the music. But community is the most important facet of that format and learn so much, and it just fit my lifestyle. It just fit right where I was at in my life. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:23:28 Any other interviews that you've had along the way that you're like? I'll never forget that one. It was memorable for the wrong reasons. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:23:36 Yeah, well, the good ones. Paul McCartney face to face with him in Montreal on the Flowers in the Dirt tour. I still have a picture with him. I think I must post it at least three times a month just for the hell of it, because it's Paul Mark Knossler from Dire Straits. Two people that when I was interviewed, after I got the good rocking job, vagina CBC did a piece on me and I was asked what would be the artist that would make you the most nervous? And I mentioned those too. So to be able to get to talk to them, it went great. Others not so good. We did a tour of the UK and we were doing some boy, I don't know, it was like 15 interviews a day. At one point. It was crazy. So you're in the elevator at one building and you're reading the bio of the group on the way up to the interview and you're trying to get your crap together because there's no time to prepare. And then it's another interview. I talked to Mark Hollis from Talk, who was one of the most uncooperative people I have ever met. And he was feisty right from the beginning. Now he's dead. I don't want to speak yellow the dead. But Mark was just so tough. And I forget what question I asked him. He goes, Why don't you ask me what I had for lunch? That's just about his intelligence. Oh, my God, why are you like this for me? What the what? And his face is turning red and he's clearly getting angry. And I'm like, what is going on? But, you know, for the most part, my lesson in interviews that I learned was that one are funny and one not so funny that they're not your friends. And you don't go out to make friends when you're doing that. It's not because you're going to blast them in the future and you don't want to seem hypocritical. It's just that you think you make a connection and maybe you do at the time, but these guys are rock stars and they talk to a million people a day. And if they see you again and manage to remember your name, you're great. And if you start thinking them as friends, the interview goes down a different road. And then before you know it, you're not even really doing your job. You're just trying to have this inside sort of club with this friend. Hey, everybody, look, I'm friends with so and so. Isn't this great? So there was that. And then there was making a connection. I did an interview with Brian May from Queen, and it was in Los Angeles. And we were flown out much music and CBC was flown out to do this in honor of Queen signing with Hollywood Records. And the guy that ran Disney, that was his label. So they were having this big event on the Queen Mary. But first, Brian was doing interviews and Freddie. Nobody knew that Freddie was sick. He had not come out on the trip. So Brian and I are talking during this interview, and it is going wonderfully. It's just he's so forthcoming, and he seemed to be really enjoying himself. And at the end of the interview, he said, that was really good. I really enjoyed that. It was so nice meeting you. And he said, I look forward to seeing you there again tonight. And I went, wow, fine. It's like I connected with Brian May. So came to the event that night. Queen is announced. They come walking out and they've got this velvet rope in between them and me. And I see Brian walking towards me and I catch his eye and I hold up my hand to say, hey, Brian, it's me. He hands me his empty drink and says, I'll have a vodka and Orange juice, please. Speaker 4 00:26:31 You could hear the air come out of my heart and soul. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:26:36 The publicist is just looking at me with a shrug, like, I don't know. Sorry. So, yeah, you think you make a connection? You don't make a connection. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:26:46 Did you get the vodka Orange juice? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:26:48 I did not. But I remember Tony Wanamaker, who was the cameraman from Much Music, said, that's a tough one. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:26:56 Where's the film of that? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:26:58 Yeah. Nobody. No cameras. I would kill to have it. And you know what I always say? You got to have a story. And that's one of my favorite stories. I'm just being crushed like a bug. But that was so good. I wish that I could see him now and relive those moments, but it's one of those things best left out in the universe. It's still one of my favorite times. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:27:20 When we come back, Stew and Colleen Land at Easy Rock where there's a load of uncertainty that comes into play stations being sold. Things are in flex part of the pun, but the whole thing is about to go boom. Also, I posted some additional footage and media about a few things that we've spoken about so far. Things like Guy Madden's, my Winnipeg, and the story of Tom Joyner, the fly Jock who did morning drive in Dallas and afternoons in Chicago five days a week. You can find it all@soundoffpodcast.com. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:27:51 When I was at EZROCK with Colleen, we had three years to try and get that morning show going. And I love working with Call and I thought we had a good show. And I don't say that with any sense of bitterness at all. We did have a good show, but we were up against some Heritage morning shows in the market and people listen to who they get used to. And we're up against CHFI, who's had a morning show that's got a reputation that's lasted for years, and Roger Rick and Marilyn at Chum. So our backs were against the wall to begin with. So we're kind of middle of the pack and we're struggling and my contract is up and the station gets sold from standards sold it to Astral. So perfect Storm, right where they get. Okay, the morning show is not doing that great. His contract is up. We don't have why don't we just try something totally different? So I was out, Colleen stayed, and they put together a five person morning show, and they were still Easy Rock at the time. And then they were sold to Bell. Before the sale to Bell, they became Boom, which I think now they're in their twelve year, ten to twelve year, something like that. And I was still on the outside looking in, and I was doing voiceover work, trying to keep busy, trying to keep money coming in, but it wasn't all that great. I was asked to host an 80 show with Kim Clark Champion. So I did that. That was good. But still I just wanted to get back into mornings. The program director at Easy Rock Boom was Chris Ebot from La. Chris had no great guy but had no previous knowledge of any work that I had done. You could tell that he was looking to make a change in that show, but it wasn't going to be me. And for whatever reason, I ended up getting an evening shift, covering for evenings there. And then I'm starting all over again. So it was hard because it was just really at my age, I got to get back down there and get started working up to where I want to be again. And I got so close and it was gone. And now here I go. I did evenings for a while and made changes in the morning show. And Kristen, why don't you go into Mornings now? We don't want to do a traditional morning show. So I heard. Of course, yes. They're probably looking for somebody else. I'll be there to keep the seat warm. And then as it turned out, things started getting better. We started just as a single person morning show started getting some traction. So they let it go for a while. It's just steady. Nothing great, but just steady. It was always moving up. It was never going down or spiking. And then it kept going up and up and up. And now features start to get added into the show, and suddenly it becomes my show. And then to go from number eight to number one in about I guess what, five, six years maybe is a great jump. And here I am now again, as I said, I look back on those moments and it was really sad. It was really hard to get motivated. And then I'm so glad that I did. And it's a lesson for anybody. It doesn't matter how passionate you are about these things happen, right? Like things we hit our wagons to horses that we don't know just so that we can do what we do. And sometimes the horse takes a different direction and you're on the outs. And after you put a whole lot of work into it, you find yourself on the outs and you're like, oh, man. But you love it so much that you don't want to go and you feel like you have something to offer. And I always felt that I was not done yet. And I still say that to this day I'm not finished, and I love it too much. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:31:01 Well, I have a couple of takeaways just from that whole thing. And one of them is you and Ez Rock. There's Stu Jeffries and he's on a rock. But today I hear Stew Jeffrey's on Boom with the music that I've always associated with what I've seen on TV or heard from you in the past. It just makes it a little bit more sense. Speaker 4 00:31:21 Yes. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:31:21 And the other takeaway is it takes three years to build an audience. No matter if you're in radio, you're starting from scratch or you're starting a podcast or you're starting even a business. It takes three years. And after year three, that's when if you're doing things right, this is where you catch and you talk about where the horses will take you after that. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:31:41 Exactly. And you know what? Three years even longer. There are people that still think Boom is easy rock listeners. I mean, so it's like it takes so long to get that impression out there. And yeah, you're so right. And yet you hear all the time when somebody hires a new morning show, they'll say, hey, listen, this is a marathon. It's not a sprint. We're going to be behind you. We're there. But, you know, technically, you got three years to show us something. And then look, you're starting all over again, right? And here we go again, starting from the middle of the pack or the bottom. And that's what I loved about Boom and the people. Plus, we were at one point we weren't owned by anybody before Newcast picked us up. Bell did not take us into their fold when they bought from Astral. So we're just floating out in the breweries. And I think that was key for all of us there. We became like, oh, yeah, okay, you don't want us then you know what? Look out. And it was a very unspoken all for one and one for all attitude that I remember in Regina where everybody was just all about it. You talk radio, you lived radio, you met all the time. You went to people's houses, you're talking radio. And it's like, oh, my God, this is like back in 1981 again. And the music, of course, supplies the soundtrack to that. And because of that, we said, here we are and take notice. And now again, I'm not sure how old the station is. I want to say twelve years. It might be eleven or whatever, but we're a powerhouse. And it's all because of that. I think it's all because of that attitude of you don't want us, we're going to make you want us. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:06 And that worked out well for us now is an opportunity to talk about some of the great radio people you get to work with, say like Steve Jones and Steve Parsons and Troy McCallum. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:33:16 These guys are passionate, beyond passionate, and they are smart. Steve Parsons and I worked together at country. He was my program director of country. And I love Steve from the get go because Steve questions everything. Like absolutely everything in a country. We were like a one one, maybe a one two share. We could not get any ground. We were the only country station within whatever. Oshawa was the next closest, I think, and we could not get numbers. And we'd have a ratings party because this is our first book and it's really a lousy book. And every book after that was never very good. And he would always try and spin it to make everybody keep the attitude up. But we would have conversations all the time going, I hate this. And I hate this, too. I can't wait another six months to find out how we're going to do this. Sucks. We've got a good station, we've got a blah, blah, blah. And Steve would continue to question everything that we did and how can we make it better. And he does it to this day. He is you'll walk in with an idea, Troy could walk into his office. Troy's got ideas. Like Troy goes to the washroom, comes out of the washroom with twelve ideas. Then he'll go into Steve and he'll say, I got this, I got this, I got this, I got this. Steve will be fouling off. Hitting them off, hitting them off. Say, what about this question? This question that so nothing ever goes to the air without it being thoroughly beaten up. And Troy can tell you, man, he could write a book with his ideas and maybe three or four of them got through, but he's always there and he's always trying to think of stuff and that's passion. And Steve Jones watching the two Steve's together in the future, when Radio is done, I'll sell tickets to just those two guys, duking it out, those two guys on a panel. And only those two guys would be must see radio conference stuff because the way they go at each other and in the best way possible, exchanging ideas, chirping, it's a thing of beauty and what I love, it's just they all know their shit. They all know it. And you feel confident working for people like that. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:11 I guess I better have Steve Parsons on this podcast now. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:35:15 That's right. It'd be worth it. You'd love it. Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:18 I've had Troy on and I've had Steve Jones on. I guess I better have him on. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:35:22 You got to have Parsons, man, and just be prepared to be hit the line. You'll be fouling off everything you throw at them. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:30 You guys did the top 100 Canadian songs of all the time. Really? I think it feels like it's almost lost that specialty programming would even happen anymore. I just don't hear it. But so glad that you did it. Can you think back? Did you get close enough with the 100 songs to look at it and say they forgot one on the list? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:35:50 Oh, yeah, we could go forever on that one. A combination of listener votes and just what makes sense, plus the stories to go that we're told by Randy and Burton, you compiled the best list you can. But you know what? As I said to anybody that said, I can't even think of names now. But what about so and so? What about so and so? What about so and so? And I would always respond with, well, it's a really good problem to have you look at the top 100 songs. And would you argue with any of them? No, you wouldn't. Would you say there's some missing? Absolutely. But that's a great problem to have. And how could you rank them? How could you put Summer 69 ahead of taking care of business? Because they're all really good. These are all really good songs. So it was more of a celebration than a top 100. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:36:35 It was a story. So that really built the special. Speaker 4 00:36:38 Yeah. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:36:39 And those guys, Randy and Burton, can tell. And there's another thing, and I know it's not exclusive to Winnipeg storytelling, but there's something about musicians from that city that they spent a good yarn. And boy, those guys, Incidentally, an exchange with a friend of mine, a long time friend. We're talking about the guests who and why they're not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Can't figure it out. I looked up their track record is incredible, but apparently it has something to do with lack of success in the UK that is keeping them out of the Rock Hall. And it doesn't make any sense to me for what they've done. And their music has been worldwide, world renowned. But I don't know, for some reason, maybe they've been shunned in the UK, but why should that make a difference? It's one particular area, and those guys are so good and meant so much. And Trailblaze, they got charged numbers in America before can come before any of those rules. They were getting on the radio because their songs were good. They weren't government assisted. They were like good songs. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:37:37 Well, it took a long time for Rush to get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and it took a lot of phone calls from Donna Halper. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:37:44 Yeah. And it doesn't seem right to me. And I remember John Bon Jovi in an interview once saying it's really who's in favor at the moment. And he said, the Rock Hall has got my report cards. They've got my first demo, they've got a cassette that I did blah, blah, blah, all on display. And yet forget it. I guess it would be nice. But he said it's almost so ridiculous and open to so much argument that he said, I don't know if I'd ever want to be a part of it. And Steve Miller, remember Steve Miller got in. Amanda Logan (VO) 00:38:14 Steve was like, first of all. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:38:17 They'Re not going to fly me out with a guest. And they're basically making the rules and the people that are inducting. And he said, I've never met them before. I know they're fans of mine, and that's great. But what is going on? And he said, And I can't get an extra ticket for a family member. Like, this is stupid. And then Chicago. Chicago was together, but Peter Cetera is arguing with the rest of the band, so they're not going to perform for us. And I'm like, this is pointless. It's like, absolutely pointless. But I think to guess who, I don't know. They just rep this country so well. And, yeah, my Winnipeg chest is sticking out again, too, but I think they belong in there. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:38:51 That's okay. I'm looking at the top 100 list. And of course, as a born Quebec, I have to complain about the lack of Quebec representation on there. And Men Without Hats. That's far too low for Safety Dance. Amanda Logan (VO) 00:39:05 Yeah, like I say. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:39:06 Man, well, you know what? You mess with those rankings and you show me your list and you'll get no argument. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. You want to take out and put in. By all means, knock yourself out. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:39:15 Safety Dance at 65. And I would look at that sort of list and just say, oh, it seems to cut off at the Ottawa River. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:39:27 Hey, listen, isn't Pop goes the world in there? Don't we have some rock cuisine in there? Come on, come on. Paglia is in there. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:39:37 I don't think he is, isn't he? No. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:39:40 Well, he should be. I'll do something. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:39:41 No, Pag and Geno Vanelli is missing. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:39:45 There's no Gino. Not even black cars. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:39:48 Just checking here. No, there's a black velvet. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:39:52 Okay. All right, we're close. All right. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:39:54 But you could do 150 and still come up with these arguments right now. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:39:59 There were actually two lists too matter as well, right? There was one list for the classic rock stations and then one list for the sort of pop rock stations, just so they make sure that everything kind of blended together. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:40:07 Well, there. That just covers everything now, doesn't it? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:40:11 Really? It's a top 200. And your argument sucks. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:40:15 Can you review the Roadcaster Pro for me? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:40:18 Yeah. And this comes from. I'm not a tech guy, so this will be super basic. What I like. I'm an Apple guy. I've been kneeling at the Church of Apple since the LC two, and I do it because it works. And the set up is easy, and it just works with the roadcast. When I have to do my shows from home, it had to be not only simple, but effective. And I did all the hookups myself. I do love that. That's a labor of love is hooking things up. I love doing it, but as far as the text and the specs, I'm lousy. But as soon as I've hit the power button on that thing, it was like my best friend and I knew everything. There were no mistakes, at least at my end in terms of what pots going up, what controls what my kids were. Of course, we're all in quarantine. One of them, Leo, would wake up in the morning while I'm doing my show from the living room and come downstairs, and I thought, let's get him on. I ran downstairs, grabbed a mic, hook it up. No problem. It reads, it adapts, and I even hooked up my smartphone to my iPhone to the thing with simple Oxford. And so any interviews that I could do on here or anything that's on my iPhone just run right through their flawlessly. I love it. And it makes me want to podcast, although I'm too lazy. But, I mean, I like the simplicity of it and how I could have you over as my guest tomorrow and there'd be no okay, let me just work with this or fidget with this. It's just like it's so good. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:41:41 What was it like doing a show during the pandemic from home? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:41:45 Really? Yeah, really weird. The hardest part for me was feeling like nobody was listening. And I don't know how the studio would have improved that being in the studio, but you just look out at the city and even though you don't see any cars on the road, you feel like the city is with you. For me, I'm looking out the front window of my neighborhood and seeing people jog by or walk their dogs and stuff. We're right in it now. Right now, we're knee deep in pandemic talk, and every single day it's case count and testing and how many deaths. And my wife was quite sick, and we're convinced that she had it got tested afterwards and found out that she didn't, which was great, but she was so sick. And so it was stressful as well. And then to wake up, do all the prep that I usually do, and then just take three steps and I'm in the studio. And as I told you, it was my goal my entire life to do a morning show in Toronto. And if you had told me that, yeah, you'll get that. But you'll also be doing it from your living room. I'd be like, wow, so weird. And yet we did very well. But it just felt I don't know, it felt like I was lost and it felt, too like people have said this before, that we're in a movie and it felt like at any minute somebody would say and seen, and then that would be it. And if you go over, we could all get back to normal and everything is so not normal. And yeah, we're adapting to it now, but, boy, when every single day was another story and another pandemic or breakout, another outbreak. It was just so hard to do. Right. So the novelty of being in the living room was okay, I guess. But what you had to deal with wasn't so it was tough. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:43:26 I know Troy was on the sound off show, which is something that I do on YouTube and he and I talked about the station taking a break from all the COVID talk. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:43:35 Right. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:43:36 Do you still have those discussions going back and forth about how much COVID talk is too much talk for the show? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:43:42 Yeah, we did. At first there was just no way around it and you couldn't be. So what we did was say, well be coveted free Friday for 2 hours to give you an idea of just how welcome that was. We were joking around the very first Covet Free Friday we ran. We had splitters that were saying welcome to Bleep free Friday. And then every time somebody would say Covet or I would try and say Covet, I bleep myself. It was all very let's just have some fun. But people texted immediately and called immediately and said, I thought you said you're COVID free. We don't even want to hear Covet beeped out like Covet nothing. Don't want to hear anything. And they were quite passionate about it. So we learned going forward that you guys need it so awesome. And we did say four Fridays after that, we just did not mention it at all. Even beeped out and we got amazing feedback from it. Amanda Logan (VO) 00:44:30 People said yeah, we're good. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:44:31 But now you have to acknowledge it. We're making progress. So you have to acknowledge that progress for us. We're obviously not a news station, but we try and feel the vibe of the city and the vibe of the province in terms of where we're going with this and you can't ignore it, but by the same token, you can't present it in a way that is okay, that's that. Let's move on. I still do. I mean on the fast five every morning it will be in one of the stories, but it's basically just count. And I always concentrate on the cases that are resolved to try and get that upside. And how close are we to stage three and what's it going to take and sort of give things to look forward to as opposed to the depressing news. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:45:10 It's pretty amazing to think that at the beginning of this podcast we were talking about you flying back and forth across the country to gigs and today we just give you a Roadcaster microphone in the internet and now you can't fly anywhere. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:45:23 Isn't that crazy? And you know, we've gone from the Flintstones to the Jetsons in like it's like every year something happens where it's like we're better or we are more connected and everything is so simple. Like we're going to look at that Roadcaster and we're going to go years from now. Go, Jeez, that thing. Amanda Logan (VO) 00:45:44 You still use that? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:45:46 And I love it. Technology is as scary as it can be. It's so awesome. You and I get to do this, and it's like all you have to do is plug in. It's pretty good. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:45:56 I saw Stacey Thompson from your station. She had one. And I guess Stingray had bought you all these devices at one point to work from home. But I think Stacey was recording and voice tracking using it, and I thought it was amazing that something that was really created for podcasters wound up being a great radio tool as well. Because sometimes I go to the broadcast conventions and some of the prices are these things are not even on the same planet for podcasters. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:46:25 Exactly. Speaker 4 00:46:25 Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:46:26 There is a podcaster budget out there, and it's about one 10th of everything else. That's radio. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:46:30 That's right. That's right. I just bought a ton. And this will be a time to where I'll look back and go, this was a really cool and crazy time because it's not amazing. It's like doling those things out and everybody still all the announcers boom, have it set up in their home. They're like ready to go if COVID somehow gets into the studio or whatever. And we got to shut it down. No problem. We'll still be there. I would highly recommend I Bet There'll Be a Ton for sale when all this settles down. I can keep my eyes open for one for you if you want to make sure I grab you one. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:47:02 Well, you know what? You can't get most of the things to start a podcast now. Some of the basic microphones and Roadcasters are all back ordered. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:47:10 Right. So people are taking advantage of this time, right. To really settle in and do what they I always sort of feel about podcasting, too, which I love is now more than ever, you need to hear voices from everybody, and you need to hear people talking about maybe they're talking about covet or maybe they're talking about golf. I never used to listen to them in any fashion, and not because I was against them or anything. I just never even thought of it. And now I look at a catalog of shows that I want to listen to just because it's like I need to hear people and I need to hear opinions and I need to hear honesty. And that's what I love about podcast, man. That's straight up honest. Straight up honest. You're not talking to polished radio dudes or music producers that know their shit. You're listening to real people talk, and I love that. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:47:57 Well, we're approaching 1.3 million podcasts out there right now, so happy listening. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:48:03 Yeah, it's quite the catalog. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:48:06 Who's going to listen to all this? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:48:09 Well, then there are some where you go. Okay, nice try. I get what you're trying to do there. That's cool. That's cool. Amanda Logan (VO) 00:48:14 Good for you. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:48:15 I suppose I won't be subscribing. I may have heard your first and last one, but that's all right. My eldest son, Ben is 18 and he's got a few friends and two of them, they get together every Friday, do their podcast While watching a movie together. They're all passionate about movies. And I asked them who's listening Because it's just us. But that's all right, man. What you want to do? Put it online and see what happens. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:48:38 That's like mystery science theater from comedy. Did you watch that show? Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:48:43 I don't know if this line means anything to you, but every time I think of mystery Science theater, I think of a woman on the screen. She asked, what's your name? She says, Shelley. And the two guys look at each other and say, rub my belly. Stupidest thing ever. Amanda Logan (VO) 00:48:59 And I just happened to tune it out at that time. And every time, like right now. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:49:03 I still make my ass off. Those guys are so good. Rubbed my belly. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:49:09 Oh, yeah. And to think, by the way, I used to go and get a friend with a satellite dish Halfway across Nova Scotia Who would record hours and hours of it. I would drive 3 hours one way, 3 hours back, take it back to University And we would sit just smoke ash and watch everything so good. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:49:29 Oh, God, so good. And again, here we are today, right? No problem. Just go online, knock yourself out. You can watch them from the comfort of your own home. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:49:38 Why wouldn't you BitTorrent that thing? I know. We're so old and we're laughing. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:49:47 I know. Yes, it's good, though. I don't mind. It's like when somebody calls you Whenever somebody says, hey, here's the legendary blah, blah blah. It's just basically another way of saying he's really old, dude. He's still doing it. Good for him. He's a legend dead of voice. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:49:59 Well, I'm sorry you didn't get to see a Canadian music week this year. Of course, that's canceled along with a whole bunch of other things, But I'm glad we got together for this podcast and thank you so much for doing it. Stu Jefferies (Guest) 00:50:08 Yeah, me too, man. It's a pleasure talking with you. Pleasure meeting you. And this has been a lot of fun. Anytime. Thanks for listening to the Sound off podcast. Find us online at Sound offpodcast.com and connect with us. We have a great social media house. The show is image using the sounds from Core Image Studios written and hosted by Matt Cundill. A production of The Sound of Media company.

How did Pete Marier become Bad Pete? He tells us. I spent my teenage years listening to Pete Marier on my clock radio when he was at 980 CKGM and 95.9 CJFM. The next decade Pete was a co-worker and we've been friends since. We are not strangers to Winnipeg and Montreal radio, nor the task of raising three boys, So we always have lots of talk about. A lot of people don’t immediately associate Pete with being Bob-FM's first morning host when the format was launched back in 2002 in Winnipeg. He tells the story of how it he found himself in the middle of that and a whole lot of other radio fuckery that goes on. In this episode, Pete and I settle in for a long talk about life, family life and radio life. This is a very candid and conversation about one of Montreal's most enduring radio figures. By the way, if you are listening to the episode expecting him to say something bad about someone - it doesn't happen. Pete spoke of a messy ending to his time with Astral. That was covered in detail by Fagstein. There's also about 10 other things we didn't know including that Pete was doing a rock show for Bell's Quebec City Radio station in French and that was did a stint on TV in 2012 for CTV Montreal. You may already be hearing Pete on your radio now. Pete does a fair amount of voiceover work and radio imaging. Check out some of his work here. We also talked about where Bad Pete got his nickname and he referenced the club at 1234 de la Montagne which went by the name Club l'Esprit and was as horrible as this TV ad indicates. Transcript: Amanda Logan (VO) 00:00:01 This is the podcast for broadcast. The Sound Off Podcast with Matt Cundill. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:08 Pete Marier is a lot of fun. When I was 22, I was doing all nights in Montreal and Pete Marier was the afternoon and host. There were some pretty wild moments. Most will not be divulged in this podcast episode. Even if you think you know Pete Marier, you might not know the rest of the stories. These are the ones he would tell you over lunch. And in Montreal, lunch is 3 hours with multiple courses and a nice bottle of wine. This episode is best listened to with a bottle of your favorite and if you can work in a Mimesso sub or Schwarz of smoked meat, maybe Joe Beef or Liverpool House, the place where Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau had dinner or whatever you would order at Lexpress. Pete Marier joins me from his living space in the St. Hari district of Montreal. What part of Montreal did you grow up in? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:01:01 Grew up in the West Island. I grew up in Pierrefault, Quebec for the first 13 years of my life and then moved. My old man worked for the government, dad worked for the coast guard. So we moved from Montreal to Quebec City. He ran the ice breakers are all based in Quebec City for the St. Lawrence Seaway right up until the Ontario border all the way down to Lazesque Bay. So I lived there from 13 to 16 and then we went right back to Montreal and this time we went to Dollard up the West Island. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:34 What was Montreal like back then? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:01:36 It was the greatest city in the country. It was the biggest city in the country. I can remember going downtown as a kid, going back to like Expo 67. I was seven years old and I remember I was probably my first experience remembering downtown. I went with my mom and I remember seeing the skyline coming in from the West Island. They had buses back then that drove you from the Fairview Shopping Center down to Expo. Probably cost $50 and seeing the skyline of mud for all as they came around. And then on one side the skyline was there and on the other side was Expo in the distance. And it was like that put month for you all on the map, but pretty well made it an Alpha city. It really did. It made Montfrill the world city. And then later on, as I got older, let's say when I came back to Montreal as a teenager, 1516 years old, we went right downtown just to walk around say Catherine Street or buzz around the Metro or hang around one of the malls downtown or whatever. And I remember it was bustling. Keep in mind this is the mid 70s, but it was the hub economically for Canada. You look at Dorvale Airport at the time, it had like 25 international carriers were coming in. In the meantime, Toronto was still Toronto and just over a million people. Montreal was way ahead of the game. And then something happened in 1976, in November, and it's called the PQ election. So when they got elected, then the city began to change radically. But I have very fond memories of Montreal. You know what, Matt, along the way, I was interested in radio. So Montreal was the place people came from everywhere in Canada, and people even came from the States to come and work in Montreal at either radio or TV, because like I said, it was also the media hub for the country. This was your next step. If you were wanting to be a big name in the business, you came to Montfree all back then. So it was great. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:03:49 Yeah. We talk a lot about Toronto being sort of the center, and I think a lot of people assume that it was always that way. But really, Montreal was the place between Expo and 1967, probably right up to about 1977. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:04:01 Sure. Right up until after the Olympics. Then, like I said, the peak here was elected in the fall of 76th, and the exodus out of here began right away. I remember I was at Dawson College, and I had a crush on a girl the day after the election. I think it was on a Thursday morning. We used to sit down and meet on the stairs of the Selby campus of Dasa every day like clockwork. And she said, well, we're moving to Mississauga next summer, and this is the day after the election. She said, yes, my father's company has already decided they're out of here. So there was a family of five who were gone by decks by the summer 77. They were gone. You know what I did in the summer of 77? I mowed lawns for a living, for a real estate company, for Royal Page. And what we did was we mowed lawns of all the houses that had been vacated in the executive homes in the West Islands of Beaconsfield Bay, Durfy, Kirkland, Settleville. That's what we did. And all these houses were gone. These are muntfree Allers who have been deeply rooted in the city, and they got the hell out of Dodge in a hurry and in big numbers. That was my job, is to keep their lawns clean, to give the house curb appeal. Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:05:13 It's not some isolated incident to hear that a few friends moved away. It could be very well like half of or more of your graduating class went to Toronto. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:05:22 My graduating class, they came back to Montreal and graduated at a Pierre Pong Comprehensive High School. There were 450 grads. Okay. It was big school, big West Island Comprehensive High. And there were 450 of us graduation stuffed into the auditorium since that. Now I'm going back, what, 44 years? Now I run into maybe two of the people I graduated with. They were in a hurry to leave all of them. And the high school level website. You go look and our Facebook page. And everyone has gone to Toronto. Marko, Ontario, Mississauga, Ontario. Ottawa was also a big destination because the Crow flies. You can get there in about an hour and a half from the West Island. So technically, it's not quite as far as Toronto. And a lot of people out west, a lot of people went to calves. A lot of Edmonton went a peg out. A few of them. A few of them went to the peg. So, yeah, everyone just dispersed and spread out the wind like that. But that gives you a pretty good idea that puts it into perspective. Out of a class of 400 plus, I can bump into two of them here. Maybe three. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:06:36 Was your station, 980 CKGM it was. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:06:39 That was the station again. If you go back to keeping on the theme of Montreal back in the 70s, back TKGM was the station. They had the greatest morning man in the city and probably arguably in the city's history. Ralph Lockwood, who just died, actually a couple of months back. Rest of Seoul, you go in the backyard or in the front yard. People would be washing their cars, hanging around the pool, and you would hear CKGM Am music station in Montreal now blasting from everyone's backyard as they were doing their activities around the house. You'd hear it echoing through the neighborhood almost. That's how big it was. It's crazy. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:07:18 And you were talking about Americans who came north. He was one of them. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:07:21 Ralph Lockwood was Yup. You know what I found out? That he started his career. It's kind of funny. He started his career in radio, working at an American Air Force base in Turkey after the war and came back to, I think I'm going to say, somewhere in the area of Allentown, Pennsylvania. York. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:07:43 Pennsylvania. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:07:44 There you go. And then made his way up to see Fox, the original CFOX, 1470 a. M. In the West Island. And that's where it started for. And then CKGM jumped on him and the rest became history. Ralph was there for forever. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:08:00 So you're a West Island guy, but you didn't attach yourself to Seafox. You attached yourself to CKGM. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:08:06 Ckgm was a bigger station. It sounded better. There was more money there. Seafox still had a really good lineup, but there may have been a smaller signal in the West Island. Couldn't compare to 50,000 Watt blow torch up on top of Mount Royal. That really got the whole city together. Seafox was relevant in the West Island of Montreal, but it didn't mean anything beyond Cabin Dish Boulevard or going downtown. Forget about it. They couldn't even pick it up in the East End, probably. Yeah. Gm was the deal. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:08:45 How did you get started in radio? Was it John Abbott? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:08:49 No, I went Dawson. Dawson College was the best six years of my life. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:08:55 Matthew, you see here? I've already messed up the interview. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:08:59 Okay, well, whatever. Ask the question again. How did you get started? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:09:04 No, I'm fine with it. After Dawson College, though. Is this how you find your way to Timmons? Was it Timmons? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:09:10 Absolutely. Yes. It was 680 CKGB, the voice of Northern Ontario in Timmons, Ontario. And yes, I did meet Shaniah Twain. I interviewed her at the radio station when she was about 16 years old. Wow. She wanted to be a rock star. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:09:26 It turned out it happened. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:09:28 Did it ever? Yeah. So, yeah, that was the first job I went to Dawson, but I never went to class, I have to confess. And I'd been a pretty good student in high school, but I knew what I wanted to do. I got bit by the radio bug, actually getting a tour of Seafox Radio, the original CFOX, being given a tour there on a Saturday morning. And I remember dragging my ass off the radio station, saying, okay, let's go see what this is all about. And the door swung open in the control room. They were running a country format back then, so I really didn't care about the radio station. I was like 13. I was like, country what? The door swung open and Dean Hugo Piano, another legend of Montreal radio, was working on the Saturday morning shift. And he said, hey, hang on, kids, I got to go in the air. And he hit his mic switch and he started Disk jocking a record. And I was like, Shit, that's what I'm doing. There's no doubt about that. That's what I'm going to be doing for a living. No problem. That is great. I was bit by the bug right then and there. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:10:32 What kind of music were you playing when you got to Timmins? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:10:36 Full AC? It was 1980s. That's 40 years ago. Gosh. And it was a 10,000 watt-er from dust to dawn. And you had to lower your pattern at night. Good old AM radio. And the Jock was in charge of lowering the radius of the signal. And if you didn't, your signal could travel to Mississauga. It was on the same frequency as CFTR, 680. And we could be heard, like up in Northern Toronto on the fringe of the GTA. And the format was, oh, gosh, well, put it this way. The first record I played was Barry Manilow, I Don't Want To Walk Without You. It was a hit in April of 1980, and he was sort of hot again at that time. And I also walked on vocals first time I introduced it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:11:30 So you got off to a good- Pete Marier (Guest) 00:11:33 680, CKGB. The voice of the James Bay Frontier. And here's Barry Manilow, and I Don't Want to Walk Without You. I Don't Want to Walk with- all over, just a massive three spire. But, yeah, a lot of Anne Murray, she was coming out with a lot of hits. The Monkees, Daydream Believer was a charge topper for her. Sheena Easton was an up and comer, would have played a lot of Kenny Rogers. It was a lot of crossover music. Lionel Ritchie was no longer a Commodore. His solo career was zooming, and it was starting around then. So you got stuff like that. Air Supply was huge, so it was a full on AC station. There was not too many toe tappers. I remember there weren't any guitar solos, basically, on any of the songs that played. And if a song did come out with a guitar solo, my bosses would edit it out and put the song on cart. We were playing 45s, too. No cart machines. This is ages before digital, right? So you're live in the studio and you're queuing up records, 45s, and jumping on the intro every three and a half minutes. So it was different back then, man. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:12:46 And how did you find your way out of Timmins? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:12:50 Steve Anthony, who was my best friend growing up. Steve and I have been friends since we were kids. Our fathers were in the Navy together. They were drinking buddies in the neighborhood. They knew each other, and Steve and I are the same age. Steve actually didn't even know what he wanted to do, but he came to see me at Dawson College when I was doing a radio show there, and he said, Shit, this is great, man. I got to do this for a living. And Stevie got on it quick, and he found a job in Timmons ahead of me by about a year. And then he called me up and said, Pete, there's an opening. I'm put in a good word for you, and I think you got the job. And sure enough, next day the phone ring program director offered me $575 a month to go up to Timmons and work a six hour ship, midnight to six and do it six days a week. I didn't have to do it on Sunday nights at midnight because the station signed off at midnight with the national anthem until sign on the next day. So that's it. I went for $575 a month, and it was pretty hard work for the first six months. But, God, did I learn things. I learned so much and so little time. I had pretty good bosses up there. And they were real part of the expression. They were real Ballbusters when it came time to air checking you. These guys were pretty good at their game. And my first boss that actually worked at Cfgo in Ottawa, he also passed away a couple of years back. Mike Paris was his name. He was a good boss. They were all pretty good bosses. So I was learning. You know what, Matt? When you're 20 years old, you're sharing an apartment with, like, say, the evening announcer. And he's 20 years old. He's fresh out of school and wherever some community College in Ontario, you don't care. It's all fun. You're having fun. You're a rock star in your own mind. And if you are bitten by the bug if you have the passion to do radio. And I certainly had it. I don't deny it's. Fun. Money really wasn't an object. You could live. I had an apartment. I think it was $130 a month up there. All right, I can do this. I've got a girlfriend and then press the sister. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:00 I want to say that Steve Anthony found his way to CKGM in 1981 or 1982. But where did you go? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:15:07 I stayed in Timmons, and after about six months, it's amazing how you can climb up the ladder fast. I became music director and assistant TD, and they moved me into a swing position. So no more overnights. All I had to do was fill in for, like, I had to go in every day. And they gave me administrative duties, becoming MD and scheduling, that type of thing. And there was also an FM station. It was television that owns CKGB, and they also own station called CFTI, the country station, Stereo 92. So I swing back and forth. I did everything, worked in the newsroom, production, gosh went out, met clients. It was a hell of a learning experience. And Steve left CKGB probably about, I don't know, six months after I got there. And he went to Chime 570 Chime down in Kitchener, which was a big, huge station for central Ontario back then. And Stevie was an incredibly successful evening announcer. Steve is a very bright guy. He was a really, oh, gosh almost fashioned himself after an Earl Jive type of an answer. Was pretty esoteric and off the beaten path. He was a real personality. Remember, this is the early 80s. He was different. He wasn't just a time tune and temp guy with a big voice. That's probably what I was going for. More Steve was more to get creative and tricky on his intros and on his extras. And this whole show had a lot of drops, a lot of Monty Python drops. He was highly creative. So he stayed at 575 for probably about a year and was an early 82 that CKGM got wind of him, actually. You know who hired him? A guy who works at Winnipeg. He's still on the air at Bob. It was Buster Bodeen that hired him. Funny how the world works, eh? And yeah, Buster Bodeen got a hold of Steve's tape. And when we're hiring this kid, and sure enough, he went up to Rob Braid and said, Hire him. And they jumped on Steve. And he had a great deal of success for the next four years at CKGM. And that was the end of Montreal for him. He went up to Q 107 in Toronto through Rob Brad's connections to Toronto, in particular, with Gary Slate. And they hired him in Q 107. And then he was introducing a movie. Steve is a cute guy, right? And Moses neighbor happened to be at the movie and at the movie premiere, intro and Steve came out a like I said, high energy was his other thing. Steve was wired. He was just bouncing off the walls and funny and cute. And Moses neighbor said, hey, Ken, how would you like to work on a new TV station I'm creating called Much Music? So Steve got really busy. He was doing 2107 and was part of the launch at Much Music. So he had a great career. And I owe Steve, he owes a bit to me for maybe me introducing him to radio, but he definitely had a lot to do, Matt, with me getting my first job up in Timmons, and then later on getting me back home to Montreal. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:18:28 Where was home for you on the radio in Montreal? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:18:31 Well, I came back to CKGM good. Steve was working there and he said, hey, I got this kid. He's up in Timmons. He's the muttreal. He's pretty good. He knows all the facets of radio. He's been working on a shitty little AC radio station up there. Let's get him back here to do top 40. And that was an answer to a prayer for me. And again, thanks to Steve. So I came back to CKGM, stayed there for three years, then crossed the street, went to FM 96. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:18:59 This is the part where I start to know who Pete Marier is because I think you were doing I want to say The Driver, the midday show. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:19:06 There I was on mid days. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:19:08 Yeah. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:19:09 And loving it. It was great. And that was standard broadcasting and great. Great company to work for. Cjd, the powerhouse talk and news information station was down the hall, and on the other side of the building was us at FM 96. And again, that was back to an adult contemporary format. By this time, it's the music is getting a little dance here. You're starting to play Whitney Houston a bit more, but it was FM. I'd never really done FM, apart from a couple of ships on that country station in Timmons on a homemade console. So this was sort of like the big League FM for me and I'd love to change. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:19:50 Did you change your delivery? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:19:51 Did you change the way you did radio because it was FM ton toned it down a bit and jumping from Am to FM back then, Matt, in 87, we had something called regulations regs, and you had to do content. It was part of the radio station's promise of performance. It was the law. You had to do content once an hour, and it was divided into a bunch of different categories. Another word for it, some people probably remember is enrichment. So artist information, let's say, could qualify as enrichment. If you went on for more than 1 minute, it counted as enrichment, and you were adhering to your promise of performance. Or it could be like a bit God, you could give out a recipe on the radio and that counted as enrichment. Or you could talk about a Montreal landmark, the history of a Montreal landmark. That, too, counted as enrichment. So there was an adjustment as opposed to CKGM and reading liners. That's all it was. You could do that in your sleep. That format. All you needed was good pipes and a good, strong delivery and plenty of enthusiasm to sell top 40 music. But getting to FM, it was toning it down a bit. It was becoming a little more mature, I think. And that's the way I was groomed there. Speak into the mic and pour on the smoothness. Pete. I used to get told that all the time, like, mellow it out, talk to the girls, that type of thing. Okay, I'll do that on FM 96. Cj FM. Set your mind to music. It was that kind of format. It was fun, though. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:21:41 One day I'm listening to Show, and I think Chris Michaels is doing Afternoon Drive. Al Greval is doing mid days, and then those people weren't there anymore. And who's playing what in the background there? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:21:53 Sorry, Maddie. I'm walking through the kitchen here, boys. They've got some crazy rap music playing there. What are you listening to, boys? Kiddie. Who kiddie? Kiddie. Kid couldn't. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:22:09 Exactly. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:22:10 Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:22:10 So, like, one day I'm listening to Chris Michaels on Drive on Show. Algorithm is doing Midday, and then I think those guys are let go. And then you're brought in all of a sudden, and now you're my smooth, easy talking guy on FM 96. But now you're supposed to be the rocking guy on Shown. That jar is a 16 year old. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:22:28 Pete, I've sort of troubled you, but I couldn't resist the offer. And that's exactly how it happened. Matt, they replaced Al Ravale and Chris Michaels in one fell swoop. Ken Connors got the midday show. He replaced Al Gosh. That's 30 years ago, summer of 1990. And then they put me on Drive. And, yeah, that was the biggest move, I guess, that I made because it takes a little time for adjustment. I wasn't used to saying, hey, here's guns and roses on the spirit of rock. Shalm 97. I haven't done any of that radio yet, so there was some adjustment needed. But it was fun. Gosh. That's when it really kicked in. I think that's when I became a little more of a personality. It was at the ten year Mark in my career when Shown hired me. And up until then, I'd just been a pretty safe Jock, a good, steady, professional, smooth sounding announcer. But I also had a mullet and didn't listen to Sheena Easton or Lionel Richie records when I got home. I can assure you I've always been a rocker. I can appreciate other kinds of music. But Sean was like, that was okay. You're at Show now, and you can let the Formatt go a little bit. Get the call letters in there, Pete, but have some fun. And, oh, here's your partner's name is Andrew Carter. He's going to be your co host. Perfect. So we were doing all sorts of crazy shit. When I think back to it, pirate Peaks and quiz the Whiz radio dictionary, which was just stupid, but it was fun and people loved it. So that's when it really kicked into high gear for me, Matt right there. Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:24:20 Well, the rock thing begins to really take off. Guns and Roses, I think back to 1992. Guns and Roses. They had the riot at Olympic Stadium. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:24:32 Anniversary just passed. That's right. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:24:34 Yeah. Show with Metallica. That never really happened. Anyway. There was so much rock and roll that was going on in that city and you and Andrew were just lighting it up on drive. Terry was doing mornings and it's around this time. First of all, I remember you being buried alive. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:24:53 Yeah, that's right. That was one of the stunts that we did. And we did stunts. I was almost a bit of a stunt man that was buried alive. I did that for Fairview Toyota and it was in conjunction with the promo, excuse me, with the Missing Children's Network of Canada, which was Terry's baby. Right. So it all fell into place, all the planets aligned, and that was massively successful. People still talk about that. Hey, weren't you buried alive back in 92? Yes, I was. It was an illusion. I'll let the cat out of the bag now, but I was encased in a chunk of ice. They had a large chunk of ice up on the stage behind some drapes. It was come and look at Pete Marier. He is frozen alive in ice. And people could look in this little hole and see me inside this ice Cube. Inside the ice Cube. I'll never forget it when it happened. I got TV coverage and the papers were there. It was kind of a big promo. Keep in mind, this is 1992. And I remember going on a day like today, it's sunny and beautiful here. And they said, here's the ice that Pete Marier is going to be jumping into it. He's spending 48 hours in here. Will he make it? While you're here, make sure you look at the new 1000 1993 models that are in for next year. And we're offering special rebates. So it became a sales pitch then. But I remember going into the ice Cube within the ice, there was basically something the size of a coffin, 3ft wide by 3ft high by 6ft long. So I was five foot seven. I still am five foot seven. And I would fit in it. And I said, well, get married and do it. And we'll give him a microphone and he can do a show out of there. It'll be great. Good radio bit, right. And I remember getting on stage here's, Pete Marier. And I remember getting into the ice Cube, putting my feet in and bending down and looking at it. And I came back up. And the guy was hosting it. A guy named Doctor Silkini. Who Terry de Monte was calling Doctor Zucchini on the air. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:27:00 No, he wasn't. He called him Dr. Dick Weenie. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:27:04 Oh, Dickie. I remember the good doctor. Yeah, right, doctor. I remember him not being very happy about this. Who's your morning man got on the microphone. The intercom with me said, who's a crisis this morning? Matter. Come down here and get a beat his head. And it's like, okay. And I remember that putting my feet in and basically bending down and looking where I was going to be living for the next 48 hours. I came up and I whispered, I can't fucking do this. There's no way. He said, you listen to me. A little bastard. Get in there. There's 1000 people who want this to happen. Let's go. A lot of money involved. Get in and shut up. You'll be fine, okay? And I did. And I have to admit, I was claustrophobic a bit at first. And he actually spoke to me and said, look, relax. Here's the breathing technique. It's going to work. And then he also said to me, he says, you're going to go in here, kid. You'll get over your anxiety. And said, when you come out, you're going to be a star. I'm like, oh, I guess he's right. And it went off without a hitch. It was a lot of fun. And I stayed in there. You know what? I couldn't eat Matt. And I was told fast. Before I went in, they gave me a bunch of Gatorades and they gave me Baggies. I was one of the Baggies for. He said, Use your head kit. So that's basically how I relieved myself. It sounds gross, but that's how I pulled it off for 48 hours. I could pee in these baggage. Anyway, that was that. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:28:25 This is the era, though, when you start to get the nickname Bad Pete. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:28:29 That's right. Right around there. Bad Pete. Actually, the nickname came from Andrew Carter, my co host and the current morning mad on CJD 800 Montreal's news information leader. Andrew Carter and I hung around because we worked a lot. We became good friends on and off the air, and we had to host a Halloween bash. Remember the old 1234 Mountain Street? 1234 Mountain Street? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:28:54 Oh, yeah. They advertised on TV and everything. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:28:56 Oh, yeah. Huge place, right? It's like a dance club or whatever they invite. Andrew and I, come on down here, guys. Host our Halloween bash and get dressed up. So we put on our tuxedos and we went in as the dynamic duo and taxes or whatever the hell we were. And long story short, the party went a little later than announced. And Andrew and I remember we staggered back to his place at about 03:00 in the morning. He was living down in Point St. Charles, so we just got a late night bite at Kojax. Walked out to his place. I passed out on his couch, fully closed on tuxedo. And his daughter Michelle at the time was about two years old. And she knew me because I was hanging around the house. She knew my name was Pete. She was beginning to talk, right? She toddler. And the next morning at about 06:00 A.m., maybe 2 hours into sleep and pretty banged up, she's pulling on my sock and she's sort of pointing at me, going, Bad Pete, bad Pete. And Andrew's wife at the time, Cindy, heard that and just sort of picked up Michelle and let me sleep it off a few more hours. I'd forgotten about all this. And then we get to work and Andrew Carter goes on the air and he goes, hey, Bad Pete, what's up? I went Bad Pete. He said, yeah, that's your new nickname? My daughter Michelle named you Bad Pete and it's going to stick. Okay, so that's pretty. Well, you're right. That's when it all started. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:30:22 In just a second. Bad Pete is born, the musical chairs of morning radio starts and Pete heads to Winnipeg. He loves it, but he's also faced with some serious surgery. And by the way, if you're loving this podcast, do me a favor and leave me a five star review. See, I don't normally ask for them, but we're in a pandemic and I'm feeling a little lonely. A couple of things happened in 1993, aside from the Montreal Canadians winning Family Cup. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:30:55 Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:30:56 Terry Damonte gets lured over to Mix 96 and then show them hires John Deringer to come in from Q 107. Did that hurt you a bit? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:31:05 Not at all. I didn't want it. I'd love to. Afternoon Drive. The only disappointment was that we're going to take Andrew and put it in with darringer. But I'd like the hours. Matt. Keep in mind, I was single. I was, whatever, 32. I was not ready to get up at 04:00 A.m. Or gosh 330 in the morning. Forget about it. I filled in on mornings for Terry and I'd done mornings before. I even did mornings up in Timmons for a spell, but I preferred Afternoon Driver. Are you kidding? Montfriend all working three to seven. It was the ideal hours and they gave me a new cohost. Her name was Sue Bell and sue and I became friends, too, and had a pretty good run there, too, you'll recall. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:31:44 Oh, absolutely. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:31:45 Yeah. Bad Pete and Good Sue. People love Sue. Sue had this incredible sound and very fun, easygoing girl, and at the same time a pretty good journalist. She now works for CBC north and does docks for the most part for CBC north. And so it all worked out. Like I said, I lost Andrew, but he went to Mornings because it was going to be a big pay increase for him and just. Maddie, give me a second here. Sorry, Matt. You're going to work, son. Matt, you're going to work. All right. I'm doing a podcast here, so have a good shift. We'll see you tonight, maybe. Good, man. I'll see you next time. My son Matthew going off to work at Liverpool House. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:31 Oh, really? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:32:33 Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:33 How long has he worked there for? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:32:35 A couple of years. He's been in Montreal with me for a couple of years and he goes to Concordia. He's 30 or Concordia now, so he's a Buster there, makes good money, and they're back in business now. They opened up about two months ago, I guess. Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:52 By the way, it's Montreal. You got the Montreal Sounds of Summer there that I love. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:32:56 But Cop car backing up. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:58 Exactly. But I wanted to mention you and John Deringer, though. You guys were pals. You guys got along? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:33:04 Oh, absolutely. I saw Johnny about oh, gosh. I went to Toronto to catch a Habs Leafs game and he's got good seats, by the way, at the ACC Bastard. And he came into Montreal, I guess it was last fall. He came in last fall and went to a Habs game. John is busy. I don't know how Q is doing now. They've sort of gone down a bit. They've gone through a few changes there, but John keeps busy. He's got a wife and three daughters, too, so his time is precious. But we say Hi to each other whenever we can. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:45 It was a really tough year for John Deringer, being a Leafs fan and having to live in Montreal while they're picking up a Stanley Cup. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:33:51 Oh, gosh. And back then, John being John, he made no bones about it. He'd go out on the air on show and say, yeah, I'm a Leafs fan. Wrong thing, John. Don't say that, dude. But that was part of John's nature and his personality and lifelong Leaves fan. Yeah, it would have been tough on him. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:34:11 It was one of the listeners translated his name, John Darns, into French and called them Jean Dengue. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:34:17 Yeah, well, there you go. I remember that nickname, too. What does that mean? What are they saying about me? Nothing, John. It's all good. Don't worry about it. Steve Millerband is cool. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:34:28 And John goes back to Toronto and is that when you take over mornings at Sean? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:34:32 That's it. Yeah. And at that point, Terry was over at Mix 96, having left show him two and a half, three years earlier and he's killing it. The station is on fire and Sean at the same time is not catching up with the music. You'll recall all that seal is sort of lagging behind. Now, this is the Grunge move and it's kicked in big time. And I don't know if you remember this, but a listener actually brought down the Nirvana album and said, hey, here's an album that you guys should be playing. And the boss at the time said, no, this Grunge thing is a flash in the pan. It's not going to hold. It's not going to stick, so get lost. Well, anyway, the research came back from the consultants a couple of weeks later. He said, Where's that album that that kid brought in there from their vanilla? Let's play it. And that's when she started to, I think, lose its way, I think is a good way to put it. At the same time, remember the cross border radio station in Burlington, Vermont, used to be it still beams in here. 99 the buzz and their format was alternative and they began to kill it. So Sean was getting it from the buzz in Mix 96. Our big base of listeners followed Terry over to Mix 96 big time. So the numbers were starting to wane and I took over the morning show there. I had Andrew and sue with me, pizza and Andrew. And in hindsight, I should have taken the job a lot more seriously. I was up against some elements. Like I said, Sean's audience was waning. You could feel it. We weren't the station that people went to to find out what music was hip anymore. We lost that credibility, Matthew. We really did. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:36:26 If I could just point to one thing. The Grunge was in full gear. But Grunge music isn't something that sort of aggratiates itself to the Montreal sound. Is that fair? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:36:39 I wouldn't go that far, Matt. I don't know. There was a big ass movement. Look, I can remember just going around. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:36:48 Well, let me put it to you this way. Is it fair to say that showmes Past and the Grunge present at the time didn't really mix together? Well, you're right. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:37:00 There sounds would have been here's a good word, juxtaposed. Okay. Yeah. It was unfamiliar and it was rougher around the edges. Grunge was alternative was when it came out initially. And I could see the hesitation by management to say, no, let's keep our classic rockers here. Let's hang out of them. That's our niche, and let's not lose that. But Shown didn't do that. What they did when Grudge came in was they said at the same time, Matt, there was a lot of up and coming female artists. I think Atlantis Morris, Cheryl Crow was coming into her own. Sarah McLaughlin was huge back then. Fiona Apple. Now you classify that music as adult contemporary, but that's where Sean went. So in doing so, you're going, hang on. Look, there's a lot of chick bands here. What's happening. And we were really between a rock and a hard place. And the bands like, okay, Guns and Roses had dissolved. And then your old standby, like, say, Van Halen, they were doing ballads. Bon Jovi was now laden with ballads. These old hair bands were just falling off the radar and they were trying to adapt and trying to find a way. And they started going softer. So all of a sudden, Shown, at one point, if you go back to, like 1990, 719 98, show them is a pretty soft sounding station. We weren't playing Rush anymore. There's another example of a core audience or a core band that we sort of let go. So the station was really sort of twisting in the wind while Mix 96, the Top 40 music at the time, was flying. Grunge was really taking off. But yeah, what you're saying is there was a bit of hesitation on the part of management to play Grunge and go all out, balls to the walls. Grunge, you're right. There was hesitation. I think that's maybe where they were afraid to play the music. Well, they shouldn't have been in hindsight, hindsight is 2020 vision mine here. But we should have been on Nevada and we should have been on the Pearl Gem from day one. And we weren't we should have eased it into the audience and got it into our universe of songs, into our playlist. And we didn't do it properly. In my humble opinion, that's what happened. So we lost. We became on hip. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:39:25 And the big solution at that point, you throw the Hail Mary and shown brings in Howard Stern. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:39:31 That's right. And our numbers admittedly, our numbers are suffering. Which numbers are hurting across the board. There's no beating Terry over at Mix 96, it would seem, and there's no beating George Malcolm, the perennial muttre all number one morning then on CJD. So they say, what are we going to do? We're bleeding numbers now. What do we do? And they said, we're bringing in Howard Stern. He's syndicated and we'll get them. And they did. And it worked. The first book, the first BBM with Stern, he took over on Labor Day in 1919 was huge. He beat George Balkan. So a lot of people came in and kicked the can or kicked the tires on the truck, as the old saying, and listen to Howard Stern and filled out their ballots saying, yeah, we listen to Howard Stern. He's the greatest man in the world. He's the King of all media and he's on show. So it worked. But then it started to not work. And round about the time that the famous ice storm of 98 kicked in, people were needed their news and information. And we weren't providing that on the morning show. We certainly were not. We were Howard Stearns in there talking about T and A and doing his usual thing and not paying any attention to Montfriet all. So that began that. And apparently the story goes, Matthew, that Alan Waters, who was still CEO of Chum Group, that we were a Chum station, basically saw Howard Stern also went on TV that year and saw his TV show Late Night, I think it ran Saturday nights and basically phoned up his son the next day, Jimmy, and said, cancel that guy on my radio stations. I don't want him anymore. And that was that. So Stern made it to 51 weeks on show as the morning man. And that was it. And it was over. And when it was over, it pissed off a lot of listeners. But some people were like, okay, that's that revolt. Next, who are you going to bring in now? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:41:35 Yeah, but she'll always had a 70% Francophone listener base, and that's right. Then you've got a morning guy, Howard Stern, who's annoying them all. So this is not good business. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:41:45 Well, the first day went on, the area said, hey, we're broadcasting at a radio station now in Montreal. They're picking us up and Hello, Montfriend. There's a lot of French people up there. Wow, you people are like sheep. You bought to Hitler in just a matter of days in the Second World War, didn't you? Phones are ringing. They're off the hook. I don't know if you remember this, but we had all our cruisers, our cars, and all our signs and trucks were shown. Plastered all over them were vandalized, windows smashed, spray painted. About a week within hiring Howard Stern, that happened. So he really pissed off a lot of the fryer phones big time. So I'll never forget that. Actually, by the time he left Matt after 51 weeks, it was like, okay, let it go. And there was some people, there was some pushback from his very loyal fans, but that quickly faded. I remember that was gone in a matter of months. It was like, okay, well, but that still left Selm twisting in the wind. The station can't make up their mind. They're playing shitty music and they got rid of Howard Stern. And I'm trying to remember for the life of me, oh, they brought Steve Anthony in. That's right. Steve Anthony came to do mornings. He had left much music and was looking for work, and we rehired him. He came back to Montreal and Steve had some notoriety because he was a national TV face and still pretty good this jockey, but it still wasn't catching on. Those were some very lean years for showmefm. It was a wandering soul. Matthew didn't have anything going for it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:43:32 It's pretty amazing, though, that you've got your childhood friend who's doing the morning show and you're doing afternoon drive, is that right? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:43:39 Yes, I stayed on Drive. I stayed there up until the time I moved up to Winnipeg. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:43:45 Well, actually, I'm going to mention that because what happened to show them in the end as they wound up getting, you want to say sold, but I think they really sort of traded and flipped like a trading card was the way somebody put it to me. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:43:58 That's exactly what it was. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:43:59 So Shoe, which was part of Chum, got sent to Standard in exchange for a couple of radio stations in Winnipeg. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:44:07 It was one signal for one signal. Okay. Standard would pick up Shelm 97 seven, and Chum group would take over 99 nine in Winnipeg, which I got. I don't remember what they were doing. I don't remember what their call letters were, but we launched it as Bob, right? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:44:25 So they were called Magic 99. But you wound up being a part of the trade without really being a part of the trade because you left Montreal and you stayed with Chum and went to Winnipeg. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:44:35 Yes, I did. Well, they made me an offer I couldn't refuse, and it was very flattering at this point. I'd been at shown through all sorts of changes for twelve years. And Jimmy Waters phoned me, how do you feel about moving? And at this point, I had just had my third son and they were young and we were living in the West Island down in Point, where we had a good set up going. He said, I'm going to launch a radio station, and I think it's something you'd really be good at. It's going to be a Classic Hit station. I'm going, okay. He said, look, we're going to fly into winterg this weekend. Come and have a look. And that's where I met Howard Kruger, who was behind the whole Bob thing. That was his creation, and Christopher Brooke, who was going to be my direct program director. And they flew me out to Winnipeg, put me up at the Fairmount right there at the corners of Portugal, Maine. It was my first time at Winnipeg. It was February. It must have been -150,000 degrees. I remember Chris came to meet me at the hotel. They winded on me for the weekend, and he brought me a Winnipeg Blue Bombers Duke. And I hadn't worn a tuk since I was probably in grade school. He said, you're going to put this on? And when I'm done, I'm not wearing a Duke. Right. Especially with the Winnipeg logo. He said, yeah, you are. And boy, was he right. I hung on that thing like I never let it go. It was so cold, and I took the job. It was a great, great offer. Chum had been very good to me. And they said, Come out and do something different with your career. Come out to Winnipeg, give you the morning show. The station is going to be hot. It's going to hit the ground running guaranteed format. And it was it's still going today. So that's testament to how much of a good format it is. That format is stuck down for 18 years, right? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:46:27 By the way, a lot of people don't know that. That's the radio station where Classic Hit started. And so you're in the mix. You're doing mornings, you're the morning man on this radio station where Classic Hits launched. How excited were people to have this radio station? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:46:43 It was great. And part of their launch. This is kudos to Howard Kruger. They started teasing the launch. They knew what they were going to do. He pitched the ideas to upper management into Chum, and they said, sure, it works. We think it's going to be great. Now is the time to start playing 80s, 90s and whatever. Make it sound like it's a random station, but the music was actually pretty well researched and all that you couldn't miss with these tested songs. So what he did was carefully put together. A staff, myself included. A bunch of other people were part of the deal, too. And he began an ad campaign teasing the station with billboards and ads in the wintertime pre press. And it was Bob is coming. That's it. And that's all I would say. It was a half page ad and a big Billboard. And it just said with the same not showing the whole logo, just, Bob is coming. So people would see that go, what the hell is that? Bob? Who's Bob? What's Bob? And gradually leading up to the launch, more and more was starting to show on the billboards and in the ads, these teasers that they were running in print media. And then billboards started to reveal that, hey, it might be a radio station. And they showed this dude standing there. It was very working class. It looked like the cover of Born in the USA, Springsteen jeans and a white T shirt type of thing with a bit of a rock and roll edge to it. And by the time we launched the morning that we launched in March of 2002, the ads popped up. It was like, Bob is here and Bob is flowing in and he's going to rock Winnipeg with a format you've never heard before. And it worked. The ratings came out, I guess, two or three months later, you know, the BBM spring rating came out, and it was a station. I forget what the SharePoint was, but it was huge for a first book. It was like, this is going to be good. And like I said earlier, that's testament that they're still on the air today with the same logo and pretty much the same call sign, the same slogan says a lot about its success. Matt, there aren't too many stations that stick around for 18 years, especially classic hits. So Bob really did it. And then Howard Fugre eventually left Chum Group and now operates. I don't know. I haven't spoken to Howard in a little while, but I think he's got at least 25, if not more Bob's, and also a country version of Bob called Hank FM all over the States. He's always traveling and consulting these stations, and they've got them, and it's very successful. So good for him. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:49:39 Do you remember telling the Pinhead, who was working at Standard Radio that you were going to go to Winnipeg and not work for Standard the Pinhead? That was me. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:49:50 Yes, I did. Yes, I do. We were on the phone. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:49:53 No, we were having coffee. We were okay on Green Avenue. Yeah, green Avenue. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:50:00 And I said that I'm out of here or what? I don't remember that too well. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:50:04 Yeah, that's exactly what you said. I'm not sticking around for this. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:50:07 Yeah, well, the thing is what happened at the same time. So Chum has given me a pretty good opportunity to do something and start basically launch radio station. It's a nice feather to have in your cap, as they say. And at the same time, I was going to be staying with shown and going over to the standard building on Fort Street. But they were going to be cutting my pay and putting me on afternoon drive or keep me on drive. But there was a pay cut that came with it, and that's what I say. Chubb made me an offer I couldn't refuse. It was to pay hike. God, I got a golf membership, the Transcoda Golf Course. Maddie and I was also invited to play in other courses. There was a really nice course on the other side of the Centerboyne River over in St. James. What was it called? It's like Winnipeg's oldest course, St. Charles. That's it. Exactly. So I remember playing a couple of rounds over there. Look, they offered me the golf membership. Maybe it was just to pad the contract, but it was like, Shit, Hey, I'm going to get a golf membership here. The clubhouse in transcontinent, I think was a trailer home, but it was still fun. I had a lot of fun. I met a lot of great people out there, too, and a car. And they gave me a couple of trips a year. And it was like, I loved it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:51:21 Good on you for taking all that. I got a similar offer like that, too, that included the Winnipeg Winter Club. So to get you to Winnipeg, they give you some pretty nice perks to get you in the community here. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:51:34 The Winter Club. God, it rings a Bell. Yeah, sort of. Remember that. Okay, Peter. And corner. Thanks, Peter. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:51:41 I was a little concerned about the heart condition, though, you had in Winnipeg. You had some pretty serious surgery. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:51:46 Yeah, I did. That was the funny thing. Hand in hand with all these changes taking place, we get the Winnipeg now. We haven't launched yet. We're still getting ready for the launch. And I'm staying at the Holiday Inn on Pembada Highway, just up the street from the Chum Building on Pembada Highway. And I ordered supper in one night into the room. And all of a sudden I started choking on the food. I remember it was a cheeseburger, and I was washing it down with a coconut beer. And I remember going, wow, that's weird. I guess I bit off too much and I'm starting to choke now. And all of a sudden this pain sort of started shooting into my left arm. It was like, okay, I better sit down and take it easy. And it passed. And I went, wow, that was weird. I guess that's some sort of indigestion. I had no idea that it would have been a heart problem. And then it started to recur every so often. And at work in the middle of a shift. If I got really stressed or at home, if I was picking up my newborn baby and walking up the stairs, it would hit again. I get the shooting pain in my left arm. The attacks became a little more frequent and they intensified in pain. So I finally, about a year after this started, I said, well, maybe I should go get myself a doctor. Went over to my doctor and he said, don't worry about it, Pete. He said, It's just the stress of moving to Winnipeg with a young family and starting a job, and you're working hard at Bob and blah, blah, blah, don't worry about it. But we're going to take an EKG. I'll let you know. So off to the EKG. I go and, okay, we'll send the results to your doctor, and he'll get in contact with you if there's anything serious. By the time I got home, the doctor was insane changed. By the time I got home into Charles, the phone was ringing and he said, Get your ass back into my office right now. So I went in. That's when I knew the jig was up. I knew there was something more serious. He said, you haven't joined them. You're going to have a heart attack here. Get down to Health Sciences Center. We're sending you off to HSC here's a heart specialist. For the life of me, I can't remember his name, and I should because he basically saved my life. And he said, You've got two choices, Pete. He said, you have two clogged arteries on your heart muscle in the front veins of your heart. The two big arteries are clogged 80% each. He said, I can try to put stents in there, which is what Claude Julie, I think, just had the greatest coach in the world, man. And then he said, we could do that. He said, but it's really risky. So what I want to do is give you a bypass. I'm like, Jesus, I'm like 42 years old. What are you talking about? I've never even had stitches. He said, yeah, that way you can avoid any risk during start surgery. You'll pull out of it, you won't be at work for six months. I can guarantee you that. So I went ahead and had the heart surgery, went into HSC, and they did it. I was in and out of there in a matter of a couple of hours. Of course, I had to stay in the hospital for a month, not a month for a good week. But that's what cured me. That's what saved me. And that led to me eventually leaving. I knew I wasn't going to be doing mornings anymore. I had a doctor's note saying, no, my patient is not getting up at 330 in the morning to go do radio anymore. And I bailed on my contract. I had a three year contract with Chum, and I gave my six month out and I was left six months short of renewing my contract, and it was really too bad. I did go back to work at Bob, but they put me on Drive and I started to love Winnipeg. Then it was like I knew more people. I was comfortable in the city. I knew my way around the city really well. Very easy city to move around in. Had friends in the neighborhood, and it was kind of sad. I remember feeling kind of bad leaving there. I remember closing up the house, and there was a couple of guys that I worked with who lived right down in my neighborhood. So we hung head together. George Jason was one of my producers on Pebbles Highway at Cham, and he's a great guy. We're still friends today, and he just retired, actually, I think he was working at Drive. Is that possible? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:56:03 Yeah, absolutely. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:56:08 I remember being fatted, but long story short, weapon was a hell of a life experience. It was great. It rejuvenated my health and it also kept my career going. It was fun. And there's another place where they stayed on top of their talent really well. We were air checked regularly. We had consultants that came in regularly, and they took their job very seriously. The other thing about Winnipeg is that it was a fantastic radio market, and I imagine it's still highly competitive. And you have to mind your pees and queues and you have to work your ass off to make a dent in that market. I remember that it was no cakewalk, and so it kept me on my toes. From a professional point of view. It was great. I really liked it. And I'll tell you what, about four or five years later, I did come back to Montreal and got rehired at Selm right away. There were times where I became very nostalgic about the peg and where I thought to myself, Geez, if I stayed there, I'd have a really good thing going. But my ex wife and I are families. Our big families are here, and they sort of wanted us back here. And so we made that tough decision to come back to Montreal. But I'll never forget when it picked it was a place that as the saying goes, man took a piece of my heart, actually, two clogged arteries is what they did. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:57:38 And when you moved back to Montreal, you don't move back to Montreal necessarily. You moved to Norton, which is about an hour outside of town. And then you came back and started working for us at show. Pete Marier (Guest) 00:57:50 That's right. Yeah. And I had a lot of fun. I moved out to Dalton. Dalton is in the Eastern Townships. It's just up from the Vermont border. As the Crow flies. It's 100 km away. That's a pretty easy commute, actually. And plus, I was doing midday at the time that show when I got retired. So I was always against traffic. It was no problem, really. For me, it was a great place to live. I got the best of both worlds. My kids could go hunting and fishing and skiing and swimming in Broom Lake. And we could be downtown Montfrey all an hour later taking in a Habs game or grabbing a sandwich up at Schwarzs. So it was a really good way of life for quite a while. Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:58:28 So carrying on through that era, what did you do back at Show Radio wise? Pete Marier (Guest) 00:58:34 It was midday for a couple of months, maybe not even a year, as I recall. And then Afternoon Drive opened up again. Terry was back doing mornings and Terry and Ted Bird were heading the morning show along with Kim Rossi. And the station knew some pretty good success again. We finally readjusted the format and gone back to playing a lot of classic rock. It was Montreal's classic rocker, so it was a great place. It felt like coming back home. I remember getting right back on the air saying, oh, God, I guess this is where I really belong. This is great. This is my hometown. This is a station that I'm familiar with and people still remember me here. It was a lot of fun. And yeah, so did Middays and did Afternoon Drive. And then Terry left again. He went to work for Chorus out in what you would call it, Calgary. And they said, Mary, you want the morning show? And I went, well, okay, well, here's how much we're going to pay. Okay, I'll do it. And jumped in and then got myself an apartment downtown. I wasn't going to be making that 100 kilometer commute from the Eastern Townships, from the country into Montreal every morning. Forget about it. That's an hour of sleep time. So I got myself an apartment downtown. And in the meantime, while this is happening, Matt Standard is being gobbled up by our friends at Astral Media. So there came another change in the building. It was a change of culture. Standard was Standard. We all know how good it was working for the Slates, right? And then we started working for truly a mega company that Astral Media was. And there was a bunch of changes. They took me off of the morning show and we're getting ready for Terry's return. Terry was going to be coming back after what he spent four years out west. So Terry, it was an asset. Terry dementia is coming back. And they put me on Afternoon Drive. And with that came a pay cut that was just a bit too much for me. And that's when the problem started. I lawyered up at their advice. I said, well, get yourself a lawyer then, because we're cutting your pay by more than half. And I said, no, you're not. And that's when the shit hit the fan, so to speak. And that led to my leaving show. I quit. I did not get fired. I quit. I gave my resignation. I had my three months out and I got the hell out of there. And it wasn't because Terry was coming back. Terry and I are friends. That had nothing to do with it. I didn't mind going back to Afternoon Drive. My pride was not hurt. What was going to hurt was the big cut in pay. I was making pretty good bank. And remember, I've got a wife who doesn't work living out in the country. We got a country home. I got a place downtown. I got three kids who are heavily involved in sports. And I wasn't ready to absorb that pay cut. And I stood my ground and basically left and regretted it. Matt Cundill (Host) 01:01:44 But it wasn't too long after that that you wound up in Ottawa, right? Pete Marier (Guest) 01:01:48 Yeah. And then actually, I went to work at the beach here in Montreal and I was able to work. After my no compete clause finished, I got hired by Kojako Nine Two Five. The Beat basically a Top 40 dance station. And I had no earthly business being there. I mean, hey, Pete, you're going to start playing Taylor Swift? I said, who's he? And you're going to start playing Bieber was really big. This was going back like 2012. Amanda Logan (VO) 01:02:19 Okay. Twelve. Pete Marier (Guest) 01:02:21 They were really nice. They hired me and I did a lot of commercial work. I was doing a lot of freelance, a lot of voice work, but I had no business being on a station like that. I remember my boss at the time, Leo, saying, yeah, we did a focus group and we asked, hey, is the name Pete Marier familiar? Just about every person in the room. Yeah, he's the guy on show. So it didn't exactly work out for me on The Beat. And then Cors hired me. They had Boom was where I went to work. 99 seven, boom, 80s, nine. What was their slogan? Best of the 80s and 90s? I think it was. Did mornings and drives there, too. And they were gobbled up or they merged, I think was Shaw. Is that the Shaw course merged? Matt Cundill (Host) 01:03:13 I think Corus bought it from Astral. Pete Marier (Guest) 01:03:13 They began to reduce their staff. That always happens, right? Change of philosophy, management, change in culture. And one day I got a phone call. I was actually in Montreal on vacation having breakfast with my late mum. The phone rang and I went, of course, entertainment. I'm done. And sure enough, it was a couple of people, my program director and one of the chief consultants of the company, saying, thanks, Pete, but that's it. We're done. We're changing. And they got rid of ten of us that day in Ottawa. Three jocks, the ones who basically are making the most money, myself, Sandy Sharky and good old Murray Sheriffs, my Newsmax. So we were out and a bunch of sales reps, and that's when I found myself. That was the first time I'd ever been laid off in radio in my 35 year career. That was the first time that I was fired saying, sorry, but you're done. That's it. Good luck. See you later. Here's your package. Get out. So I came back to Montreal, and I had sort of burned my bridges a bit at show when I left. When you get lawyers and you sue, your name is kind of muddy. But Luckily I had made my amendments with the person with whom I had the fight. So we were back on speaking terms. And he said, Pete, he said, I can't get you in on the air yet. It shown, but we're going to give you a voicework. We've got five radio stations here. Come on and do TV for CTV and Montreal and do the four radio stations here's a couple of shifts a week. Just go and read script. And that was fine by me. And I could get by for a little while. And then that went on for a good year. And then finally they opened up the weekend shift. They made some scheduled changes, and that's when I got back. And that's where I've been ever since. That's over two years now and doing the swing show. And actually, I've been filling in for Terry for the last three weeks. He's on extended vacation now. You got the whole month of August off. Matt Cundill (Host) 01:05:29 He loves to take- and you should. In Montreal, you take summers off. That's kind of how it goes. Pete Marier (Guest) 01:05:35 Yeah. Well, if you look at the French side of the media, where Bell is, we share the building with two French stations and NFG and Rouge FM, and they're star players. In other words, their A teams, September through June, get the whole summer off, and they bring in a couple of B teams for their mornings or their drive shows. And so Terry sort of falls into that. Terry means highly respected, successful morning man. He's been on radio, he's probably amassed, I don't know, ten or twelve weeks of vacation here. So he says, look, I'm going to take all of August off. Plus, he's a newlywed, so he gets to spend time with his bride. And good for him. And I don't mind. I'm an essential service. And in the midst of all this coping shit, I'm glad to have work and AP come and do mornings for Terry for a month. No problem. Okay. Pleasure for me. So that's what's happening now. And now you're up to date, Matthew. Matt Cundill (Host) 01:06:38 Well, normally Terry is supposed to be coming out to Winnipeg because he's got some roots in Winnipeg as well. And this is the time of year when he would take a week and he'd stay at my place and he'd be in the swimming pool and we'd just be enjoying winter pig in the summer, which is a great place to spend summer. Pete Marier (Guest) 01:06:51 You're damn right it is. I loved it there in the summer. It's a great place. And I tell people here in Montreal, oh, winter pig. It's so cold. I said, yeah, it's one of the coldest places on Earth in winter. But I said, Conversely, in the summer, it's one of the hottest places. And I explained to them, I said every home that I visited in Winnipeg had air conditioning and a pool. And I was pretty right. And it's true. Everyone had AC. I remember that everyone had AC in their house. And because it became so unbelievably hot there in the summer and a good beat down heat, that good Prairie, dry sun. I had so much fun there, like I said after my surgery and that I started to feel great, and I'd love to take it. I'll tell you another thing about it, too. My kids were really young. They were toddlers when they moved out there. And every single weekend, oh, gosh, almost every single day of the week, especially in the summer, you could do something with the kids in Winnipeg. It was community minded, what it lacked in the big city Ness of Montreal and Toronto. It made up big time in community and community spirit. Winnipeg was unbelievable, better than Ottawa. Even in that Department, Ottawa does okay. But the place to raise kids, ideally, I think, was Winnipeg. There was something to do all the time over at Centerboin Park. We could go there and there was an activity and it was usually Matt, it was usually free and it was inexpensive and you could find parking for free. Good luck doing that. And not for you all. And the Zoo. We joined the zoo. I remember we had a membership at the Winnipeg Zoo, which is open 365 days a year, by the way, even on Christmas Day, and the kids Museum down at the Forks. I imagine that's still going absolutely. Back then, Matt, when I was there, like 18 years ago, we got a membership with the family, five of us, and I think it was $60 a year for unlimited use at those two facilities. So it was like it was great, man. It was fabulous. Matt Cundill (Host) 01:09:04 Well, Pete, I'm so glad to have heard you throughout the month of August on Show. I know I called you, or at least I sent you a note the other day saying, good to hear from you. And then you said, oh, are you in town? I'm like, no, you're actually showman's my smart speaker radio station of choice when I'm in the kitchen. So that's why. Pete Marier (Guest) 01:09:25 Okay, right on. Matt Cundill (Host) 01:09:26 Well, I mean, I get the instructions to tell my device to put on Ch o M on tuning. And there we go. Pete Marier (Guest) 01:09:34 Nice. Okay. Yeah, it's been good. It's been amidst all the chaos of COVID shown has done really well. A lot of people are tuning into radios. You will know your research is going to show you that matter. People are getting nostalgic and not much to a lot of time on their hands. Schedules have changed. So knock on woods scholar has done really well amidst all this and it's just a pleasure to be there, to be a part of it all and just rock it and it's really good. There's great interaction between the audience and us now. It's like the good old days. It really is. It's a lot of fun. Matt Cundill (Host) 01:10:13 Well, it sounds like when I listen to it and whether it's 19. 93, 20, 05, 20, 20 it's great to hear your voice on that station. Pete Marier (Guest) 01:10:23 Well, thanks man. That's very flattering. That's the nicest thing I think you've ever said to me in 30 years but. Matt Cundill (Host) 01:10:28 Well, I think back to that time when you said, I'm leaving. I'm going to Winnipeg. I don't have time for you, kid. Pete Marier (Guest) 01:10:36 Was that next door at the muffin shop? Must have been in the old post office next to green Avenue. Matt Cundill (Host) 01:10:41 Yeah, that's right. But now that you tell me about all the money involved I totally get it. Pete Marier (Guest) 01:10:46 Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 01:10:47 Pete, thanks so much for doing this. Being candid, being honest and just chatting. Pete Marier (Guest) 01:10:53 Oh, it's my pleasure, man. It was fun, man. I mean you're an old friend and I can talk radio until the cows come home. So it's good to see you doing these podcasts too. Usually if I can, I follow them as much as I can. It sounded good. Matt Cundill (Host) 01:11:05 Well, thanks. I mean I try to make them sound as strong as possible. Pete Marier (Guest) 01:11:09 Yeah, well, you're a radio guy. We got that going for you. Amanda Logan (VO) 01:11:12 Thanks for listening to the Sound Off Podcast. Find us online at soundoffpodcast.com, and connect with us wherever great social media is housed. The show is imaged using the sounds from Core Image Studios. Written and hosted by Matt Cundill. A production of the Soundoff Media Company.

Dean Blundell was the host of the morning show on 102.1 the Edge in Toronto starting in 2001. As the internet age progressed, and social media took hold, the very things that elevated the Dean Blundell show to great heights became a part of its downfall. Add in some self-admitted flaws and it all came to an end in 2014. In the ensuing years, Dean worked mornings at 590 The Fan, but didn't appear to love the work. The last year and change has seen Dean take a look inward and clean up the mess from within and embrace change. This Dean 2.0, and he is very excited for what lies ahead. Check out Dean's website, Dean's podcast, and Daren Millard's Podcast called the Chirp. If you are a content creator - his company is doing things including looking for collaborations. (Special mention to our producer Evan Surminski who made this show suggestion about a year ago.... yes I work that slowly) During the show, Dean talked about a few of the other writers contributing to the website. You can check out their contributions here: Shug McSween Daren Millard Phil Wong And One of our favourites, Lochlin Cross. (Which means we have to have him on the podcast soon) Finally, at the beginning, middle and end of the show, Dean made reference to the sofa in the studio. Although we were recording in different cities, I made the mistake of turning my webcam on. As promised, a look at the unfortunate sofa that is now schedule to be burned. #theedge #toronto #radio #podcast Transcript: Amanda Logan (VO) 00:00:01 This is the podcast for broadcast. The Sound Off podcast with Matt Cundill. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:01 This week I speak with Dean Blundell. If you've listened to Toronto radio for the first 14 years of the new Millennium, you probably have your minds made up about him. Since he was let go from 102.1 The Edge in 2014, he's done a stint at 590 The Fan and made an appearance or two at Newstalk 1010 and on The Rock in Oshawa. All through that time, though, he's had Deanblundell.com and it's more than just a website, as you're about to hear now. The podcast this week starts, as you would expect, with me immediately regretting turning on the camera in the studio. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:00:38 That's when you start doing stuff like podcasting at your kitchen table or in what looks to be a beautifully appointed basement with a well covered couch. I don't even know why that couch is covered. Do I want to ask? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:50 It actually came with the house and I haven't touched it yet. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:00:52 Good. Don't. That thing just looks like a fart sponge right behind you, doesn't it? It looks like, if that hasn't aided in insemination, it might if someone lays on it without clothing on. And that might be you. I don't know if you're a nudie. Do you walk around naked at home? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:10 No. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:01:12 You should. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:13 I do. With the lights off. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:01:14 Oh, you don't want to see that either. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:16 I think I'll be visiting Ikea shortly for some new furniture. So here we go. Apologies in advance for me not asking the burning question you might have wanted answered. Dean Blundell joins me from the kitchen studios of Deanblundell.com, where his better half is getting ready to leave for work. Your dad worked at Chum, right? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:01:35 Yes, he did. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:36 Jim Blundell, yes. What was it like growing up with Jim Blundell as your dad and Chum in your household? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:01:43 It was weird. Sorry. Hang on, one second. There you go. Got to say goodbye to my girlfriend. Yeah. Camera, camera. So we're good? We're still rolling, right? You got to keep us in there. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:54 It's in there. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:01:56 Just for proof. Yeah. He was in radio. I grew up in radio. My dad moved to Canada from England when I was, I think, one or two. So we immigrated to Canada and he came over. His story is funny because he came over and he couldn't speak, like, without a British accent. He was Cockney so no one could understand a fucking word he said. So he was looking at the paper and the newspaper says, hey, we got a job at a radio station. He was packing boxes and filling paint cans where he was from in England. So a job at a radio station sounded pretty cool to him. So we went in and he asked this guy, Ernie Mushtuck at YR Radio in Edson, Alberta. He said, do you have a job? And he goes, yeah, I do. But not for a guy that talks weird. Like you. So he said, you go home, come back, and I'll give you a sales job. And he goes, yeah, perfect. So we went home, and he watched Donahue all day or whatever was on television. I think The Price Is Right. And he just literally sat there all day practicing how to speak without a British accent, went into the next day at work, blew everybody away, and got a job at radio. And a few years later, he bought a little radio station in Saskatchewan and then a couple more in Alberta. And then interest rates killed him, and he was left with one little radio station in Rosetown, Saskatchewan. So I was fortunate enough to get to go out there in the summer and do radio when I was like, 17, 18, stay with my uncle Wax, who's still one of my best friends. I know it's a weird thing, but he used to spin records, so he called himself Wax. That's old school. It'd be like you calling yourself cart or digital cart. I'm going to go with reel to reel, by the way. Anyway, so I was always around it. I did everything from sweeping the driveway to going to the Eston Gopher Derby and calling gopher races and pig races at the Calgary Stampede. And the summer, I was sort of always around it. And so my dad had a radio station in Brooks, Alberta, that he was taking care of, and a friend of his said, hey, do you want to go on the radio? Because one of the guys hadn't shown up. He was on- literally on some four day coke trip. And he said, you want to try? And I was like, 17, 16, I said sure. So I did it for a couple of summers and then just never did it again until I was 24 and a chance to get back on the radio again. And I listened to a ton of Jerry Forbes. I don't know if someone was to say to me, do you have, like, a guy that you would attribute your love of radio to? It would be Jerry Forbes. It was like everything he did when I went to University in Calgary was just fun. He had the ability to make shitty things sound really fun. And I thought that was a cool gift that he had. Yeah, I fell in love with radio, and then I started doing radio for McMurray, and now I'm in my kitchen. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:38 So you had early 90s, CJ92 is what you listened to in Calgary? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:04:41 Yeah, big time. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:42 What did you study at University? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:04:45 Volleyball. That was my way. I took any class. I didn't have a major. I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a fighter pilot. As most people in radio do when they set out to do something that's not radio, they realize radio isn't work when you start doing it. So all the work dreams you put aside because you fall in love with the job, right. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:05:05 And how did you get to Windsor? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:05:06 I sent a tape to my dad and I wanted to get out of Rosetown. So I was in Fort McMurray. I left Fort McMurray. Actually got fired. Fired in Fort McMurray. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:05:17 What for? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:05:18 I was late for a shift. 05:00 in the morning. They took their 05:00- we give you coffee and Donuts at 05:00. It was called Five Alive. It was like, when I got there, it was like 5:11 alive, as they do in small markets. They're like, that is fucking terrible. 5:11 alive. You're fired. Which turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I went and worked back at that little radio station I worked at when I was a kid, and then sent a tape to a guy named Murray Brookshaw. I don't know if you know who Murray is. Good guy through my dad. And they offered me weekends and evenings and I was in winter for a year and a half and they gave me mornings, I think about six months in and it was awesome. It was great because it was Detroit, right? You got to experience this market you only watched on TV as a kid. You got to experience American radio. I was around a couple of drive-by shootings at the State Theater, which was pretty cool. Got mugged once on Cast Corridor. So I got the full effect. It was a lot of fun. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:06:21 And 89X, pretty cool radio station. I sent some demo tapes there to Marie. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:06:26 Oh, did you? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:06:26 Oh, yeah. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:06:27 How did it go? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:06:28 Not good. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:06:32 Yeah, it was great. You know what? It was cool because it was back when Beck was massive. Like I remember he sent me a list of his big spinners, he called them. I'm like, oh my God, this is big time. He called them spinners. No Doubt. Don't Speak. Fuel was huge back then. You remember Fuel? Papa Roach. It was like- It was cool. It was like Nine Inch Nails that just came up with their second huge album and Incubus- It was cool. It was a fun time to be an alternative music and to do a morning show. It's sort of in the States. It was fun. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:07:00 From the bands you mentioned in the songs that I can sort of picture in my head, it sounds like you spent about 1995-6 all the way through to about 2000 in Windsor. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:07:10 No, it was '97 to 2001. '97, I got a phone call from a head Hunter asked if I was under contract or if I could speak to somebody. And I said no and yes quickly, even though I was under contract and then talked to some guy. And then he said, you're going to get a phone call from another guy. It was a guy named Dave Farrell who asked me to come work at The Edge. And I didn't know anything about The Edge because I'm a fairly insular person and I didn't listen to a ton of radio and I still don't. So I said, yeah, for sure, I'd love to. So I got a chance coming after Humble and Fred, who I didn't know at the time, had the heritage that they had. And yeah, so it was cool. It was actually pretty interesting because I probably shouldn't have been working there. I probably- like 28 years old, Someone gives you a morning show in Toronto and you really still don't know what you're doing, right? Like you're emotionally just kind of charged up and you're ignorant to the fact that you could fail. We just did shit, and we did a lot of shit, and it worked and we did really well. For sure we did a lot of stuff young, immature JV radio guys do, but we also did a ton of really good stuff and I was really proud of a lot of the stuff we did. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:08:21 What was the initial first few months like for you at Edge? Because all I seem to get, and many of these interviews actually go this way where I have to sort of qualify, I only know what I read or what the perception was at the time. And there's Humble and Fred, they're going to Mojo and they're starting something new on 640 and Dean Blundell comes in. And I had never heard of Dean Blundell, and I sort of worked in the radio business to the point where I think I know who my top five people are that I can hire, but I had never heard of you before. So how did you fly under my radar? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:08:55 That's just how I am, despite you obviously know who I am now for a variety of reasons, but despite that stuff, I've always been that guy. I think one of the things that I think is very important to me and it has become much more important over time and maybe almost to a fault is- for lack of saying I don't get out much. Over time I've become more insulated. But I've always been wired, like, I go in to do the job because I love to win, I love to create content, I love to stir the pot. I loved creating a community. We had a chance to do that in Windsor a little bit and someone I was really fortunate enough that our stuff I think was good enough and I worked with people that made me look much better than it was for sure. So when I got there, I kind of didn't know any different and I wasn't aware. I had no idea that Howard and Fred were as big as they were for as long as they were so blissfully ignorant and I just wanted to do shit and I remember looking out my window and this is how I'm wired and I lost it for a couple of years, but I'm back and I remember looking out the window and I thought to myself. I am going to be the best at this job in my capacity that anybody has ever been. And that was my goal. My goal wasn't to do Radio, and it still isn't with Deanblundelle.com and the podcast that we have. My goal isn't to do podcasts. My goal is to create a media hub, a really cool media hub, and for other people to recognize that it's important to consume information from places that don't sell you cable or don't charge you an extra $5 on your phone. But it's just how I feel, and I'm always felt like that. And I think we live in this fucking unbelievable time now where technology. You and I can sit here and do this, and we can develop a podcast that sounds like a morning show. We can deliver content, we can deliver an ecosystem, which is what Dean Blendell really is. We want to keep bringing people back into it. And Radio hasn't done that. So I guess it's my way of saying I'm more excited now than I was in those first few months. And I sort of feel like that now almost blissfully ignorant. Maybe it's because I don't really know what I'm doing for one day to the next, but I'm happy because I'm doing something that I actually love and I'm not doing it for somebody else. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:11:08 What's your relationship like with Radio right now? Do you have one? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:11:13 Yeah, I love it. I do. I've done some stuff for Bell. I haven't wanted to do it for a long time. When I left the Fan, we had talked about me leaving, and it was sort of a kind of a pre arranged. I didn't want to be there anymore. I hadn't wanted to be there for a long time. They knew that they didn't want to be there anymore. And it felt like for the first time ever that I was done. I thought, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't like it. I don't like what it does to me. I don't like the pedestal it puts people on. I don't like the anger. I don't like the frustration. I don't like the inability to have an opinion that doesn't require 58 fucking thousand people telling you that you're racist or telling you that you're an idiot. And I became one of those Twitter watchers towards the end of my time at the Edge, too, where it was like, oh, my God, was that any good? I better go check. Oh, my God. And it seemed like I didn't feel like it was anymore. Like it was when I loved it. And I was, quite frankly, not in the head space to do it. I was drinking too much right after I left the Fan, and I had to get my shit together if I was going to give myself an opportunity at the age of 46, and I didn't know if I wanted one, right. I had no idea if I wanted to be in radio anymore. I really didn't. But as health does, when you get your head straight and you stop being selfish about the way you're dealing with your life, you realize that you have way more to offer. And then you get excited again too, like I am now. It's where I am. And I look at radio like it's a viable opportunity, but I don't think other people do. I think people look at radio that own radio and go, Fuck, what do we do with this crap? Because it doesn't make as much money as the three other four other verticals that they own. So I think what you're going to see is like, Stingrays come in and other people come in and invest from different avenues and say, hey, listen, you don't want it, but we do. We'll use it to prop up our creative. We'll use it to deliver content in other ways. So maybe that's why I'm ignorantly happy, because it's absolutely impossible and I live a pipe dream. But I really do believe that radio is going to change in very short order here. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:13:26 So when Mike Bendixon comes to you and says, Take a couple of slots on 1010 in Toronto, how jazzed are you? Where's your energy level? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:13:26 Zero. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:13:26 Really? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:13:36 Yeah. No, I filled with fraud. That's not me, right? Yeah. I've always been- a pirate, I guess? I didn't get up at four in the morning to lose. I fucking hate losing. And if I couldn't be myself, and if I had to deliver something that belonged to someone else, I knew that it wouldn't sound great. Hang on. So I said no the first several times. I think he asked me for about a year. You'd have to ask him, because I wanted to do radio and I didn't want to fill in. I don't know if I use that as an excuse to not have to fucking do it, but it was kind of the last piece of the puzzle, right? Like, I was physically and mentally healthy enough and in a really good place where I thought I could exercise my radio muscle a little bit and see if I wanted to maybe do it on a full time or part time basis now. And I do. I love it. The first couple of shifts were a disaster, but that was just because you go into a news talk station, they go here's 2 hours, have fun. What's your format? How do you do the call letters? It was literally like that, but they were really cool. They didn't say anything shitty to me. They loved it. I think the sponsor is really good, and I don't know if I want to do news talk again. And I don't know if I want to do it full time. And I don't know if I want to work for somebody. And that's not me saying I don't think I'm capable of working for somebody. I just don't want to work for someone like everybody is now working for somebody. I think that there are partnerships with content producers like yourself or like myself or other people that just want to produce content that radio is going to have to partner with if they want to survive. But yeah, it was fun. It was a fucking big mountain to climb mentally, and I'm over it. So I'm good. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:26 Do you think it's a trust issue between you and anybody who would want to employ you? Because I know for me there are trust issues. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:15:33 What do you mean? You don't think people want you to work for them? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:37 No, people do want. But it's just you get in there and you're not going to have a ton of control and you could be disposed of at any moment. So are there trust issues? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:15:49 Yeah. You know what? I'm about as honest as it gets. And I had a conversation with Julie Adam just before Christmas. She called me when I was on my way home from CFRB. It's funny how that stuff happens, right? I was at 1010 and I had a fun time. And anyway, Julie, who's the VP of radio at Rogers, and we've talked back and forth several times. There have been pseudo offers and nothing that worked for either one of us. And she said something really funny, and it was kind of the first time I had heard it. But she said because of some issues that they're going through in Winnipeg, she's absolutely terrified to hire anybody that is going to produce any content that she might think is out of that box or might get them in trouble. Right. She was very honest. She said, hey, I love because I've got a proposal in front of a proposal, but a model in front of them, among other people that everybody loves about branding radio with different people and using people to brand radio and doing the kind of content that we're doing and allowing people to be themselves, because that's how you're going to drive audience. That's what everybody has to do is they got to partner with people that really want to drive audience, but they're going to have to at some point in time recognize that they're not going to compete with the Internet. They're not going to compete with this and the immediacy of it. There is no song anybody's going to remember where they go. My guy, remember when Power 98 played that Limp Biscuit tune back and nobody remembers any of that stuff. People remember how you deliver information and how you are as a citizen. And I think that's the trust factor when you talk to somebody like Julie or anybody else, no one really brings up the fact that they can't trust me, but they bring up the fact that they are still stuck in that place where they're like, you know what, we know radio is going to change and we're going to have to bring change agents to it. But people like me scare the shit out of people, right? They really do. They don't understand that. Guys like you and I could have a brain for the entrepreneurial side of content and producing great content as well. But that will change over time as long as you keep doing what you're doing. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:18:06 I ask Julie Adam. They're someone I trust. Julie was a top download from 2018. Really good episode. Very authentic, all about content creation and working with the team at Rogers. I've got a link to it in the show notes. You should check it out in just a second. It's not quite an episode of hey, what happened? But we will ask Dean about what happened in a few things. And by the way, please don't fast forward through the spots. I need to buy a new couch. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:18:35 The Sound Off podcast is powered by Coreimagestudio Your Brand Sound. Get it in the nowcoreimagestudio.com. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:18:45 I didn't get a chance to listen to a ton of your show, even though we had the Internet in Winnipeg, contrary to many beliefs. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:18:51 But seriously, did you have a dial up? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:18:54 Pretty much. We just got the 56K. We just got rid of that last week. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:19:04 Did you think you'd get that? Did you think you'd get that in this podcast and you going, no, you didn't. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:19:13 Have you had any CBSC complaints at your new company? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:19:20 What a shit show that is there here's. The funny part of that is some of the last complaints that we got, some of the last decisions that went against us. No one even complained. They were just proactively listening and boning us at the end. That was the funny part to me. No CBSC complaints, no CRTC complaints. I largely believe the CRTC is just this enormous self funded joke. Sorry. I do. Yeah. It's not going to go over well with a lot of people in radio. I would adhere to it under every circumstances if I was on traditional radio, but I'm not. But I think you should be allowed to say shit on the radio. I think you should be allowed to say fuck. I think you should be allowed to talk about really important heart issues. I think you should be allowed to crack jokes about people who are truly assholes. I think you should. But it amazes me. It's a government that not only allows people to smoke weed, we're physically encouraging people to sending it to their fucking houses. But you can't say shit on the radio. That's the most amazing part to me. And the government is still so over involved. The broadcasters take it so seriously. And it's going to happen, I think, at one point. And I hope it doesn't. I hope radio does this before smarter people like you or me do it. You not me, but someone's going to start a radio station online, 24 hours radio station with people in 100 different areas. And it is going to be better than every other radio station you're going to get a chance to listen to. And they're going to put that on a traditional radio station, and they're going to edit it a little bit, and they're going to send people to a traditional website or an app, and everybody's going to jump on. And those licenses that people protect are going to be worthless. And that's why you see people selling them and buying them. Can you imagine 20 years ago selling a radio station in Toronto for $10 million? No, but it's going to happen. If not, it probably already has. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:21:22 Well, there hasn't been a review of radio since the late nineties, which basically tells me that the CRTC is fine and radio seems fine and everybody just seems fine. But I think Google is going to buy radio stations at some point because someone is going to start that radio station, and it's just going to be an extension of pushing out that Internet radio station that you were talking about or that content or any of that stuff. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:21:48 Yeah. And you know what the biggest problem? It was a great article I read in Forbes by a guy named Jean Eli, and he interviewed this fellow who owns a media marketing company out of New York, and he was bang on and he said, what's the biggest problem facing? And I don't have an axe to grind. Like, I think when I say stuff like this, people think, oh, he's just a sour push because of the CBSC, and he's a sour push because he's on the radio. I'm not at all. I completely, absolutely developed a reputation over doing stupid juvenile shit over time. And it caught up with me. Whether I think it's right or wrong doesn't fucking matter anymore, because I learned from it. And I get it. That's the arena you need to play in. But there is an end to radio as we see it. When you look at profit loss and you look at profit gain, double digit profit gains in the digital world when it comes to content, 10%, 20, 30%, depending on your distribution and how you advertise in your digital plan. There are double digit losses in traditional radio, and that's only offset by national games in big centers. So the writing is on the wall, as it was for newspapers, where they started to shut down newspapers and look at it like it was an online venture and grabbing great content producers, which is what Dean Blendell does. Our goal. We hired Darren Millard. We hired Matthew Barnaby. We just hired a professor of cannabis. We want to start a cannabis vertical for the cannabis business who's just dying to get their message out that it's healthier than alcohol. It's an amazing time to be a content producer if you understand that you can make unlimited revenue streams from those things. And radio just doesn't really care about that. Yet. They're still trying to protect it. And Radio is still the best medium free medium to own right now. And I just don't think people understand how to reinvent how Radio is done as opposed to how they've done it in the past where they've got a program director and they tell you, you've got two minutes to say shit between these two songs. And it better be fucking good because there's like a million people outside that are lined up to do this job for less than you. And people have to start treating people on Radio fucking better. That's just the way it is. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:23:54 Radio is the way it is because they're just gaming metrics. You're gaming a Ppm meter. You're just playing a game. It's just a game where you're just trying to capture audience and those people with those funny looking pagers on them. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:24:08 Yeah, but you know what? That's fine. If that's what you do, then how do you create users? How do you say to those people will play that Ppm game with you? But how do we bring those people into our ecosystem? That's part of Radio's miss. That's why it blogs in sites that produce original content, spoken word, video, written word stuff that big companies don't want you to see because they're uncomfortable with this content or litigiously. It may be a problem for them down the road. Real content is coming up underneath these people, and it is eating them alive. It is, and everybody knows it. And then what's going to happen is someone's going to say, oh, listen to sound off with Matt Dean today. I was talking to all these guys are all down on Radio. No, I love Radio. I think Radio is one of the great investment meetings you can get into. Now, if you're really smart and you have a massive brand that produces content and you've got some fairly deep pockets, you could change the way the world works when it comes to content distribution and having people on the Radio, bringing those people into your ecosystem, it's the easiest thing in the world. But for some people, it's just a really hard paradigm to shift because they have the money. And that issue is myopic leadership. There are really great people out there, really grayed people that are not concerned about pink eared ones. They're not concerned about. They're concerned about keeping their jobs instead of doing a job that turns Radio into what it should be, which is an addendum to the Internet, which enables you to bring people in that Ppm world into your universe's. Users and through all kinds of content and a bunch of different verticals. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:25:45 I hope that anybody who listens to this right now just can hit the rewind button and write down pretty much what you just said, because that is a template for going forward. So I like that. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:25:56 Thanks, buddy. Do you want me to send it to you? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:25:58 No, I've got it. On tape. You can just hit rewind. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:26:00 You know what? I'll send you the presentation. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:26:03 There's a slide show. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:26:04 Yeah, dude. So part of- at deanblundell.com we partner with Envision Digital Media, so they're a part owner in our company. And so what we did is I came up with and we sourced and did a forensic sort of study on how many different revenue streams you could drive with a radio signal to an online ecosystem, provided you had the right content providers. And we found 40 different revenue streams that don't exist now. And that's a problem solving thing for radio, right? Instead of scaring the shit out of people and saying, okay, if you don't need budget, how about you say, okay, let's go get some users and see what happens. Let's put as much of our content in our universe on their phone and see what happens. And then have other people say, okay, we want to be involved in that because you had 80,000 people look at a fucking tweet, or you had 130,000 people check out one post at deanblundell.com or while you're at 50,000 subscribers for your podcast. So it's a matter of educating people, but it's also a matter of parting with radio because radio needs help. They need new thinkers, and they need people to say, okay, enough of who's next. Why don't we find out who's doing a really fucking great job and bring them in house and find ways that we can monetize with them for them? Because what they don't understand, too, is that you, Matt Cundill and myself and other people that do this job that still really love this job. What they don't understand is that the bigger you are, the bigger they are when they partner with you. The more entrepreneurial irons you have in the fire, the more they have in the fire. And so it's almost like putting revenue streams and different revenue streams into an old, mature business. But you have to think of it differently, contracting people that are really good at delivering that content to be able to do that for you on air and online. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:27:56 The same as a morning show. Right? Like, if you have a great morning show, you're going to have a great radio station. And all the radio stations that I programmed, we struggled with the morning show. And if we struggled with the morning show, the rest of it was not very good. It was tough. You've always been very good about building a community. You did that at your early days at the Edge. Who are some of the people inside that community that really made the engine go? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:28:23 Like guys I worked with? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:28:24 Yeah. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:28:25 You know what? I was really lucky. I got to work with people that made me look good. It should be the key to everybody's successes is find people that are better than you at your job. So I worked with Jay for I don't know how many years I worked with him for so funny. He was just still is. I haven't heard him or listened to him, but they let him go for budget reasons as they do. And I haven't talked to him since. But for my money, maybe one of the funniest radio guys, pure wit, dry humor, funniest radio guys in the world. I think he was just burnt out and wasn't having a lot of fun. And that really reflected in relationships and relationships in the building change. So I worked with Todd for a long time, 13 years, and we actually just reconnected on an email and who knows where that goes. But I haven't talked to him in several years since then. But again, he was fearless. That was one of those guys that was just a weapon. And you had just unloaded when you wanted content where you'd say go to the auto show and try and drive out of there in a BMW or go to the fair and play bingo and really fuck things up for all those crazy people in there with their daughters and yell bingo three times or go beat someone on television in front of like a weather camera down to. He was fearless. And you know what? Those I've never met anybody like him and it's one of the things I respected about them as well. But business gets in the way and there's a falling out over literally $750 and it was nothing to do with me. But he decided he didn't want to come back. And then the edge, as they did to everybody at the end, just wanted reasons to let people go. So that was the end of Todd in that capacity. But still easily one of the funniest people I've ever worked with. And I was really lucky because if it weren't for those two guys, we don't get the start and I don't have anything that I have today. So I'm appreciative of both of those relationships for sure. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:30:28 But you and Todd just recently spoke or sent an email and reconnected because the departure was auspicious. No one was really talking. And you guys didn't talk to each other for a long time. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:30:39 Yeah, no, we didn't. And he was mad, rightfully so. Effectively, we have these two TV shows in production. If that sounds like a radio station that's getting ready to fire their morning show, I don't know what it is. We have two TV shows in production and they were doing it on Spectator thought I was getting paid for it and I wasn't. He demanded money and I lost my fucking mind yelling at him and told him this wasn't about him. It was about the group. And we said some fucking awful shit to each other. And I'd never gotten around to apologize for my part. And I think that's part of being healthy for me is going back and saying, okay, you need to go and amend certain relationships just so that you can amend the relationship just so you can get some freedom. It's super important in people's lives. Not a lot of people do. It is when there's a falling out and radio is one of those businesses. When things go sideways, you fucking never talk to people and they're always assholes until they have a job for you or until you run into an industry event. And then you're like, hey, man, how's it going? So I don't do industry events either, because I can't fake that stuff. Amanda Logan (VO) 00:31:47 Really? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:31:48 Yeah, I'm terrible at it. Anyway, we got to fight and he refused to come back to work and we literally didn't talk until I'm going to say. And then they came to me at course, and they said, Listen, if you want them gone, we'll get rid of them because his contract is up and that means we won't have to pay. It classy group, right? There's a classy group back then. I can't speak to the group now. It's all changed over. But that was literally what happened. So, yeah, that was the end of Todd. And then we hired Billy, and a few months later, there I was in La getting fired. So it was a lot of fun. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:28 Did you have a favorite program director? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:32:31 Yeah, I did. Ross Winners was for sure my favorite program director. Without question, Ross did what he said he was going to do. He always had your back. You always felt like he had your back. He always communicated properly with you. You know what your expectations were with him? He was, without question, the best program director I've ever worked with. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:52 Ross hired me for Winnipeg, so I will agree with you. And I've asked Ross to come on the show and he will at some point. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:32:57 I do believe he's big time now. He's going to big time. You. This is the first one of these things I've ever done, by the way. Ever. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:03 You've been on podcast before? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:33:05 No, just my own. Really? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:07 You've never been on another podcast before? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:33:08 No. This guy, some guy named Toronto Mike here in the city, begged me for like three years to be on his podcast and all he does is slander people. So I just refused to do it. And outside of that, I've just never done other podcasts. Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:23 He thinks you're having a war with him. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:33:25 No, there's no war. I don't even know who the guy is. He begged me to be on his podcast and then when I came out and said, hey, listen, I drank too much. And here's a cautionary tale of people in their 40s not dealing with mental depression or mental instability and medicating with alcohol. And I lived my life very honestly. So what he did and it was a really classy move. He took an old podcast and chopped it up like I was attacking him and he was just looking for attention. That's what people do, right? I sort of respected it. Because it'd be like I would have done something like that. I'm like, Fuck, I should have thought of that, but I don't feel terribly enough about myself to do it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:34:05 You're just pissed off he stole your bet. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:34:08 Hey, that's something I would have done. Great bet. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:34:13 Hang in there's more. Deanblundell 2.0. And what exactly is going on@teambundell.com? As I found out a lot, how hard is it to quit drinking? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:34:25 It's tough. Yeah, it was really tough. How do you play this one? Honestly, I guess it was a problem for me because I could draw a direct line. I got to the point where I'm like, oh, I can draw a direct line from every negative part of my life to alcohol. I think it was £80 more than I am now. It's probably not good, actually. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:34:54 I remember meeting you in Toronto about seven, eight, nine years ago. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:34:59 Was that nice? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:00 Yeah. You were definitely fatter. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:35:04 Yeah, way fatter. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:05 And you look way healthier now. And your hair is better kept. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:35:09 I showered. Good job I did this. I showered for you. Normally I wouldn't. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:14 It's insane. This isn't even a video podcast. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:35:17 Yes, it is, is it not? I can see you. Well, this is audio, but we'll have the video. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:21 Yeah, we'll have the videos here. I'm not even recording the video. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:35:24 So, yeah, my hair looks great. Was it hard to quit drinking? Yes, it was very hard because it was my friend and it kind of helped me out. It was like a lot of different people get to a point in their lives where they self medicate with something, whether it's Coke or never done Coke. Never done drugs. Really big proponent of cannabis. I don't consider that a drug, but alcohol just stopped working for me. It was there for me on weekends when I had to be at home and face the reality of my life that I hated marriage, that I couldn't fucking stand. It was there for me when I had a bad day at work. I just need a drink. And I used to say all the time when I was doing mornings, if I didn't have a job where I had to get up at, like, 230. 03:00 in the morning, I would be dead. I would have just directed myself right into oblivion. Because it really was and still is the greatest solution for people that haven't actually dealt with the issues that they have. Right? And when someone gives you as much as I was given and you take as much as I took and you're selfish, like I was selfish, you never, ever really learn how to deal with real hard stuff. So it was really important to me to be able to get as healthy and get the perspective that I needed to be able to get so that I could offer what I knew I had to offer people and so that I could live a better life. And so it's come with a ton of changes too, right? Like when you're clear in your head is clear and you're not medicating and you're not full of anxiety and you're stressed out and you've got all kinds of shit on your mind. All the what ifs of life. When you're not like that, you can work and your gifts kind of come out again and you have a different perspective because you've been so low that you had to go get help. You never want to throw a log in someone's journey that's really struggling anymore. And I think that's the difference between drinking Dean and non drinking Dean is their perspective. That okay. Listen, A, you're not fucking Superman. You're never going to avoid the pitfalls of life, and you're never, ever going to be able to ever deal with anything difficult if you don't deal with it from a realistic head space that isn't affected by alcohol. So was I under a bridge? No. I mean, I was that guy that had like a few drinks tonight and on the weekends, guaranteed Friday and Saturday. I made sure that I could fall asleep because I needed that, right? So I got a lot of therapy, went to AA and did a ton of meetings and got some perspective that I desperately needed. And I'm not ashamed of any of it because people said the right things that helped me at the time. So I think there are different variations of people that deal with addiction and medication. And mine was alcohol and I don't need it. I've never had less and I've never been happier, I've never been more hopeful, and I've fucking never been more driven. That's the other thing. What you don't realize, it's a slow crawl to being clear again. But what you don't realize is when you're actually you're like, oh my God, I got to do more shit. I can't sit here. I got to do more stuff. And you're eternally positive because you lived in that hope to get you out of that imprisonment of whatever it was you were dealing with. So it's a different life. I feel very differently today. And as hard as it was for the first three to six months, I feel like I won the lottery. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:38:40 Do you feel you have to outrun some of the perceptions that were left behind at Edge at all? So people say Dean Blondell, he's that homophobic guy, or he's the guy who caused the mistrial with Derek, and here's the guy who all these things happen on the radio. The perceptions are there. So what do you do and how do you handle it when you come across those perceptions? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:39:03 Tell the truth, there's nothing I can do for anybody else other than control what I can control, right? So I control my effort when it comes to what I do, because I know I live a different way and feel very differently. That's just going to come out and if it changes someone's mind, good. If it doesn't, I really don't give a fuck anymore. And I don't give a fuck because I think if you listen to our show and I think if you heard that I got fired for being homophobic, you would go, that's fucking not true, dude stood up for LGBTQ rights forever, ever, and always have. The details of that story are actually hilarious. And I've never really told them in public. But long story short, the guy that we got in trouble for- and it's amazing how the news can drive a different narrative other than this guy sexually assaulted four other people. But anyway, this guy sexually assaulted some people, four guys in a bathhouse. Our producer was a jury foreman on the trial. He came back, we cleared it with the powers that be to talk about the details that we are going to talk about. And so we talked about the trial. We talked about it from a perspective of the idea that you can go to that there are places that exist where multiple people have sex. Grossed me out. I didn't say anything about them being men or women. Didn't even give a shit. I just thought, that doesn't sound clean. And then three months go by after we do that whole break. And it was insensitive for sure. Three months go by. The lawyer who lost the trial, Katherine Wells phones her friend at the Toronto Star and said, I'm trying to get this case overturned. This is great. Can you help me with this, and write a piece on them being homophobic? They passed it off to David Brewer and Jesse McClane. They then chased around Derek. They then started to drive the narrative that what we had said was homophobic in its origins and that he was homophobic. So in the end was the jury foreman. So the case needed to be overturned. In there, everybody has completely missed that we were making fun of a guy who effectively raped four other men. And I happened to believe in Street Justice. And so where we got in trouble was I said, you sentenced a man to five of the greatest years of his life because he was going to jail. And it was amazing how it went from a rapist is going to jail for raping people. Oh, my God. Dean is hoping this guy, because he's gay, gets raped. If it's a straight guy, if it's 100 straight guys, if it's 15 women, if it's anybody that- And I've stood up for the abused and victims of abuse for so many years, and it was interesting how that narrative started. And then I just turtled, like, I thought, I don't even want to talk to people because when you're labeled homophobic, it's like the worst thing in the world. It is the worst. And it still is to this day, the one thing that follows me around that I fucking hate, hate, hate, hate. And so I never go out of my way to endear myself to the idea that I'm not homophobic, ever, because it's disingenuous. But I will write stories and I will post and I will talk about standing up for LGBTQ rights as I always have. I've just never had a chance to actually talk about what happened. But we were dicks. I think that's the other part of that thing is, we treated every community- we bullied a lot of different communities that didn't deserve it. We thought because we stood up for LGBTQ rights, and this is a totally separate issue, we could have fun with it, too. We could make fun. We thought equal opportunity offenders, that means everybody gets it. And we've developed a reputation that allows us to do it. And I remember reading an article about Howard Stern not long ago when he stopped saying the N word. None of you, he just stopped saying the N word, like ten years ago on the radio. So everything had sort of changed and was continuing, and we were held up as the example. So we definitely deserved it. We were mean and we bullied a lot of different people in every community, including the LGBTQ community, because we thought we could. And you know what? I think that that's the hugest learning experience that I've taken out of this, is that people who can't change who they are, who are born any way that is not you. Any way that you don't identify with, already have a journey to take. And who are we to throw logs in their way? Who are we to joke about lifestyle? Quite honestly, and a lot of people will say this, you don't know unless you've been there. Being as low as I was a year and a half ago, and as seriously as I took the insults when I started this website, I knew then I thought, you know what? I know how this makes me feel. Whether I'm joking or not doesn't matter, because it's not a joke to those people who I've offended. So there's no upside to being a dick and bullying any specific group. And it's just how I feel. I think you can do a lot more by having fun with people than making fun of people, especially the people that don't deserve it. Having said that, if you deserve it, I'm all for it. All for it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:44:34 Fantastic disclaimer at the end. I love it. Who's in your community now at deanblundell.com? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:44:42 Well, we're lucky. We've got 13 bloggers, and we've just started to bring on some significant folks, content providers. So Darren Millard, who was 2022 years at Sportsnet he was a day one-er, his podcast, The Chirp, has been absolutely lights out. I don't know if you've got a chance to listen to it, but everyone from Ryan Whitney to Doug McClane to general managers, to current players, and he's got a chance to spread his wings, too. Right? Like you do a sports show for as long as you do a hockey show, he's got a chance to do a bunch of other shit, and he's had a blast doing it. So we just hired Matthew Barnaby as well. So we're starting his podcast, which we can't talk about the name of it because he's being all secretive and weird. Brother, don't tell anybody the name. I'm like, Dude, no one's going to take that name. It's so weird. He's like, Brother, don't take the name. So we have him. We've got James Walker, who is a terrific car writer. We've got Shane McSween, who is another terrific sports writer. And we just brought on another young lady named Amy Riemann, and she runs a company called My Hip Life. What a story she is. She's a survivor of abuse. She is full on into the cannabis community and the holistic approach the cannabis community provides. And it's one of those verticals that we wanted to create, it was really important that we bring someone on board that was able to not just do a podcast, but talk about it professionally and it was connected to the community. So, yeah, we've got a full deck. It's busy. We've got tons of content providers and always looking for more. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:46:17 How many of those 40 verticals have you filled out? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:46:22 Hahaha. You want some of that? You want some of these verticals? Is that what you want, man? You want a vertical? I'll give you vertical. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:46:27 There must be one in there for someone. So who are you looking for? Is there anything you want to fill? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:46:32 You know what? We're at the point now because we're just in the process of doing a deal with another company, and I can't talk about it because we're in the process of growing, which is great. So what our goal is now is we want to have someone in Vancouver. We want to have someone in Calgary. We want to have someone in the Prairies NHL cities effectively. And then we want some people on the East Coast, too. But we don't want writers. We want people to get it. We want people that love weird shit. We want people that think that the world is there to have fun with, not to be taken so seriously, but still deliver really great news and great content. So, yeah, we're looking for people that are like minded and think like we do. So if you go to the site and you want to write and none of that stuff pisses you off, go ahead and email us. Info@deanblundell.com. And let me know what you're doing with that couch. I keep looking at that thing. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:47:34 It's fucking awful, eh? Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:47:35 You can't see, people, there's a couch in the background. It looks like that's where Obi Wan Disintegrated. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:47:45 I'm going to put a picture of the couch up on the website so everybody can see exactly what you're talking about. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:47:51 Yeah. Or there may have been several internal exams on that couch that we're not aware of so I would burn it if I were you. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:48:02 Dean, this has been fantastic. I think I touched all the bases here with you and it's great to speak with you for the second time ever because the first time thank you. Ten years ago was I drunk? I think we might have both had re wasted. No, I don't think it was like that bad but it definitely was a work event. What do we need at what was it some sort of gathering of the programming minds all getting together and I think it wasn't me. Well, you weren't going to sit in a room with ten other program directors. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:48:33 I'm saying that's out of my pay grade. I'm no good at that. I mean sure I run a nice little website and lots of other people a programming convention. What's worse a programming convention or having that STD test with the Swizzle stick down your Phole? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:48:52 Oh no, I'll take down the P hole any day. Dean Blundell (Guest) 00:48:58 All it is a bunch of guys going yeah, we finished number four in our demo. Really? What's your demo? I can't talk about it right now. We're still trying to find those numbers but we're big time. I think I'm going to get the call up to the soup. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:49:15 Really. Amanda Logan (VO) 00:49:16 Thanks for listening to the Sound of podcast find us online it's and connect with us with our great social Media's house. The show is imaged using the sounds from Core Image Studios written and hosted by Matt Cundill a production of the sound off media company.

Corey Dylan understands resilience. The longtime Tampa Bay radio personality was let go from Cox owned WFLA in the summer of 2016. In that time since, she continued working her voiceover clients, hosted a few television shows, and tried her hand at podcasting. She also never gave up in her quest to get back into radio. That meant networking at conferences at a moment when funds were at a premium, and putting herself out there when it could be most uncomfortable. I was turned on to Corey's story from a blog post by Fred Jacob's from Jacob's media which spoke to Radio's resilience. Her career started at Washington State University and shifted to Bakersfield, California and later back to the Pacific Northwest where she produced the Robin & Maynard show. In time, she got a show of her own doing middays at Kiss 106 in Seattle, one of America's most competitive markets. In 2002, she moved to Tampa, and what followed was 17 years of morning radio, and engraining herself into a market she was originally unsure about. That all ended in the summer of 2016. She's back on air at Cumulus' Kicks 101.5 in Atlanta, thanks in part to her networking upkeep with the likes of Mike McVay and Brian Thomas from Cumulus. She also shared with me, an article called "The Secrets of Resilience" by Meg Jay, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 2017. Please share this episode with someone who you know is having a difficult time and is in between radio jobs. #radio #tampa #atlanta Transcript: Amanda Logan (VO) 00:00:01 This is the podcast for broadcast. The Sound Off Podcast with Matt Cundill. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:08 This week I speak with Corey Dylan from Kicks 101.5 in Atlanta. Corey is the cohost of the morning show with Cadillac Jack, and together they are Caddy and Corey. This is a story about resilience. Corey had been out of work from radio since the summer of 2016, and didn't get back in until January of this year. And this is 2019, by the way. This is a great story about what it takes to stay afloat and a true exercise in patience. Now, I've caught up with Corey during one of those early days at the new job, which means you can hear the echo of the common room of the complex she's in, while she awaits for her stuff to arrive from Tampa Bay. Corey was the subject of a blog post by Fred Jacobs at Jacobs Media that talks about the relationship between radio and resilience. And that word came up again in an article that touched Corey in 2017, titled The Secrets of Resilience by Meg Jay, and it was published in the Wall Street Journal. Corey Dillon joins me from the common room inside her apartment complex in Atlanta. So I'll roll you right back to the beginning because I've been dying to use my cheesy line all day. And that you started your radio career as a Cougar. Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:01:18 Yeah. KUGR Radio at Washington State University. I sure did. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:24 And it was Cougar radio. And you also went to the Edward R. Murrow School of Broadcasting, is that correct? Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:01:31 I did, yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:32 And you got a journalism degree. Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:01:33 I know. I'm one of those rare birds that's actually using it, too. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:37 How long did you spend at WSU? Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:01:41 Well, it's a four year University program, but I might have been there one summer session. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:46 Are you going to say what course you had to repeat? Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:01:48 No, it's not that I had to repeat anything. I just somehow didn't get in like two credits. So the only class I remember taking, I think there might have been two. One was definitely a journalism class. It may have been a videography class, but the other one was Introduction to Jazz Music at 10:00, like on Wednesdays with everyone asleep in the class. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:02:10 And from that point on, was it going to be radio or were there other thoughts of doing some news or television? Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:02:17 I thought about TV news, but Ironically, at the time I said I really don't want to be at a bus strike in the cold, freezing rain at 06:00 A.m. On any given day. And radio just took off more quickly for me, to be honest with you, I think because at the time I just looked super young, but I didn't sound as young as I was. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:02:39 What were some of those early shows. Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:02:41 Like just flying by the seat of your pants? You have no idea what you're doing. And I didn't really have a mentor for the first year or so I would say that I was kind of feeling my way. I mean, I moved to Bakersfield, California and was working at a big band radio station and the morning DJ at the time I think his name was BB Hamilton. He actually played football for the Huskies, I think in the 60s, which is my alma mater's, archnemesis. But he was just a really nice man. It was kind of a retirement gig for him. I mean, he was just kind of having fun on the radio in the morning playing some big band hits on the Am band. And I was just his morning news reader. So he taught me a little bit about radio. But it really wasn't until I moved back home to Seattle that I got a job doing weekend overnights at Kayzokay and then I got a job producing the morning show for Kayzokay. So for about a year there I was doing both producing mornings for Robin and Maynard and then go home and go to sleep and then try to get up at Friday night and do my radio thing on the overnights. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:03:50 So you were honestly living and breathing radio, are you Pacific Northwest girl? Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:03:55 Yeah. I mean, that's essentially where I spent my youth. Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:01 And then middays came calling at Kiss 106. Yeah. Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:04:03 I was the first midday person at Kiss. I don't even remember what the format was, but they flipped it to Kiss 161 and at the time it was CBS Radio, which we know doesn't exist anymore. Now it's owned by Iheart. But I was the first midday Jock on Kiss 106.1 and I certainly learned a lot there under Mike Preston. But there was always so much more to learn and to do that, I think oftentimes you do have to sort of jump ship and go somewhere else. I mean, it wasn't necessarily my initiative that caused me to leave there, but I'm glad it happened because then I ended up doing mornings in Tampa for nine and a half years. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:46 I read somewhere that you interned at Entertainment Tonight, is that correct? Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:04:50 No, I had the opportunity to, but it was after a summer or two interning for the CBS affiliate in Seattle. And Entertainment Tonight has a cache of overwhelming number of interns. I think I would have been something like one of 30 interns without a stipend in La. I didn't know that I could make that work. Maybe I could have, but at the time it didn't really seem like it was going to be a great possibility. I didn't have any family in La. It was one of those things. I just didn't know how to make it work. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:05:26 So then you wind up going to Tampa and you do this long move. Is there really a longer move in the US to go from Seattle to Tampa? Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:05:33 Yeah, La to New York. I don't know. I know it's a little over 3000 miles. I think as the bird flies. And it was kind of a culture shock, too. I mean, the south and Florida is a whole lot different culturally than the Pacific Northwest is, but I found my footing eventually. And the next thing you know, you've been there for 17 years. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:05:57 Well, I went there for about three days, and I wanted to stay forever. Now I'm from Canada, and we usually don't want to go back until the snow melts. And I thought this is really a place I could get used to. And the radio has always been quite extraordinary. Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:06:12 Yeah, it was fun. I think Seattle and the Pacific Northwest is a lot more competitive, to be honest with you, as far as radio is concerned. When I had the opportunity to go to Tampa, some people warned me against it, actually, because they thought maybe it was kind of too far off on its own. But guess what? People say the same thing about Seattle, too. You know, it ended up being a really great move. And yeah, the weather for much of the year is pretty fantastic. And you've got amazing world class beaches, and it's really come a long way as far as growing up. I mean, St. Pete, when I first moved there, just doesn't even compare to what it is right now. It's a burgeoning city, a huge art scene, the restaurants and culinary scene. It's just exploded. It's really exciting to see that happen. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:07:01 When you first moved there, how long did you think you were going to be in Tampa for? You must think, oh, it's just going to be for a few years. And then the next thing you know, it's 17, honestly. Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:07:10 I mean, that first year was hard. Like, it is anywhere that you go. And I was to some degree that first year looking to go move on as soon as possible. But I think you just kind of find your stride and you find some success, and then you're like, this is pretty good compared to, I don't know, Chicago in January or Winnipeg in January, as you are well aware. So I don't know. I mean, I just grew to love it, and I made friends and built relationships and things that work were great. And that's one thing that everyone's asking me, how do you like Atlanta? And to be honest with you, I haven't even had a chance to explore much of it, Lana, just yet. But I'm so happy in the job, and that's such a huge part of my life that everything else is just kind of gravy. You know what I mean? You just learn how to deal with everything else. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:07:58 If you're happy at work and being in Tampa for 17 years now, you went through a few job changes inside Tampa. Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:08:05 Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:08:06 But then you go through the more recent one. By recent, I actually mean 2016. At that point, did you think it was kind of done or that you and Tampa were done or that it was going to be hard to get because you are Tampa after 17 years. Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:08:20 Yeah, that's a good question, because every time I've lost a job and a big job, you have to reevaluate you're like, is this what I'm meant to do? Do they want me back? And you really have to dig deep to figure out if it is, in fact, and how much our industry has changed? I'm like, I don't even know if there is a job out there for me again. And the fact that it happened the way it did and when it did is nothing short of what feels like a miracle after two years and seven months doing my own thing with voiceover and TV. But radio has just always been my first love. So I continued to apply and reach out and go to conferences and just nurture the relationships that I had been building for years. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:09:06 How many times did you consider giving up? Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:09:09 Oh, I mean, up until the last minute. I mean, really, I got to the point where I said, well, okay, I'm going to sell my house because I think radio has played out for me. Like you mentioned, I'd worked for two different radio companies and four different stations in Tampa. And I knew that the next opportunity and the next opportunity that I would want wasn't going to be in Tampa. So I knew it was time to go. Sometimes you're ready and you make that move, and sometimes you don't know that you're ready and somebody else pushes you off the ledge, which is kind of what happened to me in Seattle. And I can't say that that's what happened to me in Tampa because I was ready to go. I wasn't super happy at Iheart, and I just wanted to move on. And so I had been looking for even longer than before I had left. Iheart for a great opportunity. Like I said, sometimes you're ready, sometimes you're not. Sometimes the universe knows that you're ready when you don't. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:10:07 And I know when you're looking for work that it's not just resumes and phone calls and networking all the time, because like you mentioned, you were doing some television and you explored podcast as well, I believe. Is that correct? Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:10:19 Yeah, I had a podcast, but it was almost three years ago now. Even back then, I'm sure you've experienced this. It's hard to get people on board with the future, you know what I mean and what it could mean in the future. I was working with a couple of comedy clubs in Tampa, having on their owners and or the comedians that were coming through town. And the owner, he just didn't get it. He didn't see the bigger picture. He just said, well, I don't know if this is selling seats in my comedy clubs. And I wanted to tell him, well, I don't think going on the news talk radio stations that with the average listener being 62 years old, is putting rear ends in your seats either. He's a little old school. He just didn't get the big picture that not too many comedy clubs have their own podcast out there. I loved it. But selling it is another matter. And having to take off and get those numbers that everybody wants you to have. Not everyone is Snooky without following. It's a process. And again, nothing is overnight. I don't care if it's radio or podcasting or voiceover or TV. You have to toil away for sometimes years before it produces what you need it to produce. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:11:31 Did you do some work with the Arizona Coyotes as well? Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:11:34 Yeah, again, in part came about because I have a relationship with somebody who had worked for USF outside of Tampa, who had worked with the Tampa Bay Rays and Disney, and he is now the marketing vice President, I believe, for the Arizona Coyotes, which is an NHL team. He actually gave me an opportunity to work with a minor League hockey team, which I still work with, out of Lehigh Valley, the Phantoms. When he made the move to Arizona, he called me up and said, hey, I'd like you to do some voice work for TV spots. And so he reached out not only to me, but other people that he had befriended to do the video work and some other voice work as well for the Coyotes. Like I said, it's all about relationships. Everything is in just a second. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:12:19 Corey stays behind the microphone doing some voice over and continues to network her way back into radio. But I want to talk a little bit about what voiceover did for you and how you did voiceover because you've been doing voiceover for a long time, but you really suck yourself into it this time. Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:12:36 Well, and people had said to me a long time ago that it's not the kind of thing you can really do part time, but that's a scary thing. When you do have a job, you don't want to quit your job. Obviously, nobody wants to quit a paycheck and a full time salary for something that is so uncertain and takes so long to really build up because like anything, it's a business. You have to get regular clientele and customers and paying customers, and that's a whole other bag that you have to figure out. Like, how do you get people to pay you? Once you've done the work for them and they've agreed to pay you? How do you actually get them to pay you? Because everyone's on their own schedule. If any part of it was that I wasn't happy at Iheart I saw the writing on the wall, which is what was happening in the industry with the radio industry. I mean, there's fewer and fewer jobs every month, it seems, and those jobs aren't being replaced. So I said, well, what is the future for me? And I do think for a lot of us, the end game is voiceover. I mean, the need for voice is just so huge right now. And so I tell everybody I'm like, get a great microphone, get with the best that you can afford, get some training, which everybody thinks if I have a good voice, that's the end all be all. But guess what? They don't want radio talent. They want actors and just even the how should I put it, the tone or the characters or just how natural you can be? They just don't want you to sound like you're on the radio when you're doing something like that. And so I started training with a coach out of La over like ten years ago or so. After about a year and a half of training with her, we produced a demo. And then from there I put it on sites like Voice One, two, Three, and just started marketing myself to people like friends in the industry, advertising agencies, marketing directors, things like that. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:14:34 You really networks hard, haven't you, like in that time that you were on the beach? I mean, not literally on the beach, because I know it's all that, but you're out networking all the time. And I think a lot of people who find their way out of work, that's something they're not really used to doing well. Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:14:50 And you have to I mean, you just have to because, again, everything that's going to help you succeed is all about networking. I don't care if it's radio, if it's TV, if it's voiceover. I mean, whatever industry you're in, that's what's going to help you. So you really do have to go to the conferences and meet people. I think I've only been to one Voiceover conference, and that was in La several years ago, but one of the biggest ones is in Atlanta every day, every year, actually. Everybody has to get better at it and really just connect with the people that are inside your industry that are doing the same thing you are. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:25 Let me ask you a little bit about that conference circuit. Do you have a set number of conferences that you'll go to every year in order to network or to just connect with people? Do you have any favorites? Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:15:35 I love morning show boot camp, and I love Chicago, but I've been in Chicago and Atlanta. I went to a Voiceover conference called That's Voiceover in La several years ago, as I just mentioned, and then I went to Conclave in Minneapolis a couple of years ago. And that's outstanding. And that one really I think they really try to cater to people that are newer to the industry, which I don't qualify in that regard. And boot camp, some might just consider that kind of I don't know, almost like a reunion, but I've made great friends and relationships at that conference as well. I mean, there's so many others like worldwide radio conference that I would love to go to. But time and money has usually prevented me doing all of them. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:16:24 And that's why I asked that question, because I think time and money really comes into play when making decisions about which conferences that you're going to go to. I think you mentioned Vo Atlanta, which is something that's quite popular worldwide Radio Summit. That's another one. And I'd love to go to the mall. I think we'd all love to go to the mall. But again, time and money well, right. Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:16:48 From what I gather from all these different conferences, it's going to cost you about $1,000 between the conference ticket, the airfare, hotel accommodations and the parties. That's about what it's going to cost everybody and anybody but some of these people. If you are on the beach or out of work, they will give you a discount on the tickets. I mean, I have certain people like Don Anthony be very generous, and Lori Lewis, too, when she was working with Conclave. I'm not even sure if she is still reach out to them and tell them your situation and chances are they're going to be receptive and embrace you. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:17:24 Tell me a little bit about how you landed the job in Atlanta and how it all came to fruition years ago. Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:17:30 I went to the talkers conference in New York City. I think that was about four or five years ago. And I met Mike McVeigh for the first time. And so I see him at these various conferences. And I have to say he is probably the only executive that I've ever met in radio that is just he's so consistent and such a supporter of talent, and he always has gotten back to me. And when I saw him in Chicago, we talked a little bit and then we had a phone conversation after that. And he said, well, we've got lots of radio stations at Cumulus. We'd love to try to work something out. So we had a conversation, I don't know, a week or two after that. And Brian Thomas is the program director and he's executive and format leader with the format country. And I never thought I would work for Brian, but I've known Brian just personally through another radio friend for several years. He was in New York when he launched Nash, and then he moved to Chicago where he was at WLS. And of course, those are two legendary stations and markets that they have never done, country in Chicago. I mean, nobody wants to ever leave that station because it's such a legendary station. So I never really contemplated or considered the fact that I would one day go to work for him. I think I was driving back from the NAB radio show at late September and Brian called me and he said we might have an opportunity in the near future, but it was still months later that we really connected. And I interviewed for the job not till January. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:19:09 Early thoughts on getting to Atlanta? Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:19:11 I mean, I'm so thrilled to be working with Cumulus. I mean, I can't even tell you just the opportunities that Cumulus radio has and with Westwood One and all the things that I want to do in voiceover and TV and who knows what else. The opportunities that exist with Tyler Perry Studios here in Atlanta are just incredible. So, I mean, I'm still trying to set up my apartment. I'm moving, like, every weekend. It feels like out of Tampa Bay and into Atlanta, and then I'm waiting on my stuff. So that's my new hobby. It's just moving. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:19:45 I know, actually, when we're talking here, I can hear a distinctive Echo, and I can imagine that you're waiting for your stuff to arrive. And I think everybody in radio knows what that moment is and can fully understand the Echo that they're hearing right now in the room you're speaking in. Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:20:00 Right. Well, I mean, the funny thing is I'm actually in the clubhouse of my apartment building, so it's full, but it's cavernous. But yeah, I mean, it's super exciting and just all the things that I hope to do in Atlanta. And I went to my first concert, which was Dan and Shay last night. It was awesome. So I'm getting to know the venues and the listeners, and Cadillac Jack and I are so excited about everything that we want to do, and we're just having a ball. We like each other so much, and we're just laughing harder than I've laughed in years. I was just goofing around and just having fun on the radio. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:20:35 When you found out you were getting the job, what did you do? Did you fall to your knees? Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:20:38 No, I went out and bought some champagne. Of course, that was my second guess. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:20:43 I had champagne down next. Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:20:45 Well, see, now you know me better. Now you know me better. So it just became kind of a whirlwind of trying to figure out, like I said, how to change your life. I mean, how to move after you haven't moved anywhere for 15 years and just get all that stuff done in the process. I was also selling my house, which I tried to sell for a year and a half and then finally actually sold it, and it only closed just yesterday. So I'd already been here in Atlanta for like two and a half, three weeks. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:21:13 And what about meeting your morning show partner for the first time, or had you known him beforehand? Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:21:18 No, there's I think, like two or three Cadillac Jacks working in the business. So I'm friends with the guy that just landed in Detroit, too, but it was great. I don't know when you've been working in this industry as long as both of us have. I think there's just sort of a knowing and a familiarity, and we get along. We had some phone conversations before we met in person in January. It's been smooth sailing so far. Knock on wood. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:21:46 I want to thank you, by the way, for sending me the article by Meg Jay the secrets of resilience. Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:21:53 Right. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:21:54 When did you first read that article and how did it touch you? Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:21:58 Well, I had been on the beach for like a year and a half. It was Christmas time, I believe. And my niece, who is well, she was premed at Brown, but now she's, I think, dropped out of premed, so she's studying psychology and so she had come across that article in the wall Street Journal, I think it's dated 2017. Right. And so she shared it with me just kind of knowing what I've been going through for over a year and a half and struggling. And so she shared that article with me and I've gone back to it several times now Because I think a lot of times, whether it's somebody that wants to get into radio or voiceover and they just think they're going to be an overnight success, nobody is an overnight success. It just goes to show you everyone from Henry Ford to Oprah Winfrey or any of those big names that you know and the most successful people we've ever known, nothing happened overnight for them and you're no different. It's like you have to toil away, as I mentioned earlier, I mean, sometimes for years, as I did for two years and seven months, doing my own thing, Which I plan to continue to do that as well Because I don't ever want to let that go now. I mean, just never quit, never give up and just keep doing what you're doing. Believe in yourself, which is the hard thing to do when you haven't found that person that believes in you as much yet. But that's what it takes is to find that person that gets what you are and what you're about and wants to give you a shot. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:23:26 Corey, thanks a lot for speaking on the podcast and telling your story. It was a long time on the Beach, but we're glad you're back on the radio. It's where you belong. Corey Dylan (Guest) 00:23:34 Thank you, sweetie. I appreciate that. Amanda Logan (VO) 00:23:34 Thanks for listening to the Sound Off Podcast. Find us online at soundoffpodcast.com and connect with us wherever great social media is housed. The show is imaged using the sounds from Core Image Studios. Written and hosted by Matt Cundill. A production of the Soundoff Media Company.