Buzz Knight has a storied history in radio both as a programmer and executive. Now, he is working on his own podcast series called Takin’ a Walk. Buzz picks out people he admires to take a walk with and pick their brains. As you may expect, several radio personalities have shown up on the series.
WEEI morning man Greg Hill is the subject of the latest edition of Takin’ a Walk. Knight tells Hill that he always admired how much Hill wanted to be in front of people in order to build an audience. The response is kind of surprising. Greg Hill appreciates the compliment, but wonders if anyone could build a show that way now.
Specifically, Hill talked about a regular stunt he would pull when he was on WAAF. The station was mainly considered a Worcester signal when he started in 1989, but management wanted to have a presence in Boston. Hill would walk from Worcester to Boston in order to build buzz for his show. Along the way, he would shake hands and collect change for food banks in the two cities.
“I look back on those things as kinda being the great days of radio where you didn’t have lawyers involved,” Greg Hill lamented. “You could do things like that and there wasn’t an argument against it. Now, you bring something up you want to do and now there are ten people telling you why you can’t do it.”
The events would take place over the course of 3 or 4 days each time Hill started his walk. For him, it was putting a lesson he learned from his former boss John Garabedian into action.
“Getting to shake hands with people and being able to say ‘hey listen to me tomorrow morning on the radio’ is the greatest way in which to build a radio show.”
Hill says Garabedian taught him to think about hosting a morning show as if it were a presidential campaign. People want to meet the guy they hear on the radio. He said it was like running for president. The more hands you shake, the more fans you will have.
Knight and Hill then begin reminiscing about their relationships with Garabedian. Hill always admired how much the man truly loved radio. He said in his experience, you don’t find many people in management like that any more.
“I still think there are a considerable amount of those people in this business, but I am not sure there are as many as we used to be when we first started,” Hill said.
His observation is worth pondering. As the audio platform diversifies and heats up as an investment opportunity, do you need to really love radio to run a company? Is it possible that some of the people in positions of leadership view radio as no different than any other business? That is certainly a sad way to think about our business, but it may not be far fetched.
Buzz Knight and Greg Hill recorded their conversation as they walked around Boston’s Seaport area. The thirty minute episode features great history lessons, not just on Hill and Knight, but on Boston radio in general.
