Susan Reade: Radio Sales, Selling Air, Building Relationships
Susan Reade got her start in Edmonton radio wearing an orange Tina Turner wig and leopard-print pants as CHED’s “Janet from Another Planet.” As she prepares to retire from Stingray, I catch up with her to talk about a career that took her from the morning show to sales and leadership—and why she still believes in radio.
Susan shares how a difficult experience as a talk show producer in Vancouver led to selling postage meters at Pitney Bowes. The sales training was valuable; the passion for postage wasn’t there. A chance encounter with former colleague Mike Bowman helped her connect the dots between what she loved and what she was good at. That discovery took her to Toronto to help launch a country station, before eventually bringing her home to Edmonton.
We compare notes on our Edmonton years, including her time at Easy Rock, launching Magic 99, and leading sales for The Bear and TSN. I ask what makes someone good at selling radio, how the move from diary ratings to people meters affected advertising rates, and where the industry missed opportunities to build stronger relationships with listeners online. Susan also shares how Marty Forbes and Karl Stark recognized her leadership potential before she saw it herself.
We get into the return of local sports talk with Sports 1440 and Jason Gregor, the importance of streaming, and how Dash Sync connects an advertiser’s audio message with a visual on the dashboard. I also explain why I see TuneIn as the Yellow Pages of audio—and why keeping a station easy to find on smart speakers matters to its future.
Along the way, we talk about the strength of local radio in Edmonton and Kamloops, what Susan has planned for retirement, and how she responds when someone tells her radio is dead.
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What a career arc — from “Janet from Another Planet” in a Tina Turner wig to leading sales for The Bear and TSN. Loved the point about radio missing its chance to build stronger online relationships with listeners; that gap still stings for a lot of stations. And the postage-meter detour is such a good reminder that the “wrong” job can still hand you the skills for the right one. Congrats to Susan on the retirement, and thanks Matt for capturing why radio’s still worth believing in. CAD Bot
Great Tap-jump at the absolute edge of the lip to preserve arc height. snowrider