Howard Kroeger was there in 2002 when a new radio format was launched in Winnipeg. The program director of Hot AC Q94.3 was apart of the programming team that had recently acquired AC Magic 99.9 from Standard Radio. It was obvious that Magic would no longer be an AC station, but what would it become in Winnipeg's competitive radio market? This is when BOB was born. Classic Hits is now in its 20th year as a radio format; straddling the divide between Boomer and Generation X - the original station is still on the air doing what it has always done with similar imaging and presentation to the original product - with some musical and presentational updates naturally. In this episode we speak to Howard about how the format came together, why Winnipeg was the place to make it happen, and how the format began to spread across North America. We also asked Howard about the other formats he has created including Duke and Hank. By the way, I also pulled out some recent audio from my conversation with "Bad Pete" Marier who was Bob's first morning host in 2002. Hear that podcast by clicking on the link at the bottom on the page. There's also a bunch more about the other stuff on our episode page, including the CTV report from 2005 about how the format grew across the continent. You know that thing we've saying about - "It Takes Three Years To Build an audience". Well after three years, CTV thought it was time to do a National News piece on the Classic Hits format. Sean Ross also had a really interesting take on Classic hits and the cancon issue in Canada. And for added fun - the hit/non-hit rule in Montreal and Ottawa. Transcript: Tara Sands (VO) 00:00:01 The Sound Off Podcast. The podcast about broadcast with Matt Cundill... starts now. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:01 This week is one of those episodes that I've been meaning to do for a long time. I was reminded by Troy Scott a few weeks ago that it was high time to have Howard Kroger on the show. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:00:01 And I always thought Troy was brilliant because we hired him to be- as a board off when Troy was like 17, 18 years old. And just to kind of see him in his career where it's gone to now, I'm just so proud of the guy. I always look at him as almost like a son. I do. He's a great guy. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:01 Troy is currently writing his own podcast episode for this show as content director at CHFI in Toronto. In a perfect world, I would get in the car and drive down highway 330 for the 25 minutes drive to La Salle, Manitoba, to record this episode in person. And I know what you're thinking. Why am I driving with my blinker on? The truth is, I don't know. It's just what everyone does around here. In 2006, he started Kroeger Media and works with radio stations on branding, including formats across America like Duke, Hank and Bob, the classic hits format that got its start in 2002 in Winnipeg. This is about the birth of the classic hits format in radio as we know it today, and Winnipeg was the perfect incubator for this radio format concoction. Howard can tell the story, because he was there, and he joins me from Kroger Media headquarters in La Salle, Manitoba. Why does Winnipeg punch above its class when it comes to rock and roll and radio? And is it for the same reason? Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:01:49 Matt, that's a really good question, and I've often thought of that. It's also come up in discussions with some pretty big and bright radio people. I remember talking to Steve Young, former program director at City FM, but of course going on to WNEW New York and KISW in Seattle. Funny story about Steve and myself. We went back a long, long way because before I started my radio career, I was in a band. We won City FM's homegrown contest, and that's how I got to how I actually originally got to know Steve. Anyway, years later at CMW, we were talking and I asked him the exact same question you just asked me. And he had said, Howard. He says, I don't know what it is about Winnipeg, he says, I look at all my accomplishments in my radio career and I hold my tenure as program director at City FM as one of the best gigs I ever had. And I never thought it was anything to do with the only later on in life, as I travel and experience more in different markets, that I think that maybe it's an isolation thing. I don't know. There's certain things that have always happened here that I've always taken for granted. But other people go, really? That actually happened in your market? So I think what happened is that a lot of people came through here. There's always been good radio, the influences from outside markets. There was no big Metropolitan that was really influencing us. So I think it was a bit of a petri dish. And I think about the Bob format, I don't know if that could have happened anywhere else the way it did here, because that in itself is like a Winnipeg, like a total Winnipeg story. I just think that people that have come through Winnipeg, they've loved the city, they've made their market. It's always been a fierce, as you know, a fierce competitive market. The other interesting thing that we talked about, Matt, just before we signed on to talk to each other about this, you had mentioned about how when you go to CMW, we don't share ideas as much. I always felt there was that kind of camaraderie here. Some of my best friends when I was programming Q, 94 FM and Bob FM, like some of my best friends were over at City FM. Right. And these other places. So I think there is that that may be contributed to the I don't know what you want to call it, but I think the fact that we're isolated and I think the fact that there's a certain camaraderie that has created an isolation, I don't know. But anyway, whatever the fact it's worked, it was a great place to actually start my career and basically continue it for many years. I was with Chum for 22 years. It was a magical place to work. It really was. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:57 So I do my research for these podcasts. So what did Steve Young think about the band Slipstream? Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:05:06 Okay, so this is a great story. I think I've shared it before, but what happened was that our band, we were from Morden, Manitoba, of course, men and white background as all of our members, except one, except Guild Dungeon. But anyway, so what happened was that Steve, we were recording at Century 21 Studio. It was like Brick for Brick, the same as the record plant, Los Angeles. This place was absolutely amazing. And anyway, Steve calls me up like 19 years old and Steve says, yeah, listen, Howard, Ralph Watts and myself want you and the guys to come down to the studio. We got a final mix for your single, and we want to know what you think about it. So all of us guys would crowd into the studio. And of course, you got to remember, we were young and we had visions of being rock stars, right. And the fact that we were in this big recording studio that street hearted recorded in and all these other people, it was a pretty heady time for us. So anyways, Steve says, okay, I want you guys to listen closely to the mix. Ralph, roll it. So they play this mix back, and it's really great coming out of these big monitors. And then all of a sudden, towards the end of the song, like, all of us were listening with our head down and our eyes closed, just digging and going, man, this sounds really good. And then all of a sudden, I could have heard what I swore were Moose of a cow. Right towards the end of the song, I'm hearing in the background, and I'm kind of looking over at the guys and they're kind of looking over at me. We were kind of too in odd to say anything. So at the end of the mix or at the end of the playback, Ralph Watts. He says, okay, guys, what do you think? And I said, Well, Steve says, yeah, I really want to know what you guys think about this. I go, Well, Steve, I could swear we heard cowmus at the end of this mix. And he's gone, yeah, you did. And I went, really? Like, why? And he goes, well, this is all part of the marketing thing that we've got planned for your band. We want your band to change its name from Slipstream to Mannoites with Hats. And then what we want you to do is we want to release this single of yours, and we think it'll do fine. And of course, we were going really thought he was serious for two minutes. But anyway, that kind of got off to where it was a funny time. It really was. I felt very relieved after I found out he was just joking. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:07:36 How did you spend most of the 1980s? Was it on the air in Winnipeg? Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:07:41 Yes, Chris Tanner, actually, what had happened was that our band, we had come off the road, and we had been on the road for like nine months at one point. And I remember before, I think we were playing an Ada Coconut or some place in Northern Ontario. And I asked our guitar player who I roomed with, who was also the accountant. I said, his name was Howard Dempe, still a very good friend of mine. And I said, So, Howard, you're doing the books. How much money have we made so far this year? Believe it or not, before we went on stage, it was like a hockey player, right? I was the vocalist, so I always have to take care of the voice. They had a little nap. I remember waking up and Howard looking at me going, okay, we've been on the road for nine months. I think after all expenses and everything, I think you've cleared $3,000. And I just got married, too. So it was kind of like, oh, man, financially this isn't really working out the way it's anyway, making long story short, we came off the road. We still actually got together and played with plans of doing other projects. In fact, another band kind of spawned out of that. But anyway, it was at that point that I figured, oh, man, this music is great, but there's a vow of poverty that I've taken is not so great anyway. And by the way, I had been on the radio before this in Morden, Manitoba at CISV. I had applied at Q 94. I dropped an aircraft tape off and I got a call back from the program director at that time, Pat Holiday, who hired me. And I remember he hired me to do all nights and evenings. And I guess Howard Manchein and Iran would be on the air at the same time. So Pat Holiday made me go through a telephone book start at the back. And it was like we stopped at T and it was Tanner. And then we went to the front of the book and it was Chris or C for Chris. And that's how Chris Tanner was on the air for I guess it was till about 89, 90 till I became program director, actually, in 91. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:09:48 Look back at the 1980's Q94. I'm just thinking back in my head and I've done about 240 some odd episodes. And the people who've been at Q94, Alan Cross comes to mind. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:09:58 Yeah, Alan Cross. Yeah, we were great friends at Q 94. In fact, one of the first things Alan told me when I started there was, yeah, you know what, Howard? Make sure you pick up the Rock and Roll, the Rolling Stone, Rock and Roll Encyclopedia, because you really got to know about the bands and stuff like that. So you knew what direction these guys are going in. Another guy that I started with, Todd Fryfogle, aka Ron Ralph, aka Lamont Hollywood, now working in San Jose. When I met Todd for the first time, he told me right out, hey, my goal is to work in the US. I want to work US radio. This is like back in the early 80s. So it's kind of interesting when you look back, everybody kind of had their path carved out back then and everybody ended up where they thought they were going to work. Another guy worked with Pat Cardinal. He was across the hall from you at CFRW. We became very close friends. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:10:48 I didn't even want to talk about earlier in the podcast when you mentioned Street Heart and Terry Demante was at 92 City FM. He managed Street Heart and Brother Jake Edwards, also in the market. So it's not only you got a great radio station in Q 94, you got to go up against some of these people. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:11:03 Oh, yeah. Actually, a funny story too, is Terry Damonte and Steve Young. They would come for gigs to watch us play. It always made us quite nervous because we thought we got two guys. In fact, they even came out to Morton to watch us play one time, which is kind of interesting. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:11:21 How did you know you wanted to get into programming? Was that to pay the Bills thing or did Chum what was it with working with Chum that spurred you into programming? Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:11:29 Well, first of all, Chum was like going to go to University and getting paid. Right. I was just exposed to so many smart people. The first thing I did, in fact, when Alan Cross left because I remember when he went, he went right to CF and why in Toronto. That was back in 86. I remember. Well, you know what? Alan's gone. I really want the music director. I eventually became music director, and that's kind of when I learned that you got to remember, too. This was back in the days for radio when it was just shut up and play the music unless you were doing mornings. That was Kenny Loggins on The Sound of Feeling Good. Q 94 FM. Whether next. It really wasn't very exciting for me and the programming side really intrigued me. So I got into the music library music director for a few years. And then when Mark Mayhew, another brilliant radio guy who taught me an awful lot, actually, Ironically, more after he left because I kind of got to know Mark way better after he left when he hired me to do research when he was over at Newcap. But we had guys like Mark Mayhew there. Jimmy Waters was just this fabulous radio President who really deferred to his local markets. Mark and Bob Lane had hired the research group out of Seattle, and I think we were one of their first Canadian clients, and that was an experience in itself. So when I became program director after Mark left in 91, four Q 94, then that's when I kind of fell under the wing of the research group. And there was two gentlemen there, Mike Dorne and Mike Anthony. They were both VP of program and research for the company, and they taught me an awful lot. In fact, also Ross Davies. I can't forget Ross, like Ross really opened the door for me as well, introduced me to these guys and they took me under their wing. And all three of those guys I would consider mentors to this day. In fact, I remember when I decided to leave on my own. I think I talked to Mike Anthony every day for five years as he drove to work in Palo Alto, California. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:13:48 Q 94 was a monster radio station when it came to ratings. I mean, what it was like 30 shares of women. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:13:56 Oh, yeah. It was humongous. Yeah. It was really funny because when I started programming it, I always felt like I'm having to saddle up on this Dragon. I didn't want to screw it up at all. But it was I think the best book we ever had was like a 21 share. And the people that I was working with, like Bow and Tom, two of the nicest guys over the years, there was Botom and Caroline, and then there was Botom and Fraser and then Botom and Des, you couldn't have worked with better people. Chris Brooke, another guy that a very close friend of mine. We worked together and we were just allowed to make mistakes. And we were told that, listen, you know what? Don't be scared. You got a great idea. You feel strongly about it. Tell us why we'll buy into it. If you can tell us why we should go this direction, just be accountable for your mistakes. And that's kind of how it worked for many years. And yeah, we learned a lot. Like I said, it was like going to University and getting paid to go to University. Every time there was an opportunity to go somewhere or change gear, something would come up and new experience all over again. It was an awesome time. It really was. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:14 You never really get a good idea for the scope of the power of the radio station until you sit down and have a few beers with some former sales people from Q 94 who they love those numbers. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:15:26 Oh, yeah. Actually it was really funny, too, because it's radio. Well, I call it radio physics, right. When I look back now and I look at some of the softer books we had, those were most radio stations, good books at that time. But yeah, I remember, like the Billings that we did on that radio station were incredible for the time. They were amazing. They really were. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:55 So sometime around the year, like late 90s, there's a little bit of deregulation. We're all allowed to bring on an extra FM or two stations, depending on the market, and Chum and Standard make a swap, which is very difficult to explain, but it involved, I think, a couple of radio stations in Winnipeg and showmetham in Montreal. It was almost like flipping trading cards the way to take in place. And there might have been a small exchange for cash. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:16:20 Yes. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:16:21 Income is a new radio station at 99 nine that is going to come into your building, which I believe is on Pemba Highway. And what are you thinking? What is the strategy at that point? Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:16:34 It's interesting because we already had Q 94, which was this giant, and we were, for all intents and purposes, a hot AC radio station. We were pretty broad, but we had it covered pretty good. Magic 99.9. They had always been kind of over here. We had thought to ourselves, you know what the thought always was that it's better we own the signal. If we can figure out something to do that will complement our signal, great. But if we can figure out what to do with this signal and get a bigger piece of the pie overall, let's think about that. And we were pretty wide open. I remember when the deal went through my head, I was going, man, what could we do with this? Because I thought there was something going on at that time. And you got to remember, too. This was like 1999. Napster was on everybody's. I mean, even my father, who was 78 79, even he was downloading songs off Napster back then, right? So there was this whole thing going on. And I remember I went to a friend's birthday party. It was his 40th birthday party. It was right by the hockey. It's such a Canadian story, right? It was by the hockey rate. My buddy Bert Siemens, he was turning 40. His house was next door to the Sanford Hockey Arena. And I show up at this party and he had this flatbed trailer outside his place and he's two big speakers, like two Cork and big speakers up there. And they're blasting City FM. I get to the party and Bird says, yeah, Howard, thanks for coming, but we're not going to be playing that Winpass Music your station place, referring to Q 94. We're going to be rocking out the City tonight. And I go, okay, great. And he says, yeah, we're going to be rocking out to the music we grew up with. And we were talking and I'm going, okay, well, that's really interesting. You say that, Bert, because at that time I'm listening to City and it was playing Jimmy Hendrix and the Animals and early Stones and stuff like that in The Doors. And I says, Bert, this might be music that you think we grew up with, because Burton and I actually have gone to the same school. We went to a boarding school, Mennonite Collegiate Institute in Gretna, Manitoba. And I says, Bert, the music that we grew up with, it was the cars, it was Meatloaf, Tom Petty, Damn the Torpedoes. I mean, Elvis Costello, Leonard skinnerd. I mean, a lot of our music was focused on 80s, not 60s. Anyway, make a long story short discussion got around to talking about music. And you got to understand there's like over 100 people at this thing. We're all standing around a fire and there's all these great conversations going on about music. After the night was over, I thought to myself, okay, I got to investigate this little further. So I went and I came home and I grabbed Joel Whitburn's Top 40 pop hit book. And I started in 1971 because that's when I remember my musical taste buds just totally being juiced by something. And I started at 1971. And I just went through and I listed all these songs down that I thought were great songs that I hadn't heard on the radio or radio wasn't playing anymore. And I kind of came up with this playlist. We had a strategic session a few months later. There was Jimmy Waters, Mike Dorne, Ross Davies, Chris Brooke, the programming team, Bryan Stone, the general manager. We're all sitting in this room. We were talking about what we want to do with this radio station. And I says, well, I got a crazy idea, like, what do you think of this playlist. I mean, nothing is happening. Nobody's playing these songs. I says, I got to tell you, I was born in the early 60s. There's nobody playing my music. I'm too young to be a baby Boomer, really. And I'm too old to be a full fledged generation actor. So there's got to be like some sort of missing generation that's not hearing this music. And so they say, okay, let's try it. You really feel good about this idea. So anyways, great big discussion. We put together these musical montages. We had the strategic study that we did, and the study came back and the hole was just massive, right. For this type of format. In fact, I remember Mike Dorne saying that, yeah, I don't remember ever seeing a format hold this big. The Passion scores were huge and we call it the P One Index. It was massive. Anyway, we decided, yeah, let's try this. I mean, what do we got to lose? I know that sounds cavalier now, but anyway, next came the idea of what are we going to call it? And I remember us talking about it. I go, yeah, you know what? I don't want to call it the bear or the Eagle or any inanimate object. I think what happens is give it a name. So it's got a personality so it could be people's buddies, right? I said, we talked about different names. And I said, what about Bob? And they said, yeah, because everybody knows a Bob and it just kind of falls out. Nice full disclosure, too. I am a bit of a radio geek and I would actually drive to Minneapolis and quite a bit because we only live 8 hours from there and going for concerts and so forth. I listen to radio and I was down there and there was a station, it was a country station, it was WBOB. And I always thought, man, I liked that. That's kind of cool. And this was back in the early 90s. So I kind of tucked out my back pocket. And then when the time came for this, we decided, Bob, let's call it Bob. That's kind of how it started. And I remember in the boardroom, everybody was laughing. We were talking about all these great turning out to Bob and all these crazy positioning lines and so forth between Ross Davies, Jimmy Waters, Chris Brooke, Brian Stone, myself, we came up with this plan. We said, okay, what we're going to do is we're going to set this thing up. Howard, you do this, Chris. We'll look after this. The only thing that we're going to do, though, is we want to make sure that when we launch this, we do it two weeks into the book. Because if this thing blows up in our face, at least we can always say, well, we didn't catch the whole ratings period. So what I did is I actually commissioned a small tracking study. This is back in the days, Matt, when we had research budgets, right? So anyway, I commissioned a little tracking study to go along from when we launched it. And I knew that we were on to something. When we ran these ten second ads on TV, all they said was, It's coming, Bob, 10 seconds. And my mom and my dad, they were out with their friends bowling one night. And my mom told me, yeah, Howard, we were talking about bowling tonight, and friends of ours were see this Bob thing all the time. And I figured you're in radio, you might know something about it. Like, do you know what this is about? Is there a new furniture store coming to Winnipeg? And I says, no, mom, it's not a furniture store. I don't think. Anyway, I kind of knew that we tapped into something. And then when these little tracking studies started coming back, I kind of took a double check because I looked at them and they were like, they were massive and they kind of cooperated. What we saw with the original strategic study information we saw then when the ratings came out, it was a smashing success. First guy that phoned me was Pat Cardone. My buddy Pat was always like, Pat. We go back a long way. Like Pat. Whenever he came to, he had a place to stay here all the time. We were very good friends. And he had said, you know what this means, right? And I went, yeah, we got a great radio station here. And he goes, no, people are going to be looking at this, man. This is something. This is a new format. And you kind of planted the seed there. It was a great time. It was a great ride. That book or Bob, it did amazingly well. I'm still doing well here in Winnipeg. I have nothing to do with it, mind you, but it's still doing phenomenally well. And it's celebrating 20 years. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:25:15 And you hired Pete Mary at the time. And I know that because I was at the other end of Montreal trying to get shown back together and sort of put the shine back on a heritage institution. You were starting something completely new at the other end. But then I said, Pete, would you come work afternoon? And he told me in no certain terms that I was to go fuck myself with the offer, and I'm going to win a peg. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:25:35 Bad Pete. Oh, yeah, Pete was great. We had just so much fun. And I got to tell you, too, Matt, I mean, this was a big venture, and of course, there was lots of money involved and so forth, but we really did have fun. It was just an amazingly great time. And as I said before, I don't think that would have happened anywhere else. I really don't. And the thing is, when it was successful, that made it even better. Not just Pete, but there's other people that worked in Winnipeg. They're like rock stars, right? I mean, I know Botom and Fraser, they were like rock stars. Going back further. Jake was a rock star in Winnipeg. Tom and Larry Winnipeg has always embraced their radio personalities, their media stars. I guess it makes you grateful to be part of the industry here. Okay. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:26:31 I might have exaggerated Pete Mariette's departure over coffee that one day in February 2002 when I had him on the show last year, he spoke very fondly of his move to Winnipeg and the launch of Bob FM. Tara Sands (VO) 00:26:43 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 winterpay, free press. 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 not showing the whole logo, just Bob is coming. So people would see that go. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:27:16 What the hell is that? Tara Sands (VO) 00:27:17 Bob? Who's Bob? What's Bob? And they showed this dude standing there. It was very working class. It looked like the cover of Born in the USA. Springs to jeans and a white T shirt type of thing with a bit of a rock and roll edge to it. 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, and it was the station. I forget what the SharePoint was, but it was huge for a first book. It was like, this is going to be good. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:27:54 You can hear that entire conversation with Pete Mary in an earlier episode. A link, of course, is in the show notes. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:28:01 It ended up being a really amazing experience, and it still feeds my family 20 years later. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:28:10 And we're going to find out how all that happened, too. Wait for it. The Sound Off podcast. Do you remember that first book? And when you put a format like that on and you talked about how much space there was, you're going to get a lot of radio people, people who don't listen to radio, who are going to come to the medium and a lot of sampling. But do you remember what radio station you affected the most? Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:28:33 Yeah, I do, actually. My favorite radio station, the station I never got to work at, the one that I always listened to, and that was City FM. I remember at Ford. I love Ford Gardner. And I remember it was a concert we were at, actually. I think it might even be a Steve Earl show or something like that. There's something going on at the Walker Theater, and it's the first time I'd seen Ford after the book. And I see him sitting there. I go over to just say, hey, Hi, Ford, how's it going? It's like, yeah, thanks a lot, Krueger. But it did, it really did affected city. And the thing was that it was never like the format itself was always designed and I still run it to this very day as 50% rock, 25% pop, 25% AC. I always find that if you delineate or you move away from that mix, what ends up happening is if you move too far to the female side, you'll have yourselves very like a neutered classic rock station. And then if you move too far the other way, you'll just have a very uninteresting Hyundai Sea Station or Gold based Sea Station. So it's very important to follow the ingredients. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:29:51 How did you wind up with a trademark for Bob? Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:29:53 Well, that's an interesting story. I don't own it in Canada. Could be a whole other podcast, Matt, because that was like a very interesting journey. But what ended up happening was that I remember Paul Ski and Mike Dorna myself. We had actually talked about launching this in the US, bringing this to the US and I don't know whatever happened, I mean we drew up ads for it and we drew up marketing materials and at the very end, I guess there was just a lack of interest. In fact, I remember I was kind of told Howard, I don't think anybody will be interested in this in the US. And I figured, well, I really felt strongly that there would be. And of course Jack came along a year later and totally proved that assumption to be correct. What I did is I actually, yeah, I trademarked it in the US and that's how it works. This is the other thing that's interesting too is that in radio I've always felt that nobody the value of a brand. It just seems to be the last thing on. I mean, we're so quick to gas formats and try something else and all this good will that you've built towards a brand. We were always so willing to throw it out the door. I own all my brands. I also own the Hank brand, the country brand and the Duke brand in the US, which have actually done almost as good as the Bob brand. But yes, at the end of the day it is all about the brand because you can move things within the brand to move the needle on what you're trying to do. But yeah, we've always been so easy. We give things up so easy when it comes to the brand. I don't know if you agree with that, but it just seems it's like we've built these great brands and before we are able to listen, sometimes they just don't work. But that's probably another conversation because I think the metrics we use to measure our successes are just God awful. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:00 Listen, when it comes to brands, I'm the first person I think it happened to Cool in Ottawa and it was chum. They cashed out top 40. Cool turned it into something else. Actually, I think they turned it into Bob. Tara Sands (VO) 00:32:13 They did. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:32:14 Yes, they did. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:15 But at the same time, that's sort of in the moment you're telling your audience and giving them a Tshirt and getting them to buy in for years and years and then swapping out and saying, oh, here's something completely new. We were only kidding about the other format. Yes, it worked out for Bob in Ottawa. I look at Power 97 and Winnipeg. They took that off the air, tried something different. It's going to take you a minimum of three years to get any traction in the market. And I don't think anybody thinks about that when they make that change. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:32:43 No, they don't. And that's something I've experienced quite a bit over the years. It's interesting because for the formats that I do, maybe it's because I've always sold the integrity and the importance of the branding, but the attrition rate for what we do, it's not that big, right? So, I mean, if I had clients that have been doing Bob for like 1314 years, as long as you are able to continue to keep the brand fresh, as long as you're able to provide new ideas, as long as you're able to keep people engaged and excited, that's how you're going to keep it alive. Now, of course, there's a whole other thing about the metrics that are used to measure it because they don't help a lot of times. I mean, a lot of times you really are going north, but the sample shows you're going south. But yeah, no, the branding part is something that's always perplexed me, and that's why I've always made it pretty integral. Part of what I do is to make sure that, listen, I want to own the IP and I want to make sure that 100% attention is being paid to it before it gets decided to be jettisoned. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:52 What did you think of the knockoffs Jack for Rogers and Joe for Chorus? Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:33:56 Well, you know what? Success has many fathers, right? The Jack one was great. As far as them marketing in the US, I wish I would have got a head start jump like they did. They did a great job on it, man. Pat and I talked about it all the time, and Pat was the guy that launched Jack in Vancouver. Like some of the stories, the behind the scenes stories that we had, that'd be great for a book one day because there's probably some things nobody would believe about that period. And some of the thought that went behind the Jack Brown. I mean, I remember Pat telling me and you know what? I could be totally I don't think he was pulling my leg. He was telling me that originally the whole thought about doing adult hits for Jack was just going to be a stunt before they flipped it into AAA or something like that. Anyway, the brand was successful. Here's the other thing, too, which was amazing, is that eventually, like in April of 2005, Billboard magazine did a story. They had me at my picture and they had a little caption in the corner of the magazine saying, Radio does know Jack. Right? And so it talked about the creation of the format and the success behind it. And that was really heady time because all of a sudden there was this big story about Canadian radio migrating to the US. Right. And I remember CNN did a story on it. They did a national news story on CTV, on Bob, did an interview with the New York Times, Rolling Stone, New York Post, all these guys, all of a sudden it was just this very. This would have been about 2000. Yeah, it was 2005. So about four years after we launched Bob, that's when the wave hit the US, and that's when it really blew up. And I guess that's also the time when I thought to myself, there's the future for this. This is something that maybe this is something that I can bring to the table and do full time. And it was about 2006 when I actually did leave. Actually, Mark Mayhew hired me over at Newcap to do their research. They were kind of my first big client. Of course, I had a bunch of voiceover clients, so I use that to finance the beginnings of what Kruger Media is today. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:36:27 You were doing research for Newcast. Was that in Winnipeg or was that elsewhere? Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:36:31 No, that was across the chain. That was actually a really interesting experience. It was fun. And again, getting to work with Mark was awesome. After I left that, that lasted about a year. Then Mark had hired me to help him out with a radio application for Ottawa. And here's the other thing, too. Mark was always so ahead of the curve. I mean, this radio station that he wanted to get on the air, he was thinking totally outside the box. Again, remember, this is the same guy that came up with Chamaroo. I don't know if you remember Chamaroo. Chamaru was like it was streaming formats before there was streaming formats. Right. So Mark wanted to come up with this station that was you sold sponsorships rather than spots. And if anything, it was a very cool project to be a part of. And I often found that over the years in my career, when I get involved in these things, it's just like you get whacked in the side of the head that totally changes your way of thinking. And I really do think it's being exposed to these people that are so bright and smart, that challenge the way you think about things and really force you to think and look at things through a different lens. And that's what guys getting back to my mentors in the business the Ross Davies or the Mike Dornes, the Mike Anthony's, the Mark mayors. That's what people like that did. You know, for me. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:38:04 Just to confirm, Pat Cardinal told you that people were going to copy it, then he copied it and then launched it as Jack. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:38:10 Yeah. Okay. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:38:13 That's Pat. Speaker 4 00:38:15 Yeah. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:38:17 In fact, Matt, it's interesting because I remember when Jack launched I remember on the marketing materials that were faxed to me, and I think Pat did Pat Fax them to me. Anyway, Jack has friends in other places, and it was all the ratings that we had in Winnipeg for the Bob format. It was good for them. And in a weird twist, early on in my consulting career, actually, I did some research work with Pat Bond and Gary Wall on the Jack brand. Small world, a lot of fun, great experience. I got to say, it was a life changer for me. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:38:59 You mentioned earlier that Bob has continued to do well all these years later. We're in the 20th year of it now, and not a lot has changed. You've talked a little bit about the music mix. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:39:09 I arrived in 2006. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:39:10 And the only time I saw Bob slip was maybe they got away from that music mix that you were talking about nearly 20 years in and nothing's really changed much. How incredible is it that it's that durable a product? Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:39:25 Yeah. Well, there's a couple of things that are kind of built it in a way to be future proof. I mean, listen, eventually the brand I mean, there has been changes within the brand, music wise, but whereas most formats have tended to maybe drop off the 70s, increase the 80s a bit more and move into the 2000s, think about classic rock, where the sweet spot for that format is 70s, 80s and the tail end of the 90s or a beginning of the 90s, mind you, Bob format the same way. I mean, the whole idea of it is like, listen, we're going to play great songs. We're going to test the library all the time. Because really the thing that I've found out over the years is that really there's about over 1000 songs that work well with the format. These songs that are in power, they come down, they become secondaries. The ones that are secondary, they got rested, they move up to power. The key to it. And this is what a lot of people don't understand. The key to it, believe it or not, is the branding and the imaging that comes between the music. Because what happens is that more and more as TSL gets eroded by streaming services and so forth, what's the one thing that we can do better than anybody else on the radio that's tell stories and create great audio ear candy? And that's what's so important about the imaging and the branding for these radio stations. And frankly, that's how we make a living right now doing it. My sons, Travis and Lucas, they produce all the Bob imaging now, actually do all the Hank imaging. I still use Sean Caldwell for the Bob voice. I've used Sean for 20 years. And we just keep the writing fresh. We work hard at it and we don't let it go by the wayside. So many stations and clients stations that I've worked with, what happens, they get really excited coming up with these cute liners at the very beginning of the process, and then after about two months, they lose interest and interest in the station wage. You just got to keep it fresh all the time. That's the secret, really is. And they've done an awesome job of that over at Bob FM and Winnipeg, just keeping it fresh and keeping the creative content moving the way it should. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:41:40 I don't know, a successful radio station that doesn't have a weekly imaging meeting, and I used to crank out five pages a week of this stuff just to have the station image in a fresh way. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:41:54 Yeah, that's something that listen, I think what's happened and I feel it a lot because most of my client bases in the US consolidation there is. You think it's changing here. It's changed dramatically over there. There's just not enough people to come up with that. There's not enough people left in the room to come up with that sort of stuff. So that's a service that we provide well. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:42:22 In the US, I think they got rid of all the writers around 20 08, 20 09 when there was a recession. They just told the sales people, you guys write your own spot? Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:42:29 Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Actually, we came up with a solution for that. It's called Spot Voltage. It's a service that my sons and I put together with a company called Sun Broadcast that actually distribute all of our formats in the US right now. And it seems to be doing pretty good. The whole idea is just provide great copy and great production for people that sales guys that don't have time to go and write copy. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:42:52 Tell me a little bit about Hank. I don't take from the country, Ben, but I have heard Hank across the United States. So tell me about it. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:42:59 Well, Hank kind of came off the heels of Bob FM and again, my close friend and mentor, Mike Anthony, he phoned me in 2005 and said, yeah, I'm doing some work with station in Indianapolis. Call letters eventually were WHK W L HK. Anyway, he says, yeah, what about taking the Bob idea and put it into country? And I said, yeah, that would work really well because I always felt the same thing that had happened to pop music and gold based 80s 90s music. The same thing was happening, could happen over the countryside eventually. It did happen, but not quite to the extent that it did with the Bob side of things. So anyways, we came up with I said, hey, we should call it Hank again just because I like to crank it to Hank. So they launched Hank that was in 2005 did well, I think it went from number 17 to number five. And there's a whole other thing that happened there, too, because I think serious at that time it was satellite radio. They had a what is it called? Hanks? It was called Hanks Channel or Hanks Place or whatever. They were very excited about me using the Hank brand. But anyway, it worked out and yeah, so that was the first Hank in 2005 in Indianapolis kind of use that as the launching point for the other Hank brands. That original Hank one. It was kind of one off almost. But again, I took the Hank brand. I own it in the US and we've been able to I think we have 20 some Hank stations right now that we do. I also have another brand called Duke, which is exactly the same as the Hank brand, but we just created it for another company called Midwest Communications who couldn't do Hank because they wanted to do a Hank in Terrell, Indiana, but it was too close to Hank in Indianapolis. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:45:05 Midwest Communications, aren't they based out of Fargo or Green Bay? Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:45:10 Green Bay, Yes, Appleton, Oshkosh. Green Bay, Wisconsin. Great family company. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:45:16 I've actually featured Wi Xx 101. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:45:19 Oh, really? 101. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:45:21 Wi Xx. I featured that radio station on this podcast. At one point. They've got live people 24/7 they do. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:45:29 The owner of the company, Duke Wright, is a sweetheart of a man. They got some great talent over there. Jeff McCarthy, they are vice President of program. He's just a wonderful human being. That's the great thing about when you work on your own, Matt, if they're assholes, you can tell them to go away. Right. I've been very fortunate. The people I've worked with have been just very nice people, brilliant, smart people that are willing to try new things. And yeah, it's been really rewarding. Really has. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:46:00 Well, it's really amazing because being in Winnipeg, we can drive down to Minneapolis. And then I hooked up with the people at the Conclave and began to meet all these people that Midwest Communications and across the Midwest. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:46:11 Oh, yeah. When you go to CMW, you know, everybody right there's a certain it's just 18,000 radio stations there. But you do get to know certain groups of people and you do form this very close bond. I mean, the company that's about ten years ago started this research company. It was called Radio Doppler and it didn't fare too well. There's a lot of other things going on. One of them was my wife was involved in a very serious car accident which kind of took my eye off the eight ball. But the one thing that did come out of that was that company called Envision Networks based out of Cleveland and New York, picked me up as a client and they ended up distributing all of our formats for us. They eventually merged with a company called Sun Broadcast Network. They're the guys that sell our formats, and they've done an amazing job because that's one thing I needed was feet on the ground. Right. Because when you're the chief bottle washer, you're the programmer, you're the imagery. It's very difficult to get all your Ducks in row. But these guys have done a great job of selling our formats and even creating new business ventures with them. It's been a really great run that way. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:47:28 What are the market conditions that you need to have a successful launch, whether it's Bob or Hank or Duke? Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:47:34 That's an interesting question because there are more stations in the US. What ends up happening is there's probably more strategic reasons to do it. Right? Like, you don't necessarily launch a station to be the number one station in the marketplace. I mean, guys that want to do Hank, it might be because they might be like the third country station in the marketplace, but nobody is doing classic country or they might want to protect the upper end of their mainstream country station. So one of the things that's very important is to have somebody on the other end who gets it. I'd like to think I partner with stations more so than dictate to them. But if you have somebody on the other end who gets it, who understands what you're trying to do, who is great at it's very important to have some sort of on the ground marketing presence. If you can pull those off. Those usually work out very well. I mean, there are some stations that we'll do everything for them. We'll do their music, imaging, everything. Some stations, it might be just their imaging that we will in branding we do for them. And that's the other thing, too, is that so many things that we do just kind of happened out of being at the right place at the right time. Right. I mean, like, for example, I'm the voice of all the Hank and Duke stations. And I never planned on doing that initially. I wanted Rocco with a Clown, right. Remember Rock with the Clown and those film house commercials? That's who I wanted. But when I started doing this, he didn't have his own studio. Greg Leland was his name. He didn't have his own studio. And he was kind of expensive for me at that point. I tried it myself only because I had to save some money. And it worked out. In fact, a lot of the Hank stations in the South, I don't even tell them I do the voiceover because although if they're listening. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:49:33 I guess they know now what's the balance of radio, art and science. I was watching the Stanley Two Chief series, and there's a chef in Rome who doesn't want to reveal the secret of parmesan to Pecorino in his pasta dish. I'm going to ask you to reveal the balance between art and science and radio. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:49:54 First of all, as program directors, you know, we tend to come from the many of us come from the creative side. When you come from the creative side, you really have to learn to accept the science side. And when I say the science side, I'm talking about not just the research side of things, but also the sales side of things. Right. Because you can be so pure that you create this product that you're not going to let any client touch. I know that we were very fussy back in the day about who could sponsor this product when now it's like anybody else. We wouldn't even run funeral announcements or funeral spots during the day or at all. But now you hear them all the time. Anyway, the balance between science and art is understanding where the two intersect. Right. And the thing is that, for example, you do a strategic study. I became a science guy. I had to learn that I was always a creative guy, but I had to become a science guy. But the minute you understand that, man, if you understand the science, it can create the art. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's all about knowing how to read between the lines. I find that even with music tests, I've done enough music tests and so forth. And I found that the more records I would put into the mix that didn't test. But were Owl records, the better the ratings would be. And it's understanding how that works. And I always think as Canadian program directors, we actually got trained really well in doing that, in how we managed at least I'm talking years ago, because we're managing Canadian content. There's a tons of great Canadian content out there. But the thing was that depending on what format you were, there might not be enough or there might be a lot to choose from. If you're a gold based radio station, chances are there wasn't. You'd burn out certain titles after a while. So you have to be very creative in how you program things. And I think that really helped develop the science side of things. I know that I have done many music tests. For example, country. I did a huge test for our Hank stations, and the Hank stations are 90s based. But the biggest testing records that came out of this music test would be like 80s tracks. Oh, yeah. Number one testing song for I think like four studies in a row was the theme from Duke's Hazard. By Waylon, Jenny. Now common sense would tell you, oh, yeah, the 80 stuff test great. We got to play more of that. No, you don't, really. It's just there's a certain amount of 80 stuff that tested great. Just got to make sure you work it better into your music mix. The other thing is using the art to reinforce the science. I've always been a big believer in if you have imaging that talks about how your station plays the Legends of country, the great songs ever recorded, you got to make sure that you're playing one of the greatest songs ever recorded, like he Stopped Loving Her Today by George Jones or something of that. Like you got to live up to the promise all the time, right? Yeah. It's understanding the science, reading between the lines and reinforcing it with the creativity. Does that make sense? It totally doesn't. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:53:23 In fact, it actually just brought on another question. I've had about two questions left now for about a half hour. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:53:28 I'm sorry. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:53:30 The classic hits format has to play 35% CanCon yet. It has to be from an era when there was only 20 or 30% on the air. How frustrating is it for Canadian programmers to program their way through that? Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:53:44 Oh, you're absolutely right. I guess one of them in the US. I don't have to worry about that. But no, you're right. But you do develop skills in how to accomplish that, right. It's really funny, Matt, is that I remember when we had Bob, we would test our Canadian I always considered they're just great songs. Right. A Streetheart Thinking of you by Harlequin, like top five record that there was a lot of great music. We never had a problem because if it was great, we played it and all of that stuff, like so much of that stuff tested just as well as the Internet and why shouldn't it? Right. We never really had a problem with it. It's when you get into the older gold stuff, that's when you run into problems. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:54:34 I'd ask you what sort of wish you had for radio. But I think I know the answer is to get a better measuring system. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:54:40 Yeah. We're going to go through some real pain over the next few years. We do need better metrics to measure. Listen, we live in the digital granular age. Right. You think about digital advertising and mobile. It has eaten Radio's lunch for a long time. We don't have granular information. We're using technology that was well, first of all, if you're still in a market that has diaries, that's 1920s technology and Ppm. I remember not much has changed with Ppm since the first time they rolled it out back in 1994 when they came across Canada rolling out the here's what we're going to be doing. That's got to change. And I'm disappointed that we haven't been able to find like surely to goodness everybody in the world carries a cell phone. Why have we not been able to tap into cellphone technology as something that can measure radio listening? I mean, I think the reason we haven't is not because the technology hasn't been developed. It's probably because it's been squelched. Right. Difference being hearing in Canada numerous is not for profit. Nielsen is a different animal. So I think that will have to change. The other thing that's going to be very interesting is where we are going with our digital assets. I mean you look at what's happening at Iheart media right now and in the US and that will give you an idea about where things are headed as far as how we handle our assets. And the thing is it's not like it hasn't been done before. You look at what's going on over in Europe. I mean I have a friend of mine who worked in France for a couple of years and what they're seeing right now taking place in North America, that happened there a long time ago. What will eventually happen is that we'll be scheduling our music in the cloud. Digital assets will all be in the cloud. The Studios. You don't need a big studio. In fact, I remember visiting a client like about seven years ago and this is in Texas, actually, Waco, Texas. And I'm going through the Studios. Beautiful wheat, stone boards, brand new microphones. But there's nobody in there, right. I think that have laptop will travel. That's probably going to be your studio, you're going to be plugging into music feeds. I think that's going to change a lot that way. And maybe we'll have also figured out a better way to measure what we're serving to our listeners. But I think that is probably the way that things are eventually going to go. And I mean I have more days behind me than I do ahead of me in this career, so I don't know if that's going to fully show itself while I'm still doing this. My kids, my sons, they've shown an interest to keep on going, so they're probably going to be experiencing that. But yeah, I do wish we'd have a better system to measure. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:57:44 Howard, thanks so much for taking the time to be on this podcast. This has been years in the making. I apologize that I could not come out and we do this face to face, but again, we don't need to in this day and age, we don't. Howard Kroeger (Guest) 00:57:55 But that being said, you do live in the same town as me now. So once the pandemic is done, you and you are going to go out and there's lots of other great radio stories that I want to hear from you. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:58:04 The soundoff podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill produced by Evan Surminsky social media by Courtney Krebsbach another great creation from the soundoff media company, Imaging Courtesy Corps Image Studios There's always more@soundoffpodcast.com.

Paul Kaye is the VP of Music Brands and In House Production at Rogers. When he was hired in July of 2017, it was mentioned that his position is an evolving one. True to that statement - his position remains as fluid as ever given the accelerating change for the medium and for the content creators who work in it. The last time we had Paul on the show, it was December 2016 and he was fulfilling a role at Newcap Radio. We haven't felt the need to have him back because the episode was very evergreen and stood the test of time resiliently. However, with the pandemic - it is time for a catch up. In this episode, we spoke about the differences between "Big Bits" and "Conversational". (Spoiler: The former is passe) We also debunked some of the truths and myths surrounding live and local, and how the pandemic will result in better radio content quality, even if the economic indictors do not reflect that right now. We also talked about the future of morning radio citing two recent changes in the Winnipeg market with the bringing Brock and Dalby to afternoons on 92.1 CITI, and transplanting Roz and Mocha into the morning show on 102.3 Kiss FM. Both are glimpses into the future for radio talent... and yes they should be excited about the possibilities. And yes we did discuss what he looks for in demo. I'll even let you cut right to that part but you really shouldn't because there is so much other great stuff you'll likely need to know from the episode before you send him an mp3 or .mov of your work. It's at [13:40] What goes into a great demo.... 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, a return visit with Paul Kaye. Paul is the VP of music brands and inhouse production at Rogers. Back in December 2016, we had him on this show when he was working with talent at what was then Newcap. In 2017, he left for Rogers, where he has been working with talent ever since. If you listen back to this series, we've often had discussions with very busy radio people while they're commuting by car. But this being 2020 and all, I caught up with Paul Kay while he's having a walk after about 14 hours of continuous Zoom meetings. So if you hear the sounds of nature, those are Canadian geese preparing for their migratory path south. We joined Paul on his walk through Vancouver. So your role has changed over the last number of years, and now you've got this great title, and it's VP of music brands and in house production. So what does your work day look like? Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:01:05 We're still trying to figure it out, I think. Look, my work day hasn't really changed. The title may have changed, the portfolio may have changed a little bit. But ultimately my day is spent working with creative people, trying to solve creative challenges and build brands that mean something to audiences. And now I get to do that across our music radio brands and in house TV shows as well. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:31 So what are some of the TV shows that you're working on? Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:01:33 This is fresh. So Breakfast Television Toronto and City Line would be two of them. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:38 Music brands is actually in your title, and you mentioned that you're steering your way through this. So what is the relationship really between the performers who are working over the air and the music they are playing? Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:01:52 Well, look, I think anyone that's on the air, in a music radio station or on a music brand has to have some connection to the music that they're playing. I think that's one of the things that we've missed over the years where we've just cast great talent around music that doesn't necessarily fit their personality. And for me, a brand is the sum of all of the parts. So really the connection between the performer and the music that they're playing should be genuine and it should be complementary both ways. The music should complement the on air talent and feel right around them, and the talent should feel complementary to the music as well. So I see it all as, our job is to cast every element of a brand, to make the sum of all parts greater than any individual parts in a very simplistic, big picture view. That's the way I view it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:02:45 And I asked the question not to say that there's anything that should change really with the talent, but people have a different relationship with the radio and the music that's on the radio than they did in the past, ergo, something is going to change for the content creators. Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:02:59 Yeah. Fundamentally, I think everyone has a personal relationship with music that's never going to change. No matter what method music is delivered to people, it's always going to be deeply personal. I think our job as performers around the music is to reflect that passion and that love and that sense of connection that music can bring. So I don't think that's ever going to change. But I do think that actually one of the challenges that Music Radio face, as I mentioned, was for a long time we forgot that the talent had to fit the music and the music had to fit the talent. And now some of the best radio is when those two things are aligned. And I think that's not just radio in the terrestrial sense. I think when you look at things like what Apple have done with their radio products recently, like they've really married the talent of the music and vice versa. So it makes cohesive sense. So I think that's what we're talking about. When there's a connection between the talent and the music, it's got to feel genuine and it's got to be part of something bigger than either entity on its own. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:04 It feels really liberating when you say all that, by the way, because now you can go and get whatever talent you want and put them on whatever station you want. Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:04:11 Well, that may be the trick. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:14 You mentioned this back in 2019, at the beginning of the year January, you came up with one of your great blogs and you mentioned that bits are out and conversations are in. Break that down now for anybody who's still doing bits and what they need to do to pivot. Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:04:31 Yeah. Look, I think deep connection comes from conversation. If you think about humans generally and how we interact with one another, conversation is the exchange of opinions and ideas and thoughts, and that's what leads to connection. Long gone are the days where I think we got away with, okay, what are we doing at 710? Okay, it's the joke of the day, right? We'll do that. It's not really that authentic. It's just something that's taken off the shelf. We'll create that moment, put it there. Right. What are we doing at 720? Okay, it's Hollywood sleeves. That's another bit. And so you may inject a little bit of your opinion, but there's nothing deep there. So I think conversation for me was about okay. I think because there is so much competition now for people's attention, for people's time, we've got to focus on making really rich, deep connections. And that means you've got to have conversation. So that first of all means that it's really about finding things of interest to you, finding things of interest to your target audience and where those two meet, having a conversation. So where the interest that you have and the interest that the audience have overlaps. That's where you need to start having a conversation. But that doesn't mean you need 20 people on a morning show or two people on an afternoon show to have a conversation. Sometimes that conversation can happen one on one with you, the performer and the audience member. But I do think it's about moving beyond these pre planned stage set up little bits to get a reaction or create a smile and moving deeper into, okay, what is it that I'm going to say? What is the opinions, the thoughts, the perspectives that I want to share with the audience and also realizing that conversations are always contextual. So it's very unusual to suddenly break into a conversation that's completely out of left field with someone. If I'm meeting you for a coffee, we're going to sit down, we'll probably do some pleasantries, and I will bring something up that I think is going to be of interest to you, Matt, and we'll start talking about it, and we'll share our opinions and our thoughts. So there's always a contextual element to conversations, which there isn't with bits. The only context really with a bit is, oh, look, I want to do it at this time, and I think radio in particular has to double down on conversations. That humanistic connection between you and someone else. It doesn't mean the bits are completely irrelevant in all forms of entertainment. I mean, James Courtney has a really successful bit in carpool karaoke, but I think for meaningful, rich radio, we need to double down on conversation and move away from those stage bits that for many of us was the secret to winning back in the day. I remember producing morning shows, and all we really cared about was do we have all of the questions created for battle of the sexes? Do we have the impossible question of the day set up and the facts of the day ready to go and look, some of those still have merit for some shows, but really the driving force is how do we have conversations that really connect on an emotional level with our audience? And that actually isn't a new thing? I think that's always been part of the secret. But for a long time, with a lack of competition, with consumers having less options and less choice, we were able to get away and hide behind some of those bits. No one is going to spend a lot of time with your radio show just because you have the best fit. They're going to spend a lot of time with you as a performer because they like hanging out with you because of the conversations that you have and the fact that they can pick up your values and your beliefs and your opinions and find that connective tissue that brings you both together. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:07:59 Well, you mentioned the word hiding in there, and that's kind of where I was going to go. Is it fair to say that a two or a three person morning show could probably hide behind bits but will become completely exposed in conversation. Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:08:14 Oh, yeah. Conversation is raw. I don't think too deeply about what I'm going to say to a friend. And there's a level of trust that neither of us are going to betray one another's confidence, and we're not going to go too far in performance setting when there's two or three of you on a show. Yeah, it can be a little bit scary. It can be a little bit intimidating to put your whole self out there knowing that today those words live on as they should. But it was much easier to hide behind a great bit and not have to put yourself out there, not have to set yourself up for judgment, not to have people make a decision about what kind of individual you are based on what you were saying. So, yeah, back in the day, it was much easier to do bits and be a bit inauthentic, authentic around the bits, but not authentically yourself on the radio. And look, I think the secret to any kind of content creation today is it all hinges on the unique perspective of the creator or the performer, and that requires us to find a deeper level of authenticity than we've ever seen before. And that comes through in conversation. So maybe it's really pissy to say bits are out, conversations are in. But the reality is what we're talking about is there is a really deep need for authenticity and performers today, deeper than we've ever seen in the past. And performers who can unlock and are willing to unlock their deep thoughts, feelings and opinions and share them with their audience are going to be far more successful than anyone else, I think. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:09:45 Well, that really changes what show prep is, because rather than trying to land on how you're going to make it all tidy in a neat bow, you actually have to do a whole 360 on the subject matter. Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:09:56 Yeah. The hardest part of show prep, I think today or any performance today is developing your sense of self awareness. The more in touch you can become with your reactions to things, the easier it is to prep a show. So it's no longer about finding that story in the news that everyone's talking about it's understanding what your reaction to that story is the first time you read it or the first time you come across it. Do you feel sad about it and why do you feel happy about it and why? What are you embarrassed that you feel, and how are you going to bring that to life on the radio? Actually, the more you develop your self awareness, the easier it is to prep your show. But, yeah, it's no longer about. Well, it's no longer about going, okay, right. I'm going to start this break by saying X, then it's going to move to Y, and then it's going to move to Z. It's much more about going, okay, I know how I feel about this, and here are some of the things that I want to share, and then I'm just going to put myself out there and let it unravel in a really raw and natural way. Look, just saying that scares me, and that's probably why I was never very good on the other side of the microphone. That's a very vulnerable place to be. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:11:04 Well, you mentioned self awareness, and anybody who wants a little bit more self awareness just has to stop doing drugs and take yoga every day and you'll be on your way. Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:11:16 Yeah, well, that's the secret then. No more show prep, more yoga classes. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:11:20 But that leads me to the question, can you teach authenticity? Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:11:23 Look, I don't think you can teach authenticity the way you say it, because authenticity is who you are, not what you do. Do you know what I mean? It's not a skill. I think what you can teach is helping people see themselves in the way others do, help them get comfortable with understanding how to pull out their thoughts and opinions. The irony is authenticity comes so naturally to all of us in our everyday lives, right? Not many of us sit around and put on an act amongst our friends and family. We are just us. I think half of the job of teaching authenticity is really about helping people rediscover that level of comfort in amongst a really artificial environment. Sitting behind a microphone is a very artificial environment, and it takes some work to get yourself truly comfortable and at ease with being yourself behind a microphone, same as a TV camera. So authenticity and teaching it is really about helping people see past that artificial environment and getting back to expressing themselves in a way that they do with such ease around friends and family. It's kind of like we're never at ease when we go to a job interview. Right. And that's the same for most performers when they're in a radio studio or in front of a TV camera. We're not quite at ease. We're putting on a bit of a show. We're trying to portray ourselves in a way that may not be completely accurate. Like we're trying to play up the good sides of ourselves and maybe play down the bad sides when we're with our friends having a beer or having a coffee, although that seems like a lifetime ago these days. But when we are, we don't think about putting forward just our best selves. We put forward ourselves. So I think, yes, you can help people find their authentic voice or their authentic style or their authentic self if they're willing to do it. But it does mean that you have to be vulnerable. It does mean that you have to be totally comfortable with putting everything out there. And that's scary. And a lot of performers don't want to go that deep and don't want to expose themselves in that way. And therefore there are levels of authenticity, but they're never truly at the heart of showing them their whole self to the audience. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:13:30 I know some people are just going to download this episode and just listen to this one question, which is too bad because they've missed a really good show up until this point. What goes into a demo? Because I know you get demos all the time. There's a lot of people who know, well, I want to send a demo. I want to explore working with Rogers, and I'm going to send one to Mr. Paul K. And what is he expecting or looking for in that demo? Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:13:54 Yeah, it's a great question. I get asked this a lot, and I wish I had the answer. The cliche is, you know, it when you hear it. And I've been thinking a lot about that recently. I've received quite a few demos over the last couple of months, and really what I'm looking for is a true sense of what makes you different really quickly. I really struggle to get through the demos to start with, reading me a line or spend a lot of time doing the back, selling a song, front, selling a song. So the first thing that I'm interested in is, who is this person? What do they sound like? What's their opinion? So anything that you can send me, whether it's a video or an audio demo, look, in the first 30 seconds, I want to get a picture of you. I want to decide as a human whether I like you or I dislike you. And the only way to do that is for you to put yourself out there and do something that I wasn't expecting. Do something good about yourself. I actually don't even need you to send me breaks. I got a great demo the other day from someone whose name I won't mention, but it was a 62nd audio introduction to who they are, what they like. And I could hear the genuine, heartfelt expression of themselves through this audio. And I was like, wow, I'm going to pick up the phone and speak to them. And we spoke a couple of days later, and I love their personalities. So when I was trying to fool my way into on air gigs, it was about, Can I make this demo sound really polished? Can I hide the fact that I have no idea what I'm doing? So I'll sell the music really well, read a liner really well, and put a caller on. I wouldn't get hired today because I was just a voice on a stick. There was no personality. I sounded the same as everyone else, maybe marginally better than some and worse than others. Today I want to get a sense of, who is this person? What do you stand for? Put yourself out there. And I think you can be as creative as you want, you know, if it's a good demo, because it won't start with the same thing everyone else can do if you're starting with the weather, probably not going to cut through. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:49 You know, when you hear it, which was a great way to sum it up, because back a few minutes ago, when we were talking about knowing yourself and self awareness, the people who are highly self aware, and some of my favorite performers, they know exactly who they are, and I know they know that because I can hear it. It's kind of like the old porn thing, right? I don't know what it is. I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:16:12 Yeah, look. Yeah, sure. For me, it all comes back. I wish it was more complicated than this. I think we over complicated it. But the reality is the reason it takes many months, many years to perfect being great at creating radio shows or content. It takes us a long time to learn how to just be ourselves. You know it when you hear it because people are comfortable in their own voice, they're comfortable in how they show up. That feeling is really the lack of inauthentic performance, having fun, being yourself. That's the secret. Now we're all different. Not one person has created the same as another. So it's our job in demos to start or in performance, to start showing ourselves, showing the audience or who we are, letting them get to know us. And it sounds so cliche, and it probably is. But the reality is that's what separates the good from the great or the great from the good is being truly comfortable with yourself. If you think about some of the greatest radio performers or performers generally, they're not really doing anything special, like really analyze the content. They may have a good idea every now and then, like late night talk shows are a great example. On TV, it's kind of the same act from everyone, but we gravitate to a favorite, whether it's Kimmel or James Corden, whoever your favorite is, it's because you identify the most or you feel connected the most. There's something that pulls you to that one individual. But it's never really the content. It's the individual. And the sooner you can find yourself, the better it becomes. And that's what it means. I think you know it when you hear it. They've really found comfort in who they are, and they're going for it. Once you're authentic, average content becomes good content. When you're inauthentic, good content becomes average in just a second. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:18:12 Paul and I go back in time to see how we progressed in terms of taking risks. What is the future of morning radio with all the changes the pandemic has brought? And I'll warn you, it's going to be weird to hear radio people talk about exciting changes to radio content and what it sounds like when there's a pandemic and we debunk some of the myths and truths of live and local. How should people be measuring themselves when they're on the radio? So if you're in a diary market, you get a report twice a year about how you're doing. Maybe you can send your tapes off or I said tapes, your MP3 is off. Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:18:48 Thank you. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:18:50 And by the way, you and I are talking about back in the day when we were talking about that, we only mean a few years ago, we don't mean to go all yeah. Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:18:55 Of course, we're young and springly. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:18:59 But if you're in a diary market and you only get feedback, numbered feedback twice a year, maybe you're sending off your material to other people to be air checked. And what are some of the measurements that we should be looking at when we're evaluating our content? Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:19:15 Yeah, it's a good question. Well, the first thing I think you should do is if you're evaluating whether you're good or not based on ratings, then that's a really sad state of affairs. I think creating content is an art form, and an art form shouldn't be distilled down into bland analytical numbers. So the first thing I would say is I've heard some of the best radio never find an audience doesn't mean it was bad. It was actually really good. Radio just for whatever reason, didn't find an audience. It doesn't stop that art being good. And I've heard some really bad radio find an audience and rate. So I try and avoid ratings. And in fact, one of the things that I'm most passionate about is not judging first and foremost our success based on the numbers that we deliver. I think it's archaic and not the way that I get inspired. And I've yet to find anyone that got into radio, TV or any form of content creation that goes great once I've put myself out there, please judge me by those numbers in an Excel spreadsheet that will really get me fired up to keep creating. So for me, it all comes down to how would I judge successive content? What's the strategy? What were you trying to do and did you achieve it? What are you trying to do and did you get closer to it? So when we're working with radio stations or shows, we define what the mission is. What are we trying to achieve? Not from a numbers point of view. What do we want the audience to think about this? Where is the need that the audience has that we think we can sell and how we got to fill that need? And then we judge everything against whether we're getting closer or further away from that. And I think when you start thinking about things from a humanistic point of view, we can focus more on the art and less on the science. And that's really the job of the talent. It's the focus on the art and less on the science. So that's how we do it. That's how I believe in doing it. It's certainly as I navigate my newer role and start working with people on the TV side of the business, that's the first thing I've said is, look, I don't judge success based on the numbers. I judge it based on what is the brand values that we're going after, what is the need of the audience that we're trying to fulfill? Are we getting closer to that or are we getting further away from that? And I think even if you're in a small market doing a radio show, that would be my first question. If I walk through the door, who is this show for? What need are you trying to fulfill for them and how do we want to fulfill that need? Because sometimes that need maybe for escapism. Okay, so how are we trying to fulfill that need? Is it through comfort and sincerity and kindness, or is it through humor, whatever it is, and then we're just evaluating content against the need of the audience and then the brand values and the filters that we set in play. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:21:57 So you and I were talking back in 2017 about how we really shouldn't pay attention to the numbers and we should really be programming and not being so safe and taking some chances. Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:22:10 I actually think Radio's biggest problem is programmers are scared about being replaced. And I think as a result of that, we program really safe. Amanda Logan (VO) 00:22:19 We don't give the talent as much freedom as we would like or that we believe is necessary to win. Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:22:24 And I think that's because of fear, this is maybe a controversial stance. Amanda Logan (VO) 00:22:28 But I think maybe that's our problem, that the people in charge of creating the art of radio don't feel empowered enough to take the risks that they need to take in order to make great radio. So I think our newest resolution should be to empower our PDS to get back to directing artistic radio, and that will involve them giving more freedom and more control and allow more experimentation and more risk taking with their talent. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:22:57 Have we gotten any better in the three or four years since we spoke last? When it comes to programming. Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:23:05 I think in pockets? No. It's really easy to say things very hard to then do them. I think since we've spoken on that subject, we certainly take in some progressive stances of trying to not hide the numbers from our teams, but take them out of the daily conversations. So none of our Ppm programmers get the daily numbers. They don't even get the weekly numbers. And the reason for that was to stop having the conversation about was yesterday a good or a bad day? Was our content good because of what numbers we got yesterday? And I would suggest that the radio stations that we have that are performing better now because they are now focused on trying things, creating things, playing around with their brands and trying to live into their brands and not judging themselves by their numbers. If I look at it as an industry, I go, look, I still think we're a slave in the numbers, but part of that is because that's the business we're in. The bigger the numbers, hopefully the more of the revenue that we control. I would like to see us be even braver and go, okay, we're going to be more focused on how engaged can we build an audience, no matter what size the audience is? And hopefully we can monetize that engaged audience. But as an industry, I would say we're still probably a slave to the numbers, which is a shame, but that is the world that we live in. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:24:23 We're in a pandemic. So much has changed since March 15. What are some of your thoughts when it comes to morning talent and morning radio? And I wrote this down. What do we do now? Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:24:35 Yeah, look, I think one of the things that I hope everyone has felt and seen is the radio has a level of creativity that I think was there but dormant before. One of the things that I worried about as we went into the pandemic is, wow, what is this industry going to do? Are we just going to go, oh, well, we don't have concert tickets to give away. We don't have promotions to give away. Lots of talent are set at home broadcasting from the bedroom. Are we just going to accept that as a reality and do very little? Because let's face it, there are times where the industry hasn't won awards for its creativity. But actually the opposite happened. And I was really excited by some of the ideas and the desire to keep that connection alive with our audiences, from small markets to big markets. Whether it was hosting happy hours on Zoom to doing weird and crazy concerts over Facebook Live, whatever it was, there was lots of things happening. Talent embracing the fact that they were broadcasting from their bedroom. I felt like radio came alive. There was people willing to take requests on the radio and throw the format. It was exciting. So I think one of my hopes for the future is we don't lose that creativity. The irony is every single idea that we had as an industry during the pandemic should have and probably needed to have been on the radio before we got to the pandemic. There was no reason why we weren't hosting happy hour sessions with our listeners on Zoom or whatever before the pandemic. It just took that disruption for us to realize that there was more we could do. So I hope that creativity doesn't go away. Look, we're going to be disrupted for a while longer in terms of listening behaviors and listening habits. I think that's going to mean that there's probably less people listening in the morning for a little while longer. Commutes aren't happening. But I think for morning talent, it's never been more important to double down on being great and really working at making every moment on your showcase. I think as people start returning to whatever the new normal is going to be, having their friend with them in the morning is going to be important. So I think the message is the same for morning shows as it's always been, other than you're going to have to win some audience back. When commutes do return whenever that is, to the levels they were before, it won't be as easy as just jumping in the car and hitting preset number one and going we'll pick up where we left off. People's expectations for connection and information is going to be even higher, so we have to work really hard at that. We're in no different place in terms of the long term trajectory for radio than we were at the beginning of the pandemic. Look, terrestrial media has to find ways of moving to an ever increasing digital footprint, so we're going to have to combat that. I think talent is always going to be our secret weapon. It's the IP that we own. Music is rented, talent is owned by us, and it's what makes talent incredibly valuable. So I think we're going to have to double down on that. And that means being more experimental. That means talent being more willing to build a connection with their audience outside of their radio show. Whatever we can do to amplify and build the awareness and profile of talent is going to be really important. And I think you'll see some companies double down and select some talent and try and raise their profile on a regional or national level. I think that's going to be really exciting. Look, as technology increases, legacy media will have to find new ways of competing and new ways of evolving. And that creativity that seems to have awoken during covert will lead us into new places if we embrace it and are willing to experiment and to go full circle. If we're going to be a slave to the ratings, then the future for radio is a bit bleak. If we're going to be slaves to creativity and experimentation and talent, then the future could be exciting if we're willing to create it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:28:39 I'm fairly excited by this whole pandemic thing, not really, but I love watching it. The change to morning radio, though, does excite me, because what happens is there's no pressure to get people to go out the door, to get them from point A to point B to point C. Once you take away the traffic and the benchmarks and all the things that were there before, that just aren't really needed there anymore, because the day is starting 75 minutes later for so many people that some morning shows feel very exposed that they can't sort of walk outside that box while the very talented morning shows are thriving. Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:29:15 Yeah, like my belief going into the pandemic. And certainly what was going to happen was morning shows that are built on chemistry and content kind of second. Chemistry first, content second would be still really important to people. They're the kind of shows that even when you're getting up an hour later and don't have to commute to the office, they're the ones that you still want to click on, whether it's on your computer or grab the app or ask your smart speaker to play them because they mean more to you than just that companionship on the commute. So I definitely think those big personality morning shows where chemistry comes first have fared better. We need to create more of those shows where we are less slaves to the format clock and content and more about that relationship people have with the individuals that are performing. If we can do that. And I think that stands beyond morning radio. I think that here's the wake up call. If we don't have great talent in everyday part, we're going to face some tough times ahead. But for morning radio. Yeah, if you rely on hey, my traffic happens at 20 past the hour and my headlines run at the bottom and the top of the hour. And I have to do a couple of weathers and a few funny games. Yeah, it's going to be really blue future. If you're the kind of talent that relies on great chemistry amongst yourselves as a team or yourself in the audience and you can choose great content, then the future looks really good. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:30:44 So Winnipeg has always been a bit of an experimental market for products and whatever they want to unleash upon planet Earth. But I noticed something, a couple of the moves that were made here in Winnipeg are kind of fascinate me because they both represent the future. And you were just talking about personalities, and here's Brock and Dolby who come in from Regina, and they're doing afternoons, hiring a team for afternoons that's not done in a lot of markets. And at the same time, Ros and Mocha coming in from Toronto to go and be a part of the Kiss brand in Winnipeg, there's a show that's being rolled out nationally and again, more big personalities, but this one on a national scale. Talk a little bit about those moves because I think they both represent the future well. Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:31:30 Look, I think they both fall under the same umbrella, although the execution is different, like interesting people talking about interesting things and finding the right home for them. Rock and Dolby on 92, one city that felt like a great home for them. They feel complementary to what that product is. They're both interesting people. They've got a great chemistry, and it's us putting a flag in the ground saying, look, music alone won't win the battle anymore. We have to do more than that. People want to be entertained beyond the music, and they need escapism right now more than they've ever needed it. And that on those stations comes in the form of entertainment. So that's us finding talent and trying to enhance the brand with local talent. But it started with a desire to find entertaining people. And then the Rosamoka move was that's one hell of a morning show proven in Toronto does well, as indicated, repackage show in other markets. It was a question of look, we are competing against some really good morning shows in winter, Peg. I believe that great entertaining personalities talking about interesting things is always going to be the root of success, especially as a competition is no longer just geographical radio stations or geographically based radio stations. It's the global audio spectrum or it's the global content spectrum. So I think we have to double down on entertainment. Look, I believe local still remains increasingly valuable in all of our markets. I don't know if we need to do it in exactly the same way as before. If we kid ourselves that local equals sat in a studio in a market, then I think we're going to come into trouble. Now, if it's sat in a Mark in a studio in a market talking about things that are local, I'll buy that. But too many radio stations claim to be local, and then you listen to the talent that sat in that market and they're not talking about anything local. So again, you've got to prioritize entertainment first and find new and interesting ways to deliver local, or at least that's the hypothesis. This all goes full circle. Everything's an experiment. Some people will criticize that move. Some people will secretly applaud it, probably not publicly as a bit of experimentation, but it all comes back down to we are hell bent on finding entertaining talent and putting them on the radio in places where we think they'll be successful. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:52 Hey, I really like the idea of having national radio shows no matter what day part it is. I think a lot of people would just prefer relevant rather than local. Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:34:00 100%. Yeah. Look, I know it comes up every time in research. Do you want a radio station that provides local information and local connection and it normally sits near the top, but the reality is I don't believe that's the primary driver not for music radio brands. Do you want the music that you like? Yes. Do you want to be entertained and to feel good? Yes. Do you want that to be locally relevant? Yes. But it doesn't mean necessarily that we have to forgo entertainment in order to have someone just delivering local. So we've got to think creatively about how we deliver content. And sometimes that may mean putting on a show that's not originating in that market and delivering local content in a different way. And other times it may mean doubling down and putting really interesting, entertaining people onto a radio brand where they originate in the same market that they're broadcasting to. There's never in the history of radio being one right route to success. And I think if we're naive enough to assume that there is now only one right route to success, we'll be in big trouble pretty quickly. So I'm with you. It's about relevance. It's about entertainment. It doesn't mean the locals not important. I just don't think it needs to be delivered in the way it's always been delivered. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:19 For a number of years, I would drive around and I would track my radio listening habits, and it turned out I listened the most and enjoyed the most were two performers, but they were coming out of Toronto and their show was voice tracked, and they were the best performers to my ear. And it was like that for a number of years. Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:35:36 Yeah. This is another thing that we're going to have to battle with, live versus non live. We came up in an industry that point of difference was live and local. Now I'm not even convinced that life is essential. If the quality of the entertainment is great and it's relevant and it's delivered in a context that makes sense to me. And it's a higher quality than something that is live just for the sake of it, then it will win out, right? So, yeah, there's lots of things about radio that will hold true forever, and there's lots of things that I think we've held onto its best practices and haven't really played around with. And now I think it's the time to play around with them. Not all of them are going to be successful, but if we stop taking swings and stop trying things, then we're never going to create anything truly special. And that is exactly what's happened to every other business that is no longer in business. If you like to Blockbuster, if they've taken more swings and taking some risks, they may still be around. We've just got to stop being curious about what radio is and understand that our job is to create content that is entertaining, relevant, and that people deeply care about the method in which we deliver that or create that can be whatever we want it to be. As long as the audience find value in it and we can monetize that value, then that's our future. So I would file those moves in Winnipeg under the same bucket, find entertaining people, put them on the radio because we think that they will add value to an audience and that ultimately we can monetize it to very different delivery methods. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:37:15 Well, you've got me very excited for the future, Paul. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to jump back on the radio. Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:37:23 Well, look, send me a demo. Remember, you've got to grab my attention really quickly. I'm excited about the future. There are days where I wake up panicked, going, wow, radio is a legacy media in a world that is being incredibly disrupted, that panics me. Like, we've got to fight quicker and harder to reinvent the future. We've got to think about how do we move our audio content into the digital space and then there are days where I can't sleep because I'm truly excited about discovering new talent and trying different ideas so that we can create that digital audio future for ourselves. No one is going to create that future for us unless we get out there and do it. There are many people that want to steal that space and we'll occupy that space if we don't get out there and start experimenting and creating so yeah, I'm excited about the future. It's going to be hard. I'm happy to go on record and say we will make more mistakes than we have successes but if we're not making mistakes then we definitely aren't going to have any success. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:38:24 Paul thanks so much for spending some time today on the podcast. Paul Kaye (Guest) 00:38:27 During your walk as we obviously went by some Ducks and geese I was walking it was either speak to Matt and stay in the house for what would have been the 14th hour of the day or take a walk and talk to Matt. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:38:44 Well, we'll have to give a special guest credit to the Ducks and geese you walked by at one point. Amanda Logan (VO) 00:38:49 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.

I never realized how lucky I was to work alongside Maureen Holloway. Mo is now the morning host with Darren B. Lamb on 98.1 CHFI in Toronto. Maureen is brutally honest about her career, her family, her relationships and her 2005 battle with cancer. I was working in Montreal at the time and she was quite open with the Mix 96 audience at the time. I did not know that she had not shared that with the rest of the radio affiliates outside of Montreal and Toronto. In this episode, Maureen and I grapple with what we could get away at the turn of the millenium and the unforgiving nature of cancel culture. That includes this episodes where we might have cracked a few jokes between us that would hold up well in this day and age. We also got into the silliness of gender reveal parties, not getting her name on the show marquee until later into her career, and some career advice for those coming up in radio. Practice fearlessness and get into what the late John Lewis described as "Good Trouble". Maureen is also the originator of working from home (the Last Word was done from her home studio) but she misses the camaraderie of working together with other creatives. As promised I have attached her acceptance speech of the Rosalie Tromblay award at Canadian Music Week in 2018. The award is given to Canadian women in broadcasting who have blazed new trails. You'll understand why she got this award just listening to her radio path on this podcast. Maureen mentioned that Jennifer Campbell from CHYM in Kitchener is working through cancer and we wish her healthy healing. Transcript: Amanda Logan (VO) 00:00:01 This is the podcast for Broadcast. The Sound off Podcast with Matt Cundill. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:03 Maureen Holloway is known in every radio market in Canada's top ten. Her role on morning shows across Canada from 2000 and thousand to 2014 with The Last Word made her a favorite in households across the country. Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Vancouver. You get the picture. Mo and I worked for the same company for many years, and even when we weren't at the same company, we always found a way to have her be a part of the radio station in Winnipeg. Her segment was a part of our biggest quarter hour on Power 97. And I tried every year to get a second hit with Mo, but couldn't make it happen. She was that busy. This is another podcast episode of it's been too long since we talked and in an ideal world, we do this over a four hour dinner with one bottle of wine too many. But this podcast will have to do when did you first use your inside voice and say, I want to be on the radio? Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:01:04 I never did. I never decided I wanted to be on the radio. That was a complete fluke and complete accident. And, you know, like a lot of people in their 20s, I had a few false starts. Interestingly. My University boyfriend was on the radio, but I never had deep boys and was really into music, but I never thought I wanted to be. So I have my first degrees in film studies, which is a really useful degree. Not so. I worked for a film company that distributed experimental films. It was very artsy. You wear black and very intense and smoked a lot and not make any money. So then I went to work for Xerox, selling coffees and made money, but had a big black hole where my soul should be. So at this point and I was living in Vancouver and I was in my early twenties and my relationship was falling apart. So I went and traveled for six months. Then I came back. I had no money, got a job as a waitress at the Keg. Then I decided, hey, you know what? I should be an advertising. I think I would be a fantastic creative director. So I interviewed with a bunch of ad agencies and they said we don't have any technical skills or any experience. And somebody suggested that I take the RTA program at Ryerson, which was very hard to get into. Probably still is. But I got accepted with the full idea that I would get another degree and I would go and work in advertising. And the first summer I was hired by what was then CKFM, which became mixed and became Virgin as a traffic reporter. And it was just supposed to be a summer job, and they offered it to me full time in the fall. So I decided I wouldn't go back to school. And that's how I ended up in radio. There was never any internal voice saying, you should do this. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:02:55 So you walk into Mix 99 in Toronto. The owner is Gary Slate. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:03:00 Yes. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:03:01 And there are these large personalities floating. Yeah. So What'd you think? Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:03:07 You know what, when I started, Wally Crowder was at CFRB, I think Betty Kennedy was still working at CFRB down the hall. Seriously. And Don Daniel was the morning man at CKFM and they were all Legends. And it was just a great summer job, too, I have to say. I was actually doing cross country traffic and I was reporting from the station boat. Back when stations have big budgets, we actually had a boat that just sort of cruised around the harbor and they hired me to do boat reports. Come on down to the waterfront. It's great down here. And the guy they had hired to skipper the boat was an engineering student from UT who is now my husband of 34 years. So that was a really good summer. And I just thought everything about it was fantastic. So obviously when they offered me the job, I was hugely. A lot of people thought, well, why would you go and work in radio? Radio is so dated. Radio is old technology. But yeah, to your point, there were big personalities and big stars. I mean, Don Daniel was a massive star. So to be asked to be part of his show, even a very small bit, was hugely flattering. So that's why I did it, really, because it seemed glamorous and fun and sexy. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:30 So it's about 1990, something the Internet has barely started. But radio is already dated. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:04:35 Yeah. Well, they've been saying that for about radio since 1950. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:40 Yeah. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:04:41 Yeah, they're still saying it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:43 Did you have any aspirations to go into TV at all? Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:04:46 Well, yes, and I did. I did a lot of television and at the same time. But yeah, I had like three or four shows over the years. But it never pays as well for radio. You do it as, you know, 52 weeks a year. Television is all episodic. So you get a season of this or a season of that. But no, I never had that need to move on to television. I never thought television was better than radio. Certainly wasn't as well paying or as consistent. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:05:25 That radio station, Mix 99, wasn't doing so well in the early part of the 90s. Then it started to really do well in the later part of the 90s. What was it about that building, what was going on in there that made it so successful that got it Sharepoints of eight and nine? Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:05:40 Well, I think Gary Slate, while being a challenging personality in his own right, certainly is good at hiring charismatic people. And so there was a real vibe. Everybody came through that building to St. Clair west. Everybody came through whether they worked at the stations. There or worked elsewhere. Gary had a pretty cool, pretty influential circle of friends. And even if you didn't know them directly, it was still a legendary place to be. I think probably the Chum people feel the same way about their building and so on, but, yeah, I think that when the Slate owned Standard Broadcasting, it was definitely the place to work. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:06:28 And then came a moment when you moved and you had to leave Standard Broadcasting and you went to chorus. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:06:35 Yeah. So, you know, I've talked quite a bit about this in recent years, but at the time, it's just the way things were. There wasn't any place for a woman to take the driver's seat in radio across the board. They brought Rob Christie in from Edmonton and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting him and building a show around him. But he was sort of a B level talent and I didn't even get marquee billing. It was the Rob Christie Show with, you know, and I remember they invited us all up to BBM at the time and the whole staff was there and they were allowing us to read the diaries. This is back when ratings were measured by diaries and diaries alone. And we all got a chance to see these diaries and to read them, and all of us were there. There must have been about 20 of us and we were all reading excerpts from diaries that we thought would be interesting and maybe every second one mentioned how much they enjoyed other people's misses in Maureen hallway. Like, I got way more mention than anybody else on air. And still I was relegated to this, not even second billing. I didn't even get my name on the marquee. So while I enjoyed what I was doing, I was bitter and pissed off and feeling that there was nowhere to go. And then chorus came along and said, hey, we're going to take that little bit that you do, and we're going to syndicate it, or rather get you to do it live with all our morning shows and you can work from home. So Gary was really pissed off when I went to tell him, but I remember saying to him at the same time, can you blame me? Can you blame me? You haven't done it. He says, we have put so much time and effort into building your career. I'm like, I think it's time to move on. And I did go for more money. In fact, at the beginning, it went for less. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:08:37 So who presented the offer to you to go to chorus? Was it JJ? Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:08:40 No. That's funny because I really needed to get away from JJ was the GM. That was another reason I had to leave. He was just a crazy, intense little guy that I couldn't work for him a day longer. So that was another reason why I jumped at it. The offer was presented by the general manager at the time a guy by the name of Josanovio who was a dead Ringer for Raleigh Auto, who didn't stay in radio, but he was there. And they had a syndicated outfit called the Rock Radio Network. That's what it was. And David Hussar was the guy. Neither of these guys are even in radio anymore, but they're the ones that met me in a parking lot outside of coffee time and made me the offer. Now I know why you're laughing, and why I'm laughing is I take the offer. One of the best moments of my life was when I heard JJ got my letter of resignation, and Gary apparently went down the hall and said, what the hell is going on? And the reason why we're laughing so hard is that six months later, Cory hired JJ as my boss. And you know what the first thing he tried to do was, Matt? I was sitting right at this desk in a different house. He called me up. He said, okay, the first thing we have to do is we have to cut your bit. The last bit from five minutes to three. That was the first thing he did. Anyway, a year later, he was gone. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:10:08 I'm pretty good at connecting the dots with the timelines and who went where and what, but I completely missed that one. But at the same time, I can be forgiven because it was 20 years ago. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:10:17 It was 20 years ago. But yeah, it was funny and it was just absolutely infuriating. But you know what? A lot of stuff like this has happened over the years. And in the end, I'm still here. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:10:30 Oh, yeah, you are. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:10:32 I'm still here. And none of these guys are. I'm still here. I got my name on the marquee. I got my face on a Billboard. I got all sorts of trophies and awards still making really good money, especially for radio. So really, at the end of the day, how bitter can you be? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:10:49 And you beat cancer. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:10:50 And I beat cancer. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:10:51 Yeah. So that was 2005. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:10:53 Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:10:54 I remember hearing from you because there were some phone calls with you and Blair, and I was in the office as well. Just about some of the things you were going through and the fear and your family and John and how you tackled it. And I was moved through the whole thing. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:11:17 15 years ago. Yes. It was awful. I almost didn't realize how awful it was because it was just happening so fast. Although I think it was Marilyn Dennis who told me at the end of the day it wasn't a bad career move. I'm not sure she said that maybe I shouldn't be quoting her, but we laughed about it. It was a really scary, scary thing. Yeah. I was never given a prognosis. I didn't know whether I had six months to live or whether it was going to go away. And so I was already in the mind frame that things were going to come to an end. And of course, the most alarming thing was that I had a six year old and a twelve year old, and that was really hard on them. You know what? It's funny, Mad, here we are all these years later, and I think they both suffer from anxiety. They're tall, gorgeous, strapping, brilliant men, but they both suffer from anxiety. And I think a large part of it stems from that time. But in terms of my career, so I continued working through it. I was working from home, so it was not that big a deal. And I was very open about it. In Toronto on Cue and also in Montreal, it was on at Mix 96. I didn't make it public elsewhere. It would have been too exhausting. And I think to Maryland's point, it was a good career move, because up until that point, I'd sort of come across as this sort of little miss can't be wrong snarky, slightly bitchy person. And by being so open about losing all my hair and my eyebrows and doing it all very publicly, I think kind of made me more approachable to a lot of people. And I heard from so many I mean, hundreds, thousands of people felt that they had to email me and let me know that they, A, supported me or B, had been through something or were going through that, which was lovely and exhausting. But I think it was a good pivot in my image or my persona. It was humbling. I wouldn't recommend it as a humbling experience, but it brought with it some gifts. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:13:42 Yeah. I found it interesting because I was working in Montreal in that time period when it happened, and you and I have never worked in the same building, but we've worked together. And when that happened, I still felt that we were family because you had a special relationship with Mix 96 in Montreal and as well, obviously with Toronto, because that's where you're from and that's the building you work out of. So I remember feeling the whole building being very touched and with the listeners, we would get a lot of email as well. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:14:11 Yeah. You know, Jennifer Campbell was diagnosed at Chime and Kitchener. I think it's Ovarian, and she was diagnosed and she's in treatment right now. And she left the air. And I sent her a note when I heard a couple of months ago, and then I just sent her out Saturday night at midnight. She immediately wrote back and, well, what are you doing up at midnight? But she's a lovely woman to begin with, but you immediately feel I know a little bit about what she's going through. Like I said, it's humbling in it, but it also gives you an opportunity to make you don't have a lot of time for people to waste your time. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:14:51 Yeah. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:14:52 Teaches you courage, give birth twice, and then have cancer. Nothing's going to frighten you again in just a second. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:14:59 More with Mo as we dig into The Last Word, which aired on stations across Canada. What went into getting the segments together? And what was it like to work with the incredible radio talent across the country? Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:15:10 The Sound Off podcast. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:12 The Last Word was something that went for many years, but it was in all these markets. We could find it across the country. Walk me back to a couple of things about it because it was something that when I was program director, I knew it came out at 815 in Winnipeg, but this was something that went across the country. So I want to know a little bit about your work day and how it started because it has to start early and then how you space out the brakes and the stations you're on. And what was the favorite station you got to work with? What was your favorite morning show you got to work with? And why was it Wheeler and Hal? Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:15:50 Oh, my God, they were great. And of course, Wheeler is back on the air and Hal, of course, has gone on to talk. It was weird. It grew like a house where you just keep adding rooms to it and it doesn't really make sense anymore when you try to explain to people what your morning is like and how you do it. But yeah, and it wasn't on just one. So it was on like four times at Deringer, I think I was on at 1.4 Times Morning with Terry when he was at seven in Calgary. So I had more than one break and then I think I was on twice in Montreal with the Mix 96 group with Erin and Taso. And then they added so Winnipeg came in early and Winnipeg, I'm not blowing Sunshine up your pants. Winnipeg is an amazing radio town. Like, some of the best, biggest talents in radio in this country have come either out of Winnipeg or through Winnipeg. And the talent there is ridiculous considering the size and where it is. The mosquitoes and black lives. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:17:03 Portage in Maine and 50 below. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:17:06 Yeah, I know. I started with BJ and Hal and then BJ went to Halifax. So I was on with BJ and Halifax. I had this wonderful situation where I'd work with people and they would go somewhere else and if they could, if it wasn't a problem politically with chorus, I could be on air with them, too. Jake in Vancouver. And at one point I think I was doing 20 hits in eleven stations across the country. And yeah, the content was almost always the same. I'd have this scripted bit, The Last Word, that'd be four or five stories, but show business, but the conversation would go everywhere and anywhere, as you know. And so it was different every time. Even though I'd go to the table with the same dish, people would season it differently. And so it was really fun and busier than a typical morning show because I was basically doing 20 breaks with different people. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:18:06 So here we are in a pandemic and everybody is working from home. But you're the original work from home. You've been doing this since 2000. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:18:14 But without the video. Now, when I work with my morning show at Thfi, we're all on Zoom like our producers, so we all see each other. We talk off air like you and I are talking right now. But back when I was doing that, I was doing it over ISDN which great technology, but nobody's using it anymore. It just sounds really good. And I wouldn't see anybody. And I think, honestly, Matt, not seeing anybody and not being able to talk to anybody off there was almost a good thing because I'm hearing this the way the listeners are hearing this. So just turning on the mic was like, hey, how are you? It's genuine, right? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:18:56 How did you compile the stories? Was it web TMZ? What did you do to get it all together? Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:19:02 Before the Internet came with USA Today, it was my original forest. We had morning prep services, but they were never really any good. I should show you I've got a factor because I'm sitting near my filing cabinet. I would handwrite them and I'm serious. Let me show you this. I would handwrite these things and put them in a file. I can't get this stuck in there too much. I've kept about ten years worth handwritten on one sheet. I don't know why I had to handwrite it. It just made me better for the creative process. But I've read back some of the stuff that I did. I started doing. When we started, at first it was other people's business. And when I went to chorus, they changed it to the last word. And then when I went to Rogers, they trademarked other people's business and renamed it what it was originally, but essentially a three minute bit. And it was filthy and racist and sexist and homophobic and obedient. And I cannot believe that I got away with this. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:20:08 We get letters. I remember we got a few of them. And I can't remember if I forwarded you one or two, but you responded directly to the listener. And I remember specifically what you wrote. If you don't like what I'm saying, why don't you reach down and give your knob a twist? Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:20:26 I cannot believe. I think that same attitude has helped me, but it would definitely lose me my job now. We are so careful now. And I called Terry Fox a quitter. And I remember Stumpers calling me in the early days of saying, did you do that? Yeah, it was a joke, clearly. And he just laughed and said, well, we've had a lot of calls. He also said I said, do you want me to apologize? And he went, no, never apologize, which was interesting. This was like 2000, right? Never apologize, which led into Dean Blendell. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:21:15 Which was really a string of apologies from CFA or from Edge for a decade. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:21:20 Yeah. Well, Dean, I'm a big fan of Dean. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:21:25 Me, too. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:21:26 Yeah. So, I mean, you need a certain amount of fearlessness. I don't know how I would manage if I were just coming up in media now. I don't know. I mean, it's amazing. In four years at CHFI, they have not rained me in. I've done most of that myself. But yeah, it is a really difficult time to try to be funny. I probably get away with a lot because I'm a woman. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:21:54 You know those fun conversations you have with friends where you can laugh and say things but you don't want other people to hear it because someone with an earshot might not like it. Well, we had that conversation and we're not letting you hear it. So I guess, what advice do you have then for people who are coming up? I know you're connected to Ryerson, and there's people who go to Ryerson who are looking for careers, possibly in radio. What advice can we give? Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:22:20 Well, I think again, I'm going to go back to that. I don't want to redact the thing. Edit, edit all those years ago and look at her now. She's running edit. I don't mean that. I mean, in fact, you don't get a break no matter who you are. Now in terms of what you can say, someone is going to be offended. But if you're coming up now, you know what, I still think you need to exercise some fearlessness. I hate saying this because it's so easily misconstrued, but the rules don't necessarily apply to everybody all the time. It's like John Lewis saying, get in trouble, good trouble. If you've got convictions, you've got to do a lot of soul searching. I mean, you've got to make sure you don't have hatred in your heart. If you really do, it's going to leak out and people are going to see you for the asshole you are. So try to be as good a person as you can, but at the same time, take a risk, say something. One of the things is, you know, because you're a funny guy and you appreciate humor as well, is sometimes the funniest thing is what just comes off the top of your head and your first reaction might be, oh, I shouldn't have said that. But if you get a laugh and you know, well, of course I should have said that. You got to kind of have to trust that instinct, right? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:23:41 Yeah, I think it's one of the joys of radio is that you can sort of let something slip out and apologize tomorrow morning at 730. The thing about I know you're shaking your head, saying nothing. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:23:52 Yeah, it's out there. Wendy Mesley is a good friend of mine and one of the most heartbreaking stories this summer is what happened to her. And I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole. But she said it was saying that she was story for something that was so unintentional but just at the wrong time. That pretty much gave the CBC the right to give her the hoof because by saying sorry, she acknowledged that she had done something wrong. And I'm not saying that she didn't. She's not saying that she didn't, but it gave them they gave them a hook to spear her with. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:24:29 Speaking of cancel, I'd love to cancel gender reveals. And I caught part of your show yesterday and heard Darren going off about gender reveals yesterday. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:24:38 We both were, but I was kind of the one that went off on a tirade, which is usually the case, gender reveal parties, which are actually sex reveal parties, but they don't call them that. Revealing the biological sex of the baby rather than the gender or the gender is what you identify with, as we know that now. So gender reveals a misnomer to begin with, to make such a big deal about whether your baby is going to be a boy or a girl, as if there's something that weighs in the balance, as if there's one that's better than the other. And then burning down half of California as a result kind of seemed biblical, didn't it? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:25:18 I don't care what color the gender reveal is. Just if you don't cheer hard enough, you could be canceled. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:25:26 Yeah. Well, yeah. Cancel culture. I got to tell you, some good people are falling by the wayside because of this, some really good people. And I don't know if they'll ever make it back. Pretty brutal, but I don't think it will last. I mean, right after 911, what we're on the anniversary, aren't we? Everybody said, oh, it's the death of irony. You can't be funny. You can't be ironic. That didn't last very long. People were pretty damn ironic a couple of years later. And I think the same thing will happen now. For every action, there's a reaction. And right now we have to be super sensitive and super aware. And I think that will do us a lot of good. But ultimately the pendulum will swing back where diving into the Black Lives Matter and the race wars that we've been witnessing this summer. If you look back at people like Richard Pryor and even Flip Wilson, for God's sake, and George Carlin and 40, 50 years ago, they were far more outrageous than they are now. That freedom to express your anger is going to come back. But yeah, right now I think it's sorely missing. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:26:44 In just a second, Mo shifts a show into the studio at Q 107 and later moves to her current home at CHFI. There's so much more on the episode page at soundoffpodcast.com, including Maureen's acceptance speech for the Rosalie Tromble Award, which recognizes Canadian women who've blazed new trails in radio. The Sound Off podcast. After the last word ended, you weren't going out across the country, but you were working with John Darn. Sure. Full time Q 107. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:27:14 Well, I don't know whether the terms of a nondiscosure agreement still carry weight, but no, it was both fantastic. I've never had better chemistry with anybody on the air, and he's a brilliant guy. I got billing. It was Darren in the Morning with Maureen hallway. So I got that. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:27:37 And it's at this moment that the NDA kicks in. Like I said, it's like we're having dinner and it just got really loud in the restaurant. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:27:48 So that ultimately came to an end was the program director at Q. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:27:53 Was it Blair? Yeah, he mentioned it before that. But when you and John no longer work together, he felt it was like, well, the Beatles are breaking up. I mean, he thought that much about the two of you together. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:28:04 Yeah, it was hard. You know what? There's still a lot that I miss about Darn. Sure. And I know there's a lot that he misses about me. We were really good on the dance floor, and so they put me in afternoons. A lot of people thought that I killed Kim Mitchell because he had a heart attack shortly afterwards. But I actually had people saying, you took Kim Mitchell's job and he had a heart attack and you're responsible, and that was a disaster. I'm not an afternoon person. I play basket with other people. I didn't have anyone to play with. I had basically a great guy, John Scoles, but a glorified op. So I languished. I just died. And then when the opportunity to move on to when I heard that Aaron was leaving, I thought, all right, might as well throw my hat in that ring. That's a job I can do. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:28:54 Then you're off to Rogers. We've spoken about her at length before, and we'll talk about Julie Adam and what she means to radio. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:29:04 Yeah. So first of all, I went from the world of men to the world of women. I had Suzanne Carpenter for a while as a GM when I was at Cube. But other than that, I never worked for women directly or never had a female program director, never had a female general manager, had never really had other women on a show with me. That is how male dominated radio has been. So going over to CHFI, it was Julie. I went and I called Juliet Coffee with Julie. She said, what do you want? I said, Well, I hear Erin's leaving. Nobody knew. I was definitely in information, and she made me an offer a week later. So that happened really fast. And I'd never met her before. I'd only heard about her, and everything that they say is true. She really is a girl wonder. When I say girl wonder, it's because she looks like an intern. We're always asking her to get us coffee. I don't think there are very many people that are so admired, male or female, in this business. She's managed to make her way to the top of her game without alienating anybody and only gaining respect. Working for Julie, working for Wendy, women are always saying, is there anything you need? How do you feel? I don't think I've ever had a male manager ask me that in all the years I've been in the business. So it's very different. It is a very different culture. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:30:35 So in all the years that I was program director at Chorus, there was only one female program director. It was Suzanne, and that was it. Why is that? Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:30:48 Well, it's changed a lot. And why is that? Why was that? Because I think it's changed. I think we're better represented still not 50% by any means. It's just why have white men ruled the world for 2000 years or 20,000 years, Matt? You tell me. Because women there was that old idea that women, first of all, couldn't run things. And secondly, people don't like to listen to women on the air. Women shouldn't have opinions. They shouldn't especially have contentious or unpopular opinions. And that has changed rapidly. And I think that's a good thing, although there are a lot of horrible women out there thinking of Fox and Laura Ingraham, people like that. But, yeah, if there's been a rapid change, it could change back. I don't know. But right now the focus is on people of color and other groups that have been discriminated against. But, yeah, it has changed, hopefully for the better. I would hate to see radio. I guess we're going to get to that. Where's radio going. I would hate to see women have a voice, only to have the platform disappear. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:08 I don't think the platform is going to disappear. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:32:11 I don't think it's going to continue to exist along the same way that it does. I think people will always want to listen and connect with personalities, whether it'll be via podcast or I just think the whole Am FM, Am talk radio, FM music driven your station, that is going to have to change. It's changing right now. We don't know what the I don't think it's going to disappear, but I think it's going to morph into something quite different. Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:42 And I think the pandemic has had an effect on it where it sort of accelerated what was going to happen, maybe by about three, four, five years. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:32:49 Yeah. Look at us, Matt. You're sitting in your basement. I'm sitting in my studio. I haven't been to my station physically in six months. And yet there we are at the top of the ratings heap. So that's changed. We don't need to have that set up anymore. But also listen. If people are going to be working from home, we're not the only ones. As more and more people work from home, my entire family is working from home. My home, even the ones who don't live here anymore coming here to work. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:19 Well, you should charge them money for Hydro and also for WiFi. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:33:24 Yeah, well, one of them is a student, so hopefully by the time he's done, he'll pay us back. But what was my point? What was my point? Oh, yeah. So everybody's in that group mornings, which have always been the flagship of a radio day, people aren't going to be commuting. We're losing our traps. Captive audience that would spend 2 hours in their car from six to 08:00 in the morning. Now they're getting up at 830 and working from home. So everything is shifting and no one knows for sure how we're going to come out of this and when and if and how. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:59 Do you notice that even from home? I know in the studio you might be able to catch a little bit of it on the phones or the heartbeat of the radio station, but you're at home. We know people are getting up 75 minutes later. We know that they don't need traffic, weather and whatever together to get to the next point and all that sort of we're doing a morning show to prepare you for the day. Has your show changed at all over the last few months? Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:34:25 Well, we don't have guests or the guests that we do have are over the phone, sometimes over Zoom. And that changes the nature of the interview, but not that much. I think it's a timing thing, literally. I think it's a mechanical problem. Darren and I have a delay when we talk to each other. And so to my ear, it sounds like we don't quite get each other's jokes because there's always that pause and then that laugh. So I don't think the show he loves working from home and he maintains that the show sounds just as good. But I really think there's an energy when you're in the room with a group of people, stuff that happens off air spills over onto the air, and there's just a general feeling of people sitting around at a table that the listener has been invited to join that is not there when we're not sitting around that table, literally. So, yeah, I mean, maybe it's subtle, but I would rather be in the studio. I've done both extensively. And I think being in the room where it happens is still very important. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:25 Do you think that maybe like, new ideas and sort of camaraderie and energy is going to be sort of a casualty of the creativity that we have in radio? Because again, I was watching the national last night and somebody presented that as being a possibility that because we're not going to be face to face in a boardroom, we're not going to have all these new ideas. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:35:44 I was listening to an interview, DAX Shepherd's, armchair expert. He was interviewing Seth Macfarlane and who's brilliant. I didn't know he went to the Rhode Island Island School of design he comes from. He was a child prodigy. He was talking about the writer's room, and he said, if you're used to writing with other people, you cannot do it like this. You have to be in the room. You have to be in that stinky, smelly room where with people with their stale leftover sandwiches and throwing paper in the waste paper basket and just sticking up the joint and laughing and being politically incorrect. That's another thing I think that's really important. And it goes back to something I wish I hadn't said halfway through this interview is that you get comfortable enough to spitball and to think outside the box. As long as you're doing this, somebody could be recording you. Somebody could be listening in. There isn't that sense of safety and comfort that you have when you're actually face to face with somebody? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:36:48 You've dabbled in podcast. You had a podcast. What did you think of podcast? Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:36:54 I said, and I still want to do podcasts, but that's a commercial model where they come to you and say, we have a sponsor with red tag and they want to do a travel show. I was like, oh, great, a travel show. Where do I go? They're like, well, you don't actually go anywhere and we're not going to pay you. We're not going to pay you because it's all experimental to get your feet wet. So you're going to interview various travel experts and we're going to put together the show and we're going to promote the hell of it. Hell out of it. It's called Four Trips Ahead. Three Trips Ahead. Sorry. Because I used to like to plan three trips ahead to keep always have something to look forward to. And I think it was really successful for a while there. But no, nothing else has come of it. You have to have a sponsor now, and I would have done it differently, but they gave me a producer. Stephanie Phillips is amazing and has her own podcast now, so they made it very easy. All I had to do was show up and interview people and they just put it together and sold it. But I would like to do more of that. I would like to do some edgy, provocative, Brave New Waves kind of stuff. If you go back to that old CBC show where they sat around and talked about everything and drank wine, and I would love to do that. I'd like to ask some interesting people uncomfortable questions, but good luck getting a sponsor for that, right? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:38:23 I'll get you a sponsor for that. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:38:25 All right. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:38:26 Yeah, I'll get you a sponsor for that. And you get enough listeners. There's people out there. Jeanmarie heimareth he's got a podcast company. He'll get you a sponsor. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:38:34 Well, I would love to do I'd like to ask people I'd like to ask Rick Mercer about coming out. I'd like to ask people who don't necessarily in a very comfortable way. It's like pivotal moments in your life, things that you've regretted, things that you wish you'd done differently. What is it like? You asked me about going through cancer. I haven't talked about that in a long time, and it was a real pivotal moment in my life. You don't really realize it until you move on. Right. So I'd like to do more of that. I'd like to connect and communicate and laugh and find out about people and satisfy my curiosity and not worry so much about saying the right thing or satisfying the Choi audience, which is lovely. By the way, when I first went over there, I thought, oh, I'm going to be talking to little old ladies and yeah, we're talking to little old ladies, but we're also talking to phenomenal people that are far more interesting and three dimensional than I thought that they would be. The listeners are wonderful there, and they twist their knobs and break it off. They're lifers. They don't go anywhere else. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:39:48 That thing is stuck on every taxi that I've ever gotten into since 1980 something 98.1 CHFI. And there you are on the same spot that Dawn Danard was. Can you believe it? Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:40:05 I know. Don Daynard, Jeez. Yeah, Erin. And there haven't been very many hosts there. Sandy Hoyt. I think I think I'm like the fourth one there. So it's a real privilege to work there. And it continues to do. We're the only AC station that's really doing well in the midst of this pandemic. And I think it's just because it's such a comfortable place for so many people that they don't change is not what they're looking for right now. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:40:32 Chfi is not something you change from. It's something you evolve and grow with. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:40:37 Yeah. And I think that's what we do. I make no bones about this. I was at the golf course last week and had some guy go, hey, Mo, this still happens. Miss you on the queue. Well, why don't you come over to the age of five? The guy goes, well, I'm not that old yet. And I thought, you know, that the average Q listener is in their 60s, right. That's a classic rock station. And there's this perception that Chi is still a candlelight wine. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:41:04 But anyway, I was listening to Terry Demante this morning. He said, you know, I'm 62 and we're playing a game with how old are you, sir? 68. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:41:16 You wanted to ask me who my favorite was? Well, of course, Terry. I mean, Terry. Terry is a dear friend. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:41:22 Yeah. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:41:23 And yeah, I love Terry. He's still a dear friend. I'm going to go see him in Montreal. I'm going to actually take a road trip and go to Montreal the first weekend in October, see him and the missus. And he's just such a natural broadcaster. Right. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:41:39 Yeah. I think at one point you were on with Terry and then I think you changed companies or something, but you still stayed with Terry. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:41:48 Yeah. When I went over. See, it gets so complicated. Sorry. After Chorus sold their stations in Montreal, there was no reason why I couldn't be on a Bell station with Terry, even though I was working for chorus. But when I went to work for Rogers, they were like, we don't give Belle anything, ever. So I had to sever that on our relationship. But, yeah, one of the things I love about Terry is he's so authentic. There's not a false note ever. You know what he's thinking, you know what he's feeling. And his incredible curiosity and deep kindness shines through all the time. Grumpy as hell, too. But I think he was grumpy when he was 20. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:42:33 Oh, yeah. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:42:34 He's been great. Wheeler's back. I've stayed in touch with Wheeler through thick and thin. He's back on air. He's probably speaking of cancel culture, he's probably learned a few things, so he's definitely been a favorite. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:42:46 Well, speaking of, I'm still here. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:42:48 Yeah. Right. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:42:50 Yeah. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:42:51 And he never gave up. He was in his basement doing a podcast with his wife. So, I mean, for some of us, it's ingrained. If you're not going to let me do this on your dime, I'm going to do it on my own. Humble and Fred, another example. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:43:03 Yes. You were in the middle of accepting an award, the Rosalie Tromble Award at Canadian Music Week. You've got it. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:43:14 I weather on it every morning. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:43:16 There it is. You still found time in that speech to give a shout out to Blair Bartram and say, somebody hire him. He was in between jobs, but that's the kind of person you are that you can identify when somebody really should be employed. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:43:35 Yeah. And you know, it's funny because, again, Blair is a friend and always a big booster of mine professionally. Although our relationship did not work out particularly well when he was my program director. You know what I mean? He's not the boss of me, and I didn't think he gave me the best direction that I've ever had. But he is somebody who belongs in this business. And I got a huge amount of applause when I said, if somebody doesn't hire him, this would be but I have this perfect room to say, you're never going to get a better opportunity than that. And it was fresh. It was fresh. He had just been let go, and he was devastated. And I knew both from knowing him and from Karen, his wife, how incredibly devastated he was. And I had given a 45 minutes speech at the Rosalie cocktail party the day before where I said everything I needed to say. And when you stand up there, that is one of the toughest rooms. Everyone in the industry is there, and you don't have a lot of time. So I just thought, well, what the hell? If I can use this time for anything, I'm going to do a shout out for Blair because he deserves it. I'm really glad I did that, Maureen. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:44:54 It has been awesome talking to you. Maureen Holloway (Guest) 00:44:56 It's been awesome talking to you. Although I did all the talking. I wish we could do this on a regular basis and not just talk about me. Amanda Logan (VO) 00:44:56 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 Sound Off Media Company.

You know Geoff Allan's voice. No, really, you do. If you've ever heard an ad for Burger King or Hardee's, you've probably heard Geoff's dulcet tones announcing the return of the biggest burger you've ever seen. I've certainly heard Geoff enough to recognize that baritone anywhere- although I suppose I have an advantage. He is my second cousin, after all. As his cousin, I can tell you that Geoff has always had a fantastic voice. So, of course, it was only natural for him to finish school and get straight into... the hotel business. Yes, Geoff was a world-travelling hotel manager for most of his adult life. He'd always had a passion for radio and voiceover, but it wasn't until he was in his 50's, and in Dubai of all places, that he was able to hit the airwaves. Nowadays, he's been a professional voiceover artist for years, with training from industry veterans in L.A., Toronto, Montreal and Dubai. In this episode, we dive into Geoff's journey from suites to studios. We talk about how he found the opportunity to make such a dramatic career change, where it's taken him, where he'll go in the future, and how much he's learned from his time as a voiceover pro. We also do a hefty bit of reminiscing about the past. If nothing else, Geoff's story stands as a shining example that it's never too late to start doing what you love. For more of Geoff, or to hire him for your voiceover needs, check out his Personal Website or connect with him on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. You can view some of Geoff's many commercial engagements below: Episode Transcript: Tara Sands (VO) 00:00:01 The Sound Off Podcast. The podcast about broadcast with Matt Cundill... Starts now. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:10 This week, I'm keeping it in the family. Geoff Allan is someone I've known all my my life. He's my second cousin, and we spent summers together as teenagers, whether it was on a farm in Montebello, Quebec, or the Allan family home in Metis-Sur-Mer, Quebec. He's always had a deep voice, and a lot of people said he should be on the radio or doing commercials or something like that. So he went into the hotel business. But today you can hear Geoff as the voice of things like Hardee's. Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:00:45 Glorious match of 100% chargrilled beef with thinly sliced roast beef. Taste the Fame. Only at Hardee's. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:45 Bud Light. Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:00:45 Introducing the Bud Light Platinum Sleek Can. Triple filtered smooth. 6%. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:45 And Burger King. Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:00:45 The Big King XL is back. Now with double the stacker sauce, two flame grilled patties, all the fixings, and then double that sauce. The Big King XL only at Burger King. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:03 He also appears on screen. And the lesson in this episode is very simple. You can start something any time in your life and achieve success. Geoff Allan joins me from Studio A headquarters, of Worldwidevoicing.com, which may or may not be located in Montreal. Geoff, you are the best dressed person I have ever had on this podcast. Do you have a job interview? What's going on? Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:01:29 Well, if I stand up, you're going to see that I'm stark naked. I left my day job to come racing over here just to see you. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:37 That's crazy stuff. I have to, by the way, be very careful about saying something like, oh, you're well dressed. Do you have a job interview? I've had a few people say, no, I've just come from a funeral. Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:01:47 Yeah, excellent. Yeah, that reminds me. When I was at my wife's mother's funeral, I was sitting there and I hear a cell phone started ringing, and I go, who wouldn't turn off their cell phone? And I'm looking around and I realized this was in the day of folded phones. And I go "OOH" and I'm in the front row. So I figured, like, oh, my God, it's my phone. It's my phone. So how do you turn off your phone discreetly at a funeral when it's a fold one? So I just was pushing that button as hard as I possibly could, just talking about people dressing for funerals. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:02:18 Jeff, I'm going to walk you through really, your whole life because I've known you for most of your life. I'm trying to think back to one of the earliest memories, but I know this isn't one of them, but I do enjoy the time that you took my brother Josh and threw him headfirst into the snow and he had his head stuck in the snow with just his leg sticking out. That was awesome. Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:02:36 Well, the memory you should recall, that I recall, is our moped ride in Matisse. I think you were an infant that enjoyed being with the slightly older people, and we had the Bianco Moped, and we were driving around, and you got to sit- kind of stood in the front, and that seemed to be an epic moment. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:02:58 The thing was, the Allan boys had all the toys, and they all went, Vroom, Vroom. And who wouldn't want to get on the back of the moped or the motorcycle or whatever gadget you guys are trying to fix all summer, that never really worked anyway? Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:03:10 Well, the good news is we haven't changed. We still have those gadgets. Last year, I bought a 1969 Honda CL125A, which is a very rare twin cylinder Honda. I have that. And I've got a 1975 Honda ST90. So what that really means is that we still live in our infancy, which means we are fundamentally still immature, I guess you'd say. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:03:31 I know you've told me the story before, but take me back to the moment when you first thought you would be a good fit for radio or for voiceover. Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:03:40 I would tell you that when my mother was in real estate, she would get all these telephone calls. So I would answer the call. In the old days, the listing was on a piece of paper, so phone would ring all the time. Hello? And so one lady who she was trying to sell a house to, I think you may even know the name. Her name was Pat O'Mara. And Pat O'Mara was a friend of Gord Sinclaire. And so I'm answering the phone. She says, You've got a good voice. I know this guy named Gord Sinclaire, but right up until that point, I'd say it was probably, I don't know, the National Institute of Broadcasting was advertising in the Montreal Gazette to go to Place Bon Aventure and to audition to pay for this course. So I go down there, you pay $20, they record you on a handheld cassette recorder. They give you a score, and they say, yes, yes, you'd be an excellent candidate. So all of a sudden, there's all this excitement like it's going to work. It's going to work. So Pat O'Mara, Gord Sinclaire, go meet this guy on Fourth Street at CJD. I go there, I meet a fellow by the name of Bruce Devine. I've got butterflies. I'm panicked. I was at CFKS Radio at Dawson at the time. So I was reading the news, being kind of a late night DJ on that thing. So I go and I see who I think is going to be Gord Sinclaire. But it's this other guy. And I go into this kind of small cubicle office. It's doors closed, and it's got a very low DB threshold. And he goes, So what are you here for? And I say, with as nervous a tone as possible with a frog in my throat, I want to get into a radio. And in the first 5 seconds, he says, you will never succeed at radio. Your voice is monotone. It'll never work. So I go, oh, okay. So I turn around and I walk out and I figured, I guess that career interest is off the books. So I move on. So I go to the hotel, as you know, the whole story, hotels and all this and a bit of securities business. And then I still stay in kind of the theatrical side of the business, which is doing MC work. And whenever I'm in one of these resort towns, I kind of find the local radio station. I do a couple of radio ads. And ultimately what kind of kicked it off was when I went to Dubai in 2001, they were doing a remote spot at the Fairmont Dubai. And I said, if you need a guy to read any part of it, I said, I'm kind of into that stuff. And they said, oh, yeah, we'd love that Canadian accent. So I'm working with TMH International. It's a remote spot in the lobby. And they say, can you read the sports? So the sports, as you can totally appreciate from your background in sports, is about rugby. It's not about like football North American style. It's football European style, which has a different lingo altogether. So when a Canadian guy or North American voice is talking that lingo, it's kind of funny. So I read it off like North American style, hyper excited sports cast. And their phone line jumped off the hook and they said, that guy should come down here. So the moral of the story is I was introduced to ISTN digital transfer of media. And John Deacon at TMH was still there. He said, we can record you anywhere in the world. So I came back to Quebec, you know the story. And that's when I really started researching building a studio. And I knew that being a voice over person, not really in radio but in private media, would be much more interesting because- thanks to you, actually, this is a significant part of the story. Actually, it's a highly significant part of the story. When we were in Alberta, you walked me. You were kind enough to want me to come over to Bear in Edmonton. And I go and I see you there. And we go walking through the studio. And of course, whenever I was near a radio station, I'd have like butterflies in my stomach because I knew maybe someday it's going to happen. But I was always nervous in front of the microphone, like in excitement, in a positive way. And so we walked by one of the guys on air that there was like a corridor and there was a window where you could look in and you could actually see him behind a microphone and he's reading a script, but he's sounding really casual. And here is Emily coming with. The traffic sounded natural, like impromptu. And I looked over and I said to you, I said, Is that read? I said, is that all read? Is he just reading a script? You said, yeah, it's all programmed radio, that's all down to the second. And I thought, oh, my God, I thought, I probably wouldn't survive at that because I would be- you wanna improvise too much. It's like the little bit the Ted Bird, the Terry DeMonte story where you really have to be yourself, and when you're in program radio, it's just tough. Moral of the story is I discovered the worldwide distribution channels forfeiting my local market because I'm an English person in the Montreal market, which you can appreciate. So I secured coaching out of Toronto, coaching out of Los Angeles, coaching out of Montreal on breathing, just to kind of accelerate, get the discipline down. The strongest person, most influential, was Ellie Ray Hennessy out of Toronto. And so she was able to kind of break that through. I was at Second City for a year when I was running part of the SkyDome in Toronto, but Second City was also a breakthrough. You've got to be- the expression is getting comfortable being uncomfortable. And Ellie Ray was very good to pull that out. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:08:47 I think you raise a very important point, and that's one of the things that I've really struggled with, that when you're in radio, you really do have to flash your personality. There are elements of it that are programmed and that you can go through the mechanics every day of throwing to A to B to C. But that personality part. And you mentioned Terry and Ted, and you're the voice of the Terry and Ted podcast standing by. So tell me a little bit about, because it's acting, what you're doing. You're doing a form of acting as opposed to the opposite, which is radio, which is being yourself. Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:09:18 Yeah. Well, there's an expression that acting is a shy man's revenge. So when I was at some hotels, like when I was working for Fairmont and Ottawa, not that it's all about hotels, but hotels happened to be the vehicle that brought me to different cities and being in different cities, which I've got a funny story about. Beach Studios, Toronto, World Wrestling Federation. I'll come back to that. I wanted to be the on stage, you know, the guy who introduces the wrestlers, but I actually wanted to be what's his name? Mcmahon? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:09:48 Did you want to be the announcer who called the match? Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:09:52 I wanted to be a character who emerged to be the lost son of the President of the Canadian WWF that was run by DeMarco. I forgot his first name and I spoke to him about it. He said, well, due a cassette. So anyway, Carl De Marco, Carl DeMarco, exactly. Sounds very funny. So acting tremendous range. So like when I was in Auto, I went to the Ottawa Little Theater. I auditioned for the Keen Mutiny simple role. And they called back and they said, no, we want you for the lead role. And so I said, well, I'd love to do it, but when you're in a business that takes so much of your time and you have to be available, your dreams kind of get shattered so in the sense that you cannot pursue what you want to pursue. So finally, when I kind of cut through and realize that this digital technology and being able to record from your house, from wherever you want with the highest quality standard is achievable, it became fascinating. And so by meeting up with the la rays of the world, the Debbie Monroe, all these other characters in the business, as you know well, your voice has to innate, I do animations and all this, and it is a form of acting, as you say, and being elastic to be able to be comfortable in those ranges. Last week I was recording one Bluey, the animation about a horse, and I was playing the principle of the school. And it had to be kind of like I had to be sort of tough but kind of nervous because Bluey was going to rat on me. And so I had to sort of be a different kind of character and all this. And then there is Donny Duchard, who is in a feminine fashion photographer. This was auditioning for an animation that was related to The Simpsons. It was like a spin off of The Simpsons. And I auditioned as Donny Duchard. I got the number one ranking on him, but they didn't execute it. So what I liked about Donny Duchard is that Donny Duchard, his favorite expression was love it, love it, love it, hate it. So I was walking around the house, always trying to master my love it, love it, love it, hate it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:11:53 You and I have been doing imitations for years, but it was just our family. Whether it was Audrey who kind of raised us both at different times. It could have been parents, it could have been grandparents, it could have been great grandparents. But how many characters have you been carrying with you throughout these years? Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:12:12 I would say the characters are by imitation. So, for example, Borat, you remember the cabrae and Matisse. I'm not sure if you ever went down to the Cabaret, but the Cabaret was a summer theater where all the kids who wanted to do part of this stage program would do an act. So as you grew out of that, you'd be the host. I think characters that you carry with you, which is a good way to put it, because characters that you try to imitate are usually residual personas of some part of your life or something that you've recently experienced, that it just sticks with you and it's kind of the character of the day. So in this case, Borat very nice. So I dressed up as Borat, and I did this because that was kind of the movie for a while. And his spin off when he was doing Borat in Bruno. What's so much about Bruno? He was so over the top, and that's not a good invitation, but you know what I mean? So I was kind of fixated by some of his things for a while. More so because Sasha Baron Cohen is one of the most disciplined trained comedic actors. He was superbly trained, particularly on how to use hyperbole to bring out a character. So I guess just over time, you kind of adopt your characters and you kind of stick with it. I could tell you a lot about the movie Deliverance, which was a fixation with my brother and I, but I won't do that. Your podcast may be rated PG, so I won't go down the Deliverance road too much. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:13:41 It's rated whatever the story winds up. Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:13:44 Yeah. So the Grand Brothers, Ted and was it Ned Beatty and all those guys, like, we had every line of that movie down Pat. And so that was quite hysterical. So that was what I would call an extended play adoption of persona being in the hotel business. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:14:01 And for the length of time that you were in there and you mentioned Dubai, did you ever come into contact with Tim Clayton in Dubai? Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:14:09 Well, I know the name. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:14:10 But I did not make any direct contact with him because he was actually working at the Bear in Edmonton at about the same time that you'd made that visit there. But he was another one who went to Dubai and really sort of honed his craft and really liked it. So what else was going on in Dubai that really opened your eyes and changed your view to not only hotel but also media and that you could get into it? Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:14:34 Yeah, I would say there's an expression there. While the rest of the world was sleeping, Dubai was building. So at that time in 2001, there's a lot of conflict across the Gulf in Iran, and everyone was polarized, as you may see today, with other events in the world, whether it's what we know is going on in obvious places. But in every Sequent chapter of time, there's something dominant. And while those dominant activities are manifesting our attention, people are creating opportunity in a quiet, kind of upward spiraling way that we suddenly become surprised by maybe a decade or a generation after. So to answer that question about Dubai, the Dubai story was you look at a map of Dubai from no more than 50 years ago, 50 years ago, and you see fluvial Rivers that come into these sandbars that are going into Delta into the Gulf of Saudi Arabia, and you kind of go, okay, this was sand. And so they had to create a destination because the Dubai oil reserves were less than Abu Dhabi. There are seven Emirates in the United Emirates, and Dubai needed to have an economic vehicle to sustain itself for Millennium, I guess. And so what you see, what you're impacted by is two things. One is an extraordinary investment in infrastructure which makes you understand that everything is possible. And something that was unimaginable was possible, which you can take personally, that what you thought was unattainable is attainable. That's a good key message. But at the same time, it tells you that you need to kind of define that vision and just stay on it. And so those would be kind of lasting comments and lasting experiences from Dubai. And it was kind of a tough place to work in as well. You're working six days a week. There's very little downtime, but it becomes an energy. And so when I return from Dubai, preparing for a trip for another kind of real estate venture, I arrived in Calgary. I was living in Calgary at the time, which I always enjoyed, but I showed up like in a snowstorm. So I've come out of Dubai hot and sunny, and I'm in a snowstorm, and I said, man, I'd like to go back there because the energy was so different. But nonetheless, their path took me back to Quebec. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:16:57 Give me a parallel between building a hotel from scratch and building your voiceover career as a business. Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:17:06 Building a hotel is about a plan, but it's also about what is the classification of the hotel. You can build a hotel that's three star, four star, five star. And in the voiceover business, I'm not really saying three star, four star, five star. What I'm saying is segmentation. Who am I trying to serve? And you know how it is. I did a conference once- There's 29 different profiles of voices in the voiceover business, it's probably 50, probably 100. And so if you're trying to be all of them, for example, if you're building a property and you're trying to serve everybody from $100 a night to $1,000 a night, you're going to have a very difficult time building that property. So what does that mean, is that you've got to have an architectural plan that is going to serve the segment you want to serve. You have to make sure it's distributed. So distribution in hotel rooms, they call that a perishable inventory, because if you don't sell the room last night, you're never going to be able to resell it. So in the yield management business, which if any of your audience are familiar with that term, it's when you yield your inventory, how do you maximize your inventory? Well, voiceover is about yielding your time, yielding your inventory. So what's your inventory? Well, I can do ten voiceovers next week for $50 a piece. To get my ten, I'm going to have to do three auditions each because I'm going for a segment that is in a low price segment. So how do I want to spend my time? Or I'm going to try to present myself and penetrate the market into more of a commercial national program in my vocal range that's in this demographic, whatever it is. But I now want to negotiate for $2,000, $3,000 an ad. So that's yielding my time and yielding my segmentation to cater to how I think I'm designed. And so I would say there's a- the most simplistic form to make that parallel between building a property and building your voiceover career is, know what you're trying to build before you embark blindly into distributing yourself and launching yourself. Because you may find that the segment, the clientele, the market you're trying to serve is not shopping for that tone. And you know that well in the business, because you go to the B-to-B's or the P-to-P's, whatever they are, the Voice123's, and the Voice.com's and the more generic sites that are broad market, is everybody's auditioning for each of those scripts that come through hoping one of them is going to catch. But now it's like, I just take the ones that are kind of more relevant, and I really try to do them well so that I have a much higher chance on one great one than a low chance on ten mediocre ones, not to mention servicing your business afterwards. I'll wrap that parallel by saying a hotel, as you can appreciate, is all about personalized attention. How can I look after you? Are you sure everything was fine? I hope to see you next time. Repeat business. Repeat business. Voiceover business. Was your client- If you're dealing with an agency, was your client satisfied with the sound? Is there anything I could have done better? By the way, if you want to call me back anytime you need a test read, don't be shy to call me. I'll see if I can fit you in. And it was a real pleasure to work with you. And I hope to do business again. It's like a tone of hospitality. I think everybody probably has that intuitively in this business, voiceover business. But at the same time, it's a good discipline to have that touch. And I'll close by saying there's one nuance. We talk about one star, two star, three star, four star, five star. I bring this up all the time in the hotel sector, everyone thinks- and this is parallel to any business- that when you are increasing your caliber and quality in any business, that it's an ever ascending straight line curve up to five star. The reality of it is that you go up to one star, two star, three star, four star, which is basically mastering your skill. And then on the tone scale, it drops. So the scope of your service increases. But the tone of your service relaxes, and that's a sign of confidence. So when you're in the voiceover sector, you're going 1234 and okay, I think I pretty well mastered the skill. But you know what? Now I'm going to relax. I can give you anything you want, and your clients will feel it. They're going to feel that the guy is not totally hyper, just trying to do any possible voice. You know how it is. You've got the director on the line and you're reading the lines too quickly and you're going into the next line too quickly. It's like they can sense when you're there. I can do whatever you want. Just I'll listen to your direction. I'll do it calm and coolly, and they're going to go yeah, this guy takes the direction well. So 1234 or I'll accept five to be your five star character. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:21:37 In just a second, Geoff shares some of his secrets, like what's inside his studio, what are his favorite mics? And here's my favorite part. He shares his secrets about Google. Yes, there's intense gamesmanship that goes on with it. We also talk about our early media experiences, which was basically making prank phone calls. And what's his experience with the pay to plays been like? Pay to Plays are those companies like Voices.com and Voices123, where you pay a subscription fee to receive auditions. There's an algorithm for that, too, and very likely you're going to want a transcript of today's episode. And you can get one right now at soundoffpodcast.com. Mary Anne Ivison (VO) 00:22:18 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) 00:22:29 The Sound Off Podcast with Matt Cundill. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:22:34 So what has been your experience when you're in the Voices123, or the Voices.com and all that? The pay to play world. You have a very unique voice. And again, it's very broad. So you must look at the script and go a lot of no, no, no. And then yes. And do you do a lot of work in that world? Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:22:54 That's an interesting question because I'm challenging the algorithms as we speak with one particular supplier that I went back to. I raised in one of the- you'll see, on one of the Facebook voiceover communities. I've self selected myself as the algorithm guinea pig. And so I've gone so far as buying one of the more expensive memberships. And at the same time, I'm not getting any better a yield, because in this world of post COVID, which again, everyone can appreciate, correct me if I'm wrong is that the voiceover sector went through a little bit of a lull. I think people were kind of businesses didn't know quite what to sell, what to sound like demographically, politically correct, wise, hyper sensitivity to sound and tone. So you don't want to fall into that trap or you're going to be left on the abyss. I'll give you a qualified anecdote to that effect without saying names, is that I was seeing all these people in these online forums and they're doing their demos, and there's a fellow out of the US that does these demos and they're $2,000 US. And if you get that, you get all these things. So I said, I guess I'll update my demo. I'll do it again professionally. And that's $2,000 US I'll kind of reinvest in myself and all this. So I call him, make contact. And he says, well, I can't take it because you need voiceover training. He says, you're not ready for that. This was last year. So I said, okay, well, who do you recommend for voiceover training so that I can kind of re-adapt? He says, well, talk to this guy. So I talk to this guy. I book a session. He says, how old are you? I said, I can see on screen. And I said, you're done. He said, you're done. I said, I'm done? Just like that. So I had a clear impression. The next week I booked four deals at $1,000. I've got my national campaign for a fast food company that I still do, and I cherish that and I make sure I'm dynamic right time. So coming back to these crazy P-to-P's is that when I look at them, I go fishing in there. I am marveled by the strata of how memberships affect what you're able to catch. The memberships are not accessible to the average Joe. So their algorithm is in priority sequence, is in how's your profile. They will send you invitations. But if you're buying the base package and you know what the pricing of all these things are without identifying who and what the channel is, it's in the low hundreds to mid hundreds to high hundreds to low thousands to significant thousands to get your pipeline. And I went into the mid-1000 one as a fishing expedition. And as I said, I'm the algorithm guinea pig. And I've done that now for six weeks. And I've had zero conversion. So just so everybody else who may be playing in these things and they're frustrated that they're not getting business, nor have I. So I write them all the time saying how's it working because it does, S'a marche pas, as I say, donne ma bonne Francais. And so that's it. So just to say that my business comes from what we talked about before, I treat my clients like gold in a hospitable, confident, we're here to look after you kind of tone. And that's my business. My business is return, return, return, doing a good audition like I did, as I mentioned to you, I did a national campaign for a bank that's coming out on TV, I guess in a month or two or so. I'm doing the voice for it as well. But that's just from accepting a piece of business on camp stuff is the same. It doesn't pay particularly well, but if you take it, it's going to lead to the next one. So moral the story is I never underestimate PPC campaigns, your online positioning. I was obsessed with that, which really got my- I was getting high, let's say visits, click throughs from that. Which is a lot of maintenance to keep it as well because Web 2.0 and all the Google standards and all that, you really have to stay on it with an excellent webmaster. And when you lose your webmaster, you've got to reconstruct all this. So those sites, P-to-P, are a channel. Treat them as though they are an invitation for you to meet other people through your audition with no expectation to actually get the business. If you do get the business, fantastic. But where you will get possible future business is that someone who hears you will say, you know what, mark that voice for that other promotion we have. And that I would tell you is how one of those channels did pay for itself. So just rest assured that eventually if you stay in it, you may get an ROI, but not maybe directly through the auditions on the site. But maybe one of those clients will call you and say, we like your voice you did, like, a year and a half ago. And you'll be surprised that that does happen. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:27:26 One of the things that you told me a few years ago when you were building this thing was Google, and the importance of Google, and you touched on it for your company worldwidevoicing.com. And I'm into this too, on the podcast side, because you need a website. You really need a website if you're going to do voiceover or podcasting or any form of entrepreneurial, anything. But you also have to understand Google. So without getting too deep- and this is what I love about you, Geoff, for years and years is how detailed you are. And if you don't understand how something works, you're going to go and become the immediate professional on it. And I'm certain that you know lots about Google. Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:28:00 It's very funny. It comes from the real estate side and the hotel side. So what happens is you have a project, let's say, and you engage a consultant and you want to see what your positioning is. And if you go into Google and you go all in URL, colon, all in URL, all that, pick who you think is your biggest competing voiceover artist that you're always head to head with. I'll take Mike Rowe out of the US, so you do all in URL Mike Rowe, and you will see every website that his name comes up on. But you may see agency, you may see distribution. You could put an all in URL, voiceover websites. You're going to see something. If you see someone's particular website, let's say it's pick an artist or pick an agency or pick a studio, Disney, linked, colon, and the full website of what you think is your competitor, every web link that they're connected to will show up. So what does that mean? You go to their website then? If you need to force your positioning, then you will do- when you have their website up, put your mouse into the corner. It depends if they've got Flash media on their website, which is less ideal for organics for search engines. But let's say they don't. You go view source on the right hand side, right click view source, and all the keywords are H1, H2, H3 Tags, which are basically Google bot search tags, will show up. So you can see if you go to a website for your competitor or an agency, you can see what words are driving traffic to their site. So then you then adopt those words or you include them into organic phrasing in your own descriptive website, which will pick up an organic search when those words are blended. You can use the three of them, but extend the sentence and that is how you increase your organic positioning. But it helps to have a kickstart on your PPC or pay per click SEO, paid SEO and PPC, which will drive some traffic. I would confess right now that I have too many keywords that are in my PPC campaign. I have not had the time to manage it properly. I get a bit of organic search because I've been in the system for a while, but I see my competitors are now getting some page one hits above me and I changed my domain name, but I kept my original domain as an extension, which penalized me a bit. So these are all little things. And to simplify the complexity of what it sounds like to your audiences, just go to Amazon and buy either PPC For Dummies, Google for Dummies, whatever it is. And it's $20 and it's the best buy you can make. It's the best investment you can make, because it makes you feel less dumb. And you sort of go, okay, it's not that complicated. So then you go to Google, you do your campaign, then you learn about it, but moreso, do that all in URL colon, pick who you think is your competitor, linked, and all these sites are going to come and you say, man, if that's where they are, that's where I should be. So that's like Badalgo, voices.com voice123. And there are so many other sites now that I've forgotten them because I was just loading up every single one of them. I better be there. I better be there. I better be there, better be there. But at the end of the day, I didn't really get much conversion from it, but I had visibility. So that when you search Geoff Allan Vo, you'd see, oh, he's there. So that's the key. Just watch where your competitor is and be on the same channel. And if you do that, you have a fighting chance. Hotels do the same thing. Hotels, distribution. Pick any product you follow. Look where they're distributed. Voices, same thing. You're a product. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:31:35 Have you done anything in French? Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:31:41 En Francais? Oui, bien sur. I don't do many in French, Matt, because if you have a good French ear, then I sound terrible. But if I say it really fast, then I can get away with it. But if I speak for too long, I sound like I'm bastardizing the language. Some people, French Canadians in Quebec, think that- they say, "Vous vous n'es de quel pays?" For your English speaking audience, is what country are you from? And I go well, in French I say I was born here. They look at me, they sort of recoil a little bit, they go you're not from here. So they think I've got an Austrian accent, so quand je parle Francais, apparement, j'ai un accent d'Autriche. So apparently it's a very corsee accent, but I'm proud of that. I can sound Quebecois, but when I go to Tim Hortons, for example, because these days for your out of towners who are not living in Quebec anymore, you have to speak French when you're going through the drive-thrus. So if I speak in my proper French, the most common response is, excuse-moi monsieur, Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:11 Yeah, well you taught me how to do prank phone calls. Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:33:17 Yes, oh yeah. Those are the best. Except the last time I was officially spanked by my father which I was 24 years old, I guess. No, I'm kidding. I was in our basement and we used to phone the same number and this lady who would answer that number was always very engaged, she wanted to continue the conversation. So we had said we're going to come and take away your washer/dryer because you didn't pay your credit card bill. And so my father picked up the phone, I did it almost by behavioral boredom- we had a black and white Motorola TV in the northeast corner of the basement, the telephone was in the South West corner of the basement so he would be watching that way, and the phone was red in color, it hung on a wall and I could put a chair next to it, he was watching TV and I'm on the phone and these are the push button phones. So as engaging as a television was, I found the phone to be the equivalent. So I just pick up the phone by behavior, phone the lady and then my father picks up. And this is where my older brother learned that because you're the oldest, you're responsible for the youngest. So my father apologizes to the lady and calls us upstairs, we were spanked four times with a wooden coat hanger. The rule was the more you cry, the more you get, which I sort of thought was like well that's kind of like, don't you want to hear me scream? Don't you want to get the satisfaction I'm being punished? No, the more you cry the more you get, so you have to hold it in. So that's the last crank phone call I did before I was an adult, which doesn't mean that I stopped doing them. So then when I became an adult, then I had a buddy of mine, Jay, who you've met. So I had an English teacher who you would also remember from a common school who was from Britain. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:34:54 It's Miss Shaw. Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:34:55 Yes, that's it. That's it. So I always found that she kind of played favorites in the class, and I felt that I was the underdog. I was underestimated, and I had potential, though I had a certain jealous envy towards some of her favorites. So I said, in a fit of boredom with my buddy Jay, when we're adults, I said, let's call Ms. Shaw, what else is there to do? And I will tell her that I'm in the hospital, that I could imitate this other co student from- it had to have been, I think I was in my early 30s, late 20s at the time. So immaturity, I guess, had yet to escape me. So we phoned her and she answers the phone. So I go, Hello, Ms. Shaw. So I'm talking to her. Then I tell her who I want her to think I am, and she's delighted she can remember. She can remember that person. So I said, oh, it's incredible. I said, here's the problem. I've just been in an accident and I hit my head, and I know that the alphabet has 26 letters in it. She's an English teacher, by the way. I said, I know the alphabet has 26 letters in it, but for the life of me, I can only figure out 25. So if I can run- bother you. If I run through the alphabet, would you mind terribly to tell me which letter I've missed? So I start going, A-B-C. When I get to J, she says, do you mean to say you've forgotten the alphabet? And so we find that the most hilarious thing, and I can't control myself anymore. So I then blurted that the doctor was coming, and so I had to hang up. But that was my funny teacher crank phone call as an adult story. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:36:31 What does your mother think of your voiceover career? Because I know she's heard you on TV, because I know she likes to watch the hockey and she likes to watch football. And you've got that Burger King ad that's running across Canada ad nauseam during the sports shows. Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:36:46 Honestly, Matt, I don't think she's really phased by it. It never made any sense. She kind of gets it now, but it's a different planet. In her mind, I build hotels. It all gets kind of murky. I don't just build hotels. I do big real estate projects and manage them, less so hotels even. But for her, all that voiceover stuff is just kind of a blur. Like when I say I'm doing an on-cam commercial and you may see me. I think she saw me on the Salon Pause commercial. I played a pharmacist or a doctor. I forgot what it was meant to be, but I just talked about the product, which is a good product. I use it for my back. So nonetheless, I got away with being perceived as a doctor. But I think she saw that, but it didn't compute. None of this computes. Like, I don't get what you do. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:37:30 Well, that's the same with my mum. And they're related, so it all makes sense, really, right? Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:37:35 The only thing that will sound impressive is if I say I'm going to my investment office downtown and that's where I work. That's the only language that makes sense. But I don't have that. Nor do I do that. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:37:47 Where's your studio located? Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:37:49 This studio is just north of Montreal in Laval. This one is pretty well equipped. So this is Neumann Sennheiser 416. Focal speakers. This is part of the investment. So kind of going back to breaking into the business is, what is the best business? I started with an Audio Technica 4040. I was next to a HVAC room where I could see the sound of the fan on Pro Tools, but I couldn't hear it because the human ear doesn't pick up those frequencies. But your microphone does. And so, changing the equipment, I had a Summit Preamp, which was really excellent at the time. And I went to Economic, downtown Montreal, and I said, what is a good microphone cost? And I said, that Neumann TLM 103. I said, how much is that? He said, that's 1000, 1100, 1200 bucks. And I said, well, that's expensive. And he said, no, that's not expensive. That's a starter microphone. I said, really? What's an insane one cost? They said, well, they can run up to $5,000. I said, $5,000. That's insane. I said, what does Don LaFontaine have? And they said, well, he's got a famous mic. Anyway, so I rented one and I took it back. It's got the preamp, it's got all this. And I said, wow, that sounds good, but it's kind of cumbersome. I said, what's the next one? They said, Well, Neumann U87. So I said, how much is that? 4000. All this equipment, Avalon 737, Neumann U 87, Pro Tools 12.8, Focal twin Be's, probably 18,000. And $20,000 worth of equipment. That all paid for itself in one year. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:39:20 I think Don Fontaine, it was the Sennheiser 416? Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:39:22 It was the Manley, Manley Gold was what he used. So it had a gold plated capsule, like on the filter. And it was a Manley. Sorry. Thank you for prompting me to remember what it was. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:39:35 And I thought I was being smart by getting up and going to talk on my Sennheiser. Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:39:42 Sennheiser seemed to get a pretty good rating, the little Shotgun 416. I don't use it much. Never really. But I thought I'd have it just to say that I had it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:39:49 It's great to know that you got to a point where you can say, I have it just because I have it and it costs 1500 bucks, but okay, good for you. Jeff, I love you. Tell me about your business. During the pandemic March 2020 hits, a lot of people, especially a lot of voice actors who don't have home studios, really began to panic. What did it mean for your business? Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:40:09 Well, it was a complete stall, like a total stall. A business right across the board, really, the so called day job, but also voiceover prospecting. There just was nobody. And you said it years ago. You said you can tell what the barometer of the economy is by the demand for voiceovers, the number of auditions and all this. And I think you said it by saying that voiceovers are like a weather forecast for the economy. So when people are planning a campaign, they're going to be engaging the talent, as you know, 3, 4, 5, 6 months before a campaign will go to market. So if they're just talking on month zero, that okay, let's start investing. That means they sense the economy is going to be coming back in the next several months. But when the economy comes to a crash which people don't foresee, it's a cold stop, and it's a very long relaunch period. So what did the COVID period mean to me? It meant to take advantage of a retooling period. So a retooling period means, okay, what will new distribution look like? What will the sound have to be? Look at the trends in sound. What will the trends be in two years? And you know what, the answer to all of this, is that it's more of an imperfect sound. If you sound too polished, it's like it's a little bit too old school, like you sound. We don't want that FM announcer sound. You've got to sound like it's conversational. It's a relevant tone to the generations that are targets of the relative campaigns. And so that's what it was. So what did COVID mean to me, was a time to pull back because no matter how hard you prospect, there was no business. So it was a question of retooling, redistribution, rechecking. I let go of one agency because instead of going higher volume at a lower price, I decided to go lower volume at a higher price. So in other words, ratchet up the mix so that I'm not bottom feeding as much because the other agency was just trying to book business. And so I'd spend 3 hours in a studio for $300, less 20% commission. And I said, man, this is just not viable. I'd rather sit retooling my business and making $250 on those terms, driving down and all that. So that's what it is. So it was retooling. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:42:25 Geoff, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. It's great to see my second cousin again. And it's with immense pride. Every time I hear you on the TV doing Burger King, I just say, "You know that's my cousin Geoff, right?" Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:42:35 Well, there should be four on air so I've got a couple of banquets coming out. I've got the Burger Kings out there. TV show, Cyclone if you're watching a French TV. I'm in a hot tub with Veronique Cloutier. I was going to share that link until I saw myself turn sideways exiting the hot tub and I repulsed myself by my stomach, that seemed to be distended when I walked out. I'm body shaming myself. So I didn't share that on social media, but in case you need to see other evidence of your second cousin I'll send you some private images. Matt, congratulations on your success as well, and if we lived closer then we could share more intimate times and other stories and crank phone calls and imitations. But we'll save that for the next time. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:42:35 Geoff I hope to see you at VO North. Geoff Allan (Guest) 00:42:35 Yes, we'll be there. I'll have a small table signing autographs for those who choose to show up at that table. Tara Sands (VO) 00:43:27 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.

It's not often that we hear a British accent on the radio in Canada. Especially outside of Toronto, or maybe Vancouver, most of our talent is home-grown. Chris Ash is a notable exception to that rule. Chris was born and raised in the UK, attending Staffordshire University and beginning his broadcasting career in Kettering, close to London. After only a few years, he made the journey to Canada, landing in Yorkton, Saskatchewan in 2016 and crushing it in Canadian broadcast ever since. But if you think Chris is just another disk jockey, you'd be wrong. We've talked a lot on this show about the evolving nature of the Broadcast industry, and how it needs to move forward with the times. Chris has been at the forefront of such evolution for his entire career. One of his main roles at Connect FM in Kettering was to manage their social media, and he did a bang-up job; their largest Facebook posts during his time at the station were reaching over 130,000 shares. Not bad for a city of only 63,000 people. While his career as a radio personality is about as successful as anyone could ask for, he hasn't been resting on his laurels. In more recent years, Chris has leveraged his penchant for internet notoriety to expand his portfolio. He now offers commissions for professional voiceover work on Fiverr, as well as continuing to advertise his background in social media and video production. In this episode, I speak to Chris about his journey from the UK to Saskatchewan, and eventually to Winnipeg, where he is now. You'll hear about his humble beginnings in Kettering, how he fell in love with broadcasting, and the way he honed his skills through years of hard work- along with a dash of pure charisma. If you want to learn more about Chris, you can check out his LinkedIn or visit his Personal Website. You can also contact him there if you're looking to hire a warm, professional English voice for an upcoming project. If you want to hear Chris Ash live, tune in to 94.3 NOW! Radio in Winnipeg, weekdays from 9am to 2pm. Check out some of Chris' previous Facebook videos below: SHOW TRANSCRIPTION Tara Sands (Voiceover) 00:00:01 The Sound Off Podcast. The podcast about broadcast with Matt Cundill... starts now. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:11 Chris Ash is someone I met back in 2016. We've never actually met. It's been a lot of Skype and Zoom and Google Meet, but I feel like we're friends and that kind of sums up a lot of relationships these days. Chris's journey to Canada actually started with this podcast. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:00:28 It's crazy because when I first came to Canada, this is the podcast I listened to so I could figure out who I needed to bother for a job. So I'd be like, emailing Paul Kay and Christian Hall all the time after hearing them talking on here, and now here I am. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:41 These days in radio, you need to look your best. And I appear to have caught Chris on photo day. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:00:47 No, it's photo day as well, so we would just have a new photo, just how I look now. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:53 What's photo day like at the radio station? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:00:56 It's always awkward. I think photo days, it just reminds me of school. I'm never sure where to look. There's too many flashes going on and now we're in a post pandemic world, so we were like masks off, close to each other. It's bizarre. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:11 And being in Winnipeg, we're in the month of April and so everybody is Lily white. This is a terrible month to be taking your picture in Winnipeg. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:01:19 I mean, Photoshop will help, hopefully. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:21 Chris is now doing middays at Pattison-owned 94.3 NOW! Radio in Winnipeg. The station launched last spring and is modelled after the NOW! Radio versions in Edmonton and Calgary. It flies in the face of stations that play ten in a row. It features personalities connecting with those who post, text or call. Let's call it social radio. And it's not new. Canadian radio has been largely reluctant to put it on the air because it requires two things that Canadian radio is allergic to. Personalities and marketing. Both cost money, and inside the boardroom at budgeting time, the struggle is real. How do I really feel? Well, if more of these stations had sprung up twelve years ago and grown alongside listeners media habits, the business of radio would be much healthier today. I know you didn't come here for my hot takes, but deep down, you know I'm right. Chris Ash joins me from his relatively new home in Winnipeg. I want to talk to you about Winnipeg, first of all, arriving here and what your thoughts are and all that. But we'll get to that after we cover the beginning and we wind it all the way back. And the nice thing is we get to wind it all the way back to about 2013. And it was the first time that you'd interned at a radio station. What was that station and what was that experience like 2013? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:02:41 Oh, that would have been probably Amazing Radio up in Newcastle in the UK. And at the time they were a super futuristic kind of station. They were telling people to submit their music and they just played pretty much unsigned music all the time. And it was such a small crew and it was like one of my first times that I realised, oh, in modern radio, you do it all. You don't just do that one little thing where you turn the mic on and go, Blah, blah, blah. No, I was editing swears out of awful songs and all that kind of stuff. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:03:11 It was a terrestrial radio station, or was it something different? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:03:14 It was something different. They were digital radio for a little bit, online only, and then they had these weird boxes that they sold to some stores. So basically these stores wouldn't have to pay licencing because the music was unsigned. It was a really interesting kind of thing they were doing. I don't know if it ever really took off. I think they're still going. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:03:36 What part of England are you from? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:03:38 It's a place called Kettering. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere, close to London. My dad has always worked in London, so that's just where we ended up. My dad's originally Canadian, so he just kind of landed there and then met my mum. It's a pretty fun area. You're close enough to London and far enough away. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:03:56 What did he do for a living? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:03:58 He's worked in sales. He sells software. It's something that I've never really understood, but it's something he's great at. He's now probably in his final kind of promotion that he's got now, and he's doing pretty well. He's done HR software, website software, now payroll, I think. I don't know, it's complicated stuff. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:19 And do you know what your SAT score needed to be to get into Staffordshire University? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:04:24 Really low. It didn't take much. I think there's like 150 Uni's in the UK. It was pretty close to the bottom. It's a lot better now. They've done investment and whatever, but I loved it there. I had a great teacher there, David Corsa. He sadly died a year after we graduated, but he is one of the biggest inspirations in my life. I can always hear him in my head, just like, shouting at me abuse, but, like, in a caring way. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:48 What are the encouraging words and what is the self talk you're presenting to yourself? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:04:52 I can always hear David saying, "Don't wank the fader." Playing with a bed, you know, going too hot with a bed. He was that kind of guy. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:05:04 That is awesome. "Don't wank the fader," yeah. We need a T shirt. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:05:11 It was very nononsense. It was very old school. He was an old BBC producer and he would always tell us his story about how he interviewed Nina Simone while she was laying in bed because she didn't want to move, so he had to get in bed with Nina Simone to interview her. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:05:24 And so what are you studying there at school? Because I know you did some campus radio. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:05:29 Yes. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:05:30 Well, what's your degree in, or what were you studying and what were you working towards? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:05:34 It's actually a full degree in radio production. So you cover it all and you do radio dramas, you learn the history of TV. We even did TV, which I'm thankful now, because in modern radio, there's cameras everywhere. And then in our final year, it was the big kind of module that we were doing was radio station management. So we got to look after the campus radio station, which was One Media Radio. It was incredible to do that because we were just on top of a bar, so we were a student. So every so often we'd be like, okay, well, this person is in the studio. We'll just go down and have a drink and come back, and hopefully nothing's on fire. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:06:11 If you're a student on campus, how do you get to listen to this radio station? Is it on an app or is it streamed? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:06:19 It was on an app and streamed. And then in maybe the final week that we were there, we managed to get it in all the Uni stores. It took us that long because they were like, we don't know. Because we didn't really follow a format until our year. And then we're like, no, we need to give it like a Radio One style format. So in the day you've got all your pop pits, and then at night, that's where all your specialist programming was. Which everyone loved to do. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:06:41 Tell me a little bit about the Glastonbury Festival, because I hear about it. I just don't know about it. And you were doing some work there that was pretty interesting, that involved a lot of new and up and coming artists. So tell me about 2014. Who was playing the festival, and what did you do there? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:06:58 2014. The headliners, Arcade Fire, Metallica who I skipped. Who else was headlining that year? I saw Dolly Parton and VIP passes got us further than I wanted. She asked me to hand her "a bottle of water, darlin'". While at Glastonbury, I was working with a community station, Worthy FM, and they're kind of a pop up station for the run of the festival. So you're doing traffic updates. You're going to all the smaller stages. And I was mainly focused on the smaller stages. So it's just little bands who really didn't do too much, but they were just friends who like to play together. And because of how many stages there are at Glastonbury, there's something for everyone there. But yeah, the Dolly Parton moment, that was crazy because we were just backstage, and we saw the photographers moving, and we're like, all right, let's go. Because we knew we had backstage passes, but we didn't know where they were going to get us. So we just jumped into the middle of the pack of the photographers, and we got right side of stage, and it was incredible. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:07:55 Dolly Parton is getting the Betty White status. Iconic and across the board. And it doesn't matter what format. And a lot of people are now beginning to ask their devices for a song like Jolene. And even though 20 years ago, a lot of people maybe didn't know it, and also a lot of people didn't know that I Will Always Love You was originally her song, yet they flamed out listening to Whitney Houston sing about it in the 90s. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:08:19 And she wrote those in a day or something. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:08:22 Yeah. And then she declined her nomination to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:08:25 So Dolly, Dolly is an icon. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:08:28 And so what's your next event where you were? And I think it's 2015 around this time, when you find your way into a radio station doing terrestrial radio. I don't want to say that it's a little more for real, because that just does a disservice to all the great stuff you've done beforehand. But some big boy radio coming up here. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:08:46 Yeah, this was real kind of stuff. So I'd been on the street team of a radio station in Kettering. It was Connect FM no longer around because that's radio. And I was on the street team with them. And it was maybe a day before I graduated. I just said to them, I was like, hey, I got this degree now, if you need any help around the station, let me know. So they just started bringing me in and it was like full time radio. So it was- because I had a degree in radio production. They were like, well, we need some new imaging. Can you do that? Sure, I'll do that. I started doing that, and then we kind of did that for a couple of years. And I would go out to events. I would do cupcake drops, just take cakes out to people, do that. And then eventually they were like, okay, we need some help with the morning show. Could you help produce it? Just sit there, take calls and do all of that kind of stuff. And also it meant I got to do the early morning show, which was 4:00 till 6:00a.m. And I got to record that before I went home. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:09:42 Voice tracking the dead hours. I mean, who doesn't get to start there, right? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:09:46 I know, it was perfect. And there was actually one time I was at the pub with my sister, and this was maybe a month into doing the show. So I was big time. And this person comes up to me and they're like, you're from Connect FM. And so I'm there with my sister like, yeah, I am. And she goes, yeah, you dropped some cupcakes off at our workplace. So you don't know me from the radio. You know me from dropping cakes off. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:10:10 So why did you come to Canada? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:10:12 So towards the end of my time at Connect FM, I was trying to get on air more. And the person who was hosting maybe the midday show or the drive show. I can't remember which one. They were going on vacation. So I said, Look, I'll do it, I'm here, I'll do it free of charge. I come in on Monday and they've got someone out of market voice tracking it. And I was like, ugh, that's not working. So I went home, had a couple of drinks and saw that there was a job in Yorkton, Saskatchewan at Fox FM, and applied. The next day, I had a reply from the programme director, Brad Baison, and he was like, Are you a citizen? And I said, yes. He goes, okay, we can talk. So it was nice and easy. I had been applying for other jobs in Canada, but mainly in Toronto and big cities. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:10:57 Okay. So I didn't know that part about you being a citizen because your dad is Canadian. But when was the first time you came to Canada? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:11:05 There's pictures of us coming over as babies, but we would mainly go stay with my grandparents, who- they live just north of Toronto, and that's mainly where we'd stay and have a good time there. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:11:16 So were you versed enough in the winters in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, to know enough? Or did you just say, I'm going, I'm Canadian and can? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:11:24 Yeah, I was just like, let's see what happens. Let's see what happens when I get there. And I did my first winter without a vehicle. I was walking everywhere and that was not a wise decision. I remember one day I went to the Superstore in town and it isn't really a town where you walk around, so the sidewalks weren't taken care of. And I can remember stepping up onto a snowbank, which was probably about three foot tall with all my grocery bags and falling right to the bottom of it. It just collapsed all the way in. And I was like, this is Yorkton. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:11:55 So how far was the walk to work? Because I think anything over 500 metres. And I'm like, this is too far in the winter. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:12:02 Yeah, it was a ten minute walk. There were many times I'd be FaceTiming my parents on my walk and my phone would freeze and it would quit. And at this point I was doing the evening show there. So, yeah, I was working six till midnight there. Well, I'd get out around 11:30 and run across the street to Joe Beaver's, have a drink there, and then walk home. That helped. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:12:21 Okay, so we have to map that out as well. So the trip to Joe Beaver's, is it on the way home or do you have to do a little side turn? Because these are the things that add up. When your final weather forecast to the audience, it's -29 with a wind chill of -43. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:12:41 It was kind of out of the way. It had maybe two minutes onto my walk, but it was just the other way. So I just take the main street, which I think was Broadway, down to Myrtle where I lived, rather than taking- Oh, I can't remember the streets now. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:12:52 How can you not remember the streets in Yorkton? There's like two of them. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:12:55 First. Second. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:12:57 The station is located at the corner of Main and Main. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:13:04 In Broadcast House, I believe it's called. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:13:05 Yeah, but fun radio station. I have to think back to that time, and it's owned by Harvard. I want to say that there was somebody on the air 24 hours a day. Was there? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:13:17 There was pretty much on GX94. Yeah. And I think they still do, maybe. Pretty much they have people on all the time, or did at that point anyway. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:13:26 I think the person who is working the online at GX had a live Facebook stream or something. And I used to watch and just chat. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:13:34 Oh, James Meyer, he got in trouble for that because he was talking about some advertiser, a competition they were running. It was one of those narrow boat competitions. And he said on the stream that you have to pay to get there so you don't really win much. And he got in trouble for that because the advertiser was watching the stream. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:13:52 Yeah - You know, I think what's really important when you start your career is that you work for people who are going to help you, and good programmers, a good company that was able to really think about talent and what they needed to do to get to the next level, even if they weren't going to move within the company. And I remember this is about when you and I connected and we started sending some tapes back and forth, and I was doing some air checks and whatnot with you. And then where did you go next? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:14:18 I saw a post on Milkman, a very rare post from Rolco. And they were hiring for a position. It was very vague. They were hiring for a position. There wasn't much info about it, but they were just hiring for a position in Regina. And of course, Z99, what a station that is. It's a powerhouse station. And at the time I was dating someone who was from Swan River, Manitoba. So I was like, well, this is all right because I was looking at a job in Ontario and this one. And I was like, okay, at least she's close to her family then. And I love Saskatchewan, so whatever. So, yeah, I ended up taking a job with Z99 in Regina because of how vague it was. I really don't think they knew what they wanted to do with me, but I was there for a year and a half doing evenings and weekends and having some fun there. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:04 Remind me, what's the format there? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:15:06 It's hot AC, CHR kind of. It's in between that. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:10 Is this the station you got fired from? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:15:12 That is the station I got fired from in February of 2020, which is not a good month to get fired, historically. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:18 I'm trying to think back on your career. I think this is the point where he gets let go. And so I'm glad I inserted it right in the right spot. And we're just before the Pandemic, it's February, for all intents and purposes, in the middle of the cold Prairies, were days away from shutting down. What happened and how did you handle it? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:15:39 So then my girlfriend at the time, after I lost my job, decided she was going to move back home, which is fair. We were having troubles. It wasn't going well. And this was kind of just like the final nail in the coffin. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:51 Okay, so you got fired again? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:15:53 Yes, fired from a relationship. I'll tell you what, the exit interview I got from that was much longer than the one from the job. So then I reached out to Christian Hall because of Harvard. He was still with Harvard at the time. And I said, hey, I'm out of a job right now. Is there anything in Harvard? And he replies, well, there's your old job in Yorkton or I think in Fort McMurray. They're still hiring for midday. And I knew a couple of people up in Fort McMurray. I knew Travis Stewart from my Yorkton days. So I was like, this seems like a good spot, because I was like, I'm going to be restarting my life. And I was like, let's go to Fort McMurray. Why not? So I pack up the U-Haul. And at this point, I'm also interviewing for another job in Barrie, which I almost held on for. That was at the Corus station at the time. And I was interviewing for a job there, and I almost held on for it because I was like, I would prefer to go to Barrie than Fort McMurray. Funny how that works out. And if I had held on to that, the Pandemic would have kicked in and they stopped their hiring process. I pretty much got to Fort McMurray. And then it was like, okay, now we can't do anything. And I'm just so lucky I got that job within two weeks of being fired. I signed that paperwork, and I was like, I'll just go wherever I want to still do this. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:17:06 The Fort McMurray experience was a year or two. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:17:10 It was one year exactly. But while we were there, there was a flood there. You're dealing with the Pandemic, knowing what we can do. Of course, there was some restructuring in the company as well, so it was terrifying for everyone. And it was a good year. I had some great friends there. Everyone's gone everywhere else now, as you do in radio. One person leaves, and all of a sudden, everyone else is going. But yeah, no March 2020 to March 2021. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:17:35 So what was the work from home strategy for the Harvard station up in Fort McMurray? Was there one? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:17:42 No. All non essential staff. So sales. Well, I mean, I'm not saying sales are non essential. I'm not going to bite the hand that feeds me there. But nonessential in the office were told to work from home. So sales were working from home. Promo were working from home. Our PD, Andrew Wilcox, was meant to be working from home, but not very often was he working from home. And it was mainly just the on air staff in the building. I think we needed the PD there just to keep us in shape. Otherwise it would have been hell. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:18:07 Yeah, and you were talking about Barrie just a second ago and thinking, oh, if I can just hold on, I'll go there. But you did hold on a year and look at that. You went there. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:18:16 Yeah, we went there. Oh, well, I went there. Yeah. I had applied for a job. I think it was another drunken job application. I'm not suggesting that's a good idea, but it worked out. No, it wasn't. I wasn't drinking at the time. So anyway, I applied for that job and it was Kool FM with Central Ontario Broadcasting and I've been applying for jobs there for at least a decade. It must have been about a decade. I'd been bothering them that long. And I guess I just sent the right tape and did well in the interviews and moved there at the start of March in 2021. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:18:45 Well, you did mention that you stopped drinking at one point. Is this because you were drinking and then getting into new jobs? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:18:54 You look at my track record, maybe in 2020, I decided, all right, with the pandemic going on, I'm going to be healthy. So I lost about 100lbs just by running and doing keto. And for most of 2020, I wasn't drinking because- not all the time would I say that I have a great relationship with alcohol. It's something that I'm dealing with now. I do therapy and whatever. I used to use it as my coping mechanism, but now therapy and medication is the way to go for me. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:19:21 Yeah - There was like three things that happened all at once. And of course, it gets lost in the pandemic. I don't see as much. It's not like in my travels I'm gonna come across you necessarily. And all I can really see is what's happening on social media. It's like, oh, Chris made one life decision. Oh, it looks like a second life decision was made for him by his ex. And then here's a third life decision that comes with, I'm going to cut out alcohol or lose weight. And I don't know which order was, but I'm like, man, Chris is rocking it. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:19:49 Yeah I was just in a good place in Fort McMurray. There were trails that were just at the end of my road. I had no excuse and I had a whole bunch of time and I was like, well, I may as well try and get something positive out of this totally negative experience. And I say in some stand up shows- well, I say I do stand up. I do some open mics now. But I say the pandemic has been great for me. And people are like, what? But the pandemic has got me back on track. It put me in a better place. It's like when I got hit by a car when I lived in Yorkton, which we skipped over. I forgot about that. Because I was off work for a few months after being hit by a car. But that re-centered me. I'm not going to say that I need those moments, but I've had moments of being re-centered, and that's nice. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:20:31 Yeah - There's a collection of us who just do better by not having to go out. Listen, if you go out, nothing good happens when you go outside the house. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:20:40 No, everyone must be able to see this after two years of doing it, how great it is inside. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:20:46 In just a second, we'll talk to Chris about the stress of a launch. How do you keep a format change a secret? Turns out it's harder than you think. What's the reception been like for someone with a funny accent? And what are the differences between radio in the UK and radio in North America? And there's more. There's always more, including a transcription of this episode, at soundoffpodcast.com. Mary Anne Ivison (VO) 00:21:14 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 (Voiceover) 00:21:25 The Sound Off Podcast with Matt Cundill. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:21:29 Fundamentally, though, what is the difference you find between the radio that you experienced, whether you were a listener or you worked in it, in England versus what you've been working on so far in Canada? Give me one good and one bad. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:21:42 I feel like in the UK, radio is so much more. Well, for the most part, it used to be, anyway. It's changed a lot in the last few years. It's super interactive. Super interactive. And while I was still in the UK, it wasn't as voice tracked. Like, voice tracking is great. If you can do a great voice track show, go for it. It's a great way of getting great talent in markets that they don't live. But there is something to be said about live radio, isn't there? There's just something magical about it. There's something magical about being able to call the number and talk to that person on the other end. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:22:15 Which I guess brings me to Winnipeg. And I'm glad that you had a nice, sober moment to make the decision to come to Winnipeg. A lot of people don't make sober decisions to come to Winnipeg. This is me with my hand up. Programme What? Yeah. Okay. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:22:30 In Barrie, I was set. I loved it. In Barrie, I was at Kool FM there, and I was close to my grandparents and whatever. I ordered some Chinese food. And I opened up a fortune cracker and I read it and it said, you will never have to worry about money again. I thought, oh, cool. The next day I get an email from Mark Hunter and I can remember looking at it and going, I don't need this right now. I'm in a good place, whatever. But I knew if it was him reaching out to me, it was something good. And at this point I'm thinking maybe it's NOW! in Edmonton. I've loved NOW! since I got here. In fact, Travis Stewart, who I mentioned earlier, he was the person who said, you need to cheque out this radio station. It's so much like UK radio. So that's when I fell in love with NOW!. And, yeah, so I get this kind of vague email going, we have an opportunity. I can't really tell you much you want to know more. So I have a phone call, again, it's really vague. And I put the details together and I start working it out and I'm like, okay, I know where I'm going before I've signed this NDA. Sure. And I just kept going with the interview process and it ended up being the evenings/weekends position for NOW! Radio in Edmonton, which we launched back in October. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:23:43 You said Edmonton. I think you meant to say Winnipeg Chris Ash (Guest) 00:23:46 Winnipeg. Yes. To launch NOW! Radio in Winnipeg. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:23:49 I just want to be sure that you know that you are in Winnipeg and not Edmonton. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:23:54 I think so. It's the Oilers here, right? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:23:57 Well, I think you probably did the math to figure out that it was going to be Winnipeg, but I think that's something that you would have to reveal to the person you're interviewing at some point. Hey, listen, this is Winnipeg. You didn't have a chance to go and visit Winnipeg for the four weeks a year that it's really nice here. Somewhere between July and August, I guess you just did the math, figured out it would be Winnipeg and just continued on with it, right? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:24:20 Yeah, they said enough, and I got enough info, that I could positively say it was Winnipeg. There are some things that you can do. You can check websites and stuff, which I do whenever there are rumours of a station flip anywhere, because I'm a bit of a radio geek like that. So you just type in. For example, when Virgin Radio Windsor set up, you do a quick Twitter search, you do a quick Instagram search, you cheque if that website has been bought. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:24:45 Did you check to see when the website was bought? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:24:47 Yes, I did. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:24:49 Yes It was May 2021 that that purchase went through. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:24:53 Yes. So they've been planning it for a little while. It's easy to be sneaky like that. And in fact, in the launch, someone else had done that and somehow it was online somewhere. And that was a sad situation. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:25:06 I do like the fact that this station came to Winnipeg because the city really needed a station like that. But you said something very profound, and that's that the radio is a lot like the radio back home. And listen, I can sit here and I can provide the answers, but I'll probably do it over a drink or two whenever I meet radio people and say, well, why don't we have more stations like this? But I find it really super strange that it took ten years for NOW! to be replicated in another market like Winnipeg. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:25:33 I can already see the signs that it's really working in Winnipeg. People are really latching onto it, and it doesn't take long for people to know our names, to know features, to know Now Wells or teaching them about CanCon. When I'm doing the takeover, people will now request Canadian content without me asking. And they'll say, this is CanCon. That's where I do- a takeover is a whole hour of request, which we do between twelve and one. And it's just highly interactive and it's what radio used to be, and it's maybe what radio should be more like. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:26:05 So when you have to explain the format to somebody, what do you tell them? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:26:10 I usually say we play anything because we do and we're just a party. That's all it is. It's just- you're inviting someone into your house and going, hey, we're chatting about this, actually. Do you know anything about this? And then you just have these conversations. And then, of course, with our website, we've got the texts coming in there and people can chat in there as well. So not only are we talking with the listeners, the listeners are talking to each other as well. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:26:36 So I can text, I can interact on the Facebook page. I could probably tweet at you. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:26:42 Instagram. We got Instagram. Yeah. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:26:43 I mean, I'm trying to imagine the control console just for the social media aspect here. And it's like flying a 747. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:26:49 It pretty much is. And there's a lot going on. It's very fast paced. We don't ever really give it to the music for too long at any time. I mean, we're live 6:00a.m. till midnight, pretty much. It's like two songs max, and then we're there chatting. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:27:04 I like it. I enjoy it. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:27:07 It's so fun. I can't believe how much fun I'm having doing it. I like to think I've worked at some great radio stations and done some fun stuff, but I've never worked with a crew like I work with now who are just so engaged in the products that we're putting out there. We're so motivated to do it. And maybe that comes from flipping a station and then people not being our number one- not being our biggest fans when we first rocked in. And that's fine, that's fine. We had to deal with that. We knew that we were going to have to deal with that. And it's something that the people in radio have to deal with, it's not nice. The whole situation of it, of course, is not nice. I've been on both sides of that table. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:27:44 There is a social media shit show going on. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:27:47 Yeah. And everyone said that everyone was from Alberta. I'm from the UK. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:27:51 Well, this is the other thing. It makes me nuts about Winnipeg. I didn't want to get into it. Winnipeg is very, very odd. Here was this blowback about letting four, five, six people go from a radio station, which I understand. Nobody likes to see anybody. And I had friends who were let go, and some great broadcasters, and I'm glad a few of them found jobs since then. However, here are- wait for it. Here are four or five or six new people who are moving from somewhere else, and they're going to come and live in your city. They've made a choice to come and live here and to be amongst the community. And here's this social media shit show going on. And I thought, man, I'm glad Twitter wasn't around when I moved here. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:28:34 Yeah. No, it's hard to deal with. Eventually we just had to look away because our Billboard campaign people guessed what that was. They put the dots together. And I do remember seeing one post after everyone was let go. They said, oh, that's not a good sign for young broadcasters in the industry. That's not nice for them. And then I'm like, there's a whole bunch of young broadcasters being brought in. Those were tough days. Those were testing days. But I completely understood all of it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:29:03 Yeah. And gone after about three weeks. By three weeks, nobody is talking about this anymore. And people are enjoying the radio station. And I love the fact that there's a feel that there's really no rules to it because I've heard Marilyn Manson, I think, on there, and it goes into Bruno Mars, and then there's a conversation about that sort of thing. And I can get my request played. Not that I've made any requests, but I could get my request played if I wanted to. And I'm hearing cab drivers and the Uber drivers are listening to this. I mean, do you have any rules? Because I've heard you say, hey, why don't you make a request and make it a CanCon? This sort of verbiage just wasn't done. And somebody obviously said, hey, why not? Well, we can just mention that stuff and mention what our requirements are, and we can read out our licence if we want. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:29:46 I think that's the beauty of it. It's because we're just going, we'll do whatever. I think on day one, my first show, I played Duran Duran, and then someone called in complaining that we'd flipped, obviously. And they were like, Would you play Iron Maiden? Sure. So I went Duran Duran to Iron Maiden. And I think I was just kind of, just going, whatever, we'll do this. This is what we'll do. Of course, there are some rules. We don't want complaints, we don't want all of that. But as I said, it's a party. Stuff happens at parties and it's so fun. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:30:17 People must call you up and ask you about your accent. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:30:20 Yeah, I get Australian a lot now, but I've been here for six years. But I found that I get a lot of Brits calling me now. There's a lot of British Winnipeggers that call me up. A couple of weeks ago, we had a conversation that was completely fueled by British people. It was just Brit after Brit after Brit. And I was like, this is fine. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:30:40 So the ratings are going to be coming out in a couple of weeks. I cannot possibly ask you to make any predictions, so I won't, because I could never make a prediction. Anytime anybody made a prediction, it worked out badly. And if you said, oh, we're going to do crap, you really did do crap. I guess the question is, what's the reception been like? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:30:59 It's been absolutely incredible. We've got our regulars, we've got people calling up and referencing our regulars. We celebrate every listener that we have. We celebrate them getting involved. And I can remember on day one, we walked down to Earl's, the old Earl's, not the new one. And someone stopped us. We were wearing our NOW! shirts, but someone was like, oh, my God, you just launched today. And seeing that on day one. And then I was at the Burton Cummings Theatre a couple of weeks ago watching Bianca Del Rio. And some guy came up to me and he goes, You're Chris, are you? And I was like, yeah, I am, because I'm Jason. I listen all the time. I text, blah, blah, blah. And I think what we're doing is we lift up the curtain, we break that fourth wall. We make ourselves so normal, we make ourselves so approachable that people can't help but get hooked. Even people that hated us on day one, we can scroll back and see the text and you see that they've completely changed their tune. Maybe you don't like the music, but you're going to like the conversation. That's what's going to go on. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:01 So I know you're a foodie. What are your favourite restaurants so far in Winnipeg? You got a friend coming from out of town. You want to go out for goodbye to eat? Give me a couple of restaurants you like. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:32:12 I am a big fan of Susso. I love it. I had bone marrow there for the first time. I felt very much like Anthony Bourdain just going for it. I saw an episode where he was eating it and I was very cool. If I was eating it, it was awesome. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:30 So I love the bone marrow there too. And by the way, this thing is sort of tucked away like a speakeasy down in the Osbourne village. But did they offer you to do a shot down the bone marrow? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:32:42 I've done it every time I've had it. It's incredible. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:46 Well, for someone who doesn't drink, that's fantastic. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:32:48 Yeah, I do know a little bit, but you just have to and you get all the this is going to sound gross, but you get all the fatty remnants still coming down. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:58 It's a great shot. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:33:00 It's the best shot I've ever had. And then there's Carlos and Murphy's I love as well, which is kind of like a Mexican place where you get your nachos and some good beer. So many good breweries in town as well. Now that I said I drink again. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:12 I can mention that you slowly introduced it back. It started with a shot, probably on the bone marrow. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:33:18 Exactly. Yeah. Once I had a good life balance, I was like, let's start having this again. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:24 Well, all you have left to do in Winnipeg is to find a place to go watch the World Cup in November. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:33:29 Yeah, I'll find somewhere. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:30 How about The Grove? Chris Ash (Guest) 00:33:32 Love The Grove. I was there just last Tuesday. Actually, that would be a good place to go. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:36 I watched England, Croatia from The Grove a couple of years ago. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:33:40 Alright, well, I'll look out for you. I'll poke my head in and see if Matt Cundill is in there. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:45 I should have mentioned, by the way, that you know how secrets get out where we're doing all that research and stuff. But you had the most Winnipeg of introductions and that you arrive on a Friday in Winnipeg and I'm having drinks with Avery, my partner, and Eden, her best friend. So I'm having drinks with Avery and Eden and we're up in Gimley and she says, hey, I think you might know this radio guy, Chris. Do you know Chris Ash? He decided to lease today. And I said, oh, really? I called you up and I said, Jeez, I wonder which station you're going to. I don't know just yet, but I'm going to find out. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:34:19 Yeah, you said that you had a couple more calls to make that night as well, and I never heard back from you. So I guess you figured it out. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:34:25 I did figure it out eventually, and I think there's probably a place on the lease where you have to write your employer. We didn't bother to go pull out the lease because I thought it would be easier for me to go find out myself. But that is like the most Winnipeg of stories where you get to town and your cover is busted in the first five minutes. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:34:41 I can remember waking up on the Thursday four days before we were launching, and I woke up and saw that there was an email from Broadcast Dialogue. I cheque that every Thursday I'm scrolling down and it's got the stuff about the people who have just been laid off. Sadly laid off. And then right under is a picture of me saying, Chris Ash is now in Winnipeg for an undisclosed position. And I'm like that looks so bad. I'm like I'm getting fired. I need to go back to Yorkshire or somewhere like that back to Fort McMurray with me. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:12 We're just changing the radio station formats and bringing in a new staff. It's not some sort of undercover operation. There's no chance you could ever do FBI, CIA or ceases or anything like that. You cannot work at Scotland yard. Your cover will just be busted but it's just a radio station we can all relax. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:35:30 Yeah, it was a couple of days of just everything leaked out and I think that might have been to do with the way we were launching it. By the time we put the W up on the billboards everyone kind of figured it out. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:41 Yeah, well, you had one job and that was to just get a lease and sit in your apartment but the fact you signed the lease and I wound up knowing the person who rented it to you. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:35:50 Yeah, what a time. Luckily I can look back and laugh at it now. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:55 Yeah, August and radio and it's classic. All right, Chris, let's get together and we'll go for lunch to grow sometime. Chris Ash (Guest) 00:36:02 Yeah, sounds good to me. Tara Sands (Voiceover) 00:36:03 The sound of 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 sound off podcast dot com.

One of our biggest podcast episodes was back in October of 2017 when we had Sheri Lynch on the show to talk about taking control of the Bob and Sheri Show. By control, that means retaining things like digital rights and having autonomy over your brand. The episode has remained popular over the years because of the number of radio people who have considered taking a similar jump. In fact, it is one of the episodes that I have recommended people listen to rather than me explaining what she stated so eloquently. Last month, The Bob and Sheri Show ended its run on flagship WLNK in Charlotte. In this episode, Sheri Lynch returns to talk about that departure and how the team has spent nearly 4 and a half years building a show that could withstand this. Sheri cuts through the BS and shares her opinion about how performers need to be thinking about the future and what they can do to lay the ground work for the next ten years of performing to the world. We also talked extensively about the one time they went on Facebook to do a live hit and listeners loved it so much, they decided to do it every week. Here is a version of the latest instalment. Great news! Bob And Sheri are back in Charlotte on K104.7! You can also have them on your station in Canada. Where else can you hear Bob and Sheri? Have you checked out the Oddcast? It's a whole lot more of Bob & Sheri and one that I subscribe to. Years ago we talked about doing an episode on Canadian killers and the best I can say is that episode is still in development - and some of the best podcast episodes are. This show is a great example of going beyond repurposed radio and building an audience outside of the broadcast area. SHOW TRANSCRIPTION Tara Sands (Voiceover) 00:00:01 The Sound Off Podcast The podcast about broadcast with Matt Cundill starts now. Matt Cundill (host) 00:00:01 You know, it's been over 1300 days since we last spoke with Sheri Lynch on this show. Our previous episode is one of the most popular in the catalog, and if you listen to it, the episode is a blueprint for taking ownership of your content and breaking out on your own as a radio performer. Consider this episode to be part two. This episode might go a while. How you been? Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:00:36 It, it is uh, this this (wince) Oh, my God. Matt Cundill (host) 00:00:38 Last month, the relationship between The Bob and Sheri Show and its flagship station, WLNK and Charlotte, came to an end. So what does this mean for The Bob and Sheri Show, its affiliates, and the show's future? Nothing, really. And that was the plan all along. Sherry lynch joins me from her home in Charlotte, North Carolina, where it's been too long between conversations. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:01:02 I knew the month of April would be a chaotic feeding frenzy because I've been planning, as you know, to leave the link for a very long time. But planning the divorce and then actually getting divorced, April was insanity. And then all the oh, my God. Yeah, it's just been crazy. Matt Cundill (host) 00:01:21 Were you planning a divorce from WLNK? Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:01:25 I was alone on the team in wanting to leave. I felt like it was a relationship where no amount of romantic getaways or marriage counseling was really going to fix what was broken. When you've worked in an environment where you've had, like, six owners in five years, there's no strategy. There's no continuity. You're in a burning building, running from one burning thing to the next, and everyone's yelling and waving their arms. And I'm detail oriented. I'm a Capricorn. I like to have a strategy and a plan. I like to have a fucking idea of where we're going. I don't like to wake up every day on a new reality timeline. And that's what it felt like. I felt like it was time to go, time for a change, that we were not going to be able to salvage this relationship. And I was right, but I was outvoted. One of my goals in going independent was to be a better company and to treat people with more respect than I had seen in the business. And so this isn't a dictatorship. And there were good reasons. People made good, compelling arguments for why you don't want to jump. You don't want to jump from one station to another that you take damage you don't recover from. But it was just exhausting. And I like the CEO of Urban One very much. I think he's a great business guy and a great radio guy. But their plan for WLNK made no sense to me. For Bob and Sherry, it also made no sense to me. For 2021, I had been on my knees praying that Intercom wouldn't exercise the option to pick up our show and renew it. And when they missed their option deadline, I opened a bottle of really fancy wine and celebrated. That should tell you how miserable I've been. Matt Cundill (host) 00:03:17 What is that bottle of fancy wine? What country is it from? What color is it and how much did it cost? Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:03:23 A gorgeous bottle of 2000. I'm trying to think if it was a 2009 silver Oak Cab, not some gazillion dollar bottle of wine, but around here my regular go to is a Costco Malbec for 699. This was probably a $75 $80 bottle of wine, and I sucked it dry and shoot on the Cork and celebrate it and knew that losing that flagship station was going to be difficult, emotional and a pain in the ass and everything else. But change is always hard. Matt Cundill (host) 00:03:58 Why were there so many owners over so many years? Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:04:01 Oh, you got me. So the challenge that they had in Charlotte was, you know, they had three stations, but that's not a real cluster. And in radio now they're cluster selling. So you've got a company that has Chris hits and country and Urban and whatever your advertising needs are, they have a way to meet them and they can price it differently because they can sell across a cluster. Everyone that has owned what urban one now owns in Charlotte had three stations that were two stations originally and then three. These are good radio stations with incredible employees and heritage and all of that. But there's no getting around the fact that it's difficult to sell and be successful when you've got two and you're going up against an entity that has five or seven business realities. One of the things I've been saying to my team and anybody that will listen to me is I don't think the Gulf between the reality of the business and the consumer experience of the medium has ever been wider and more difficult to bridge. What is happening in the business is staggeringly different from what people who use radio and love radio experience. I think that we don't give one. We don't give the audience enough credit for how plugged in they are and how engaged they are. But the realities of our business are such that it's very difficult for radio stations to do the kind of radio that they say they're doing this real, live and local community engaged radio. It's really hard to do that now because the economics dictate that you get employees the hell out of that building can't pay them. It's an insane time right now to be in radio. It's an insane time and not a good time to be an employee who's counting on a continuing and steady paycheck. Matt Cundill (host) 00:06:12 Well, you haven't been employed by a radio station since about 2017. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:06:16 Praise, yes, and for that reason. So I don't have an MBA, I have an MSW, I'm a social worker, and I am not a psychic or I'd have won the lottery by now, but I just felt absolutely convinced that the future for people like me, talent content creator was not going to be inside a corporate situation. My days of being a pampered, chop poodle were over that the economics just no longer made sense. And so I knew that if I wanted to continue, I had to get out of there and be independent. And I think that was the best idea I've ever had. Honestly, it's why I'm still in radio. I think that a lot of people in my position need to be rethinking how they define work and how they think about themselves as a commodity and what kind of value you can bring. Because I'm seeing heartbreaking, devastating things happening to people in our business. The people that still have jobs are getting their pay cut to the bone. And, oh, my gosh, it's just such a hard time. It's such a hard time. And I'm not here to trash corporate radio because I'm very sympathetic to the economic challenges and the competitive factors that have only been amplified and accelerated by the pandemic. But at the end of the day, we are all responsible for ourselves. You can't expect to just be pampered and cared for and protect it anymore. You have to grab that freaking steering wheel or you're going right off the cliff. Matt Cundill (host) 00:08:07 You know, you and I were sitting on the floor in Anaheim at Podcast Movement, and you were telling me in 2017 about this, and we had a podcast shortly after, which is still one of the most listened to episodes in the series of 250 some odd episodes. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:08:23 That's awesome. Matt Cundill (host) 00:08:24 Most of the time, people say, Well, I'm thinking about going out on my own. And I said, well, you have to start with the episode with Sherry. And I know it's four years old, but everything you say in that previous episode is still relevant to today. But if we go back to our conversation in Anaheim, you left. You cease being a radio employee. You went into business for yourself. You bought the show, essentially, and then you took all the things that you can control about your brand with you and then continue to build your brand. Does that sound reasonable? Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:08:55 I can't believe we did it because that was the dream. And when you say it, it sounds like, well, that sounds very complicated and exhausting, but that is exactly what we did. So we had something that we had met that a lot of people on the talent side of the equation don't have is we had a way of generating revenue. So because our show was syndicated and has been syndicated for almost its entire run, we could give up our corporate paychecks and benefits and take a stab at feeding ourselves off of our network radio revenue. So that was the difference maker for us. If you are even, like top flight talent in a great market with incredible skills and experience and chops, you still have to solve that revenue problem. If you cut yourself off from the corporate world and go independent. How are you getting paid? So that is the first thing that people who are thinking about going out on their own have to figure out. As much as we've all gotten used to working in radio, being expected to work for free, you can't actually live on free. You have to be able to generate an income. Matt Cundill (host) 00:10:11 When I heard the news that you were let go from WLNK, I thought, oh, crap, poor Sherry. And then I thought, no, wait, she's built for this moment. This is the entire reason why she did what she did and why Bob and Sheri went out on their own. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:10:26 I think we talked about this last time. It took about a year and a half of negotiating to get everything that we want. It all in one place and out. And then there we were, a scrappy little start up running an established business. We had no time to get up to speed. We had to learn on the job how to run this business while moving at top speed with no resources. So that was the first challenge. But I knew from midnight on July 31, 2017, because that was the moment we took over. I knew that the clock was running on that radio station in Charlotte. And my first primary goal was, how do we build this business to survive without this affiliate, this flagship? So that was the first thing that my business partner, Tony Garcia, and I focused on was, okay, we need to make it completely and fully independent from the mothership, from a revenue standpoint, and then everything else can follow from there. By the time the decision was made, we had built it. We had the luxury of having four years to build it out to where having a station in Charlotte did not matter for us. From a business standpoint. Now, you've got your ego right. You got your hometown pride. You have your feelings. But from a business standpoint, we were okay without it. And I was the one who triggered the meeting that led to that decision, because I just felt like, folks, I know this is radio and we struggle with adulting in radio, but we have eight employees in five States who need to go to bed knowing they're going to wake up. Okay? So let's just cut the bait and go. It was such a moment, Matt. You never know how you're going to feel. I've spent my entire adult life doing this job and my entire adult life as a working person going to that place. So you don't know how you're going to feel when the words are out, like, hey, we're done here. We're over. I walked out of the building, and I felt just as light as a balloon. I floated to my car, and that's when I knew for sure that my gut was right. My instincts were right, and my decision was right. It was just time. Matt Cundill (host) 00:13:01 Did Bob have the same experience? Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:13:03 No, he didn't, but for very different reasons. So Bob was an established player in radio and television when I met him. And he has had an incredible career in radio and TV in that market. And he's like a hometown legend. And in August of 2021, he would have marked 50 years in that building. He started as a teenager working for WBT, the big news talk station, jumped to television, then came back to radio. And I met him after he came back to radio that second time. For Bob, that building was a touchstone know, that was the one constant in his life. Job changes, relationships, divorce. He lost two children, and that building was a safe place. It was a place where he could come and put that grief aside and escape it. That building meant so much to him, and he was unceremoniously chucked out like, honest to God, the trash gets a bigger send off on Tuesdays than Bob Lacey got. And that hurt. He had a lot of emotions around that that I completely respect. And we ended up Tony and I and our director, Heather FIR, our director of digital, ended up going to Bob's house and staying at his house for the whole weekend. And we just stayed up late drinking wine and telling stories and talking and laughing, and we had a little wake for the place, and then we moved on. Matt Cundill (host) 00:14:50 And you're not gone from Charlotte because you've reappeared at K 104.7. Oh, my gosh. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:14:57 So can I just tell you? So K 104.7 is a Beasley radio station. The program director is a freaking radio legend. Jack Daniel. I have one in my whole career to work with Jack, and I had just resigned myself to. Well, our paths are not going to cross. I'm just never going to get a chance to work with Jack Daniel, John Reynolds, Bill Shannon. These are radio people that in the Charlotte market, people talk about with reverence, whether it's other radio folks or advertisers business people in the community. I used to just go, what must it be like? You know, what must that be like? And a lot of the folks at the Beasley corporate level were people I worked with under the greater media years, like Heidi Raphael, for example. Buzz Knight was with Beasley for a while, and I adore Buzz, so I knew these were really good people. This is a great company. It's a female led company. And I would Daydream about, what would it be like to partner with Caroline Beasley? Well, that's never going to happen. And then when we took the show independent, I would say to Bob, all right, perfect world, anything's possible. And we would go 4.7. We would love to be, why can't we be on that radio station? And so when the decision came to separate from the link, we were very lucky that the management team at K had the same feeling. And best of all, and this was really important to me personally. When we first sat down to talk to them about bringing the show to Kay, they were adamant that there would be no headcount change. I don't want to see anybody lose a job. That's one of the negatives of being in syndicated radio. Often when we come in, somebody's going out. So ideally, my favorite situation is a radio station where the program director is doing mornings and running three radio stations. And we save that PD having to get out of bed at 04:00 A.m.. That's my favorite dream scenario. But with Beasley and Charlotte, they were really clear, hey, these folks that we have on the morning drive, they're great people. They're great radio people, and we're going to keep them. We value them. And they were actually and this is going to sound like total bullshit. I'm just making this up. When the news broke that we were leaving our former station, it was Phil Harrison, Mel Myers, who were doing mornings on Kay, who went to management and said, it's going to sound crazy, but what if Bob and Sherry and I can't even tell you what it feels like to go into that situation feeling like you're already part of a family and a team and you're all pulling in the same direction. It's a Kumbaya moment like I haven't had in radio in a long time. Matt Cundill (host) 00:17:50 You know, it's really good for the market. When you think of a Heritage morning show, if it disappears, the tuning disappears altogether because so much of your audience goes, well, I'm not listening to the radio anymore. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:18:03 Well, and it's especially interesting right now. So I'll share this with you because I think that a lot of radio people don't want to hear this, and it makes them so upset and uncomfortable and even angry. But let's be in reality for a minute. Early in the pandemic, we partnered with Jacob's Media on some pandemic research, wanted to get a snapshot of where our people are. They working from home, are they frontline? Are they essential? How are they using media in this completely unprecedented time? And we learned something that was fascinating and terrifying. The combination of the lifestyle changes forced on our audience by the pandemic and by the explosion of competitive options for radio streaming and podcasting and all of that, and the fact that our former radio station could not sustain a coherent format for more than a minute. One day you would tune in and it's Journey, and then the next day you tune in and it's Post Malone, and then you come back and you're listening to Nickelback, and then it's Alicia Keys and it was chaotic and the audience was exhausted from it. We ended up migrating about two thirds of our listeners to the podcast platform. And I looked at that and thought, well, they're not coming back to broadcast. Not easily because it's just like anything else. If I'm given the choice of three network TV stations and Netflix and I can set my DVR, my watch to catch young Sheldon, or I can watch any damn thing I want anytime I please at my own leisure on Netflix. The consumer behavior piece of this is huge. Once consumers, aka listeners, discover the joy and the power of demand listening, they listen to the music they want and only the music they want. They listen to the content they want and only the content. And it's on their schedule. They are completely, 100% in control. They don't come back. And that wasn't a fascinating thing to see in the pandemic. Then we partnered with Jacobs again about six months later, and it was holding true. So one of my great joys in partnering with Beasley and Charlotte is when we sat down to talk, I said, Guys, I just need to be super transparent with you about this Bob and Sherry audience. We can migrate them day part to day part, but I can't ask people that have been listening to us in the morning to switch to a different day part and never again download a podcast. That's not the world we live in anymore. And Bill Shannon, he was already there. I was braced for the long, sad radio faces when you even mentioned something that isn't radio. But they were there. They were like, yeah, we get it. We know. We understand. And the relief, I felt like, oh, my God, these are adult business people in radio. I'm dizzy. I need to sit down. And so I could tell right from that conversation, that okay. I'm with a group of people that understand that the world has changed. And once the world changed, once the world changes, it doesn't go back. Nothing ever goes back. Matt Cundill (host) 00:21:50 Yeah. There's a lot of companies that try to herd cats in order to get people to listen. You mentioned Intercom. They've been trying to drive everybody to their app for many years. I found it a frustrating experience that I can't get my favorite radio stations through tuning because they took the radio stations off there Virgo what happened to me. I no longer listened to those radio stations. And I found something else to listen to. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:22:13 That's the thing about you have to it really does come down to. And this is a challenge for radio. Radio is an interesting business because the people who love radio and the people that are left in radio at this point are evangelical. Like, we are the true believers. We are the people that did the time and temp and talked up records into hairbrushes as kids. Right. We are the passionate lovers of radio. But the love of radio can blind us to the realities of the business and the competitive landscape. Listeners are consumers who have a multitude of choices, and they are going to make the choices that most suit their needs taste and convenience. And it doesn't matter how much we beat our chests about how great radio is. The consumers are going to do what they're going to do, and our survival depends on accepting that. Matt Cundill (host) 00:23:12 And we're in an interesting moment right now because I don't know how many of us are accepting that humans are interesting in that you ask them, well, how many podcasts you listen to? Well, about six podcasts. And how many radio stations do you frequent? Well, six radio stations and your apps on your phone. Six apps on your phone get most attention. That's what we do. We gravitate to the places where it's easy for us to reach out. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:23:37 You know, here's the thing. I understand radio stations that make the decision to play 14 songs an hour. I get you. I hear you, boo. I got you now. Good luck with that because people have other ways of getting the music that they want. And then we've got a demographic problem in radio. Right. Who has a passionate relationship with radio, Gen Xers and boomers. As soon as someone wants to talk to me about programming to 17 year olds, I'm like, I'm sorry, I need to go now. I don't have enough life in front of me to give you that time. Good luck with it. I hope you succeed. I can't wait to eat my words when suddenly Zoomers think that radio is fun, and they put down their streaming and their phones and start waiting for a radio station to play their favorite song so they can record it. Those days are gone. Radio needs to be responsive to the way people consume media now. And I don't know what those answers are, Matt. I'm here with my thing, doing my thing, trying to make the best decisions and the best guesses. I have no idea what the rest of the industry should do, but I do know this playbook that's not the one to be picking up right now. Matt Cundill (host) 00:25:05 In just a second. More with Sherry, we talk about syndicated radio, life in the pandemic, advice for people who want to break out on their own. How is the Bob and Sherry show structured internally, and I'm not done asking about the Charlotte departure, by the way. You can connect to everything Bob and Sherry on our website@soundoffpodcast.com. In the meantime, just sit there, be pretty the sound off podcast. What are your business meetings like? There's air checks out there. There's less talk about the show, but then you've got this other side of what you have to manage, which is your business meeting. So who's in the meetings and what are you all talking about? Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:25:45 We actually do a lot of stuff at Bob and Sherry. In addition to the daily radio show, we have a couple of podcasts. We do a ton on the digital side with social. We have a subscription based newsletter where we do a ton of contesting. We do more contesting in the average quarter than some radio stations do all year. We did more contesting in the Pandemic than my former station in Charlotte did in like three years because we don't have to work our way up and down the corporate chain getting approvals. Right. So our meetings are great fun. We pitch ideas, we figure out, you know, the best angle, and then we deploy almost immediately. We don't just talk a good game, and then nothing ever happens. We're able to actually move it. Here's how the company is structured. It's me and Tony, Garcia and Bob. And then we have our director, Max. We have our new producer, Doc, who is amazed balls. We have another producer, Steven, who's based in Colorado, who handles our podcast stuff. We have a killer admin wizard based in Pennsylvania named Ashley. We have an incredible business manager who's based in Georgia, who worked for everyone from Jefferson pilot to CBS. She's just incredible. And then we have a handful of contract people that we have under contract that help us with designing ads and all of that sort of thing. And everybody's voices include it. All ideas are welcome. We tell people when they join our team. Welcome to Now Media. We try never to say no. So if you have an idea there's something you want to try or experiment. If you think you can improve on something, the answer is yeah, let's give that a try, because I think a lot of folks who have worked in radio for a long time, you can see that there's a little bit of a SAG. Their spirits are maybe not broken, but exhausted, because the answer is always no. There's no money, there's no permission, there's no approval, just no. We try to say yes, and we get ahead of ourselves a lot. We're such a small team, but we're doing so many things. Like during the Pandemic, I wrote a really fun cookbook for crazy cat people, and we asked listeners to participate. So we have people all over the country sending us in pictures of their cats going nuts in their kitchens and all of that. And we published a cookbook in the middle of the Pandemic that was a partnership between us and our audience. So projects like that, we have the freedom to do that, and everybody gets a vote. And it's made the job, which is super difficult, especially right now. It's kind of joyful because everyone feels like they're contributing and that their ideas are valued. Matt Cundill (host) 00:28:56 I think one of the best things about setting up the company, the way you set it up, but you never have to worry about moving. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:29:04 Yeah, that's the other thing. And just recently, I've seen some folks in our business who I really care about find themselves in a position where they had to make maybe not a great deal because they could not relocate their families. And that's just the nature of radio. But it's been such a great I'm very lucky. My career has been a little bit of a fairy tale because I've gotten to stay in this place where you see me. But my show is all over the world. I owe that to some really visionary management that I had supporting us early in our career. Nobody does this alone. And I was lucky. Luck is so much a part of it. I tell people that all the time. Bob always argues with me, luck has nothing to do with it, baby. Luck has so much to do with it. So much lucky timing. The people that we encounter along the way who course correct us or show us that this idea is the one to pursue and not that one. People who inspire you and support you. So much of that is luck. And we've been lucky. Matt Cundill (host) 00:30:20 Tell me about The Pandemic, because one of the things I've really enjoyed is watching your Facebook lives. Sometimes with a cocktail all getting together and the interaction with the listeners. I mean, to have a Facebook Live of 7800 people, which happened a few times, that's an extraordinary amount of people to pop on and say Hi. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:30:40 In the very beginning of The Pandemic, we made the decision, first of all, that we were going to find a way to keep the show going. And we knew a lot of people in our business who went on sort of a Corona vacation. They were working from home and they didn't have the capability to continue to broadcast, but we did. And The Pandemic, in a weird way was a blessing for us, Matt, because it forced us to completely and fully sever from the mothership and go independent. And it gave us enough runway to figure out the technical challenges. So in that way, again, that's lucky. Just lucky timing. But we were talking to our listeners. We've always been very engaged in social media. I mean, I mind everybody's business. I'm all over people. Right before you and I jumped on, I was posting on some teacher's Instagram how much I like what she posts. I've never met this woman, but I really feel these people out there. And we said, what if we're all cooped up in our houses and nobody can go anywhere and everybody's depressed? Let's throw a virtual party. And it was going to be a one time thing. So we had no idea what would happen. We were like, we'll just go on Facebook Live. It was the first thing we could think of. And everybody bring a drink and we'll have drinks together. And from that first one, it just took off. And people were like, okay, well, we'll see next week. And we were like, we just were going to okay, well, we'll do it next week. And then we did it the next week, and then we did it the next week. And then we thought, all right, this is super awesome. Let's keep doing this. And we started reaching out to people that we know and said, hey, we do this like little goofy, virtual happy hour. You want to come on and hang out. And people like the comedian Jeff Dunham, he was tired of being cooped up in his house in Texas. He was like, absolutely, I'm coming. So we've had singers and songwriters and comedians and all sorts of awesome people come on and play music and tell jokes and tell stories and give our listeners let's bring the world, let's bring a club party experience to you since none of us can go out anywhere. And it's just been a blast. It's been so fun. Matt Cundill (host) 00:33:08 Do you have any favorite affiliates that you've signed up in the last little while? Because, I mean, my favorite, as you know, is Holton, Maine. That's the first time I got to listen to you is when I would drive past there going through New Brunswick on my way back to Montreal. And that's where I first heard Bob and Sherry and Lo and behold, you've got three now in Maine, including Camden. But do you have any new affiliates that you signed up to go, wow, I'm in. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:33:31 Well, I was super excited when we added Albuquerque for a couple of reasons. New Mexico is one of my favorite States in the whole country. It's just so incredibly beautiful. I have driven New Mexico East to west and west to east probably half a dozen times in my life. That's how much I love it. And, of course, Roswell, because, you know, I am with the aliens. I'm a believer. And the program director at our station in Albuquerque is a gentleman that I'd worked with in the past who I really liked, Chris Abrams. And it was like old home week to be able to reconnect that's. One of the other cool things about syndication is this business is a small town and you work together and then you separate and maybe you never see each other again. But we reconnect with folks a lot. Albuquerque was a huge gap for me for that reason. I have family in Minneapolis. That was huge. I have family in Ventura, California. That was huge. I started my TV career in Wilmington, North Carolina. That was huge. It's not BS when I say, like, I'm really attached to all of our stations. We have a station, an I Heart station in North Dakota. And the program director there is just one of my favorite women in the whole wide world. And she and I were on a Zoom not that long ago, just commiserating about radio in the pandemic and life in the pandemic. And these are my people. I can't even imagine my life or career without these folks. So it's been pretty awesome, even with all the challenges. Matt Cundill (host) 00:35:16 So shout out to Z 94 and Alison. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:35:21 Yeah. And you learn a lot. I've learned so much prepandemic Matt. We traveled a lot. I've just crisscrossed the country, visiting stations and meeting people, and I've never had a single encounter where I really didn't learn something that stayed with me about this business and different perspectives on what radio means to people in different communities. That has been the best thing ever. Because if I only knew what I could see and experience where I live, if I only understood radio as a listener, it would not be the same thing as understanding what radio means in a community where a station might only have a couple of full time employees and seemingly they work 24/7, but they know everybody in town and they're engaged and connected with everyone in town. And the pride that you feel and being part of that community, that is humbling. And it keeps you from, frankly, just turning into a giant dickhead, which is an easy thing to do in our business. Matt Cundill (host) 00:36:35 Five years from now, are you going to look back at this pandemic time and would you be able to say that the pandemic accelerated your departure from WLNK? Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:36:46 I will look back on this pandemic. So professionally and personally, the pandemic is two different things for me. Professionally, I am in debt to this pandemic in a lot of ways because it forced our hand and forced us to figure some stuff out that we needed to do and we had no incentive to be as aggressive as we had to become. It also reminded me at a time when radio is not the sexy medium right now, right? I mean, you know what I'm talking about. It's not the shiny new toy. That podcasts are for people and screaming. Matt Cundill (host) 00:37:27 Well, it's no clubhouse. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:37:29 Oh, it's not clubhouse. Yeah. Radio is that old standby from your grandparents age, right? It's not a sexy, shiny new toy. But one thing that the pandemic really brought home for us at the bottom, Sherry Show, is folks, especially when they're isolated by circumstances, crave and need human connection. And we have listeners. I just get all emotional when I think about it. Who, for example, are with us for our weekly happy hours and we are the only social outlet they've had in the pandemic. If you live alone and you work from home, what's this past year been like for you? You think about that, right? What's this year been like? It's been incredibly difficult. And we are reminded that the medium of radio is this incredible thing. It's so human and emotional and meaningful. We really connect as human beings through this medium. Now, the business of radio whole different conversation. The medium of radio, just this incredible thing. The pandemic was a big reminder of that. So a lot of good things came out of that. Did it accelerate our departure from the Charlotte station? I can't speak for what the new owners of that station, what's in their head? I don't know. But for us, it helped my team catch up to me in terms of being ready to leave. And I would say that it probably did accelerate their decision making process because, let's face it, freefall might be too strong a word for what a lot of radio stations are experiencing. But in a world where businesses are shut down, there's no sporting events, there's no movies, there's no concerts. You're not doing community events. People are not buying jewelry, maybe. And all of that impacted the sales departments of radio stations and has been incredibly stressful. So, yeah, no doubt that the pandemic was a factor for them, but that's their movie, not mine. And I genuinely wish them well. That's not bullshit. I genuinely wish them well. Matt Cundill (host) 00:39:59 How did you manage to keep the news of the Charlotte departure and the effect it has on the whole show away from all the affiliates? Because it's not just one radio station in Charlotte. There's so much out there. And, of course, then you're starting to get all the blowback on social media. Where are you going? How can I listen to you in Charlotte? And then people from across America are looking going, what's going on? Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:40:20 Oh, yeah. Okay. Wild story. I knew at the end of March that our last day on that radio station was going to be Friday, April 30. And the new management said to me, how do you want to handle that? And I was like, you know what? We're just going to do our show like we always have until Friday, April 30, and then we're going to be gone. I didn't want any drama. I didn't want any negativity or any ugliness. I just didn't want it. So that was the plan. And then they terminated an employee who was very unhappy and leaked it to the local press. So I took my daughter to visit a College and was on the road when my phone started blowing up. And, you know, there's a rumor. Can you confirm? Can you can? Oh, my God, no. You are not following me onto this College tour. So Tony and I talked about it, and we were like, well, we didn't mean for it to go this way, but now we have to deal with it. So we took their call and talked to the press, and the story blew up before I was even back from touring Seaton Hall. And it's an unusual feeling that I don't recommend to get a push notification on your phone announcing that you've lost your gig. That's kind of horrible and surreal and also hilarious at the same time. And of course, when the news broke, it looked to people who didn't understand or know the way we were structured, like the sky was falling and that it was over for us. I didn't want to be unpleasant because I have a lot of people that I care about who work at the former radio station. I did not want to be negative about it. And so we just tried to ride it out. We dealt with our listeners one on one. We're not going anywhere. It only affects this market, blah, blah, blah. It was really challenging for Bob especially. That kind of attention was really difficult and very surreal. And of course, I knew that we had been talking to other companies and did not want to say that because I thought it would be more dignified to take the high road. But up here on the high road, your nose will bleed, buddy. This air is thin. The high road got a little challenging at times, but it all worked out. And you know what? Again, we didn't mean for the story to break the way that it did. We didn't mean for any of that to happen, but it ended up being the best thing. So you trust the universe to know better than you do. It was chaotic. We had our hands full for a couple of weeks. Matt Cundill (host) 00:43:31 Where is your daughter going to College in the fall. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:43:34 Okay. So I'm really proud of her mom brag time. This is my daughter, Karen Mia. She's an incredibly hard worker and incredibly diligent student. Her whole life is dance and homework. She was offered a scholarship at Seaton Hall and another scholarship at Watford College, which is in South Carolina. She wants to be a prosecutor. So we visited both schools, and it's not fair to Newark, New Jersey, that it doesn't look its best. At the end of March, it was like being in a Sopranos episode. And that Wafford when we visited there looked like the set of a movie about College. And I also think Matt that maybe Carry Me wasn't ready to be quite so far from home. Seaton hall is about a 1314 hours drive. Wafford's about an hour and a half. So I'm very proud to report we have a Wafford terrier in the house now. I'm super excited for her. Matt Cundill (host) 00:44:35 You were talking about a College tour that has sort of gone a little bit wrong, where something unexpected came up, and the only other one I could think of was Meadows Sopranos College tour when Tony headed up to Maine and then ran into an old gangster. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:44:51 Had to whack a guy, right? Matt Cundill (host) 00:44:53 Yeah. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:44:54 I was so angry that this leak to the press and this drama with that former radio station intruded on my weekend of touring Seaton Hall with my child, I was sideways. And, you know, the Philly. I keep the Philly in control. But when the Philly comes out of me, I'm like, I'm looking for a fight. I was really unhappy about that because it cast a shadow over the weekend and my phone just blew up for three solid days. But it all worked out, and it worked out for the best. Our plan to just let it quietly fade off into the sunset was probably a terrible plan. It's a good thing that it didn't succeed. Matt Cundill (host) 00:45:42 Tell me a little bit about the podcast you have going on. I mean, I heard the podcast that I had to listen to, which talked all about your departure from the radio station. That was one of the more recent ones that I've listened to. But podcast is coming out. You've also got Fun Size. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:45:57 Yeah, we do. We create a ton of content here, both audio content and written stuff and video and all of that. We're pretty ambitious for a small company, the podcast we really, really love because again, recognizing the changing landscape of commercial radio, I don't have to agree with twelve songs an hour to understand why that's a strategy. But that's not what The Bob and Cherry Show does. We're not going to talk for three minutes an hour and play music. That's just not what we do. So the podcast is two things for us. The regular Daily Bob and Sherry podcast is a free floating digital affiliate, and people use it that way, in fact. And it's a little bit alarming the degree to which some people have shifted completely to the podcast away from broadcast. But again, it comes down to consumer expectations. If you tell people you're something, you got to be that thing. You can't tell people we're playing your favorite songs from the 90s and then roll up in there with a horse with no name. You have to have a musical image and then deliver on that for your listeners, or they go find Bobby Cherry on the podcast. The podcast allows us to do the kind of spoken word content that just doesn't really have a home anymore in commercial radio. So we really love it. It's more who we are as storytellers. And I can't imagine not doing it honestly. There are just so many things that don't belong on the radio that belong in that space. And we love it as you know, Matt, because you know me like I'm a giant podcast listener and have been for forever. Love, love, love could listen all day long to people talk and telling stories. And so, of course, it would make sense that we would be in that space, too. And we're doing some things podcasting that are we're experimenting with some things that are interesting. We're doing regionalized advertising in our main Bob and Cherry podcast and experimenting with that in addition to the national stuff that we do with Westwood One. I would say this to people that are thinking about going out on your own. You'll never work harder and you'll make less money than you think you can live on while working harder than you've ever worked. But the freedom that you get from that is not just the freedom to quit early and go get a haircut. The freedom that comes from that is the freedom to follow an idea and to experiment and to risk failing without losing everything, because not every idea is great and not everything you try is going to work. And that knowledge that, well, let's throw it out there. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work and it's not. The end of the world is incredible. And how many people working inside a corporate situation can say that? Usually when Tony and I are batting an idea around, we go, well, it's the worst that can happen. It won't work. Let's put it out there and see what we get. That's like play as much as it is work. We all know people that have so many wonderful ideas and they're exploding with creativity and energy, but there's no outlet for it. There's no home for any of that. When you're out on your own, you can do that. You just have to understand that you're going to work hard. Matt Cundill (host) 00:49:44 There are an awful lot of people who are in radio who are listening to this. What do you want them to know? Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:49:51 Well, I just want to tell my fellow radio people, don't wait for permission and don't wait to be asked to dance, because that's probably not coming. Permission. Definitely not. And don't wait for somebody else to invent it and show you the way. You may have to be the person that finds the way. When I think about, like, okay, how could someone who has no alternative revenue stream, how could they begin this process of going out on their own? I mean, there are some strategies that you could look at, you could incorporate or become an LLC, and then the radio station contracts your services, and that leaves you the freedom to own your digital rights to do that podcast that you've been daydreaming about to go out and pursue. Like, I know a lot of radio people are also becoming experts in the social and digital space. When you're your own thing, you can go out and you can do all of that. Nobody owns you. Nobody can say, no, we own that, and you're not allowed to have that. And for corporate radio, you're welcome. Because if you have great creators that are not on your books as salaried employees and employees receiving benefits, everybody wins here. They have their freedom and their creativity and their ability to go out there and beat those bushes and earn a living and you have reduced expenses. Human beings are the most valuable resource or radio station has and the most expensive resource. And there aren't enough human beings working in radio now. And that's a problem. And I think we all can hear it right. As creators, it's on us to find the way. It's not on them to show you the way. They're not going to. It's on you to find the way. And I promise you, it's worth it. It's just hard. But you know what's hard? What's hard is going to a job every day with your heart in your throat because you're not sure if today is going to be your last day. That's hard, too. And so when you look at those two flavors of heart. I'm working and I'm busting my ass, but I'm chasing the things I believe in and I'm chasing my dreams. And every now and again I'm bringing something home and I can feed the family versus I wake up every day with a sick feeling that today could be the end. Which kind of hard are you up for? Pick your flavor of hard, and then you know where you are. So that's what I would say to my fellow radio people. Figure out which version of hard you can live with, because there's no escaping it. It's one or the other. Matt Cundill (host) 00:52:34 I think the second version causes cancer. Not a scientist nor a doctor, but I think the stress will kill you. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:52:44 I agree with you. I think we all know an awful lot of really wonderful folks in this business whose health has been destroyed. It's not good for you to work every day with your heart in your throat. How can you be your best? And the problem, Matt, is that when people we have a situation now, and it's true in other industries, but we're talking about radio. We have a situation now where people are so overburdened and so scared and so stressed out. They're in constant fight or flight mode. And when you're in flight or flight, you can't be creative. You're just trying to survive. Right. So how many days and weeks and months and then years. Can you sustain fight or flight, no matter how much you love the medium of radio? And I get that it's not sustainable. The thing that I say to people is try to not let how much you love radio as a medium blind you to the realities of radio as a business, because the two are very different things. If you love the medium of radio, good, because you won't survive long without that love in this business. But the business and your love of the medium, they're never going to meet, they're only going to continue to divert. You've got to take care of yourself. You've got to accept that the model is changing right in front of us. And if you don't believe me and I don't know how you could not look at the trades, wait for the push notification that tells you X number of employees were laid off today by such and such company. Look at the world of the whole explosion in voice tracking. Pay attention. This is really happening. This is not a drill. This is happening. It's not too late. But what you're doing every day scared out of your mind, you can't sustain. Matt Cundill (host) 00:54:44 Sherry, thanks so much for being on the podcast. I totally appreciate it. And I love having you on. Sheri Lynch (Guest) 00:54:49 I'm so glad to see you, Matt. And I have to say, the pandemic has been good to you. Your skin looks amazing. You're bright eyed and alert. As the vet would say, you look like you've had not a bad run of it? Hopefully? You're not a seeding? Inferno? Of madness? That you're concealing? Matt Cundill (host) 00:55:03 It's just a ring light and a shade? The sound of podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill Produced by Evan Surminsky Social media by Courtney Krebsby Op Another great creation from the soundoff media company imaging courtesy Core Image Studios there's always more@soundoffpodcast.com.

Jeni Wren Stottrup is a creative. That comes with a lot of things ranging from being exquisitely detailed to sometimes scattered; thriving off a full inbox with tasks perpetually nearing completion. Jeni is the coach behind The Podcasters Forum and host of Gritty Birds on podcast and YouTube. She helps podcasters find their voice as a coach, through content marketing, speaker training, tech training and mindset coaching. She brings skills from over 20 years in the music industry as a singer, festival producer, journalist, in media sponsorship and as a content creator. Podcasting for close to a decade, she has led workshops, and stayed active as a podcaster, producer, editor, narrative radio producer and coach for the last several years. Jeni knows what it’s like to go through the ups and downs of creating a show that sticks and creating a mindset for success. Wren Stottrup has spoken nationally at conferences including Podfest and She Podcasts on mindset, content creation, production skills and branding for the last 5 years. Over the years she’s worked with a multitude of partners, including major brands like RME Audio and Mackie. She supports podcasters through coaching and courses at her company The Podcasters Forum. This spring she is relaunching Gritty Birds, focusing on creative recovery. In this episode, you will hear how and why Jeni got into podcasting. A confessed fan of public radio, she wanted to parlay her podcast work on to the airwaves. She eventually did find her way on to XRAY-Radio 91.1, a community station in Portland where she produced shows. Jeni is also a singer and performer. Here's the (re)launch of Jeni's Gritty Birds Podcast in YouTube form. And here is some of her music. Transcript: Tara Sands (Voiceover) 00:00:01 The Sound Off Podcast. The podcast about broadcast with Matt Cundill starts now. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:10 Jeni Wren Stottrup is the owner of Gritty Birds and the Podcasters Forum.com. She's all about creativity and coaching and helping you overcome obstacles. Unlike so many of the people I've met who went from radio to podcast, Jeni readily admits that she got into podcasting to land at public radio. She's one of the very best at handling audio and refining sound. In fact, she's a self-admitted audio nerd. She's worked at KXRY 91.1 Xray Radio in Portland, and she's also a singer. You know what the problem is with some creative types? They want to do everything. But is that a problem? No. No, it is not. So here she is, media content creator, artist, media coach, producer, podcaster, and the owner of Gritty Birds and the Podcasters Forum, Jeni Wren Stottrup, who joins me from her studio in Portland, Oregon. What did you study at the University of Iowa? Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:01:11 I studied voice and political communications. I developed Nodules my first year. So when I made the joke, what didn't I study? I didn't know what to do when the Nodules happen, and I really thought a couple of main routes. One was journalism, the other one was law. So I ended up deciding political communications because I didn't have to decide. And then my Masters is in Montessori education because the economy had crashed and that particular mode of education, we had friends of our family that helped found the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, schools. And the Milwaukee Institute of Montessori is one of the best in the world. So I spent a year in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, there going and studying that. And that was a huge time of a lot of studies, people exploring the brain, trying to figure out why people think and do the things. It's very fascinating. So that was when I first got a couple of years before that, I started to get into meditation through my teacher. So I'm a person who loves to learn, that'd always been a part of my life. And I feel like I'm just starting to have all the pieces come together because in these days you don't figure it out right away half the time. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:02:24 I was wondering when your first exploration with audio was, but I know you've been a singer and that's something you've probably done for many, many years. Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:02:33 Yeah, it was when I was really little, but then there's different elements of it. My dad was a teacher, but he was also, like, he was a science teacher, and then he was also the computer guy. He was the one who taught everyone in the district how to use Apple computers when it first happened, and he taught it at the College. There was a couple of things when we were really young that he made a decision on. One was to not do that anymore, and the other one was to just not drink because he wanted to be there in our lives. I mean, he still worked all the time, so I can't imagine if he'd done either one of those as well. But it was neat because I always had access to those tools and like we had Internet before anyone else did. I mean, like before anyone else did. Like the farm networks were the only people because on the farms nobody could talk to anyone, so they had Internet and they could justify it. And it was neat. But I would also have like tape recorders. And so my grandfather would record to micro disc, like his talks. So, you know, it'd just be like listening to We Sing tapes, singing along, or you make little recordings of things. I don't have any of those still, but that was kind of where it started. And then I would do audition recordings and other people would push play on those. That was through high school. So recording was always really key and important to me because I knew the value of having a good recording for audition tapes. So when I was heading into College, I made sure that my senior recital was recorded. And when I was heading to graduate undergrad, I made sure that I still did a senior recital so I could get the recording. That was part of my plan. And my aspect was always having media, having good photos. And when I moved out to Seattle, that was when GarageBand was starting. So my dad got me a computer and I went to a used place and I got an interface and a mic and I had GarageBand, and then I started recording myself. So that was towards that 15, 16 years ago period. And I did a little bit with it, but not a whole lot until I ended up in Portland. Just a lot of dabbling for a few years. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:43 So is Portland the first place that you really start to dabble with audio in a professional sense at XRay FM? Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:04:51 Yes, in Portland, but not at XRay, no. So I had produced and recorded my record. I worked with my friend Matthew, and he and I were in the studio together and know every element of it. And he said because of the fact that I did stuff on my own, just on my computer, and then I would go and record in other people's studios, when I would get hired for things. In my head, I thought that I would go ahead and be that person. And Matthew was really insistent that I learned those tools. And I fell in love with the studio. So when I ended up at XRay, it was actually because I couldn't be on stage anymore because of my panic attacks. I didn't share that with anyone because there was a lot of feelings around all of that. And so radio had already been happening. I was already getting interviewed. I already knew the radio community. I already knew the media community, even before I started the podcast, I was being called a media Maven because I was writing- it was very involved and media was something that I always felt really naturally understanding of because of the fact that I had done that in my degree, my brain really works that way. And I've been doing media and being interviewed since I was eleven. So it was just like, I was in theater and I always had main roles, and we were a small town, but we had a lot of good things. It wasn't like anything gigantic, but it was still having your photo taken and people interviewing you about things. So it just was very fun for me. And music at the time also had a really good media scene. Finding how that goes, that changes a lot of things. And so XRay. I put out a season, and then I taught for a year, had a panic attack twice in the classroom, once after school, once, like late in the day, both when I was sick, essentially a trauma response. And I lost my job. And at the end of it, I was like, okay, we're going to just dive back into this podcast. And I partnered with some friends who run a DIY label self group, my really good friend Chris. And they were doing the recording still because I hadn't used a Zoom recorder. I didn't know how to do that. I wasn't mixing my own. I wasn't doing any kind of repair at that point. And so I recorded them all at like a crazy, insane low volume. My friend Rob ended up saving them. And it's funny because now I'm just like, oh, I know exactly what I do to fix those. But I had seven interviews, and I interviewed. We put on a showcase at Tree Fort Music Festival in Boise. And then I had those seven bands. And then I also interviewed seven more, some larger bands as well, and then pitched those to X Ray. I knew one of the women on the board, just kind of, like, ended up at her shows a few times. I was like, yeah, what's going on? Yeah, just got these interviews. I was trying to be as chill as possible, but it ended up being a good situation. And after that set of interviews, I did a couple more, and they were like, hey, this is what we're pitching to you. We'd really like to have you get trained as narrative. We have this NPR producer here. And so I spent that summer training the narrative, and that was how that journey began. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:08:02 When is that moment when you first fall in love with podcasting enough to know, yeah, I'm going to do this for a very long time. Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:08:09 I never thought I was going to do it for a very long time. Podcasting was a means for me, I thought, to be able to get into public radio. So I wanted to work for public radio really badly. So all that journey with narrative was like, okay, this is where I'm heading toward it. I feel like I'm really just starting. I know it's been like eight, seven- been a few years, and there's a lot of things I love about podcasting, but the thing I love about podcasting is its freedom. And in the early days, I loved all the meeting the people. I loved things about the forum, but I was also doing things that had to be for radio. So there was like a time period. A lot of the things that I loved about podcasting just weren't there. And even after we're doing partnerships with RME, I'd say that it's been working with folks and getting less rigid. When I say falling in love with the medium itself and the freedom of it has been in the last few months, I'm like, I'm going to put out the show. But here's the cool thing. I'm allowing myself to not be so strict about what it's going to be in the beginning, because I'd always been a- this is my album and its concept. This is my show and its concept. Or I experimented with things like with streaming, and I'd have little pieces of things that would come out, but they were very sporadic. So to say, I'm going to release every Tuesday, and it's going to be the video that's going to come out a little bit later, and it's going to be what it is as it develops. It's really free. It doesn't have to be 15 minutes, one's 15, one's 20. And I think that's probably one of my favorite things about it. I like talking to people. That was always really fun. I loved the travel. But did that have to do with podcasting? Not necessarily, I would say, as I've been able to play more with creating without the same limits. That's my very favorite thing about it. On top of those other elements. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:10:04 Do you consider yourself very audio agnostic? Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:10:07 No, I'm a religious one about it. I'm very religious about my audio. Like me saying, I'm not going to be structured- I've spent countless hours in the last few weeks trying to get my templates down and messing around with things to make it perfect. I can't let it go. I'm still working on that. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:10:25 How do you view the fundamental differences between radio and public radio, for that matter, and podcasting? Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:10:32 Well, there are a couple of big ones that I was affected by that I think are important to note. One had to do with funding. When you're on radio, you can't have advertisements for your own show unless it's underwritten just FCC laws. That meant that if I was to want to have Patreon, I had to do everything separately. I could never go to both. I couldn't just produce something and send it out. And this is important to note because especially five, six years ago, the tools just weren't as easy for things like transcripts. So by the time you got to that point, you were just tired. The other one was that you have a very strict amount of time that you're in. So it needs to be 29 minutes and 30 seconds. You can't have it be less because you're going to have the bumpers. There is no flexibility. So that means you're always thinking about what you're cutting or what you need to add to get to that. And because of those two things, it really affects the work and the content that you're doing. And then I guess the third thing is the fact that you're doing it on a timeline, which is a really good exercise to do. But it's also just all those three pieces. It's a lot of guidelines that are, again, good for an experiment and getting you really good at certain elements. But it does make it trickier to get funding and finding those outside pieces because you are always trying to get a good piece as good as possible to the radio and you don't have the numbers that you can share. You can't go to your stats and tell people this is how much I did. You just have to kind of have faith that people are listening, which, I did have really good engagement on my socials. I just couldn't tell anyone an advertiser other than saying I'm on radio. I really don't know how many people I'm reaching. I don't know if they're really listening, I would hear about it. But there was no way for me to organically know this. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:12:19 You touched on transcription, so tell me a little bit about that pathway to achieving more transcription. So we just made it so our podcast has transcription available every week. So you're like the second or third episode that is going to be transcribed and people can find the transcription of this particular show at the bottom of the show notes of this podcast at soundoffpodcast.com. Give people an idea about how important transcription is going forward. Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:12:47 Well, there's a couple of reasons why it's important now and why it used to be really difficult and why it's so wonderful that we have the tools that we did. So five years ago, six years ago, really when I was producing a narrative show, you cannot produce a narrative show in a week without a transcript. And when I say in a week, it's not in a week, it's in a month. And there are two ways you could get a transcript. You could do it yourself or you could hire somebody and spend $150, which no, but I had a volunteer team. This was something that was great about XRay. But even with all the volunteers, the last 15 minutes was never done, ever. And that was so important because I needed to be able to script and move the pieces together. Because when you interview somebody for narrative, you don't always know what you're going to get. It's a little bit less of a structured interview because you're trying to get certain emotional elements, things that can fill out a story. So you might be adding extra questions because you just don't know. You might have an hour and a half if you're really having to bite the bullet with somebody. And it's so key to have that transcript. And there might be something that lasts five minutes and usually there is that you end up using. Like a lot of times the last ten minutes was the most important. So it was a massive- it was like 15 hours. It takes an incredible amount of time to transcribe if you've ever tried it. I don't recommend it since you don't have to. The second thing is, back then we're talking about not even that long ago, because you didn't have the tools to make a transcript, that meant you didn't have the tools to read a transcript. And I mean digital ones as well. Yesterday I was in the post-run for the Claim Pod Parity, which is all about inclusion and equity for women and non binary folks in the podcast industry. And in it Elsie Escobar from She podcasts in Lipson said that she discovered something very interesting as she was going through her stats. It's that Apple is now reading from your episodes, your show notes, and the episode itself your keywords. And I kind of knew this because I met somebody who runs something called Fathom FM. Everything's searchable now, if we're talking about it and using a keyword. Podcast transcripts. If I just keep saying podcast transcripts, that's going to start popping up in search results, that's new. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:10 So if I say podcast transcripts, we can add on to it a few more times by saying podcast transcripts. Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:15:16 Yeah, right. But if we say it too many times, SEO is going to be like, you jerks, you're keyword stuffing. So today it's also important because of the fact that we are now able to have these elements searched. And your podcast SEO before never had anything to do with that. So people would be like, what about podcast SEO? It doesn't exist. It's just SEO and it goes to your website. So transcripts are really important on your website. And they still are. Because remember that if somebody is getting sent to your podcast, they're still getting sent to the Apple link. And if you want them to be helping you going to your website and getting your traffic where you're getting your information for your advertisers and all those things, you still want to have that transcript on your web page because that is going to add to the words that say this is somebody that you do. And whatever those things are that you want to rank on and that you're in the right category to possibly rank on, then those are really, really key still, transcripts are, to be able to get you into the mix. Podcast transcripts is probably going to be a somewhat harder one just because that's a huge topic. But there might be a word. If you go to something like SEM Rush, you can try to find stuff that are in a category that you can be able to get up on because the more of them that you start, the small- It's like a video game. You win the first levels before you get to the fifth. And transcripts become really important for that alone. And it's also, remember that people like to have a guide map. And this is a lesson my dad's taught. This is what I've gotten in my writing. Everything. People want a guideline. And you've got show notes. Sure. But an easy way to get your show notes is as you're going through your transcript, you can have all those markers. And like, if you're doing YouTube, those markers actually get marked in your YouTube script, and then you can just take those time stamps and put them on the top. All of them are helping your listeners have an easier experience. And every one of those are positive for getting your listeners towards you. So there's, like, a lot of different reasons. And then finally, if you want to have a socials, this is like the best tool is everyone's like, I don't know what's right for my socials. I don't know. Just like, get a template from Canva. Figure out one you like. They've got so many. Do a carousel, take a piece of things that you learn from a guest on there. Like, oh, you ask them, what are the three top things about a transcript? I just named three of them. You have a transcript of that, copy the words from that, put them into that social thing, and then save it, release it that week or on another day every week. You should have something like four clips. I did that for my clips now, and now I'm pulling the socials from each one. And if you do that for every week, you're not releasing four of those every week. That's ridiculous. And in three months, the people aren't going to remember what they saw three months ago. You're going to have so many social posts. So there are so many uses for transcripts as well. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:18:16 So you've already helped us out with transcripts. But I feel like I skipped a step because I did remind people a few weeks ago about why you have to have one. But if you could do this and back me up, that would be great. Why do you need to have a website for your podcast? Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:18:29 You can have a very simple website when you start that just gets people going. But again, it's like a video game. You start off with level one. You get comfortable there. You start feeling like you're stepping up and people are still going to somebody else's website giving them your traffic. They are not interacting with you. You need them to interact with you for your show to have validity for advertisers, for you to have validity for yourself. You want to have their email, you need their mailing list, you need their numbers. Otherwise, you're always relying on other people, and you can't grow when you don't have those things. So you need to have your hub that brings people to you so you can have that relationship and send them where you want to. And that's not a manipulative, like sending them where you want. It's just like, people like to know where to go. So if they go to your website and you're a business owner and they know that because your podcast kind of expresses that, then they can come to you. And if they want to know where your transcripts are, they can go there. But you need to be in control of your own house, essentially. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:19:42 So speaking of house, this gets me back to where I've spent the last two years, which is in my house. I ran into you a number of times on Clubhouse, for instance, which was an app, and I think you were doing quite a lot of fun things on there, and you and I interacted a few times on there. So overall, how would you rate the Clubhouse experience from when it first started to- are you even using it as much today? Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:20:08 I'm not. I also took quite some time off so I could get my stuff together. But also I had launched my company, the Podcasters Forum. I put it out in the world, but I didn't have a very clear identity on certain things. And I've been experimenting so much that it was really- I decided to step back and just figure out some bigger picture things, which was really great. So Clubhouse during that period quit taking over, as these platforms often do. It was a really wonderful thing at the time because people really wanted to connect them. I loved that about Clubhouse. And then it started to get really overwhelming. Being able to connect with people wasn't the same as it was, like, even in January. And at that time, people from the previous summer were like, oh, it's just not like it used to be. And so it got really inundated with so many messages. And now actually, I think it's almost back to some of the positives of it, but you just don't have as many people in it. And I was talking to- when I was at Podcast Movement, somebody brought up one reason they were like, it became- when everybody made their own clubhouse, it quit being as neat because you didn't get the main feed things, which were really cool. And yes, you had come to my place, come to my place, but you didn't have that community aspect of, like, where you had just a bunch of different sessions based on things you're interested in. And so it just didn't become the place you were hanging out in that it was at first, but I think it's still a really cool tool. I've really enjoyed seeing our friend Jodi be able to use it the way she has, and I've seen other folks continue to use it, and I think it's still valid. But like any new audio technology or social platform, things shift for different reasons, and a lot of it has to do with we're not all at home anymore. We don't all want to be on Zoom anymore. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:22:01 Shout out to Jodi Krangle, voiceover extraordinaire and master of Clubhouse. Yeah, tell me a little bit about the Podcasters Forum, because it was launched, I think, January of 2021, and I loved just hanging out with people. It could have been a Saturday, it could have been any day of the week, really, but met so many great people. So what were your takeaways from the entire project? Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:22:24 Well, the beginning of it, it was always meant to be a broader focus that came back into a clear message. I'm heading into primarily doing coaching and courses, and that's been something I've wanted to do for a little while. I've been editing, but I just don't want to edit full time. It doesn't use a lot of my gifts because I'm a very personal person. I love the creative side, and if I'm doing all the minutiae, as much as I actually don't hate it, it isn't a full use of my skills. So I've been thinking about what that transition looks like for a while and what exactly I wanted to focus in on. And so when it started, I had this vision of these monthly events, which is what the Saturday ones were. But then I'd also do Thursday live streams, and then I was doing Wednesday Clubhouse. I mean, I was, like, full-on in, as far as streaming and things like that, and it's kind of funny because I so was very self conscious. I had very major confidence things that were going on. And so I was, like, leading these with, like, I have so much anxiety, and it made me not feel in control of some of the presentations I was giving, which is really funny. And what I discovered in the whole journey is that what I need to be doing is what I should have always been doing, which is helping people with voice and speaking. And that also includes messaging. Like, if we're talking about SEO, that has to do with it, too, because how do you get your message out there? What are the messages you should be sending? How do you do it? How do you present? And how do you build that piece of confidence, which is what I built in the middle. The Podcasters Forum is still going to be focusing on courses and coaching, so the website is now up, and I've got a couple of different packages. I'm still doing editing, but I'm also focusing in on micro packages. So there's, like, your voice work, your messaging and then also audit. So like three, four small consulting packages and then it's trailer. I forgot the second one off the top of my head. Trailer imaging or this is the audio side for like the production ones. But yeah. So like, I made these micro packages because I just wanted to be really accessible. If you're looking at trying to get ten episodes done, that's $2,000. And a lot of podcasters are like, I just don't want to think about that. And so I was thinking first in the monetary terms, but the other part is that I think a lot of folks look at voice or like going into voice coaching or into all of this and saying, it's just making me sound good. I don't want to spend money on that. My audio is just fine. And I was always just like, yeah, your audio is terrible. I was always coming from a place of like, I worked in pro audio too. And I had really not remembered the most important piece that I've always had since I was young. I started performing when I was so shy, but when I got on stage, I was able to master the ability of comporting myself. And as I did speech and debate, I started to be able to master the ability to do that, especially in smaller like, big presentations. Speaking on my own things still made me nervous, but I also could do it. And these were the elements that I realized that this last year are a bigger piece of it. And sounding good is kind of like when you're doing a presentation and you also pay attention to how you look and you're not going to show up in a bad outfit, not because you're trying to look good, but because you have pride in it. And so the part about voice now and our messaging has to do with, I want to build up people who are empowered, powerful speakers who are looking to step into themselves, that are looking to step into their careers. Not just, I have a podcast and I want it to sound okay. It's like, what is the message that you're having? What is the way that we're presenting? How are we having it be more effective? And as we're getting into interviews or your setups, it's all of those things that have to do with empowerment. Not just like, how's your audio? Because those all come through and you'll see such a growth in your platform when you have a stronger sense of self and when you're able to believe that, because most people, they just don't fully and that's normal. We're talking about ego. And ego is such a terrifying element for a lot of different reasons, because we have all these messages that have been sent to us since we're little in our brains and nervous systems don't play around with it. And a lot of overcoming speaking work isn't just like practicing it. It's also just figuring out nervous system work. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:27:08 So how much of the panic attacks that you might have had in the past, or talking about nervous work and talking about performance, when you peel back the onion or you pull back the curtain on it, what percentage of that is fear of failure, or is it something different? Completely? Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:27:27 I would say fear of failure is a word that can be used to describe all of it in a very simple way. I think that's a positive way to say I'm scared of failing, and that can be for a lot of different reasons. So I'd say all of it comes down to that. Whether looking stupid or sounding dumb, all of it is the same thing. It's the same idea. So I think that that's a good header for all of it. I think you can get into more specifics, but fear of failure is so much of it. Do I look stupid? Am I putting myself out in a place that I don't know how to do things? All of it fits within the header. Fear of failure. I don't want to look like that again. I don't want to experience that again. All of it, 100%. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:28:09 Because that's the thing that goes through my mind right when I see you're on Clubhouse or Jodi's on Clubhouse. And should I put up my hand and should I talk? And is anything I'm going to say sound stupid, and am I going to come off silly in my living room with my cell phone on Clubhouse? It's almost irrational. Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:28:28 It is irrational, but that's our brain telling us, remember that time that my teacher made fun of me when I was in the classroom? That's going to happen again. We're there right now. Again. You're experiencing it! It's happening now, and it's worse! I've added more things into it! You have a cougar coming for you, freak out! It's all of those things. It's like your brain going back into where it was when it was caveman times. Your hippocampus does not know that space in time. Like the Amygdala says, I'm here right now in the same place that I was. My emotions are heightened. Your prefrontal cortex is like, I don't have judgment. And all those are coming together. When it's something that you had some kind of difficult experience with or that you didn't feel comfortable with, that somebody made fun of you or that it set off that fear sense in your body and not that happy sense. So your brain is always fighting towards dopamine or trying to get into endorphins or trying to get to your longer term things like oxytocin. It's really trying to get those chemicals, but it's always going to be also trying to go back to the caveman sense to get those, of what can I do to not have scary experiences happen again? And how can I pull you back from those and scare you off of it? Which is messed up, but it came from a good place. But it didn't serve us going forward, especially when there's just so many elements in the world and we're so public and we just don't have the same situation with media and connection everywhere and being in people's faces, et cetera. But the biggest one is, of course, the expectations of capitalism. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:30:11 In just a second, the value of taking a break from your creative work. The value of taking a permanent break from drinking. How to go next level on your podcast. And I'm about to find out what I missed at Podcast Movement last month. I participated online, but I'm still reluctant to travel. But that's going to change. And there's more. There's always more, including a transcript of this episode. And you can find that at soundoffpodcast.com. Mary Anne Ivison (VO) 00:30:41 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. The Sound Off Podcast. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:30:52 What did I miss at Podcast Movement? Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:30:55 There was like a YouTube presentation, which was kind of the big one because YouTube is getting in on podcasting. I would say a lot of it was just being around people and having discussions with people, post. It was really nice to be able to connect with folks that hadn't in a couple of years. A lot of people went to Nashville, but it was a ton more at Evolutions. Evolutions was also much bigger than it was even two years ago when I was there. The summer one is still the largest for the Podcast Movement. Of the events, I'm really excited about Podfest coming up. That's going to be fantastic, which is more indie focused, so a lot more of those relationships. Podcast Movement Evolutions is definitely very industry focused, especially being in LA. Next year it will be in Vegas. And I don't mean industry like you and I, I mean industry on the corporate level, but I definitely got some good takeaways from things. I didn't go to a ton of sessions. I tend to be a hallway person, but I worked a few rooms and had some good takeaways that were kind of more like niche to me. One was just a couple of tools in Descript, like I had not played with before that made clipping for small social media clips, like insanely easy. That was great. And I did that last night, and probably the quickest thing that I have done in all of my processes in the last three weeks. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:32:18 I was going to ask you about Descript because for somebody who does the editing, and now you've got this option to edit just the words. But I know that you're a very hands-on person, but what do you think of Descript? Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:32:31 I love Descript. I still don't do the audio cleaning in there. I use a couple of different programs, so I use the Adobe Suite, and I use Premiere as well as Audition. So I can put my audio into Premiere and clean up the audio or attempt to manipulate it. And then by sending it through like this interchange to Audition. And then I can go back to Premiere, I can export it all as one long clip and then go into Descript. And that's important for like a workflow thing with Premiere. But I still feel like for me the export thing with some of the other programs like Descript or even Premier Rush, which is the simpler version, they take forever. Premier is just some of those simpler programs. I mean, as far as the ones where once you learn how to do it, the export is so much faster. And last night I was like, I'm going to do color correction and send it into Rush. And then it was like, it'll be 28 minutes. And then I'm like, okay, I think it's time to learn how to color correct in Premiere. And the export was like, not as long as that. It still took about 15 minutes, but it wasn't 30. And now I have that preset. But Descript is so fantastic. Being able to visually cut things is amazing. And then I'll check those cuts because I can make the timeline of it become like an audio waveline in Premiere and then just make things a little longer or shorter. Like I can pull the sides out. So if something got clipped wrong or if I want a little more space, I can do that in Premiere. But it's just so nice, especially since when I'm doing solo ones, I'll do a couple of different versions, like how we're editing here. If there's something that we want to cut, somebody starts a sentence over, I can go ahead and do that. If I want to move a section, I can just copy and paste and move it. That's incredible. All of it just gives you a lot of flexibility. And then for social media clips, you can just copy and send it over to a separate composition, which is how they have them. And then just turn that into a long style one and export it and you got a video. It's so simple. And the transcripts are really great because I'm editing and reading it as I go, I'll just edit them as I'm going. And then I'll export that text document into Premiere, which also has good transcript. But I already know that that one is cleaned up. It's always calling it Pretty Birds. I need to have a thing with just the words that it tries to make my name. It's really funny. I hate when it calls it Dirty Birds because I'm like, no, that's not what the show is. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:10 Why did you call it Gritty Birds? Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:35:12 I've always been a person who gets things done. And Jeni Wren was my nickname in College, which then became my performance name. So when I was starting a new brand, I wanted it to be related to birds. I'm a social butterfly. That really fit, like messaging and all that. Still felt like a good connotation. And my friends and I were trying to find something that fit, that I was the person who got things done and I was always DIY or gritty really fit it because I wasn't afraid to sit there and do the transfer. There are just elements of it that I think a lot of people were like, I'm not going to deal with that. In the music world, a lot of that's kind of a necessity in order to you can't pay everyone to do all those things. So you had to have a lot of grit to succeed in the music industry. That was sort of the original tagline. And podcasters, especially the ones I work with, tend to be- have a little bit more income because they- have a lot more income because the businesses, they have a different focus. And with musicians, it's a harder sale because you're selling yourself and you're selling a product that doesn't have the same value that it used to. So you don't have as much control over what you're selling, so you don't have the money. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:36:24 What's your message to the indie podcaster? Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:36:26 Which level of indie podcaster? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:36:29 Intermediate, level two or three. So somebody who's been podcasting as an indie for three years and has an established show. Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:36:38 If you are finding that you're stuck in the middle, go back to your messaging. Make sure that your SEO and your messaging is working and that you have not just done it because it needs to. And I hit people on the early side of doing this. I say three years because that's the point where you might be getting a little lazy in it and there might be new practices that would really benefit you or simpler ways of doing it. I think that's something that we get into a head space of like, I know how to do it now. I went ahead this year and actually started listening to some new podcast audiobooks and reading up on it. Not just going to conferences, not just like reading up on articles, but because I wanted to get some new perspectives. I was like, wait, I've been doing this forever. Why am I sitting here being stubborn about how I know how to do things. Learn from other people who are also doing it really great. And then the other one is build some new collaborations. Probably the biggest way that I'm seeing- I'm hearing shows work. It used to be ad swaps, which is still a thing, but it's also now just straight show swaps. So like someone takes over your feed. There's a lot of that. And it's hard to get, whatever level you're on, to go to that next level is like surprisingly hard. Even if you're like, oh, it wasn't hard for me. That's cool. Remember that every person that said it was super easy for them, there are 99 other people that really struggled with that. And I don't say that as a bad way, I just say it as a remember, everyone struggles with something. So the comparison of, well, they did it. Let's not look at the anomalies and let's figure out, y'know, look at the things that are working more commonly so that if you get the anomaly, you aren't ignoring the things that work for other folks. Like making sure that your SEO is actually working or that you have- is there a simpler way to be doing your transcripts? Something to simplify your process and save some money? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:38:29 What's the rest of 2022 looks like for gritty birds and for you? Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:38:35 Wild, because it's still like a pretty- I was about to say it's the end of the year and I'm like, no it's not. I'm really excited about this year because I have finally stepped back into the world with a podcast and I was spending a lot of time over the pandemic, really nailing down my presentation because I learned a lot. That means my video is amazing. The way that everything comes together looks great. But more importantly, I'm putting it out. So I'm able to share these stories about how our brain works. Right now I'm really into the brain things and it's funny when I read people saying, in the beginning, everyone talks about the brain, but I'm excited to be sharing like these empowering messaging and to be able to get more into the voice work and to be able to start supporting people in these ways. And I'm excited to start taking on new clients in this way. I'm excited to speak more again. So Podfest is coming up after we get off this call. I'm finally reaching out because I'll be speaking at the Personal Development Con with Josh Kerry and then also doing a TikTok reels presentation for the Experiential Track for Podcast Editors Club. And I can't wait. I just am really excited to be empowering others through the things that I'm doing. It's been really fun. I'm happy that it's all accessible and up on the internet. And I said to myself, when it started, I'm like, if eight people catch anything, any of my things, that's okay because those eight people heard it. But that's like where you begin. You just have to say it's okay with where we're at because the point is not hitting en masse. The point is continuing to get the message out. I'm figuring if it's not quite connecting, seeing how you just slightly switch it up or what you're missing. The last two weeks, I haven't even sent out a newsletter yet in a year, and I also haven't done the social. I've been just gathering the materials, I've been gathering the plans, and as of like yesterday, they're just about all together. I'm always about two weeks to a month ahead of where I'm like, this Monday is when all this stuff is going to happen. And it's usually about two weeks to a month more realistically. But I get there and a lot of the things that delay it end up being opportunities or something getting presented in a new way or just really recognizing that I just need to take some space. Like this weekend, I need to ground. It's been a three week push and my routine is just completely off. I'm a very active person and I have not been able to get to the gym very much, and I haven't been, like, following a super healthy diet, which I normally do. So I'm excited to get back into my routines. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:41:14 It's funny you were talking about being active, and then I remember your adventures on roller skates. You went and reconnected with roller skating. Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:41:22 Yeah. And that was actually really huge because when you start a new thing, something needs to be fun and it can't be a chore. It gave me a quick switch that made me not feel like I needed to go hang out around people, which I was doing, which is a lot of the reasons I was drinking, because I just wanted to be around humans, even if I didn't enjoy the way it was happening, that was like, it was the bar was like the only place you could do that. And so I didn't want to be doing that anymore. That was clear. But instead of being like, I'm not going, it's like, oh, I'm going to go skating. But then it also put me very clearly in touch with my body, which was like screaming. And it made me actually start to heal it physically. So I had a major physical rehab through the entire year, which I'm still in, just because our bodies aren't as young as they used to be and you're always going to have little aches and pains. But roller skating is so fun. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:42:16 How wonderful is it to have been sober for one year? And what are your takeaways from it? Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:42:22 It's great. It was really challenging because there's a lot of elements in it that have to do with anxiety. But also I have PTSD, and I had it. That was kind of one of the reasons the things got to the point they were is I've been experiencing those symptoms for a decade and it was hard. The two got more mixed up than they already do. And it was just amazing to simply clean my house out and then reconnecting to things that- like all of this, going into talking about how we heal ourselves and stuff. It is not that I went through this journey and then suddenly discovered these things. I had not secretly to anyone who knew me really well. I was always been a spiritual person. I've always been a person who- I have ADHD. So when I was 18, I mean, I've gone to therapy since I was 14. So it's like I've been a person who has been about self development. I got into meditation. In fact, I used to teach it, but I hid those things because I felt a little embarrassed about all of it. And so now I feel like I'm embracing all the parts of me, finally, and being able to have that confidence that I didn't have before. And a lot of that had to do with the work that I chose to do and the people who supported me through that, not just like I quit drinking and that went through it, but that's something that I learned about the recovery process. And the idea of recovery doesn't- you don't even have to be a person who drinks to feel like you want to move through a piece of recovery. And I think that's something that- think of Gritty Birds as the show as creative recovery, because all of us live in a world where it's been hard. I remember early in the pandemic having a chat with a friend saying, there's going to be such a need for trauma-informed conversations post pandemic, because everyone went through something. Everybody went through transformation. Everybody learned something from it on some level. I don't know a single person that wasn't affected and didn't go through a personal growth journey, and most for the positive. I mean, for a lot of people, I'm sure that it got worse. But just because it got worse doesn't mean that it can't get better. Like, nobody has to live in those zones. Just because you went through something, It's not a terrible thing. I'm just normalizing that it's okay to go through a point of, like, reaffirming who you are. And I always thought people had it way more together than they did. And I'm glad that I don't live and prescribe by that anymore. Not because I think everyone's messed up, but just because I think we're all human. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:44:57 I remember in the early days of the pandemic, you had to fly back to Iowa to see your parents. Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:45:02 I mentally did. Yeah. It was during the Smokestorm. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:45:06 Yeah. You said I was worried about flying. And I said, hey, it's going to be okay. And I could say that because I had just flown and it was okay. Which also goes back to what you say, well, just because it was okay for you doesn't mean it's going to be okay for you. But I remember coaching you through it, saying, hey, everything's going to be okay. Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:45:24 It's interesting noticing, like, even the scripts in my head because they weren't things that I had. Like, these are things that developed in me later. But it has been interesting now post to be able to have a different look. I'll still experience things like when I'm tired, I've noticed a lot of self doubt, questioning myself, questioning intuition, and it just has to be like, hey, you're okay. You're just really tired. And that's the same thing with the pandemic. It brought up like, questions that just come up but they just got louder because there's a lot of other voices and people and especially in Portland, because so many folks were scared. It was, like, hard not to mirror everyone else's energy too. But it was okay. It was fine. I still haven't gotten COVID. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:46:07 I haven't either, but I think I've just been lucky. Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:46:10 I hear it's actually about somewhere around, like 65%, which I guess makes sense when you think about how many. But now you've got things like the flu going around. So I was actually at my chiropractor yesterday. He goes, numbers are so low that I actually would feel comfortable not having masks on in my office. He was like, It's crazy. It's in Oregon. We just opened back up, and in medical places, you still have to have them. And we're just at a point now where he's been so nervous. So it's amazing to have him not be nervous. I hadn't seen him in three months, but after this last trip, I was like, yeah, it's probably time to see him again because being a weightlifter now and all this stuff, it's like my neck is like, ahhh. I'm heading towards 40. I may not look it, but I'm headed towards 40. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:46:53 You're the second person this week who's thrown their neck out by lifting weights and had to go see a chiropractor. Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:46:59 I actually did it by skating on the first day that I was sober. And then, yeah, that was day one. So that was fun. But I also have flat feet and major pronation issues. Most of my things have to do with working on that whole situation constantly. So I won't injure myself again because I had two major sprains over five years. This is one of the other things that happened and why I mentioned, like, a physical rehab is, I had never gotten back in shape because it was just tiring. I kept injuring myself. I didn't think I'd ever get back to that, but now, y'know. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:47:31 Maybe we could set the date and finally meet in Dallas at Podcast Movement. Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:47:36 Yeah, hopefully we'll see. I want to. The hardest thing is that in post pandemic, like, I have a family reunion. My entire family is getting together here in Oregon. They're coming out, and we've gotten a bunch of cabins at a state park where one of my cousins got married. And then also my 20 year class reunion. And it's not just mine, it's the class above and below. We decided just to put them all together. So there's some connection things that don't normally happen, and we'll see how that fits with the rest of everything. But I hope to make it to Dallas. I'm excited to be in Orlando, and then I'll definitely be out in DC for She Podcasts in the fall. So it's, like, crazy to be back at this place where I see one every two months because it just did not feel like I hadn't seen people or met them like our friend Larry Roberts. I didn't realize I'd never met Larry. In my head, because we've been, like, talking so much for the last two years after meeting through Joe Pardo and it just seems weird like meeting you and Jodi, for example, it would just be like really spread like, hey what's up? And be like, wait, I never met you in person? Or just seeing friends again didn't feel like it had been two years, because I've been now coming to these conferences for six years. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:48:53 I know I have to remember who I haven't met yet. Even thought they're my best friend. Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:48:55 I know! It'll come. I like it. It's a good space. I'd say this is probably one of my favorite things is, I just love the world and the connection because I have friends here and a lot of them do cool media things, et cetera. But I have such a common language with the people that I've met through podcasting, especially the ones that I become better friends with and it's always nice as a creator to have people who speak your language because if they're listening to your show they resonate with you and they speak your language. That's really cool because it's hard to be seen in your normal day-to-day because everyone around you shouldn't understand you, exactly. Because all of you are unique and that would be a lot of empathetic energy. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:49:41 Jenny, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. I really appreciate it. Jeni Wren Stottrup (Guest) 00:49:45 Yes. Thank you for having me on, it is a pleasure. I want to have you on about dreams. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:49:50 I love talking dreams. Tara Sands (Voiceover) 00:49:52 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 Sound Off Media Company. There's always more at soundoffpodcast.com.

The first time I encountered Lisa Guerrero was on my television in the late 90's when she was on the Best Damn Sports Show Period! I loved how it was a broadcast free-for-all that mixed in sports with pop culture and entertainment. You may have missed some of her other TV appearance as an actress, guest-starring in shows such as Fraiser, The George Lopez Show, and the In The Heat of the Night. She appeared in studio films like Batman Returns and Moneyball. In 1997, she began as a sports anchor on KCBS-TV and later KTTV. Beyond her time at FOX and her 2003 season with Monday Night Football, Lisa has been an investigative correspondent for Inside Edition since 2006. Lisa was nominated for a Prism Award for her story on the dangers of drinking at sea. She was also nominated for a Genesis Award for her investigation of horse slaughter farms in Florida. Lisa has brought attention to misogyny in the pro sports world as a reporter for Monday Night Football. Consider this interview to be a prelude to her forthcoming book about her life called Warrior: My Path to Being Brave. In this episode, Lisa talks about losing her mother at a young age from cancer, and her use of grief and theatre therapies to heal. Her first broadcasting opportunity came when she became the Cheerleader Director for the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons after cheerleading for 4 years for the Los Angeles Rams. She speaks of the challenges facing women in a prominently male workplace, including the criticism she faced for being a model in the Maxim and FHM magazines before being on Monday Night Football, the verbal abuse from her boss, and the anxiety that followed as a result. Therapy worked very well for her, and she realized that she wanted to pursue investigative journalism. Her traumatic experience from Monday Night Football made her, in her words, "more empathetic" and "a better reporter". For the last 15 years, she has been working as a correspondent doing undercover stories and investigative reports on Preacher Kenneth Copeland, Fashion Designer Peter Nygard, anti-mask wearers, and more. Here is the interview that is discussed in the podcast. Lisa interviews Preacher Kenneth Copeland and experiences some terrible behaviour from him. Here is an investigative report from Inside Edition in which Lisa appears to interview someone close to Fashion Designer Peter Nygard. Here is the interview with the anti-mask masker Lisa discussed As we mentioned on the show, Lisa is an authentic Twitter follow - Connect here on Twitter and Instagram. Here is a Tweet from her days as a Los Angeles Rams Cheerleader. Lisa doesn't hesitate to pull out the throwback pics! Finally, we could have spoken to Lisa for another hour on everything else that she has done. Did you know that Lisa is a singer-songwriter? The song she recorded with Keith Burns was the result of a bet. Check out how that all went down below. SHOW TRANSCRIPTION: Tara Sands (Voiceover) 00:00:01 The Sound Off Podcast. The podcast about broadcast with Matt Cundill starts now. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:00:11 Lisa Guerrero chases bad guys. The investigative journalist at Inside Edition is a YouTube sensation for her confrontational encounters with bad people doing bad things. I spent most of my 20s watching Lisa as a sports TV personality on the Fox show Best Damn Sports Show, period. Also in 2003 as a sideline reporter for Monday Night Football. Lisa tells her story of her broadcast career, the cheerleading and the theater in between, and the pivot in 2006 to Inside Edition. You know, even if you haven't watched the show, you know the theme. Lisa Guerrero joins me from her home in Los Angeles. Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:00:53 Well, I think I was blessed that my dad, who got his master's from University of Chicago in Social Services, immediately knew enough to get me into grief therapy at eight, and I was a pretty active kid and very creative, so he got me into theater therapy. We lived in San Diego, and there was a program at the Old Globe Theatre, Junior Theatre. I immediately learned how to put my grief in a place that was creative and therapeutic and was a natural, organic extension of living life. There are good things, there are bad things. And I was able to use theatre as a tool to help me deal with my sadness. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:46 Did you know you wanted to be an actress at that point? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:01:49 Yes. I knew from the theater experience when I was eight that I really loved being on stage, and I could channel my emotions in a safe place through a scripted storytelling process, that I was good at it, and it was comfortable for me. I was very comfortable in front of people, expressing my opinions, expressing my feelings. So I really kind of thrived on stage. So I thought, yeah, I want to be an actor when I grow up. And as I got a little older, I was also really involved in sports, because the other component that my dad thought was important was to put me in team sports. So I was a softball player, ran on the track and field team, was on the dance team and competitive dance team and drill team. And so my dad thought it was important for me to both have that acting experience, but also to have a sports experience. And so when I was growing up, I kind of thought that some day I'd like to be a quarterback for the San Diego Chargers and a famous actress. So my dad never told me I couldn't do both. So that's kind of where I was going as a kid. And then when I got older, I thought, well, I'm probably not going to be able to be a professional quarterback, but maybe someday I'll be a sports reporter or a sports writer, but I still want to really pursue acting. So that was the thought process back then. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:03:22 Who is your favorite coach and what did they teach you? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:03:25 So I had an amazing softball coach. I played for Bobby Socks. Bobby Socks is a softball League for little girls. And I had this amazing coach on my team called Goldies, but Goodies. And Coach Philip was this amazing young man and he was very determined that we little girls play like boys, and that nobody should tell us that we couldn't be just as athletic or aggressive as the boys and that we should be able to slide into home, and we should be able to get sweaty and dirty and not worry about what we look like, but instead how we perform and playing to the best of our ability. So he was great when I was nine or ten. He was a great mentor. And again, my dad was a coach as well for me, taught me how to throw a perfect spiral, how to scoop a softball up as a first baseman, and he would take me to games. The first time I saw the Padres and the Chargers were at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, and my dad taught me how to score the baseball games in the back of the program. There's a place where you can score the games. So he taught me how to score and taught me the difference between man on man versus zone defense. And he taught me the language of sports really young. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:54 What were those years like just after high school? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:04:56 So after high school, I went to Junior College, was determined to be an actor, was modeling at the time. A friend of mine talked me into trying out for cheerleader at my College, Golden West College. And I had been on dance teams before. So I thought, yeah, that sounds like fun and good exercise and being part of a female team. So I auditioned and made it. And those girls, a few months later, said they were going to try out for the Rams cheerleaders, the professional NFL squad near where I live. And I never, ever thought I would want to be a professional cheerleader. Never dawned on me to even dream about it or think about it. But again, I had a dance background. So I thought, you know what? I think that would be fun. Why not? Why not go and audition? Meanwhile, over 1000 women auditioned that year and they only took seven new girls. So I was pretty surprised when I made it and became a Rams cheerleader at 19. So I was one of the youngest girls on the squad at the time, and it was a wonderful experience for me as a performer. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:06:04 So you and I have tweeted back and forth a little bit about a documentary that is out right now. But what was your experience like cheerleading? And did it reflect anything that is in that documentary? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:06:16 So the documentary is called A Woman's Work: The NFL's Cheerleading Problem. And it's a really excellent documentary that explores whether or not NFL cheerleaders are being taken advantage of financially, primarily because back when I cheered, we weren't paid for hours and hours and hours of work. It was a part time job. You'd have to go to rehearsals, promotional events, shoots, charity events for the team, season ticket events, and of course, the games. And we got two free tickets a game to give to our parents or a friend or boyfriend or something. And that was it. And we were told that a thousand women would take your place, which was true. And what they didn't do was value our individual time and effort. And so I was really happy to see this documentary come out because it's about time these women made a living wage and they are ambassadors for these billionaires. The NFL is one of the most successful companies in the world. And the cheerleaders are young women from that community, unlike the football players who aren't from that community. They're drafted from College and they play for that team in that community for a couple of years, and then they go back home. Well, the women that are cheerleaders are from that community and end up staying in that community because that's where they live. And so I think there's been a decades long funnel of these young women that have been working for practically free for billionaires in order to enhance their status, in order to enhance their community relations in that city. And those women really should be paid for their time and for their work. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:08:04 What was your first broadcast opportunity? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:08:07 After I cheered for four years for the Rams, I became the cheerleader director for the Atlanta Falcons for three years and then went to the New England Patriots as the cheerleader director and entertainment director in Boston. And when I was in Boston, I was discovered by WEEI's radio icon Eddie Endelman, and he brought me onto his show as a guest to talk about the cheerleaders. But what we ended up talking about was the Celtics, the Bruins, the Patriots, Boston College. And little did he know I loved sports, and knew sports, and was a sports fanatic. And so that was supposed to be a ten minute conversation about the cheerleaders ended up being 2 hours of talking sports live on AM radio. And after that conversation, he said, you need to be on TV. I've never seen anybody that looks like you, that knows sports like you do. And again, this is in the 80s. And he said, I have a contract with Sports Channel New England, and I would like to produce a show for you on Sports Channel New England. So it was the first ever all female sports show is called Sports Gals of all terrible names. And it was me, Janet Prinsky and Barbara Boren. Janet and Barbara were older than I was. One was a radio personality and one was a print personality for a print journalist. And together, the three of us were kind of different generations and different specialties. I was TV, one was radio, one was print. But we loved sports. And so that show had a little cult following. And an agent in Los Angeles back home where I'm from, saw a tape of Sports Gals, called me and said, you need to come home. You need to be on television doing sports on a network. So eventually, within a year, I did end up going back home and signed with Ken Lindner and Associates, which is still to this day, my agent. And he really helped me choreograph my sports career. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:10:15 I was completely unaware of that Sports channel affiliation that you had. And it was practically in my backyard being that I was in Nova Scotia, in Montreal, and we would get a lot of New England. I would also spend time in Maine. I'm sorry that I missed this show. Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:10:31 It only lasted- I would say, we probably taped maybe 10 to 15 episodes before I got the call from an agent to go back. And at first I was really reluctant because I didn't go to College to study broadcasting. And I was a performer as an actor. But I didn't know the basics of journalism. I didn't know how to use an IFB or what a stand up was. I knew how to interview people, but I didn't know a lot of the basics that most young reporters know coming out of school. So I was a little hesitant to sign with him. And he said, look, you are a personality, you're a performer, and you know sports. You should be on camera talking about sports. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:11:16 And is this when you wound up at Fox shortly after? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:11:20 No. My first job with him, believe it or not, was a game show by the producers of American Gladiators called Wild West Showdown. And it was a Western style sports competition show that I co hosted as an old-timey Annie Oakley type. They had me in a- it looked like it was something out of A Little House on the Prairie, because this show was set in the Wild West and all the athletes were cowboys and fighters and shooters, and they were like Cowboys and Indians. And so I was the intrepid reporter that worked for the little local newspaper with a wooden stick behind my ear as a pencil and a notepad. And I would interview these characters after each event. And again, crazy thing. I remember being in this costume, this ridiculous, I can only describe it as something you would see on Little House on the Prairie. So I'm wearing this ridiculous costume and I'm calling my agent, going, you promised me I would be a sportscaster. What am I doing on this crazy game show? And he said, Be patient, be patient. So I made it through that first season. He set my second interview was with KCBS in Los Angeles, and they were looking for a weekend sports guy to replace Brett Lewis. And I would be working with Jim Hill, who is a legend here in Los Angeles. He's been a sportscaster for a long time at CBS Two. And so they were looking for his weekend sports guy. My agent talked them into letting them interview me. And I walked in and I didn't have a resume at all. And I hadn't gone to broadcast school and I didn't have a journalism background, but I knew sports and they started grilling me about sports and I basically demanded the job. I said, more and more women are sports fans. There are no women in Los Angeles that are sports reporters. I'm Latina. The Latino culture here is growing and they're passionate sports fans. And you don't have anybody like me covering sports, certainly not at your station. But there was nobody like me at all in sports anywhere. And I said, you'd be smart if you hired- the audacity, really. I look back and I can't believe I kind of said that, but they, believe it or not, hired me. And the ratings were really strong for Sports Central, which was the name of the show I was on. And quickly another station here locally, Fox Eleven, that was their direct competition on the weekends. They hired me away from CBS, too. And then their ratings went up, and that caught the eye of David Hill, who ran Fox Sports, big Fox Sports. And he saw me at the local affiliate and he hired me and gave me an overall deal at Fox Sports. So I was there for a few years and I did shows like Tough Man, Sports Geniuses, Southern California Sports Report and The Best Damn Sports Show, Period. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:14:26 At what age did you decide to take on your mom's name of Guerrero? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:14:30 So this was an ongoing conversation I had with both my acting agent and my broadcast agent. I wanted to be Guerrero when I started acting, and my old manager, who is a very famous actor's manager who represented a lot of very famous actresses at the time in the 80s, he said, if you take your mother's name, you're going to kill your career because there are no parts for Latinas other than maids or the girlfriend of the drug dealer. And you're going to limit yourself if your last name is Guerrero. I was adamant about doing it, though, because I wanted little girls to see that last name and to know that they could be an actor or a broadcaster and that they could have these possibilities that I didn't know I could have when I was little. And I wanted to honor my mother because I look like her. I'm connected to her culture. She used to say to me when I was little, your last name, Guerrero, means warrior. And don't forget that you are a Guerrero. You are a warrior. And so that just resonated within me for years. So when I had the opportunity to finally change my name, when I went on camera, I took it. So I was in my late twentys. I ended up changing my name and I also changed that manager, got rid of that manager and found a female manager that said, yes, I support you being Guerrero and taking your mother's last name. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:16:02 So in you go. The first time I noticed and connected with you, it was on The Best Damn Sports Show, Period. The only reason I got to see that show is because I pirated the TV in Edmonton with a satellite dish and had all these Fox Sports channels. And I thought, look at this show. It's got an amazing cast. Check this out. It was mayhem on that set. Just to paint the picture. Michael Irvin and John Sally and John Cruick and Tom Arnold. These are characters and there you are playing with them. What was that experience like? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:16:39 It was an amazing time because for the first time, I think anywhere you see a real connection between entertainment and sports. We would do comedy sketches and we had Ben Affleck and Barry Bonds and Shaquille O'Neill and Charlize Theron. I mean, we had superstar actors and superstar athletes on the show talking about sports and their movies or their TV series. And it was really groundbreaking at the time. But yes, you're right. The characters, the guys. It was like being in a locker room. And I had covered a lot of locker rooms in the ten years that I had done sports in LA. But working with these guys day in and day out on a two hour show was incredible. It was a lot of male energy. I was the only woman on the show. I was the original woman on the show. I would be on the first segment where we would talk about the hot topic of the day, whatever the big sports controversy was. And then I would go to the update desk where every twelve minutes I would do a three minute sports update. And then on the weekends I would fly to do sit down interviews all over the country with superstar athletes. So Shaq or Randy Johnson, Alex Rodriguez, Mia Ham, Jerry- We would go everywhere, my producer and I, to get these sit down interviews on the weekends and then bring them back so they can plug them into Best Damn Sports Show during the week. So I would get to the set at noon. We would have a production meeting. I would go straight to the desk and then I would go back down to the set when they were ready to bring in the audience and do the live show for the audience. And every twelve minutes I'm going back up to my desk and the guys would all leave because their two hour block was done. But those inserts throughout the night all the way through Pacific time, the end of baseball games. I would stay until every last game was over. Even including extra innings so often I wouldn't get home back to my house until one or two in the morning and then get as much rest as I could and back to Fox Sports PECO lot at noon. So I was working twelve or 13 hours a day every day and working on the weekends. It was an amazing time for me as a journalist. I loved it, but I had no social life, and I was exhausted all the time. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:19:03 I completely forgot that you did the inserts and because that show was on all the time. And so the show, the 2 hours, was really static, but there you were, updating it all the time. I think I had enough wherewithal to determine that you were doing that. And then eventually, as you mentioned it's, twelve hour days. At what point do you decide to move on from that? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:19:23 Part of my experience with Fox Sports was rocky because I had a boss, one of the executives, hit on me and was inappropriate with me. There was some language that I wasn't comfortable with on the show itself. It was very clear that this is a boys club. I was hired because I knew sports, but also because of what I looked like. And they asked me to wear a short skirt on the set, and I was originally in the center of the set, but they moved me to the far right so that people could see my legs because there was a coffee table in the middle so you couldn't see my legs. So there was a constant balance in negotiation for me. I knew that I had a huge platform and a huge audience, and I was one of the few women, I think I was the first woman, some writer wrote. I was the first woman on sports television that was able to argue and have my own opinion about sports with these professional athletes. I wasn't just doing sports reports or reading a shot sheet or interviewing an athlete. I was getting in nightly arguments with them, having my own opinion about a player's strike or a quarterback controversy, and holding my own with the set of guys. So I wanted to keep that job because I thought it was important to have that job and to have my voice heard. But at the same time, I was having to negotiate my wardrobe and trying to avoid this one executive in the hallway, and it just became too much. And I thought, if I want to be the Barbara Walters of sports, I want my own show where I do sit down interviews, long form journalism with hard to get athletes, difficult athletes. That's what I wanted. They promised me eventually I would get that. And then when my contract came up, they didn't give me that show. They wanted me to remain on Best Damn. So I didn't sign my last contract with them. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:21:12 So you have an idea about what you want to do, which is to have some long form sports conversations with athletes. Was that available at the time? Could you find that? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:21:21 I was doing that on Best? Damn if they would have taken all of those weekend sit down interviews that I did with all of these athletes. A lot of them belligerent and a lot of them ended up with pretty tough questions. And I made Barry Bonds cry. There was a lot of good substance there. A really smart executive would have said, oh my gosh, she's the Barbara Walters of sports. Let's do a special with her or figure out how to make it work. But they wanted me to be the sexy pretty girl. And they would always say, don't argue so much, smile more. So I just knew there wasn't a future for me there. I didn't sign that contract. And I thought, well, I'm going to move on and try to see if maybe I can produce my own show or work with an outside production company. Maybe, or maybe I should write a book about sport. I wasn't really sure at that point where I should go. And then my agent got a phone call from Monday Night Football. They were going to replace their sideline reporter and they wanted to interview me to be a sideline reporter. And that is something I had never done. That is a very specific type of a job. You're doing seven second injury updates and a couple of questions after the game and a couple of little bullet points throughout the game here and there about some backstory on a player. And it wasn't what I did. I had never done it before. Fox Sports had offered me two opportunities to do sideline reporting before for College, and I turned them both down. I just didn't feel like that was my strength and it didn't play to what I do best at first. I said to my agent, I don't want to do Monday Night Football. I don't want to be a sideline reporter. And the thought was, are you nuts? It's Monday Night Football on ABC. There wasn't a bigger job for a woman in sports at that time than being the sideline reporter for Monday Night Football. 40 million viewers every Monday night watch Monday Night Football. And what they told me, Fred Goddelli, who was the executive producer at the time, said, I agreed to go and interview with him in New York. And he said, I want to do something different with the sidelines. I want it to be more like sports meets entertainment. So we would take what you do at Best Damn Sports Show, and you would go up in the stands or in the owner's box or in the end zone, if somebody's getting married, or if there's a celebrity in the stands, or you'll interview the person that sings national anthem. And yes, you'll do some sports, but it will be more of a pop culture entertainment meet sports role. And that made sense to me because Monday Night Football was unlike Sunday football games. It is an event and you have more women viewers, you have more casual sports fans. And I thought that was kind of a cool idea, so I accepted that job. At the same time, I told Fred Goddelli, I'm here in New York because I'm also shooting for FHM. I'm doing a feature for FHM and he's like, okay, he didn't bat an eye. It didn't seem to bother him. Before this, I had posed for Maxim and I was a swimsuit model and an ex cheerleader. And I grew up on the beaches of San Diego and Huntington Beach. I was very comfortable in my skin as a model back then. And he didn't seem to be bothered by FHM coming out. Well, Disney was bothered by it. So as soon as Disney got wind that I was going to be in FHM, their new sideline reporter, they got very upset. And they said, we want her to just go back to regular. We want her to be X's and O's. We want this sideline role to be a traditional role. And I was stuck because I'd already signed the deal. They already announced me as a sideline reporter. We were already prepping for the season. And so I just thought, well, I better learn how to be a sideline reporter right fast because they're not going to go back to what I was promised. So it was kind of a bait and switch to me. But immediately when the rest of the press found out that I had done FHM and that they had hired a former cheerleader, my goose was cooked because they immediately started to just bury me in the media. Before my first game, they called me what you would call now slutshaming. They said they've hired a cheerleader to be the sideline reporter. And she's not a journalist, she's a model. So I think right away I was a big target. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:25:52 I always had the feeling with Monday Night Football, that in the off season, we're going to be creative and do some fun things and you get all sorts of great ideas, and then they do the ideas and then there's just a little bit of pushback. And it always seems to be the heritage brands that do this, just a little pushback, and then they just completely retreat. Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:26:11 I get it. People grew up with Monday Night Football. I grew up with Monday Night Football. And obviously, first and foremost, it's a sporting event, and I think there was room for it to grow into this other direction. But I think because of FHM and Disney now merged with ABC, they got nervous. And then that set me up for failure from the beginning. So I had never done that job before. I was being marginalized by the media. The first three preseason games went great, but the first regular season game at the end of the game, I flipped, corrected myself, but it was too late. At that point, the media said she doesn't know sports, see? She's just a Bimbo. And literally Bimbo. The most derogatory language you can possibly imagine. Those were headlines and the commentary back then was so derisive. These are things that you would never say about a woman today because you would get fired if you wrote that today. But 17 years ago, they wrote about my breasts, my fingernail polish color. They called me incredible names because I made a mistake. And from there it was downhill, because besides the fact that I was being publicly humiliated by the media, my boss was also verbally abusive to me and screaming at me at every game. So I became more and more nervous. This anxiety that I've never felt in my life was bubbling up before every game. I was throwing up before every game, lost 8lbs during the season and I was a different person. I look back at those tapes and I don't recognize myself. The confident woman I was on Best Damn Sports Show six months before did not exist on Monday Night Football that fall. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:28:11 So I'm trying to imagine your life. And for context, everyone, this is 2003, so this predates social media, I'm guessing you have newspapers that are going to say something negative. You have sports radio so you can't escape it in the car, you're going to hear something bad about it, and then you have to get to work into the stadium. And did you have to dodge any heckling while you were doing your job? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:28:34 Yeah, I did. It really wasn't the fans that were so bad. There's always knuckleheads, but it was really the media and it was my colleagues. And there were people that I respected and admired that I read their columns in the newspaper and listened to them on sports radio. And I think there was this glee in taking me down that most people had never seen that level of cruelty towards a young woman basically covering a sporting event. And just the coverage was really beyond what should have been appropriate for somebody that was in that position. Again, because I was reading it and I was listening to it. It affected me in a way that- I can't really express how difficult it was going to work every day that year. And then once I was fired at the end of that season, the negativity continued for the next year and a half after that. And it just seemed to be something that became more and more cruel and more and more personal as time went by. And I couldn't believe it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:29:56 You opened up about those days recently in the New York Post. And there's a link, by the way, in the show notes of this episode for anybody who would like to connect with it, because I think it's a really important read about that time after Monday Night Football and you felt suicidal and you didn't really feel you had a place to go? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:30:13 Yeah. I mean, my identity had been wrapped up in sports. When my mom died at eight, my dad taught me the language of sports. And this was something we shared together, the love of sports. And then I became a sports caster and has spent all of these years kind of honing my craft and getting to a point where people around me said, you're going to have this career for forever. This was going to be my forever occupation. And when the Monday Night thing happened, I was depressed and felt this enormous amount of pain and humiliation. And I just thought, if I can't do this, what else is there for me? I was so wrapped up in my career, and that was my identity, that I couldn't look past this career humiliation. And at one point I was driving down PCH here in Southern California and I turned on sports radio, as was my habit. And they were reading this incredibly cruel column written by somebody in Pittsburgh, and it was eviscerating me. And they were cackling over it. And I just thought, I want to kill myself. I pulled over, sat there for probably a half an hour, and finally called my dad and he said, you are not a sports reporter. You're going to go on to do more important work than covering a pulled hamstring on a sideline. Right now, you think of yourself as somebody that's reporting on male athletic achievement, but you have a greater destiny than doing that. You're a storyteller, you're an actor, you're an artist. Think about news, think about features, think about entertainment reporting. We didn't at the time consider investigations. That was beyond what I would have even imagined back then. But he did say to me, you should think about maybe working for a news magazine. And I hadn't thought of that. I had just thought of myself as a sports person. So after that conversation and after my dad encouraged me to talk to a licensed therapist about how I felt my depression. So I find out from this therapist that I was clinically depressed and I had been for this whole two year experience. So I went to see her on a regular basis, and I'm so thankful that I did. And once the cloud started to clear, I decided, well, I am going to pursue journalism again and I'm going to find what makes me good at what I do. And at this point now, I have had this horrible catastrophe happen to me in sports, and I felt really empathetic towards people that have had something like this happen to them that are much worse. And I think the feelings that I had of empathy started to grow and grow. And I think that's what makes me today a good reporter. I don't think you can cover investigations where you're dealing with victims of serious crimes or cold cases or scams if you can't connect with them. And what happened to me made me very vulnerable, but also made me really understand in a very personal way what pain is and how you want somebody to hear your pain and to help you with that pain. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:33:56 In just a second, Lisa makes that transition out of sports. By the way, there's going to be a lot more to what you just heard here as Lisa is going to be releasing a book shortly called between a Jock and a Hard Place. Coming up, Lisa talks about the trials and tribulations, about the investigative work she's been doing since 2006 on Inside Edition. And, you know, there's a whole lot more we didn't cover that you can find at soundoffpodcast.com. For instance, did you know that Lisa is a singer/songwriter? Here she is singing and performing alongside Keith Burns and Presley and Taylor in the song you hear now, Everybody Loves The Comeback. Tara Sands (Voiceover) 00:34:46 The Sound Off Podcast. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:34:48 And so it's 2006. You're far removed from Monday Night Football at this point. And you're on Inside Edition. But there's still three years in there for the reinvention to take place. So what happened inside those two years really, where you are in the process of reinventing yourself? You mentioned some therapy. You probably have to negotiate with your agent to say, this is really what I'm looking for. What do you have? What's going on there? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:35:13 So one of the things I did because I couldn't watch sports for a year, and I just thought maybe I should go back to acting. A producer was doing a play in San Francisco called Extremities. And if you remember, Farrah Fawcett played this woman in Extremities where somebody breaks into her house and she fights back and she captures him in this cage in her fireplace. So it's this real physical drama. And so every night in San Francisco, I played the lead character where I'm having these fight scenes and that fight choreography and being battered and bruised every day helped me so much. Just the physical part of getting that anger and rage out of my body was so therapeutic. And of course, I was talking to my therapist at that time. And also, believe it or not, Playboy. So the Playboy magazine had been for 20 years trying to get me to pose in their magazine, first as a Playboy playmate early in my career when I was an actress and a model. And then I kept turning them down. And then later, when my career began to flourish, they kept offering me the celebrity cover. And of course, I turned it down every year. So it became kind of a running joke. Here we go. I got my yearly file from that it would send me this beautiful package with all of these covers of all these celebrities. Lisa, we'd love you to post for Playboy. And I always threw it away. Well, that year I decided not to throw it away. And the very thing that the media had kind of held against me was what I looked like. That's part of every single criticism back then. It had something to do with what I looked like. So I thought, what if I use my looks? That's a tool in my toolkit. It's not the only tool I have. But what if I use that and negotiated a cover and negotiated, I'm not going to be nude inside, but maybe I can negotiate who the photographer is. I can pick the photos they use and have some kind of control over this and then use the platform of doing a cover because they do like a big satellite tour and a PR tour when you do a cover. So I thought, what if I use that to get the word out that I wanted to work for an entertainment magazine, one of the new shows, Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood or Inside Edition. And so I did it. And I used that platform to get the word out that I wanted to stay in journalism. I didn't want to do sports anymore, but I do want to do news and possibly entertainment news. And I remember going on one show, I think it was Neil Cavuto. And he said, your broadcasting career is over. You will never work as a journalist again. And the next day, Inside Edition called. The next day wasn't even 24 hours later. It was like 13 hours later, we get a phone call from Inside Edition saying, hey, we want to do a story about you at 39, posing for the cover of Playboy. You're Latina. You're not the 18 year old blonde kind of Hugh Hefner type that's usually on the cover. And you were just on Monday Night Football, and we want to do a story about you. So they did a feature on me. Their viewers loved it. They connected with me. I was immediately offered a two year contract as the West Coast correspondent for Inside Edition. So I signed that contract. I sent Neil Cavuto some flowers. Ha ha ha, I've got a contract, kind of thing. And I took a little glee in that. I don't know if you ever got them, but it was fun sending them. And that two year contract has turned into 16 years on camera with Inside Edition. In 2010, I was promoted to chief investigative correspondent. And for the last ten years, I've been chasing bad guys. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:39:02 Well, it's an incredible story. And if you just look at the chronology of the whole thing, you'll see that in the beginning of 2006, you do pose in Playboy, and then six months later you're chasing bad guys on Inside Edition. So anybody who looks at this goes, I'll join you on Inside Edition. But first I have to pose for Playboy and then I'll join you shortly. Did you have to do that? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:39:21 Don't do that. Young journalists, journalism students, do not do this. Do not do what I did. It was a huge risk. It was a calculated risk, but it was almost an F*** You, honestly, to the people that had been so abusive to me about having been a model or a cheerleader. And I just thought, you know what? I'm comfortable with my sexuality. It's okay. You can be a sexy person, be articulate, be a good reporter. No sports. I'm not much of a cook, but you can be a lot more than just a pretty girl. And in 2003, I was labeled as just that pretty girl. And I thought at 39, I thought, I'm more than that. But I'm going to use that. I will use that platform. And it was a risk. I'm glad I did it. I would never do it again. But there you go. It worked out well for me. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:40:18 This doesn't have to apply necessarily to people who work in the broadcast industry. It could be also the people that you go after every day. But why do so many people underestimate you? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:40:29 I think in general, I think a lot of people underestimate women. I think there's kind of this conception that we're soft or we're not as tough. Maybe we wouldn't be as willing to run down the street after somebody, chasing a criminal, or somebody that's been accused of a scam or a crime. That maybe as a woman, they just kind of underestimate women in news in general. And then when you get to the kind of niche that I've been known for in the last few years, investigations, that's a dangerous job. We do surveillance for hours, waiting for somebody to come out of their house or apartment to do an unscheduled interview in a public place. And they don't want me to be there. They don't want to answer my questions. Sometimes they run away. I've been hit by cars. I've been physically assaulted. I get death threats and rape threats. It is a tough job for a woman. But I think being a woman helps me because I do feel like they do underestimate me sometimes. And I think that helps. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:41:36 Is the scariest part of your job, is it when you get out of the car, announce who you are, and then start asking questions in that first 10 seconds? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:41:46 It's not scary to me. Weirdly. I am very aggressive, and I don't feel any form of nervousness or fear. It's not until after that I start to get nervous because I was like, oh, man, I hope they use that interview. I hope they use all the questions. I want to make sure that people know the whole story. I want to make sure that the victim that I spoke to is proud of me and that I'm able to express what happened to them and demand answers on their behalf. I start to get nervous that maybe I didn't do enough or ask as much as I could have, or you start to go down, man, did I do it right? How does it look? Because when I'm in the moment, I don't think about how I look or where the camera is. I obviously work with my photo journalist, but we're so used to working together that I don't have to pay attention to him. He knows where to go and what to do. I'm just so focused on that person and asking them questions and listening to answers. Hopefully, if they answer me back, asking follow up questions and really getting to the meat of the situation. So, yeah, I'm never scared in the moment, ever. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:43:01 What's the one story that you did where you said, I'm doing the right thing? Man, am I so glad I took up this job of chasing down the bad guys. What's that one moment, you know, you've made the right choice. And this is for you. Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:43:14 I was in the courtroom in a case that was a cold case. The story was called Justice for Juliet. And a two year old girl was beaten to death in her home. And three adults were there. The mother, the boyfriend, and a friend of the boyfriend. One of them killed her, beat her to death. And this was in Nebraska. And local law enforcement bungled the case. All three of those suspects were allowed to leave the state. They never locked down the home as a crime scene. Several years later, that little girl's aunt contacted me on Facebook and said, I watch you on Inside Edition. Nobody will cover this. I can't get the D.A. to take a look at this. And somebody killed my niece and nobody cares. Will you please care? And I looked at the link she sent me and the information, and I pitched it as a story. And my executive producer said, yes, go do this. And so we went to that D.A. and went to the Sheriff. And they said, oh, well, we don't know where the suspects are now. They're in the wind. They've all left the state. Within two weeks we found all three of the suspects. We got the woman to roll over on her boyfriend, and she said on camera to me, Dustin Chauncey did it. We tracked him down. Meanwhile, the aunt, Monica Hall, was gathering signatures to force the grand jury, which you can do in Nebraska to get the right amount of signatures. So between us airing our story on Inside Edition and her gathering the signatures, that case went to a grand jury and he was arrested. And we followed the story. It was several parts as we saw the whole process kind of unfold. And I was in the courtroom next to Monica Hall when Dustin Chauncey was found guilty. And now he's serving 80 years to life in prison. And I thought to myself, this is much more important than covering sports. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:45:09 How did you handle the moment with Kenneth Copeland when he starts to pull his finger out and he's pointing at you. What is the superpower that you have, that prevented you from taking your microphone and hitting them across the head? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:45:22 That interview is one of the most amazing reveals of somebody's personality that you would ever see on television, right? One of the things that you want to do if you want to ask questions, but you want the person to reveal themselves, hopefully in the process of your interview. And he definitely revealed himself. We were there to ask some questions about- he made some comments that he didn't want to fly commercial because he didn't want to get into a tube full of demons, meaning that people that fly commercial are demons. So that's why he was justifying flying in private jets. And we wanted to ask him about his lifestyle of luxury because of the money that his donors had given him. And we had an unscheduled interview. And we interviewed him outside of a seminar he was giving in Branson, Missouri. And he comes out wasn't expecting us. And I ran up to him and asked him if he would talk to me. And he was really interesting. He went from flirting with me to screaming at me to pointing in my face. And I just kept going back to my questions. And I knew as I was watching it that he was revealing himself. And I had been prepared with a lot of questions and follow up questions. But if you watch the raw tape, because the tape is out there, the entire interview, it's just fascinating. So the reason I didn't want to hit him over the head with my microphone is I knew that people would see him for what he was. If I could remain calm and composed and just continue to go back to my questions, I just trusted that the viewer, in the end, would see the truth about this person. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:47:11 Tell me a little bit about Peter Nygard because that's one that hits home here in Canada. But really, it's also an international story. You pursued Peter Nygard right outside of his place in the Bahamas. Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:47:27 Obviously, on the heels of the Epstein story, we saw parallels to this. Right? Billionaire, has a private island, inviting young girls to these wild orgies, allegedly. Of course, Nygard was in the fashion business, so he had access to these young women, but he also would invite women from the island, from the Bahamas, these really poor women and offer them, I can make you a model. I can make you a star. So there were a lot of parallels to the Jeffrey Epstein and the Peter Nygard story, including the fact that they both had these islands where they would have these wild parties. I think I was the first journalist to set foot on Epstein's Island, which they used to call what was it, sex offender island or something crazy like that. So we rented a boat and we went down there and I got off the boat and had some questions for some of the workers in that story. And this was just a very similar story. But he at the time, Nygard was in a big battle for years about a lot of the parties that he had with the neighbor. His neighbor was upset about all of the crazy kind of construction that was going on and the wild parties at night. We had a source that was part of the neighbors group, that network that let us have access to go and get a close up look at Nygaard's property. But again, these are the kinds of stories that resonate with Inside Edition viewers because we're always looking for stories that our audience will connect to the victims. And both of these men are powerful men taking advantage of young, vulnerable women. And that's what connected me to both these stories is these women and especially the local women in both these stories because both these men took advantage of girls from the island village that did not have much money and thought that these men were the key to having a career or getting off this island. So it was kind of chilling, actually, that these stories back to back happened in pretty rapid succession. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:49:38 Do you ever get any pushback from the people you work with about being so vocal on Twitter and being opinionated? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:49:45 Yeah, I have been told in the past to be careful about I was posting a lot about Trump back in the day, and. Rightly. So they said pull back on that, which I did. But I still was able to without using the T word, was still able to talk about the issues that were really important to me, the migrants, the children that were being ripped away from their parents at the border. I'm Latina, and so I have a lot of thoughts about social justice and the dreamers here in the United States and the lack of compassion for our farming and migrant community and the racism that I see. So I certainly have been allowed to post my views about all of that. And I think in the end, most journalists that I have seen and that I follow have had strong opinions about politics and Trump, and there really isn't. I think there used to be this thought that you can't take aside, you've got to be in the middle, but when there's right and wrong and science and science deniers fascism and democracy, you've got to take a stand. And so I was pleased to see in the last couple of years, more and more journalists have come forward and have said this is not right. What I'm saying is not appropriate. And whether it comes to the vaccine and COVID and so many people say it's not real. It's not real. I lost two of my coworkers, two Inside Edition colleagues have died of Cobid. One of my cameraman and my senior producer. I can't tell you how disgusting it is to me when I hear these COVID deniers or antimaskers. So I do take things like that personally. And I think that's what makes me a good reporter. Maybe I'm not everybody's cup of tea, and that's okay. I'm going to stay true to the things I believe in. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:51:45 Well, I saw you wandered in against the Nt Masters at one point, then you just left. Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:51:51 Well, I did this story pretty recently, and you should see the Uncut version because it's pretty wild. This woman is she heads up the anti maskers group here in Los Angeles, one of the leaders for it. And I interviewed her with a boom. Like, of course, I was wearing masks. She wasn't. And it was bananas. I mean, the types of things these people say, their excuses for not wearing masks or not believing in science is pretty remarkable. But I think that went viral, too. People like when I give people the business a little bit. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:52:26 I love that you're on Twitter and one of your best ideas, and I'd never thought about this before. And this is what makes you an excellent Twitter follow. And that's when you go to a hotel to leave a tip behind for housekeeping. I don't think a lot of people ever thought about how smart that is. You've started a bit of a movement to get people to leave some money behind for housekeeping. Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:52:49 Thank you. That's been a really big part of my message for years because I travel so much, or at least I did before COVID. I was on the road at least 100 days a year. And the housekeeping staff is so hardworking. And can you imagine that job having to clean up people's mess and having to do that kind of work, be paid minimum wage and just feel like your work isn't being valued and you're dehumanized in many situations. So I just thought, I'm just going to start posting myself, tipping, leaving tips at every place I go and encouraging people to leave tips. And that really caught on. And I'm so happy when people say to me like you did. I never thought about that. I'm going to start leaving a tip now. That makes a huge difference in these people's lives. That is the difference between paying your electric bill or not. They're not paid a living wage. And that's not to say that we're letting the hotels off the hook. I still believe they need to pay people a living wage. But in the meantime, we as consumers, we have the responsibility, I believe in taking care of other people and especially the people that are taking care of us. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:54:04 Well, you're right. It seems ridiculous. And I'm running around with my five s and my ten s and my 20s, and I'm passing it out to the bellhop, the Concierge, the Matrix, the Somalia and all the people who I can clearly live without. But I can't live without housekeeping. So why am I not tipping housekeeping, right? Lisa Guerrero (Guest) 00:54:21 Exactly. And a lot of these people are single women, they're immigrants. These are difficult jobs to do and they are some of the least paid of the travel industry. And so I just think if you can spare five or $10, please do it because it just makes a world of difference in their lives. I also leave a thank you note as well. I leave a tip with a thank you note. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:54:46 Lisa, thanks so much for being on the Sound Off podcast. I appreciate it, Matt thank you for having me. Tara Sands (Voiceover) 00:54:51 The Sound Off podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill produced by Evan Surminsky social media by Courtney Krebsbach Another great creation from the Sound Off Media company. Imaging Courtesy Corps Image Studios There's always more@soundoffpodcast.com.

Tom Leykis understands how radio works. He understands people and how they engage with radio. The Long Island kid who spent his first radio show playing Glen Pitney (and loathing it), became one of America's most renowned talk show hosts. He would go to war against other talk show hosts. He spoke in this podcast of the time that he challenged Neil Rodgers to a fight on the streets of Miami, and started off his shows stating that his show is the one, "not hosted by a right-wing wacko or a convicted felon". (The former referencing Rush Limbaugh, the latter G. Gordon Liddy who was rung up in that Watergate thing) In 2012, after radio ran into financial struggles stemming from debt, the arrival of social media, and dollars disappearing to digital, Tom started his own company called the New Normal Network. For years he would stream to his audience who had paid a subscription, proving that people were prepared to pay for premium content. Today you can now access his shows in podcast for with a few tiers of monthly subscriptions. (Also proving that you don't need Patreon to take 10% of your money if you can connect with people properly) We talked about the early days of his career, the demise of his relationship with radio, and I even snuck in a little baseball talk. As mentioned, he is a good follow on Twitter. Tom and I also touched on this 1988 Oliver Stone Movie called Talk Radio, which was released when many of America's Shock Jocks were receiving the bulk of their notoriety. The movie was loosely based on the assassination of Denver radio host Alan Berg. We get Mail! "I really enjoyed your Tom Leykis interview. I live in Edmonton but first heard Tom when I was working in Los Angeles in 2007 when he was on KLSX.. I listened to him regularly when he had his live stream going and had the pleasure of attending a couple of his listener events. He's the man!" - Rick, (Edmonton) "I just finished listening to your Tom Leykis podcast. This was your best one IMHO. Mind you I'm a big fan of the Professor. I love what he had to say and Im glad I'm on the right track preparing for the radio afterlife." - Fred (Halifax) Transcript: Amanda (Voiceover) 00:00:01 This is the Podcast for Broadcast. The Sound Off Podcast with Matt Cundill. Matt (Host) 00:00:01 Tom Leykis, the legendary talk radio host who built a name for himself by being irreverent, one of a handful of love shock jocks who made his name in the 80s with legions of fans and followers who brought ratings and attention to radio stations. Shock Jock Radio entertained many, horrified others, and a lot of people made some great money along the way. In 1988, the same year that Tom started working at KFI in Los Angeles, Oliver Stone made a movie called Talk Radio, which was based loosely on Alan Berg, a Denver talk show host who was shot and killed one evening in 1984 by what we would categorize by today's standards as a hate crime. We're going to talk about that era. But also Tom's venture in 2012 when he broke out on his own, started a subscription service streaming his show, and later shifting into podcasting fulltime. I'll be the first to admit that Tom has been an inspiration over the years. I loved listening to his show before the Internet was even a thing. I'd have some friends even send cassettes to me. After radio, Tom showed me that you could have a profitable company, own your content and work outside of radio. Now this is a long overdue conversation. I've been planning to have him on the show back when we were just four or five episodes into this whole thing. So here we are at episode 140. And with that, I can say that Tom Leykis joins me from the home studios of BlowMeUpTom.com. Tom, can you take me right back to the beginning when you first got into radio and you knew you were going to get into radio? Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:01:35 I won a contest when I was 14 years old. A radio station on Long Island had something called the Student DJ Contest. And I was in junior high school, and what they did was they told you to write a letter to the station and tell them why you thought you should get an hour of airtime on a Saturday morning. And so I didn't intend to be in radio. My whole thing was that I like music. And like every 14 year old, I didn't think that the radio station was playing the right music. And I thought if I could win this contest, I could go down there and show them a thing or two about what music they ought to be playing. So I won the contest, and I spent weeks preparing. I had the date and time I was going to be there. And I spent weeks picking out records individually and putting them into my big- The big record store at the time when I was a kid with Sam Goody, and they had these big yellow plastic bags in which they would put the records you bought. And so I went to Sam Goody and I was individually selecting records and preparing for my appearance. Well, one thing led to another. The day came. I went down with my big bag of Sam Goody records and walked into the station. And the program director met me at the front door. And he has two hands out. And in one hand he had a stack of what we call liner cards or cue cards. And on the other hand he had a stack of cartridges. And he said, this is what you're going to say and this is what you're going to play. And I got my first lesson in radio that I wasn't going to decide what music was being played, the program director was going to decide. So I was mortified as the song It Hurts to Be in Love by Gene Pitney rolled at 08:00 A.m. Under my voice, reading the legal ID. And I was absolutely horrified because I told everybody at Newfield High School in Selden, Long Island, that I was going to be on the radio. And now I couldn't believe this lousy music they were forcing me to play. At the end of the hour, I was all crestfallen, and I was leaving the station with my bag of unused records. And as I was hitting the door and ready to leave, program director comes out and says, hey, you were pretty good. Would you mind coming back? And that's how I got into radio. Matt (Host) 00:04:07 And when in the early 80s, did you evolve into really getting into talk? Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:04:12 Well, that was pretty early on in my career, I would say, right about 1980-81. So at that point I was maybe 24. And I realized that there were about 8 billion disk jockeys with tapes and resumes. But there were only about two dozen qualified talk show hosts on the radio. Keep in mind, in 1980, there were very few stations that played talk shows all day long. Very few. And as a matter of fact, there are more talk radio stations today in California than there were in the entire country in1980. And so I realized that talk show hosts were in real demand. And I decided to learn how to become a call-in talk show host. And to do that, I went down to a studio on 23rd Street in New York City called ETC. And I went down and I rented a studio to do a talk show for public access in black and white with no delay. And for three years I went in there and took all of the- they didn't call them trolls, but all the crank calls and what have you. And I learned by doing. I learned under fire how to host a call-in talk show. And then pretty soon, I got my first job in talk radio at the Pacifica station in New York, WBAI. I was on from 3:00 to 07:00 A.m., and that's where I got started in regular radio. Matt (Host) 00:05:58 But talk radio was really dull back in 1980-81, and you began to bring a little bit of fire to the format, you and a few others, but it started to really amp up in the 1980s. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:06:11 Well, here's the deal. Clearly, one of the problems with talk radio at that time was that the audience was older than dirt and a lot of radio stations wanted to do a talk format, but they wanted to attract people in the 25 to 54 adult demo. They didn't exactly know how to do it. My concept from the beginning was I was kind of a satire of talk radio. I really wasn't a straight ahead talk show host. I was playing with the form right from the beginning, everything from coming in and saying that I was doing the show naked and then taking the complaint calls from the very old audience that was listening. I wasn't naked, but I said I was one guy called in and said, I hope there's not an American flag in the studio when you're doing this. He got very upset. Or by playing with people in other ways, telling them that I was masticating with a banana. That may sound like old hat today, but back then, people were horrified. They couldn't believe I was masticating. There might be children listen. And it was always like that. The idea was to not take the form seriously. Matt (Host) 00:07:26 We just passed, I think, the 35th anniversary of you in Miami working at WNWS. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:07:34 Yes. Matt (Host) 00:07:35 And at this point, there are guys like you and Neil Rogers and others who are becoming tremendous assets to radio stations. And you had some stuff wind up in court. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:07:45 Oh, many times. Matt (Host) 00:07:47 But this specifically involving your work contract and your employment. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:07:51 Right. Well, by the way, I replaced Neil Rogers, who had been in a contract dispute. That is how I replaced him. And then when he won in court, he went on opposite me. And we went through this incredible radio war in Miami, which was legendary, really legendary. It was an amazing experience to have been through it. But I was sued by a listener in Juneau, Alaska, because she said that I gave her post traumatic stress disorder. So she sued me for $2.7 million back in 2001. I was fined by the FCC in 1990 because I had done shows on KFI Radio in LA, where I had a guest on from an organization called the Hung Jury, which in order to be a member of the organization, you had to have eight inches or more. And the guy was talking about the various members of his organization. I mean, literally and figuratively. I also had the woman who called up and said that I was doing a show called Sexual Secrets that we all have secrets that we keep from the people we're married to, the people we live with, the people we date. So I asked people to tell their sexual secrets. And a woman called in and said that she is a dog breeder, and she masturbates her dogs. And the FCC got upset because I said, "Do they make a noise when you do that?" She said, well, yeah. I said, "Do the noise. Do it." She started making the noise that her dog made when she masturbated it. We got fined for that. So, yeah, over the years, I've had my series of run ins with the law. I was sued by Marty Ingels, I guess, the latest in life and the most recent to the present. He was the voice of Pacman on the Pacman cartoons in the 80s, and he was also the husband of Shirley Jones of the Partridge Family. Matt (Host) 00:09:50 That's right. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:09:51 And he called our show and tried to get on. And I told him he was too old and hung up on him. And he sued me, saying that I engaged in age discrimination and violation of California's Unruh Act. And we won the case. But the idiot spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to sue me and the network, and he ended up having to pay our legal expenses. So it's part of the game. Matt (Host) 00:10:22 Did the assassination of Alan Berg in 1984, did that change anything for you? Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:10:27 Oh, no. I was on the air the night Alan Berg was shot in Denver, and now I was talking about it. I wasn't hiding from it or trying to avoid the subject. I was right in there discussing Alan Berg's shooting and what it all meant and that it was not going to shut me up. And it never did. Matt (Host) 00:10:49 Did not change your perspective of who was listening to your show? Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:10:53 No, because here's the thing. Looking back now, that's 35 years since Alan Berg was shot in Denver, we always knew that these kinds of freaks would be some small percentage of the audience, the loudest group in the audience, but the very small percentage that they are or were. And that's true today. My God, I think we're closer to that than ever. Keep in mind Alan Berg was killed by white supremacists. And for my money, that's pretty much what AM radio is turning into, an audience of extremists and outliers and militia members and gun owners and preppers. That's the remaining audience of AM radio today. So the thing is, back in 1984, when Alan Berg was shot, when I was on the radio in Miami, talk radio was a mass appeal medium. It was not like today where it gets a 0.7 in Los Angeles or a 1.1 in New York. It was a mass appeal format. It appealed to people of all persuasions. And stations had a Liberal, a Conservative, a feminist, and they would be arguing with each other, the hosts on the station. It was very vibrant, very lively. And now with AM talk radio, nobody who isn't a Trump supporter or a prepper is tuned in. So it's a very tiny audience today. But I knew that if you shrink when this kind of thing happens, you're dead. Your show is dead. Your brand is dead. You can't say, you know what? I'm going to dial it down, because you dial it down, the audience is going to dial you out. Matt (Host) 00:12:44 Your program director at KFYI in Phoenix. And by getting to do that, not only do you have your show, but now you get to sort of put a bunch of people around you and build this radio station. What was that like? And who did you have on the air? What was the end result of it? Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:13:05 Well, the radio station in Phoenix, KFYI, was based on my experience in Miami at WNWS. The idea was that you cast a radio station like you cast a play. So instead of having the Jewish Conservative, followed by the black Conservative, followed by the white Conservative, followed by the Libertarian Conservative, followed by... Which is what they do now. We had a line up that was literally- and I went to find them the way you would cast My Fair Lady on Broadway- I was looking for a Liberal, a Conservative, a Libertarian, a feminist, and a rock and roller. That was my concept, so that you can talk about the same topic all day long with different points of view. Matt (Host) 00:13:53 When you moved to KFI, 1988, this is the first time I actually know who Tom Leykis is, and I'm living in Canada. And the only way that I can sort of find out about other radio is Art Volo video air checks. And I saw a video air check of you. And I'm like, who's that? What is he on about? And this station sounds like something I want to listen to. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:14:16 KFI, I was not the program director, I was doing the afternoon show. But the original program director who was there, frankly, had never programmed talk radio before. And so even though I was not in name the program director, I was doing a lot of things behind the scenes to kind of encourage that we recreate or reproduce what we did in Phoenix and what we did in Miami. So we took this Miami style of talk radio to the airwaves in Los Angeles. And we used to do things like the battle of the talk show hosts, which was originally, by the way, invented by Neil Rogers. We called it different names, Meeting of the Mouths or Think Tank over the years have different names. But the idea is to take all the hostss on the station and put them all together and let them yell at each other. And the idea is if you have enough different kinds of hosts who have different points of view, you don't ever need to take a phone call. You could just have the host yelling at each other. We also had a lot of debates. My first day on the air at KFI in July 1988, I had Reverend Roy Masters, who was the father of Mark Masters of Talk Radio Network. He was a hypnotherapist a Christian hypnotherapist who said that he could cure homosexuality. And I put him on the air with the most Butch lesbian I could find. And the two of them debated for 2 hours. And I believe in creating fire. I believe in stoking the fire. I believe that you've got to have some dramatic tension in a talk show. And if all you are doing is doing straight interviews with people or taking calls about the local water treatment system, it's just not compelling and it is not going to get a big audience. But my goal in radio is to get a big audience, sell a lot of advertising, make myself phenomenally wealthy in the process. I was never there to get anybody elected. I was never there to get a particular bill passed. I think the people who do this are fools because it's such an opportunity to make a great living having a medium like that, having it at your disposal. I was always about creating a circus. Matt (Host) 00:16:45 You managed to work in some of the best talk markets, places like Miami, places like Los Angeles. But what about when you went national into syndication, into 1994? What did you find when the show went national? Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:17:00 Well, keep in mind that people love to brag about having syndicated shows. It's one of those things in radio where everybody lusts to do that. Everybody wants to be national. Remember the movie Talk Radio when the character Barry Champlain, played by Eric Bogosian? This was the whole thing about him having a local show in Dallas and then going into syndication. That was the big deal. And I found in 13 years of syndication, actually 15, but 13 years with Westwood One, I found that syndicated shows are not valued by local radio stations. They are a throwaway. They are what we call in the business needle movers. Stations have 3 hours to fill and they don't want to pay somebody $20 an hour to come in and do a show. So they take your show from the satellite and they look at shows that our satellite delivered. The way you look at DirecTV or Dish Network, if they don't like your show, they put the Donna Mike Show on. They don't like Donna Mike, they put Bruce Williams on. They don't like Bruce Williams, they would just keep switching from syndicated show to syndicated show was the commoditization of what we did. I think my work was way more appreciated on a local basis when I was employed by a local radio station. In syndication, you have complete freedom because very rarely is there somebody sitting over your head telling you what to do or how to do it. No micromanaging. But by the same token, stations would cancel you with no notice, or they would say they were running your show. They would sign affidavits saying they were running the show and they hadn't run it in a year. Very little respect in that field. Very little. I did it. I enjoyed it. I traveled the country. I did my dog and pony show in different places. We drew big crowds wherever we went. But in reality, behind the scenes, there was very little understanding of what we brought to the party and very little appreciation for it as well. The only appreciation they ever show you- And that's something that is good advice for anybody in business, whether it's radio or wherever. Is that the only way they show you appreciation in businesses with commas and zeros. Nobody pats you on the back to say, hey, good job. Hey, you're doing great. You're never going to get that. If you can't function without that, you can't survive. Matt (Host) 00:19:28 Where did radio take the wrong exit on the highway? Was it the 1996 deregulation act? What was it? Or has it just been a collection of things? Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:19:37 Well, deregulation began in the 80s, and that's really where it began, where you had the caps on how many stations a company could own, first in a market and then nationwide, being lifted, or at least being relaxed. And so you have an awful lot of people who are paying big money, borrowing hundreds of millions or billions of dollars to buy up chains of radio stations or to buy individual mom and pop companies and string together a chain of stations. And so they needed to get a quick return. I mean, the reason we got shock jocks, the reason we got shock radio is because people were buying large numbers of radio stations. They needed to get a fast pay off, and they didn't want to spend any money on marketing. So if I could go on and get a ten share by talking about my penis, they didn't care as long as they got a quick payoff. And so eventually they paid more and more and more to bring me in as a hitman. I was a radio hit man, and they had another station in town that was number one. Their station was number 27. And I would go on the air and start taking shots at the most popular guy in town, whoever that was, and get him to step into the bucket with me. And it happened often. I got into this war with Neil Rogers. Neil Rogers had been number one for, I don't know, ten straight years or something like that in Miami. When I arrived and I started torturing him, I started talking about him and saying that he wouldn't have the guts to fight me. I told one of his listeners who called in on my show and said, you can't even lick Neil's boots. And I said, I'll tell you what, I'll not only lick Neil's boots. I'll beat the crap out of them anywhere, anytime you tell them tonight, 12:30, 79th Street in Biscayne Boulevard. I will meet him there and I will beat the crap out of him. You tell him I said that. So here's Neil getting callers on the air saying, Tom Leykis is talking about you right now. And of course, that meant all his listeners were tuning over from him to me to see what I was saying about it. It was a pretty easy formula. And what you do in a situation like that, for all you- are there any budding radio personality anymore? I don't know. But if you were thinking about getting into that business, you just bleep out all those calls. You have them screened out. You don't take those calls. You don't let people go on your show and talk about what the guy opposite you is doing right now. You don't allow that. But Neil could not resist. He thought he was number one forever. And so he started taking shots at me and said I was a cocaine addict. He said that the radio station couldn't find anybody to do nights. So they hired a supermarket bag boy to do the nighttime show at WNWS. Within nine months, I was the number one show in Miami, thanks to Neil Rogers. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:22:34 I was singing for everybody. Dean's favorite song, 1805 800 Tom is your telephone number. We are about to vanquish another competitor in the Southern California radio market. He's about to get axed from his current position on a certain radio station. You won't be hearing them anymore in the afternoon. Stay tuned for the Tales. What do you do when you're 50 years old? You look like Mr. Clean. You spent your last couple of years of your career talking to yourself about how you're the number one show and you're going to grease your fist and shove it up my ass. And then suddenly you find yourself taken off the air. What do you do then? I don't know. I'm not going to mention any names, but that's the deal. Matt (Host) 00:23:38 In 2012, you launched the New Normal network. And let's go right back to the very beginning. What were your intentions when you were starting that? How is the company morphed over the number of years? Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:23:49 Well, the idea of it was I had a five year contract with CBS where I could not work for anyone else. So I was off the air for 37 months. And when my contract was coming up for its expiration and I would be free to do what I wanted, I started meeting with some of these radio companies, and I was shocked at how little money they were offering. Considering the track record I had. I was being offered as little as 1/9th of what my previous salary had been. 1/9th. And I negotiated them up to 1/6th. And I was offended. And I had no intention of leaving the house for that amount of money because keep in mind, I had an eight figure deal, guaranteed money with CBS. I'm set for life. I did not need a job, but what I did need was respect with the commas and zeros. And there was only one comma in the last offer I had, not enough. So I decided that, being that two of the top three companies and radio were in the process of heading for bankruptcy, which has since happened, I'm going to prove that you can still make a profit in this business by doing a call in show without a transmitter, without a radio station. And so I found a space that had been tricked out as a recording studio that was formerly a laundromat in Burbank. And we set up in there to do a live stream, audio only, no video. So it would replicate the call in talk show, the radio experience that people were familiar with. And we did the show live in the beginning, five days a week, three or 4 hours a day, every week. And we managed in doing this. We sold some advertising, we sold some subscriptions to our on demand library. We managed to make a profit six straight years. And we did that in the face of Cumulus going bankrupt and not having a profit for the longest time. iHeart media has not had a profit since before 2008. So my goal was sitting at laundromat in Burbank and make more profit than the biggest companies and radio. And we achieved that. Matt (Host) 00:26:20 And you also did your paperwork this week because it is tax time. So how'd you make out this year? Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:26:25 Well, profit wise, once again, even though we stopped doing the live stream in October, we converted to being a podcast full time. Once again, we made money. Did I make a zillion dollars? No. Did I make a respectable profit and keep a bunch of guys employed? Professionals who had no reason to be out of the business? I did that. I succeeded at that. I kept these guys employed for another seven to ten years, depending on which one we're talking about here. And so for me, it was a success. It was a great experience. That part was fun. Now we are doing what JCPenney is doing, what Victoria's Secret is doing, what Sears is doing. We are closing down our physical location and we are producing content. In my case, I have a home studio, so I no longer have a producer. I no longer have an engineer. I no longer have a screener. I no longer take live phone calls. And amazingly enough, the podcast world is an amazing thing. Amazingly enough, we are three to four times more profitable now than when we did the show live, putting us in a nice mid six figure range. I'm very happy to have it. Matt (Host) 00:27:48 You know, I look back at 2013 and you wrote an article and you gave advice to disc jockeys and radio personalities about what was to come. And a lot of it centered around owning your content and getting your stuff under wraps. And within six months after I read that article, I did not listen to you. I was out of work and I had to go and get a website and I had to start everything from scratch. But I do remember not listening to that advice in that article and then finding myself out of work. And then I went and pulled the article back and I said, well, I better get to work on all this. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:28:23 Well, I have told people who are in radio who are fat and happy and working for stations like WBT in Charlotte with 50,000 Watt clear channel signal. You're not a ten share show, buddy. You are a ten share show because you're on WBT in Charlotte. When you go off the air, you're not going to have access to the same cumulative audience that you have on WBT in Charlotte. So what guys like that need to be doing now is having their own URLs, having their own email addresses, having their own websites, and also to keep every email you ever receive and harvest the email addresses of everybody who's written to you over the past couple of years. I went into this business with 11,000 confirmed emails from people who'd written to me at KLSX between '07 and '09. I had all these names. And so when I started my new venture, I immediately had a mailing list that I could tell people, all right, I'm back. You've been waiting for it. Here I am. And the reason I have BlowMeUpTom.com, the URL I've had for 20 years, is simply because Mel Karmazin was running CBS and Westwood One back in the late 90s. And I had gone to Mel personally. People have heard Mel's name on Howard Stern show is named. People know. I went to Mail personally and I said, Mel, why don't we have email addresses? Why don't we have websites? And he said to me, before anyone ever heard of Netflix or Amazon, he said, you can't monetize the Internet. So I went out and got my own URL, my own email address. I had a website. I owned it. Westwood One couldn't put their name on it or couldn't tell me what to put on there. I couldn't put any advertising on it or use it for contests. Nothing. I had all of that. I paid for it myself and I owned it. When I ultimately left CBS at the end, I was able to put up a big countdown clock and tell people, I'm going to be back in 2012. Here's the exact day and time I'll be back. April 2, 2012 03:00 p.m. And I counted down to that day. Everybody needs to be doing that. If you're in radio, the end is near. It's like working in one of these shopping malls where half the stores are empty. Take a clue. Get ready for the future. Be prepared. That's what I tell them. Matt (Host) 00:30:58 Yeah, you posted a picture on Twitter a couple weeks ago from a shopping mall. It was empty and it was the middle of the day. And about two days later I was in Phoenix and same thing. It's a Tuesday and it's barren. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:31:14 Right. That was the La Cumbre Plaza in Santa Barbara, which, by the way, has a nice demographic of upscale individuals who live in the area. And here it was a weekday afternoon, a beautiful, sunny day with a mall. It was one of these malls that is not enclosed. It's an outdoor mall. No foot traffic, zero. Nobody there. All of these food courts with a bunch of empty chairs and tables. Sears had recently closed about two weeks ago. And all the stores around Sears are now going out of business because they were depending on foot traffic from Sears in its dying days. They were depending on the people who came to Sears. And without Sears, these pizzerias and delis, they were all going under. And radio is Sears, all right? Radio is Toys R US. It is going out of business. And if your plan is to sit there at the mall and wait for business to come back, it isn't. Matt (Host) 00:32:14 You've made the great transition from radio into podcast. The first time I saw you was 2016 in Chicago at Podcast Movement and you were part of the air check session. Not everybody in radio is going to be able to make that jump into podcast, though. Some just aren't talented enough to do it. I know that sounds crazy, but I think it's true. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:32:34 Well, it's not just about talent because there's a lot of guys who are good. They have good voices, and they've gotten good ratings over the years. But in the podcasting world, you have to bring something specific to the party. You have to stand out in some specific way or have some specialty. There is no mass appeal show like you would have on these big stick radio stations like KFI in Los Angeles or WLS in Chicago. Podcasting audience. These are people who curate their own content. They have their favorites, and their least favorites, or the ones they would never pay attention to. You have to bring something that makes you stick out or you have to have some specialty. And if you don't have that or if you don't have something that makes you unique, it's a field in which you'll never succeed. One of the great things about having been in radio is that a lot of people know who I am, know what I do, know what I bring to the party, know what is unique about what I do. And they know that many radio stations were afraid of me because they're afraid it might be a little too hot to handle. And people are now willing to pay to hear what radio won't give them. And you have to have that kind of show, like something that you would not hear anywhere else. You wouldn't get it any other way. You have to have that kind of appeal in podcasting. There's no two ways about it. And part of what I tried to bring to the critique sessions at Podcast Movement was that, one thing we know about in radio is staying focused on a topic, staying focused on reminding people who you are and what you do, not wasting time. And I think a lot of people go into podcasting without thinking about these things. And I do believe there are people like Steve Goldstein and others who are bringing some of that radio expertise to the podcasting world, making themselves available to people who are doing podcasts, because a lot of what we know in radio is about producing audio content and would apply very well to podcasting. By the same token, many things radio personalities take for granted, like opening up the mic and talking to 100,000 people, that is not guaranteed in the podcasting world. So there's stuff we bring to the table, and there are things bad habits some of us in radio have learned, taking an audience for granted, that we have to unlearn. Matt (Host) 00:35:11 What podcasts do you listen to? Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:35:13 I do listen to Marc Maron. I like what he brings to the table. I like The New York Times podcast, which I listen to on a regular basis. I'm a New York Times subscriber, and they have a pretty good handle on what's going on with Trump and all of that. So that's one place I go for information. I also listen to my friends Gary and Dino, because they have a podcast like no other, the Gary and Dino Show. Gary was my producer and Dino was my screener for over 20 years. And so now they've got a podcast, and I enjoyed them because they're fun. And then there's a bunch of them I couldn't care less about because they're about fields of expertise that are not my interest or I just don't find them exciting. There are so many of them that I tend to listen to podcasts and people I'm familiar with or people who have some field of expertise that I want to know more about. Matt (Host) 00:36:08 What's the setup like in your car for audio listening? Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:36:12 Well, I have two different vehicles. I've got a Tesla, which has internet in the dashboard. So I can literally put on Tune In, or I can connect via Bluetooth and listen to anything that's on my phone. Anything I can hear my phone, I can listen to my car, and I do. So the Tesla has Tune In, built in, which is an amazing thing. I also drive a Honda pickup truck, a Honda Ridgeline. And that one doesn't have the same sophisticated audio capabilities. It does have Android Auto, it does have Bluetooth. So I am able to just tune anything in on my phone and then have it play through the speakers in the truck. I will tell you that 90% of the time I am listening to something from the internet and not from radio. Matt (Host) 00:37:07 Well, I was just going to mention, you've got Tesla and you've got Tune In, which is built into the Tesla. And then you've got a company like Intercom that decides to take its radio stations off Tune In. I don't get it. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:37:19 Well, again, I feel the people at Intercom, as much as they may know about Wall Street when it comes to broadcasting, they just fell off the turnip truck. And they have this idea, like others have had, that they're going to own all their content and they're going to own all the commercial availabilities. They're going to own all that. They don't want to give that away. They want to own it. Cumulus did this. They took all their content off Tune In. Then one day they awarded it to iHeartRadio, and recently they came back to Tune In. So the fact is, if you listen to most live streams on Tune In or iHeartRadio or Radio.com, most of the commercial availabilities are unsold. You're a lot of the same promos repeating over and over, a lot of the same buck-a-cluck commercials running over and over. So the question is, do you want to expand the audience for your existing advertising base? I think that should be your goal. I think trying to hold on to every $1.98 that's available for the commercial spot on Internet streams is not worth their time and effort. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:38:28 It's Leykis 101, the ongoing on-air adult education course. It teaches men how to get more tail for less money, and more importantly, that teaches women how men think. Your questions for the professor coming up at 1-800-5800-TOM. The Tom Leykis Show. Matt (Host) 00:38:45 You're a great follow on Twitter, by the way. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:38:47 Oh, thank you. Matt (Host) 00:38:48 Because I see every once in a while you rail on the LA Dodgers in some capacity. So, what is their problem? Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:38:56 Well, their problem is they are run by these Moneyball guys from Tampa. And when you're in Tampa and your average attendance is 14,000 a game instead of 48,000 a game, like Los Angeles, you can't afford to sign the big free agents. So what you do is you try to find ways to take a bunch of misfits and outliers and cobble together a team that by bringing in a pitcher who pitches to one particular hitter because that one particular hitter can't hit that one particular pitcher, they dice everything down into these little data nuggets. And what they do is they manage to have the team during the regular season win 80 or 90 games. The Tampa Bay Rays have been in the World Series just like the Dodgers have. They have been competitive, which in a bad market like Tampa, being competitive is your best hope of getting people to the turnstiles, but in reality, they never win anything. And so these guys have applied the methods of being in Oakland or Tampa, where you just want to stay competitive so you can get 20,000 people to come to the game. But in Los Angeles, you know what, we've got LeBron James, we've got the Rams who went to the Super Bowl this year. We've got a lot of other things going on. In Tampa, what are you competing with? Nothing. And in Los Angeles, we've got plenty of great stuff to do and plenty of great teams to see and plenty of great star players and sports. So these people come into the market and they think, we can just run this thing like it's Tampa. And you can't. When you see Bryce Harper going to the Philadelphia Phillies for $330,000,000 and everybody's complaining about the $330,000,000, the Dodgers got 8.25 billion- with a B- billion dollars to keep their games off television for 25 years. So I don't really want to hear their sob story about how much money Bryce Harper wanted. It's not my problem. You got the 8.25 billion. Now spend it. But they got everybody in the door by making a couple of big acquisitions in the beginning and winning the very bad division they play in and what have you. But the reality is they're not good enough to win the World Series. We found that out the last two years in a row. And if the team was so good, why have they shed about eight of the 25 players in the roster since last season? They consider every player to be a replaceable part. They don't see any value in having stars on the team. And I can tell you that may wash in Tampa, but it's not going to wash in Los Angeles. Matt (Host) 00:41:59 Tampa's baseball team is going to wind up in Montreal probably in the next few years. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:42:04 Well, if only they build a Stadium in Montreal, which, I read those stories, and I find it hard to believe that there will be a Stadium in Montreal. Do you believe that? Matt (Host) 00:42:16 I'm hoping. I'm a longtime Montreal Expos fan, and I left Montreal in '94 after the season never finished, and I really never went back to baseball. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:42:28 I understand, by the way, which is a reflection of my age. I was at Jerry Park the first year the Expos played. 1969. I went, and I saw Rusty Staub and I saw Donn Clendenon, and I saw Manny Sanguillen and some of the other players in that first season of the Expos. It was a blast going to a minor league ballpark and watching Major League baseball. It was pretty incredible. Matt (Host) 00:42:59 Yeah. They just never got that stadium thing right in Montreal. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:43:03 Well, that Olympic Stadium had no intimacy at all, which I think- I think baseball requires a certain level of intimacy. And the Olympic Stadium is this big concrete bowl with the roof that never worked right. And that Astroturf that killed Vladimir Guerrero's knees. I think today in baseball, you got to have grass, you got to have intimacy. You really shouldn't have more than 40,000 seats, because on TV, you're just going to see a bunch of empty sections like you do when you watch the Angels on TV from Anaheim. All you see in the background are empty seats. Needs to be smaller, more intimate. Needs to look a little old school maybe. And I watch that every year. They play that exhibition game with the Blue Jays and somebody, because there's only one Canadian team. So you get the Blue Jays plus someone else. And it's an Olympic Stadium, and it's a big place. Now, of course, they've got 40 or 50,000 people coming for the one baseball game that Canada gets to see all year long. That one. But Montreal in the beginning was a great baseball market. It was fantastic. And I remember riding the Metro in Montreal and seeing all the ads on the subway, all the signs. Everybody was talking about it. It was pretty great. Between the strikes in Major League Baseball and the lockouts and what have you, it pretty much killed the Expos. And it's a tragedy, but I don't think the Expos are going to come back. I don't think there's going to be a Montreal team without a stadium. There's never been a lot of desire to build a stadium at municipal expense in Montreal. I still don't see it. Do you? Matt (Host) 00:44:53 Not yet. I hear things, but I think it's years away. It's years away, if at all. But there are people working behind the scenes like Warren Cromartie is very active in the community. He's got the Montreal baseball project, and it's something that we watch, and I think they're going to want to do it organically, much the same way the Winnipeg Jets came back as a hockey franchise. It was done organically. It's not done in the public space where your Commissioner is going to have to answer questions every 25 minutes about whether or not this is going to happen. It's something that they're going to try to work on organically. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:45:30 I also think, though, that in Canada, it's a lot easier to get a hockey arena built. How many arenas are like in Hamilton, Ontario, they've got an arena with no NHL team, Quebec, no NHL team. Getting an arena built for hockey is a lot easier in Canada than a baseball Stadium. Matt (Host) 00:45:49 Yeah, absolutely. By the way, about things that killed the Montreal Expos. You got them all right. You just forgot one thing. And that was Rick Monday. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:45:56 What about Rick Monday? Rick Monday played for the Expos. Matt (Host) 00:45:59 No, he played for the Dodgers. But there was that 1981 home run that he hit against the Expos in the National League Championship Series. And poor Rick Monday just can't get- he can't get served in Montreal. Still, really, people remember that home run as being just a devastating day. It was Steve Rogers came in in relief, of all things, in the top of the 9th, and he served up a tater to Rick Monday. Dodgers win two to one and went on to win the World Series. And the team didn't recover after that. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:46:30 I have to be honest with you. I remember the 1981 baseball season very well because I believe there was a strike and they split the season in two halves. Matt (Host) 00:46:39 Correct. They did. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:46:41 And especially in 1981. I was 25 years old and I was a baseball purist and this idea that the first half winner was going to play the second half winner, and they completely changed the playoffs that year. I couldn't get into it. I was angry at baseball that year. So my memory of the specific games and players in 1981 is a little fuzzy. Matt (Host) 00:47:08 Tom, what advice do you have for anybody who's in radio and looking towards the future in 2020? Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:47:15 Well, look towards the future because radio is not going to be in it. Radio is going to be voice tracked. It's going to be piped in from somewhere you don't live. There are going to be no local broadcast, no remote broadcast, no local advertisers paying talent fees to read the commercials. It is certainly, I think, not a career to plan for. If you want to plan to be in the world of digital content, that's where the opportunity lies. It's a little more complicated than when I got into radio, because the path to success in radio was a long one, but it was pretty clear what you had to do, what steps you had to take. I worked my way through eight markets, and I knew it was like being a comedian and having to develop an act and having to go work in small comedy clubs. I had to work in Stanton, Virginia and Albany, New York and Miami, Phoenix, Boston, and finally Los Angeles. And now you have to have a little more than just a good voice or the willingness to outrageous things. You've got to have knowledge of all things digital, every technical innovation, and you have to stay on top of it. And you can't wait for an employer to give you that knowledge or training. You have to invest in yourself. You have to spend a little of your own money, buy a better microphone, buy a better distribution system, know how to create content that sounds spectacular. One of the things I did in going from radio to a live stream to a podcast was to make sure that the audio content sounded just as good or even improved with time in all media that I work not have radio be good and then podcasting being good enough, which is what a lot of people do. I hear a lot of people talking into that- the condenser mic in their laptop, and that's a podcast. You've got to be devoted to making the content sound better and better with professional equipment and a professional attitude and professionalism. And when I go to that podcast movement, this is something people don't want to hear. I get a lot of blowback when I harp on the lack of professionalism. It blows me away. How many people put substandard sounding content out there and then wonder why they can't get any advertisers or wonder why they've got 37 listeners. People do care about the sound of your content and so I would say if you are looking forward to employment in the future or career opportunities in the future, do not go to your local radio station. They are not up to speed on digital content or producing digital content. Anyone who has any radio station that puts out something they call a podcast, usually all they're doing is replaying the morning Zoo from this morning. That's all they're doing. They're not creating content for podcasting. I did a three or four hour radio show for so many years and then in the live stream it was 3 hours. My podcast averages 35 minutes. That's what it's got to be and you got to get all the good stuff in there like a sun dried tomato. It's got to be concentrated and all right there and no wasting time. The radio is full of time wasters. Billboards on traffic reports, traffic reports themselves, news reports, weather reports. If I were programming a radio station for the 21st century, I would say if people can get it on their phone and take it off the air. Matt (Host) 00:51:06 Tom, thanks a lot for being on the podcast today. I really enjoyed this conversation. It's been a long time in the making and I'm glad we finally got a chance to sit down and do this. Tom Leykis (Guest) 00:51:14 Matt an absolute pleasure. I really appreciate it. I enjoy your podcast and thank your audience also for indulging us here. Amanda (Voiceover) 00:51:21 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. #talkradio #Podcast

Ben McCully has one of the most interesting portfolios I, and probably you, have ever seen: Radio host, car salesman, pro wrestler, brewery tour manager. If that combo of careers doesn't have you hooked on this episode already, I don't know what will. Clearly, Ben has worn many hats throughout his career, which is fitting because he currently lives in Medicine Hat, Alberta. We talk about his philosophy degree from University of King's College, how he managed his career path, what those transitions were like, and his travels across Canada as a radio host (he's worked in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Alberta). I know it's cliché to say this, but this episode really does have something for everyone- assuming you like beer, wrestling, radio, philosophy, or just really interesting stories. For more Ben, be sure to check out his LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter. Ben also has a podcast with his 8-year-old daughter, Helena. We also touched on Ben being the General manager of Brew Bus Tours. You can find out more about that here. Come watch Ben wrestle as Asher Benjamin. SHOW 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 Ben McCully has one of the more interesting portfolios I, and probably you, have ever come across. Radio host, car salesman, pro wrestler, brewery tour manager. And if that combo of careers doesn't get you hooked on this episode already, I don't know one that will. Clearly, Ben has worn many hats throughout his career, which is fitting because he once lived in Medicine Hat. And we're going to talk about that. Also about his philosophy degree from the University of King's College, how he managed his career path and what those transitions were like, those travels across Canada as a radio host working in Nova Scotia, Ontario, Alberta. And I know it's cliche to say this, but this episode really does have something for everyone- assuming you like beer, wrestling, radio, philosophy or just interesting stories. Ben McCully currently works at Rock 95 in Barry and joins me from Collingwood, Ontario. I've already detected your accent. You use the word far earlier, and it's fahr. You said fahr. Clearly, you're from out east. Ben McCully (Guest) 00:01:13 Not too far in your car. Picton Nova Scotia, right on the Northumberland Street. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:19 And what did you listen to growing up? Ben McCully (Guest) 00:01:21 Yeah. So the beautiful thing about being on the Northumberland Street is every Prince Edward Island station would come in pretty Crystal clear. And we had a hometown station that I would do projects for when I was in high school and then end up working there was my first gig. My first station was my hometown station. So in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, there was 1320 CKEC Radio ne Glasgow. And then nighttime listening was 720 C. Htn, the oldest station from Charlotte town, Prince Edward Island are coming across the water. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:01:50 So some Am listening, not necessarily on the FM. Ben McCully (Guest) 00:01:54 Yeah, Am listening. And then eventually Am working. And by the time I left CKC, they had entered into their CRTC hearings for the FM switch. They are currently owned by Stingray, and it's 94.1 degrees, but it began as a privately owned Hector Broadcasting station on the Am dial. And yeah, I mean, that's the typical place to find oldies and the classics from back in the day. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:02:23 So because you could listen to stuff from Prince Edward Island, I gather you were in Corey Tremere territory. Ben McCully (Guest) 00:02:29 The name I've heard. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:02:31 By the way, from there, I did notice you went to Kings College in Halifax. So tell me a little bit about why you chose to go to King's College, because I've walked a few kids through that on the tour, and they were all spooked off by the fact that you would be specializing in something like philosophy or journalism like you did, because you specialized in both. Ben McCully (Guest) 00:02:52 Yeah. They have the foundation year program, which is unlike anything I think many other institutions offer. And it's an intensive, very thorough. Basically, this isn't even hyperbole reading a book a week. So that didn't exactly draw me to University of King's College. It was the journalism program. But growing up, before I had a taste for radio, I was convinced that television news was going to be my Avenue. I wanted to be the next Dave Wright or Steve Murphy. I wanted to be the anchor of the television news, but I was a bit biased as well because the University of King's College was where my grandfather and my great great aunt had attended College. And so there was a little family legacy to follow footsteps into. And so Carlton University in Ottawa was a great journalism program. They offered me a little entry scholarship. There was also St. Thomas University, New Brunswick offered me a little scholarship. And then Kings, where my family legacy was, didn't offer me a damn thing. And so in my twisted philosophy, I thought, well, that's the place to go. If these other places want to give me money to go, and I'm not good enough to get money from this place, it must be the best place. And so thousands of dollars and two years more in University than typically radio people go through. So I always joke I wasted a lot more time and money than the typical radio person came out the other side and decided, yeah, I know radio is where I want to go. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:04:24 Funny, you mentioned Steve Murphy because that job just came up and Todd Battis wound up taking over from Steve Murphy. So I think when you're looking back on your career, that was the job I wanted, but you would have had to wait like 25 years. Ben McCully (Guest) 00:04:37 Yeah, it's amazing how I'm not sure if it's an East Coast thing. I know you look at the legendary national anchors and they obviously had long tenures, but it just seems like in this day and age, that's never going to happen again. I think that might be a safe assumption, but yeah, it would have been a long wait. Who knows what I would have had to have done beforehand. But there's so many great East Coast talent that have done cool things, like Bruce Rainey is another name that years ago he was the local sports guy, and now he goes to every Olympics and does awesome commentary on Olympic games. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:05:12 Scott Russell, Prince Edward Island yes, there's more. And people are probably yelling at their phones and listing off all the great broadcasters who are now doing other things. So there you go. You got yourself a journalism degree. But what was it about radio that pulled you in? Ben McCully (Guest) 00:05:27 My first foray into broadcasting, I always say was doing the announcements in my high school, and I had all that family legacy love for the evening news kind of in my head. I used to cut out articles from the local newspaper in Pictou County and pretend I was an anchor in the mirror when I was in elementary school and junior high. But then I started doing the announcements in high school and during my tenure at Kings, I spent my summers. This is how I got into radio fully was doing the Summer Cruiser gig back in my hometown station. And I realized pretty quickly the high, the rush of getting a laugh, of seeing a creative exercise right through to the end and it being a success. When you get positive reaction, the phones light up and the people laugh and compliment. And I realized instead of being person B, that takes the details of event A and conveys it to audience C, I thought, why the hell not be event A, be the creator. And so it was just making ends meet. Summer gig, falling in love and realizing that was the path to choose. Sorry, mom, wasted a lot of time and money. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:06:40 You realize you're being very philosophical there and you have a degree in philosophy. Ben McCully (Guest) 00:06:45 Well, the foundation of your program, like I said, very philosophical based, but there's no official documentation as part of the degree of being philosophical. But when you read a book a week and you write papers, essays, three to 4000 word essays every two weeks, yeah, it kind of sticks with you a little bit. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:07:03 See, that was the stuff right there that scared the kids off of going to that school because you get told on the tour that it's a book a weekend, it's a lot of essays. Ben McCully (Guest) 00:07:13 And all these years later, I could tell you very little philosophical principles and ideologies from over the years. My retention of the specifics- out the window after 20 years. But I look back at my time at the University of King's College and this is what I would suggest. Anybody suggesting it or thinking they're being scared off. You relearn how to think and retooling my brain is what I took away from my time there. So while Rene Descartes might be one of my favorite philosophers, I can maybe give you two or three quotes. All these years later, I have lost a lot of the specific knowledge, but I still think the way that I learned to think while at Kings, it retooled my brain. It changed the way I think, and that is invaluable. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:08:03 So after you get the Summer Cruiser gig in your hometown, you get a few laughs. You see the process of radio and how it works. What was your next step? Ben McCully (Guest) 00:08:12 Well, every time I would go back and it was kind of a proud moment because they had never had a Summer Cruiser student do more than one summer. But at the end of summer one for me, at the end of the first year of University, they were adamant about having me back the next summer. Please come back. We'd love to have you back. And I thought, okay, great. So every time I went back and I did it three summers, but every time I went back, they would increase my responsibilities. And so I got to voice track an evening show. Then I got to do more actual commercial remotes throughout the week, and I got to partake in planning promotions. And so every time I went back, I would learn a little more about the radio business because they were allowing me to do more. They increase my workload. And so by the time I ended at Kings, and I was like, now what? Where will I foray into the world. They were right there still, can you come work for us? We have a spot for you. And it was kind of fulfilling the destiny of the journey. Three summers learning, and then now, coming out of University, why not make it a full time gig and have my own live show? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:09:17 What shift did you get? Ben McCully (Guest) 00:09:19 So CKEC, it was really weird. And I told this story before, but I was a punk kid who didn't appreciate what I had in this old fashioned behind the times radio station. We had touchscreen Scott as an operating system, which was great, but we had still a library with walls of vinyl and CDs. And so I worked like a Wednesday to Sunday shift, and it was block formatted. So it was your Top 40 in the morning, and then there was a midday country show, and then it would go back to Top 40 in the afternoon and evening. But on the weekends there was an oldie show and a country classic show. So it was block formatting. Probably the last radio station because we're talking 2002 and three. So I had the midday gig doing the country show, and then a couple of days of the week, I had the longer shift. It went from the country to the top 40, and I work till six. And then I hosted the Saturday Gold Show on the weekends where I spun vinyl for most of the show, I'd go and peruse the library and build my show with what records I wanted. And my punk kidness at the time was rolling my eyes, going, oh, why wouldn't the station get with the times? But that was my punk kidness. Because with maturity and years under my belt, now I look back and I go, that was such a wicked experience. Why didn't I appreciate that more? Building a show with vinyl records and getting to spin them? Because the art of the DJ, the disc jockey, doesn't exist anymore. There's no discs to jockey. And so I got to do that. And I was one of the last of that generation in that area to do it, and I didn't appreciate it at the time, but I appreciate it so much more now. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:11:00 What's the moment when you decide to leave Nova Scotia to do radio elsewhere? Ben McCully (Guest) 00:11:07 It was four years of working full time there and getting married, settling down for the wrong reasons, and not having the life that I had envisioned for myself. There was a time when I left University and I took that full time gig at my hometown station that depression set in. And when you did the summer cruiser gig for the summer that you did while you're in College, expecting to come out of University and the world's your oyster, and you can paint your own path, and you still end up at the same hometown station- having fun, mind you. But there was just this depression that set in, and that depression led me to getting married too early, thinking, well, no one else will have me. So I got to lock this down. And then just working on myself, getting my confidence back, waking up, the light being turned on and becoming more myself, and realizing I need to make some changes in my life. And so, as painful as it was, I ended that relationship and looked west. My parents had gone to Fort McMurray, and Fort McMurray, I would later learn, is one of the quintessential second chance places in this world. It is a city that is vibrant and full of second chances. You might say some people run to hide in Fort McMurray, but it's a reset button. And I took that opportunity. I took that reset, and that's really when the radio career started. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:12:28 But you did more than radio up there, right? Didn't you also sell cars? Ben McCully (Guest) 00:12:33 Yeah. So in between radio gigs, after I was fired for the first time, I had been doing weekly remotes at this Ford dealership. And you want to talk about characters. The manager of the Ford dealership that I would interview on the radio whenever I was doing remotes, Jeffrey Watson. He was a Las Vegas born character that just I fell in love with. And so he was immediately like, Come work for me, sell some cars, get rich. And so I jumped at the chance to have, obviously, an income in between radio gigs. But my heart was always in radio, and I was lucky enough, although maybe again, another foolish financial decision. I was lucky enough to have the competition just down the street from where I was let go from scoop me up pretty quickly. So it was a four month stint of selling cars. My heart wasn't in it, but it was a learning experience. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:13:23 So why did you get fired from the radio gig? Ben McCully (Guest) 00:13:25 The official reason is because I rigged a contest to meet Taylor Swift. But I went to a media meet and greet with Taylor Swift that I had prearranged for myself. And so I'm not exactly sure I have my personal beliefs of it being just a personal difference in Philosophies with the general manager at the time. And so I think this was the umbrella they chose to put everything under. Taylor Swift at a concert in Edmonton. And we sent listeners all week. And I think one of the winners never picked their tickets up. And I ended up in a meet and greet, and they put two and two together too. Oh, he must have rigged it. But I was in a meeting, meet and greet with Chris Sheets from Kissing. So I was in this media meet and greet, met Taylor Swift. That's a whole other story. But I think they wanted someone else to be in the role. This is just my opinion and conjecture and found a reason to say, see you. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:14:17 What's it like? Meeting Taylor Swift. Ben McCully (Guest) 00:14:21 That's a much better conversation. I'm half joking and I only half joke when I say that we shared some moments. I forget the tour. I think it may have been the Speak Now tour. So she's headlining, world renowned Superstar. We got to meet. And when you get to be in the meet and greet on this particular tour, you also asked to be involved in the show later on. So she does her main stage set, and then she comes to the back of the arena and does four songs acoustically on this little mini stage sitting at the bottom of this tree that revolves. And we were asked as the meet and greet people to be the circle around that revolving tree. So us radio guys and girls get to be the single file laying around the tree, and she's singing to us and the other 12,000 people that are there. And she came off the stage. This is the half joking part. She comes off the stage and she runs around the circle, high fiveing everybody that's in the circle. I just happened to be the last person, by the luck of the draw. So I was the person that she didn't just high five. She clasped hands with and then raised the hand up over the head and was like, thank you. And so I get to hold hands with Taylor Swift during a concert for 2.6 seconds. So we really shared a moment. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:15:33 You mentioned that Fort McMurray is a place for second chances, but it's also a place to grow. It's one of the things I find with anybody who's worked radio in Fort McMurray is how they grow exponentially with their talents and the community and everything about it, even with all the wild and wacky things that go on there with oil and prices and housing and all that stuff. So what were some of your Fort Mac takeaways? Ben McCully (Guest) 00:15:58 It really was its own bubble. And so you felt like you were in a different world, which led to creativity. You took more risks. You get to just kind of go after it. And because there's so much money and because there's so much corporate sponsorship, there are gala events almost every other week. And so all the free tuxedo rentals and the events that I got to host, the events I got to be part of the artists that would come just because of the atmosphere led to some really great confidence building experiences. I got to host more than I've ever hosted. And I'm not just talking MC in a concert, but hosting gala dinner fundraisers where hundreds of thousands of dollars, close to a million are on the docket. United Way in Fort McMurray, I think still I haven't been there for a few years, but while I was there, it was doubling any other United Way in Canada. As far as the amount raised every year, it was the number one city in Canada for fundraising for the United Way. So these big deals really got me out of my shell, into the community. I hosted karaoke night there. I just really love the city and so many people come out of Fort McMurray with a different experience, with a different opinion. And unfortunately a lot of those people might be the people that actually worked for a living. I talked about living in Fort McMurray and one of the most common questions is what camp did you work? I'm like, I lived in the city and I sat on my ass and listen to music for a living. I didn't work twelve to 16 hours a day doing manual labor. So the people who work at the camp that never come into the city, they might leave Fort McMurray with a negative opinion of it. But there was just so many resources that led to so many avenues to expand. I got involved in community theater. I starred in a couple of piano theater productions and because of the money, once again, the Keyano Theater, part of the Keyano College is world class, phenomenal facility with some of the best people running the show. And so that was a really cool growth experience because I did a little community theater back in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. But this was sold out giant theater for a week run, learning skills that obviously you don't get elsewhere. So many opportunities for growth. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:18:08 We're going to touch on theater just a little bit more in a second. But you started at Rogers, then you went to work at the Newcap station. Did you get to interact with Terry Bill and Steve, three of my favorite people at Newcap at the time. Ben McCully (Guest) 00:18:23 Oh boy, do I have stories for you. Not only did I interact, I co hosted the show in a very unique experience and environment. So we simulcast the Terry Bill and Steve Show in Fort McMurray on KRock at the time and there was a lot of controversy around that decision when KRock launched and they wanted to simulcast this legendary show out of Edmonton. Obviously there are pros built in there, a legendary show, no names, but there were lots of people that spoke of, well, you need a local show. Where's the local content going to be. So they decided to kill two birds with 1 stone and make me the local co host. So Terry Bill and Steve would do their show and it would throw to me for the Fort McMurray audience. So when they would go to commercial in Edmonton, it would actually be me coming on saying, thanks, guys. And it was just local. I had easy show prep because I could only speak about what was happening in town. So there's no bits to do, no interviews to do. They paid me almost too well to just do 45 seconds to a couple of minutes. I had to do morning show math just as a sidebar. This is how wonky it was. I had to take their commercial logs and compare it to our commercial logs and do math every break to okay, this break is going to leave me 30 seconds. I have a 30 second break. This break- Oh, I got to kill two and a half minutes. And then there were some breaks where there was no time for me. It would go right back to the Terry, Bill and Steve show. So it was a really unique experience. But I got on Terry's bad side trying to have a little fun. I'm not sure if he would remember this. He probably would because he was going into a subject matter. I can't remember what it was, but I would hop on the KRock Twitter and I would say, I would just kind of tee it up. And I used creative language one time to tee it up. I said, Is Terry saying he's against this? Da DA DA. Find out more in a minute. Just clickbaity stuff back before clickbait was a term, and I wasn't saying anything negative. I was just trying to throw the question out. So you would tune in. And so they come back and they're on the air and Terry says, who's this Dick Knuckle up in Fort McMurray saying that I'm this. And they're like, that's McCully, he's the KRock guy. They do a bit kind of disparaging me because of this tweet that he misinterpreted. So that would happen a couple of times. And I was all in on this because I thought, hey, we got some cool content here because there's not many morning shows where there's legit heat and people with like a dis- I was like, let's steer into that. And I'll never forget Steve Jones coming to tour Fort McMurray one time and talking about that dynamic we had. And he was encouraging. He was like, I like it. It's great. My local PD was a little nervous. I think. I think he didn't want to rock the boat too much with the Legends Terry, Bill and Steve. And so it didn't last too, too long. But it was fun. Terry would refer to me as that Dick Knuckle on the air. And then I set up a secondary Twitter account, Dick Knuckle. So I was known as Dick Knuckle throughout the listening audience. And I had the gracious opportunity to come down and be a part of one of their anniversary shows, their 500 show or something. And they had a big party in the afternoon. They had me come down and Terry and I got to clear the air. And I was like, I was just all in on the creative side of that. He was like, I figured you just got me on a cranky day. So, you know, we buried the hatchet eventually, but, boy, do we have some fun going at each other. When I got to co host the Terry Bill and Steve Show. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:21:45 Those are some of the best moments with Terry Evans when he goes sideways on just a little something and then comes back and says, yeah, you just caught me on a different day at a different time in a certain time in a certain place. Yeah, it's early in the morning. I mean, realistically, who doesn't feel that way first thing in the morning, right? Ben McCully (Guest) 00:22:02 You get some punk kid on another station shooting off about you. It must be a punk kid that needs to be put in their place. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:22:11 What was that moment when you had to leave Fort McMurray, and where did you go? Ben McCully (Guest) 00:22:15 Well, I did two different stints in Fort McMurray, so when I was working for Rogers, I was doing evenings on the country station. And then I had gotten a gig in Ottawa working for the legendary Shay 106. And it was just two years, but it felt like being reeducated and learning real radio all over again with the team that was there. And so the morning show would come up at the same country station. This would be the one that I would eventually get fired from. And so I went back to Fort McMurray to take over the morning show that they offered me. And then it was okay so that for a year and then KRock for a couple of years. And then I left Fort McMurray for the second and final time because it was time to start a family. My wife and I had been in a long distance relationship, and she was also in radio. I met her in Fort McMurray. She had gotten a gig with Newcap in Sudbury, Ontario. And so we were long distance, but got together whenever we could, including a trip to Cuba, which we came home with the ultimate souvenir. And that is now my eight year old daughter. So when it was family time, and this is where I'll give Newcap all the credit in the world. And this is why I don't like when people bash the big guys and just paint them all with that corporate evil brush. Even Rogers, I had so much fun and learning and growth and the resources that we had, I'll always cherish. But Newcap created a job for me in Sudbury so that we could be together. They were in the business, they said, of keeping good talent and keeping families together, and I'll never forget that. So I moved to Sudbury because they created a job for me in the radio station. And we got together there and just kind of been chasing the Dragon ever since. So to speak. Because Fort McMurray was not a situation I was looking to leave. But out of necessity and a changing of priorities, family, I had to leave. And so I've been chasing that perfect spot ever since. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:24:13 Wait a second. I don't have any of this in my show prep in my notes here. So, A, who's your wife? And B, how do you ever make a relationship like that work where you're many times zones apart? Ben McCully (Guest) 00:24:25 Thanks to Newcap, we made it work by getting together and not having to explore doing it for too long. Jen Arruda, for a very brief time, was known on the air on the Rock station in Fort McMurray as the Barracuda Arruda, lovely Portuguese girl who has left the radio world to take on a better calling in the healthcare industry. She's now a nurse at the Collingwood General Marine Hospital here in central Ontario. So the joke was she saw the writing on the wall and made a major life change and is now doing phenomenal work and has been like, when is it your turn? And I'm sure we'll get to the point where I thought I was making that decision and then got sucked back in because of that pursuit of the perfect gig. But she's been the rock and the mother of the year eight times over and inspiration on expanding out of radio and finding value and worth in other endeavors. But we didn't have to be long distance for too long because we were too excited on that Cuba trip. It was inevitably bound to bind us together. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:25:30 Coming up, we're going to be cutting some promos and getting a little theatrical. We may even break KFAB. We're going to find out if Ben has a face or a heel. Ben also has his hand in management of the Beer Bus company. I'm going to ask about that. And did you know he's a podcaster as well? Wait until you find out who his cohost is. And Ben heads east to Sudbury, but he's not quite done with the west yet. Hang on, there's more. There's always more at soundoffpodcast.com like, say, a transcription of the show. Mary Anne Ivison (VO) 00:26:04 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. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:26:16 The Sound Off Podcast. So you relocated to Sudbury, and then how long were you there together before you decided to up and go to Collingwood where you are now? Ben McCully (Guest) 00:26:26 Well, we were in Sudbury just over a year, so we saw the birth of our daughter there, and it was a really interesting experience because they had created this position for me of doing weekends on Rewind, their classic hit station, so Newcap owned Rewind and Hot 93.5. So I was doing the weekend announcing, but also doing production throughout the week. So it was a split shift kind of dual role position they created for me and my first weekend on the air, I wasn't an official employee yet because I had driven across the continent, packed up all my stuff from Fort McMurray, moved to suburb, arrived on a Friday evening. The program director was out of town and out of range in the wilderness, in a cabin somewhere. And the weekend guy, the guy that was supposed to be on the air that weekend, ended up in the hospital with kidney stones. And so one of the random announcers who worked for Rewind called me and was like, hey, I know you don't start until Monday, but we can't get a hold of our program director. Can you hop on the air and do the shows? Even though you're not really officially part of the team yet, you haven't signed anything. Can you fill in? So I filled in on the weekends. Program director comes back from his weekend away in the woods and was like, what the hell happened? Great job. Thank you. And we were off and running, and so it was just funny to my first official gigs was before I was an official member of the team. I eventually got promoted to afternoons on Hot 93.5, which was a great spot, a great day part on a nationally recognized station. They were trendsetters in so many ways. G-Rant had gotten a promotion of the morning show, which opened up afternoons for me. Unfortunately, I only did the position a few months before getting fired for the second time. And that was over a very valuable lesson in social media. Do you want to hear that story? Matt Cundill (Host) 00:28:21 Oh, yeah. Ben McCully (Guest) 00:28:23 So in the pursuit of being as local and as relatable to the audience as possible as a new dad, I was searching for local parenting kind of stories and issues. And there was this network called Care.com, which was basically the Facebook of childcare providers. So if you were a child care provider looking for work, you would create a profile in this website. If you had children that needed childcare, you could create a profile on this website. So it brought people together. We had become members because we were like, okay, well, when you're back to work, we need babysitting. And I'm perusing profiles on Care.com, and I come across what really looks like a teenager's Facebook page because her profile picture was very attention getting. It was obviously a night out in a gorgeous dress that didn't leave much to the imagination. And it just struck me as odd that's the profile picture you chose. And so this was the conversation that my wife and I were having. And I was like, this is good content. Listen to the conversation we're having right now. Is that appropriate? Is that not appropriate? Like you're looking to look after kids, and this is the way. So I took this subject matter to the air, and the person that we were discussing somehow knew exactly who we were talking about. Outed herself in the comment section of our Facebook discussion about it. And this was very early on in social media. So I know as a company and as a station, we didn't have any regulations, rules, procedures. And so we were in new territory. Some people were accusing me of being a cyber bully. And so the company, I think, made a decision to make an example and say, look, this is a person in our listening area that you were talking about, even though you took pains to keep them anonymous. They didn't stay anonymous, but they're very upset at this. And I didn't pass any judgment. I just spoke the facts of the issue and then opened the phones. Do you think that's appropriate? What do you think? I personally never passed any judgment or opinion, but I think made an example of. And so that was what I got fired over. So then we went to Medicine Hat. So we didn't even go to Collingwood after that. Medicine Hat came first. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:30:39 And tell me about the Medicine Hat experience, because now you're rolling all the way back out west. Ben McCully (Guest) 00:30:44 Yeah, it's amazing because if you remember starting in Nova Scotia and moving to Fort McMurray, moving to Ottawa, moving back to Fort McMurray, then moving to Sudbury, then moving back to Alberta. But this time, Medicine Hat. Four of those moves, I use the same moving company, this little mom and pop shop. And so it was averaging every two years, this guy shows up on my door because he did a great job the first time. So when I had to move again, I would call him, and this guy shows up at my door, does a double take you again. Wow. And that scene repeated itself three or four times because I've used the same company to move back and forth across the company. And on the last one, when we headed to Collingwood from Medicine Hat, he told me, he said, I'm writing a book about your life. I come into your life every two years and pick up all your belongings. There's something philosophical about this. There's some story here from my perspective of seeing you change your career levels. And he said he was going to write a book. I don't know if that ever happened, but probably not. Medicine Hat was an experiment. It was the exact opposite of what drew me to Collingwood. I had a former colleague that I had worked with in Fort McMurray selling me on the sunshine and rainbows of this perfect position, perfect opportunity, small company that's just kind of starting to grow. Get in on the ground level and you could be running the show someday. It's all awesome. And it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, but it was sold to me as such when we moved to Medicine Hat- first of all, we were both guaranteed jobs. And that's why it was Medicine Hat. You of all people know the difficulty of two radio people finding two openings in the same place to move across the country for. Medicine Hat, Alberta was the only place in Canada that provided that opportunity for Jen and I. So we made the move because we were both guaranteed jobs. She was at the tail end of her maternity leave. So upon arriving, moving, starting at the station, my former co worker, now new boss, gets let go. The owner of the company comes to me and says, yeah, I'm so sorry, there is no position for your wife. There will be no position that I can see moving forward. And so my immature not getting it in writing and taking my friend word at face value was a hard lesson learned because we've just moved across the country and didn't get what was promised. And the environment, the atmosphere that I was told this company was not the case at all. Luckily, my wife got on with the competition. She worked for the country station in Medicine Hat. Did a great job. So we weren't hurting, we weren't in a desperate situation. It was just a real kick in the nuts when that happened. So basically, almost upon arriving, we've got kind of a bad taste in her mouth about the company and situation and there would just be things here and there that just piled on to, well, this isn't the place for us. So we look back east once again. Jen, being a Toronto born and raised second generation Canadian because her parents immigrated from Portugal, she grew up coming to Wasaga Beach in the summer, was very familiar with this area. So when the morning show and Wasaga Beach opened up, she was like, you have no idea how great of a place that is that is so close to Toronto. Let's do it. Let's go for it. And she had already made her mind up. I think at the time, she might say different, but she decided radio wasn't going to be for her. She already knew that a change was coming and so she encouraged me to go for that job and that brought us here. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:34:12 So if you're following along on the Radio home game, the company that lured you out to Medicine Hat, that has now been bought by Vista. But here you go. You're moving back east into a great area and I think you start working for Bay Shore Broadcasting, correct? Ben McCully (Guest) 00:34:29 Yes. And the exact opposite philosophy being used. And this is what impressed me and this is what really sold me in coming here. When I moved to Medicine Hat, my old friend had sold me on the Sunshine and Rainbows- we're awesome. Come be awesome with us. When I was offered the position in Collingwood with Bay Shore, I really respected and appreciated the operations manager having the almost opposite tone. We're small, the resources aren't great. We don't do this well. We don't do this well. We don't do this well. We can grow in this area, but that's where you come in. You can help us with that. So it's not sunshine and rainbows, but there's potential and we want you to help. And I respected that because you don't hear that. You usually hear the opposite. Sunshine, rainbows, and it's the best place in the world. So just out of respect, I was like, I'm in, that sounds good. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:35:25 And now you're working for Central Ontario at Rock 95. So first of all, Congratulations for working there. It's a great company. What precipitated the change just to move over to Rock 95? Ben McCully (Guest) 00:35:35 In simplest terms, when someone tells you that things aren't great and it's not sunshine and rainbows and are very honest, you should believe them. And it was a rough ride. Five years of doing the morning show for Bay Shore Broadcasting, living in paradise with different priorities than maybe my 20 something self, where it's like climb the ladder, get to the best gig. You're going to work in Toronto someday, kid. I have a family and we live in paradise. And so that balanced what wasn't the best work environment and there were just too many shit sandwiches to eat. And if I can be frank, it all started really a couple of years before I left, or I should say a year before I left. It really all started. And that was when my mum passed away. My mom got sick back on the East Coast and she called from Palliative Care to say, It's time, come see me. My brother and I both immediately hopped on a plane and went home. My program director at the time is very supportive, but our company had a three day bereavement policy. Three days, that's it. My mom is still alive and it's just on death's door. I got the privilege to go home to say goodbye, but on one hand I had the gall to go home to say goodbye before she passed because obviously I was home for a lot more than three days. Five days after we got home, my mom passed away. She passed away in St. Patrick's Day with the most beautiful attitude, like there's nothing to be too sad about. She knew it was time she was embracing of it. She was so positive. She taught my brother and I lessons that I will have for the rest of my life. But while I was home because it took her five or six days to pass, it was a week later, the funeral. I was an executor of her will and there was a house to sell and arrangements to be made. I was home for the better part of three weeks. While I was home, obviously I got paid, but I got a reminder, you were only supposed to be home for three days. We didn't have to pay you. So how are we going to recoup that money back? Do you just want to use up your vacation for the year, which I may have not been in the most mentally stable place to make such decisions. But I was like, this is not a vacation. I lost my mom. This summer, I'm going to need vacation. I need some time when I come back, I need to process this. I need my vacation. So I didn't agree with losing my vacation. I thought my delusions of grandeur were that this family environment that's been sold to me. We're family because there was no- no one had to step into my role and step out of another role. I had a cohost that just took over the show. She was the boss at the time, and my co host, she did the show. No other musical chairs needed to happen. There was no extra dime spent by the company that they lost from me being away. So my delusion of grandeur was, they're just going to let this one go. No, I didn't want to let it go. So they docked my pay to get the money back. They paid me while I was home, and that was a choice I made. I could have chosen to lose all my vacation time for the year, but I wanted to fight that. So the company's option was to take pay off of me for the next few pay periods to recoup their money. So I lost money because my mom died, basically, and that's when I decided I need to make a change. But I took time to make that change because there wasn't a lot of other opportunities out there. And again, we were living in paradise. But my mental health has been kind of an issue my whole adult life. I referenced it earlier. When I left University, I had an episode when I faced some discipline with this company that was, I believe, unwarranted. Long story short, I had a new manager from a different station who I've never met before upset with me because I missed a shift of voice tracking. And the way they spoke to me that first time, it wasn't like, this is the fifth time. This is the first time. I didn't like how they spoke to me. So I brought it up with upper management, and we were told we were going to have a meeting to discuss this issue. And when we went to sit and have that meeting, it wasn't about that issue. I was ambushed with a performance review that was four pages long that had everything I had done wrong in the previous five years out of nowhere, completely ambushed. And I just couldn't handle that because it was unprofessional, unwarranted, and dare I say, half of which I truly believe wasn't actual issues. It was stretches, to say the least. So that was when I knew it was time to make a big change. And I thought at the time it was a career change because I thought radio, maybe it was the depression talking, but I was like, radio is dying, and this is a clear sign that maybe it's not for me because of how I feel I'm being treated. So I thought I was retiring on my own accord and under my own volition, I stepped away and thought that was it. And so I went on stress leave, which eventually became permanent and had a fantastic summer bonding with my daughter and family time and had just started putting the pieces together of what was next when Central Ontario Broadcasting came calling like an Oasis in the desert. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:40:43 You mentioned earlier that you did some theater work back in Pictou County, and that theater work actually sort of rears its head. Because you're a wrestler, aren't you? Ben McCully (Guest) 00:40:54 Quite the pivot, yes. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:40:56 How does one become a wrestler? Ben McCully (Guest) 00:40:58 Like so many things in my life, happenstance fate, maybe, if you believe in that and taking advantage of opportunity. I've been a very lucky guy. I've had some Forrest Gump moments in both radio and wrestling and domino effect of happenstance led me to becoming a wrestler. I've been a trained pro wrestler for as long as I've been a professional radio host. The only thing that stopped me from pursuing wrestling instead of radio was that hometown radio station I had committed to going back to. Remember. They had asked me back the second summer and the third summer. So when they asked me back for the third summer and I had committed and signed on, I'll be back. I had gotten trained that year of University. And actually before I was supposed to report to the radio station, I wrestled full time. I toured. We were on the road six nights a week doing shows all over the Maritimes. And we were one of the last of the generations because the wrestling industry today, in 2022, nobody tours full time unless they're the big show, WWE. So we were one of the last of the generations of wrestling full time. But I had to leave to go back to radio because I had committed and my word was my commitment and my word is bond. So I did that. And I've just been doing both balancing back and forth ever since. I became a wrestler because I was in high school interning with East Link Television, and it was part of the course curriculum of going and basically working in the industry you're going to go into. And so I was a reporter for the local Community Access Show of showcasing events and what's happening in town. And when the wrestling was coming to town- as a huge fan all my life, I was like, I'm doing a story on this and I set it up to do a story, but I didn't get to do it. I set it up, but they actually went with somebody else. There was another kid who just joined volunteering with East Link Television. They were like, we're going to give it to you. So I was heartbroken, but that kid fell to the pressure when the camera was on. He was stumbling over his words, and he couldn't do it. For lack of a better term. He kind of choked, and he was teary eyed, and was like, I can't do this. So they turned to me and said, Ben can you step in? There's moment of fate number one. I step in. I do the report. I interview the wrestlers. We do this great story. The story gets in the hands of the promoter of the wrestling show. And he calls me up, and he says, Congratulations with his thick French Canadian Cape Breton accent. You're our ring anouncer. So I was voluntold based on a story I did. I'm now the ring announcer for this wrestling promotion. So I'm still in University. Fast forward a year of me ring announcing for this company, going from show to show, being told I'm going to be paid, but they never gave me money. Again, this is kind of a precursor to what would happen later in life. I stood up for myself, and I said, you said you were going to pay me. I'm skipping classes. I am losing money. I'm eating scraps off the wrestler's plates in the restaurants because I can't afford food. Come on. So I knew they had a training school coming up. Two of the main guys that wrestled for this promotion had a training school coming. And so I just had the idea, hey, look, I know you don't want to pay me. You clearly don't want to pay me because I'm fighting with you for money. Train me. Because at the time, it was like 2000, 2500 or $3,000 to become a pro wrestler. It's an expensive endeavor, but I convinced the promoter to let me train for free in lieu of paying me to ring announce. And they thought, oh, great, now we officially don't got to pay this guy. He won't last a day. And I was one of two people that made it all the way through to the end and was good enough to become a pro and work for them. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:44:36 I have these memories of Grand Prix wrestling and Randy Poffo, y'know, Randy Savage, who toured the Maritimes way back when. I mean, the Maritimes is a hotbed when it comes to wrestling. Ben McCully (Guest) 00:44:47 It's emotional for me. They were heroes, the larger than life heroes. While some people read comic books, I watch wrestling, and the guys that trained me got their start in Grand Prix wrestling, and I would work for No-Class Bobby Bass, who was a Grand Prix wrestling mainstay, became the promoter of the company I work for. So that transition of generations, I got to ride that wave. These legendary names that you're talking about watching train the new generation, that generation trained me. And we kind of set out, blazing a new path. But based solely on Atlantic Grand Prix. Andre the Giant, Randy Savage all came through the Maritimes wrestling for that company. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:45:27 So the trick question that I had set up for you. It's not even really a trick question, and I think you've actually already answered it. But how is the world of professional wrestling so much like radio, with the travel and the theater and promotions? Ben McCully (Guest) 00:45:41 Yeah, it's very much like radio. It's much more like being a musician, but personality has to be front and center first and foremost. Anybody can learn how to fall and not injure themselves. There's a huge difference between being hurt and being injured. Everything in a wrestling ring hurts. We won't go down the F word fake path, but everything's pretty real as far as what it does to your body. Anybody can learn how to fall properly, but it's a whole different beast. Connecting with an audience, telling a story. It's not just two guys in their underwear rolling around. If you love wrestling and you can't put your finger on it, it's because there is a story and there is a formula that every wrestling match has, and some people don't understand that. But yeah, you have to have the personality. And for me, I'm a five foot 7, 200 pound guy. That would be the last person in the room you'd say, that guy's a wrestler, but it's the gift of Gab. It's being able to talk on the microphone. It's being able to elicit a reaction. It's going back to what got me into radio. Oh, I said something on the mic and I got a laugh and that addictive feeling. I'm a bad guy. I'm a hipster character that is better than everyone I'm talking to. And it's my job to go and say something to make them react negatively. And it's artistic, it's beautiful. It's storytelling like radio. And when you have done your job, you have 1000 people screaming and booing and sometimes throwing things at you, and that's a good job. You don't want that reaction in radio, but you do want to make people think, and you do want to get reaction. So very similar in that regard. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:47:25 You live in one of the nicest parts of the planet up in Collingwood, Ontario, and you're the general manager of the Beer Bus Company. What is that? Ben McCully (Guest) 00:47:33 I spent a really good amount of time, and this is probably part and parcel to why I stayed in my not positive situation as far as radio goes, for longer than I probably would have liked or my pride would have liked. But I was the general manager of the Beer Bus Company, so I handle all the day to day bookings of this tourism based brewery tour company in this growing, bustling Northern tip of the Niagara Escarpment that is South Georgian Bay. We've got so many breweries, wineries and cideries up here, and the beer bus would go to them all. Whether it was a Bachelor or Bachelorette priority, company retreat, corporate group, or just a whole bunch of couples booked individually into our bus, we would take you, showcase the best flavors of the region, get you feeling really good, and then take you home safely. And so I became a Cicerone certified beer savvy tour guide. And not just driving the bus, but guiding the experience, telling the stories of the local spots and the local flavors, taking everyone and touring through all the facilities, getting them drunk, and showcasing how awesome South Georgian Bay is. And so, just like wrestling very similar skill set to radio: storytelling, connecting with an audience and getting them to believe in what you're saying and when you believe it, like, I believe in the local breweries. I haven't bought a national brand beer in probably five years. I probably have. But you know what I'm saying? I drink craft beer because I believe in it and it's an amazing area. And so the Beer Bus has been a fantastic experience. So shout out to Paul Izdebski. He's the owner. He started it up and was kind of running the show. They moved back to Toronto and he needed someone to run the company. And so it was like the Hair Club for Men commercials. Do you remember that? Not only am I the hair club President, I'm also a client. I started as a customer. I took a tour, fell in love with the concept and said, Can I help? So I started doing tours, and I was the guy he turned to when he needed someone to come and run it. The pandemic took it away. And so its future is uncertain. But I feel like it's got a bright future in kind of a reset mode once we get everything reopened again. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:49:48 You also co host a podcast with your daughter. Daddy Daughter Day is immensely cute. I gave it a listen to a few episodes. It's really good. Ben McCully (Guest) 00:49:59 I appreciate that. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:50:00 I mean, your daughter's carrying you through the whole thing. Ben McCully (Guest) 00:50:03 Absolutely. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:50:04 Yeah. I mean, she's really good. Ben McCully (Guest) 00:50:07 She comes by it honestly. Obviously, being the child of two radio hosts, you're going to be privy to certain things and be in a certain environment that confidence will grow. And I have been exploiting my daughte- I mean, having her as a guest on the radio since she was three months old. She had a pretty cute giggle and laugh when she was three months old. And I came up with this idea of using a baby to predict the winner of all the major sporting events. So she predicted the Super Bowl based on showing her pictures of the quarterback. She would giggle at one and whimper and cry at the other. So that tells you who her favorite was. That evolved over time. And when she had that little toddler accent, which I call like the Brooklyn accent, it just became cuter and cuter to have her on the radio to give her opinion on things. And we really steered into that during this pandemic, like through the eyes of an eight year old or a six year old at the time seven year old, now an eight year old. How does this make you feel? And just because she's been doing it, she's got an amazing personality. She's a shining star and she inspires me, even. Her energy is amazing. She reminds me of me as far as the imagination. We take screen time away from her when she makes bad choices. And it's the greatest thing ever because it forces her to go play. And then we marvel over the play that she does. And so it was born out of that that we decided we can have you on the radio for 45 seconds at a time, but you've got a lot to say and you've got a take on things. And she would just blow us away when she would weigh in on things. She has what she calls big ears, so she hears what mom and dad talk about. We don't shelter or hide things from her too much. And so she's got opinions on the world around her. And so I thought, let's steer into that and entertain some people with how an eight year old looks at things like the war in Ukraine and high gas prices. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:51:58 And she's keenly aware of things like even the mention in one of the episodes, she said Chinatown. But if I say Chinatown, is that going to be perceived as maybe racist or offend people? And no, you walked her through it and said no, it's actually called that. But to have that awareness at eight years old, obviously the product of media people. Ben McCully (Guest) 00:52:18 Yeah. And I'm not sure if media has had any influence in our parenting style. Probably. You could break that down, the psychologists or counselors who are listening. But it's just a conscious effort to not insult her intelligence. We obviously don't want to live too openly. We'll talk about anything and everything, here put on this serial killer podcast. But we don't shelter her too much from the world. And we talk to her and communicate regularly about what to expect from the world around her and how to treat people. And so she's got a very mature head on her shoulders, but she balances it well. She still plays with so much vigor and imagination. I know that we're not growing her up too much, but not many eight year olds can go to school grade three and say, yeah, I recorded my podcast last night. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:53:12 Ben, thanks a lot for taking the time to join me here on the podcast and share all this. It's been a world of knowledge. Thank you. Ben McCully (Guest) 00:53:19 Well, it's been therapy for me. Thank you for letting me just kind of trace back the steps and figure things out in my head. I feel like I can have a cigarette and a nap now, and I'm better for it. Matt Cundill (Host) 00:53:29 It's true. Podcasting is therapy. It's wonderful. Ben McCully (Guest) 00:53:32 I really appreciate the opportunity. It's great to converse with you and connect with likeminded people. Tara Sands (VO) 00:53:37 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 Sound Off Media Company. There's always more at soundoffpodcast.com.