On Monday, 104.5 the Zone in Nashville spent a lot of time remembering the life and career of Mark Howard who died on Sunday. Howard spent over twenty years with the station and made a lasting impact on a lot of people.
It wasn’t a surprise that one of the guests that came onto the station was former Program Director Brad Willis who held that title while Howard was a co-host of The Wake Up Zone. Willis called into the station’s morning show, J-Mart and Ramon, and took some time to express his memories and affection for Howard (the interview starts at 2:33:00 below).
Jason Martin introduced Willis by saying “here’s a guy who spent a lot of time with him, managing him as much as you can manage someone like Mark Howard… Brad Willis.”
“Managing Mark, yeah what a challenge,” joked Willis, “a fun challenge”.
Willis opened up about the two’s relationship off the air.
“I got named Program Director in 2007 and I was 27 years old, really young in the business,” began Willis. “Mark was a guy that was established and could have bulldozed me and never did. He would come and sit in my office almost daily and ask, ‘what do you think? what are we doing? what do you like? what do you not like?’ And to his credit, he took advice and applied it. He was coachable. And he cared. He cared about the listener. He cared about the co-hosts.”
Martin asked Willis if Howard ever had any idea how good he was in his role on the radio.
“No. He probably suffered from a little bit of imposter syndrome,” said Willis, “‘sooner or later they’ll figure me out, I don’t belong’. But he did…He kind of thought the next day was going to be the last day, every day of his career. You look back and he spent two decades with this company and you don’t do that if you’re not a special, special talent.”
