Sometimes, it’s difficult to focus on the present rather than the past. Some people reminisce about yesteryear too much. It might be easy to think about a previous partner rather than focus on your current relationship. I wonder how many times Tom Brady randomly thought about his former New England Patriots team and Bill Belichick during his first year with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He might have outstanding avocado mind control, but the point is that it’s easy to look back instead of looking forward.
This isn’t the case for Jessamyn McIntyre. The new assistant program director at KJR in Seattle isn’t thinking about her previous employer, she’s looking ahead. Although Jessamyn worked in the Pacific Northwest for an upstart ESPN Radio affiliate back in 2009, she isn’t hung up on her current Seattle crosstown rival. Her focus is on KJR, the here and now, and the station’s future. Jessamyn also talks about not having a list, growing up on the East Coast and what’s most important to her. Enjoy!
Brian Noe: What’s the backstory of your first name? Is there one?
Jessamyn McIntyre: It’s not really all that crazy. My mom read an author in college named Jessamyn West. She just liked the name and kept it in her head until she had a baby. It’s funny, she’s like “I don’t know her. She was fine to read, but I just liked the name.”
BN: I like it. How are things going for you right now as the new APD at KJR?
JM: I’m only in my third week, and two of them have had holidays so far. I’m really not too far along in my onboarding there, except that getting back into sports talk radio just shows me how much I love it. I wasn’t sure if that was definitely going to be the rest of my life, and all of a sudden, I’m back doing exactly what I love doing every day and connecting with listeners. It’s something that I didn’t realize how much I missed, and it’s amazing.
I love producing. I love working with the people who are in that business. Now all of a sudden, I’m working with some people who were interns for me back when I was at my previous station. I’m like, wow, look at how far you’ve come. This is amazing. I’m so excited for you. There’s a lot of familiar faces around. I’ve been out here for almost 14 years now. Having been in the sports business for the majority of that time, I am just really glad to be back in it.
BN: Even though it’s very early on for you, what’s a typical day like for you from when you arrive in the morning, to when you go home?
JM: Well, obviously I’m paying attention to everything that’s going on. I like to look for highlights. I like to look for good sound. I like to look for good stories and I like to create good stories. My first week was learning the lay of the land and a new space. Now, I’m up and running and producing and a part of our midday show from 1-3 with Ian Furness. We’re coming up with new angles to talk about things.
There’s a lot of retread in the business and what I try to do is think of how not to re-say the same thing over and over and not let a conversation get stale. I’m always looking for new voices to add to the station who can contribute to that. Looking at how we can be a little more interconnected between our shows as well, and just bringing everyone together. That was my favorite part of my previous role in sports talk was bringing everyone in the building together. That’s something that is still early for me, but I feel like I’m developing good relationships so far.
BN: Where did you live before moving to Seattle?
JM: I grew up in New York. I went to Springfield College to study sports journalism. I double majored in English as well. I played volleyball, which is one of the bigger reasons that I went there because I could start. [Laughs] Then shortly after graduating I got hired at ESPN in Bristol. That’s where I started my career. I got hired at ESPN Radio.
I was more of a writer in college. But I really liked the people in radio, and I really liked the medium for connecting and distributing information because you can be so much faster. You don’t need B-roll. You don’t need pictures. You don’t need any of that. You can just go with news and the voices that you have there. Going all the way back to learning at the age of 23, to now realizing that radio really is something special.
BN: What was it like for you to come from the East Coast to Seattle? And not just radio, how different was the vibe and just fitting in there for you?
JM: Well, the East Coast — and I’m sure you know this — is a little bit harsher of a sports media environment. It was a lot more relaxed here. I’m a little bit of a tenacious person, so learning how to relate to people having come from the opposite coasts — and by the way, I moved out here sight unseen — so I didn’t know anything about it. I just knew good market, good teams that I kind of watched from afar, but don’t know as much about immersing myself in the sports environment here was really wonderful. People are more interested in a conversation rather than ragging on teams and talking down about everything. Not everyone on the East Coast does that, but you just hear more of a negative tone. I think it was a smoother transition that you can make going East to West than what I would imagine West to East would be.
BN: Yeah, definitely. What have you been able to either learn the most or figure out that has made the biggest difference when you are producing a show?
JM: I would say that relationships matter quite a bit. I’ve always been a relationship person, but the relationships that you build can truly have an impact on the product that you’re putting out. It’s important to remember that, and that no relationship is worth ruining just because you want to have a hot take one day. Just being understanding, but it’s okay to have an opinion that someone might not like.
Those are things that through the years I have learned that, okay, the first time I made someone mad because of something that one of my hosts said, I felt really awful about it. Then you realize, okay, well, that’s okay as long as you were fair. It’s all right. But now it’s easier to brush off even though I still feel bad sometimes. I think that when you’re working in any environment in any medium, the relationships you have with the people that you work with are at the top of the list. That’s how you build a successful environment and a cohesive environment and that will never change throughout the rest of my career.
BN: What have you been able to take from doing national stuff, that you now apply to a local scene?
JM: That’s actually an interesting question. When I was in a national environment, it was national headlines, right? It didn’t matter what the market was. The transition going local, it was a bit of a challenge for me to be honest because I’m still so in tune with looking at the biggest story of the day, which I viewed as the national story of the day. Then I realized that the people in your market, which has been Seattle for me for this long, they don’t care that much about the national story. They care about the big ones, for sure, but they want to know about their teams.
It’s not so much what translates from national to local, it’s more what the headlines are for this specific city. This was the first time I had worked at any local market. I think that made me more in tune to listening to people, whether you’re sitting at a restaurant or at a party and listening to what they care about, and then really getting in touch with your listeners. That is an immersive experience that you have to take seriously. Like I said, I’m a tenacious person, and I’m like, well, yeah, but LeBron is going to Miami. But that might not be the headline for the people who are actually listening to us.
BN: Is there anything else that you’ve done over the years to fully understand what the listeners in your area value?
JM: Well, you can dig into the ratings any day. You can look at your quarter hours, and you can see what people actually tune into. But I think the biggest thing is connecting with the people who are in the media, who have been here already. I talked to the writers at the time; Seahawks, Mariners were the biggest thing. This was back in 2009 when I came out here, and kind of picking their brains about it.
But then also, really listening to listeners. Whether it be through their communication through social media, and that can always be taken with a grain of salt, but also, when you’re just out and about and you’re listening to people and hearing what they say. You go to a local establishment, what games are on TV? It’s not easy, and it takes a long time. But through communication, through calls, and then you always go back to the ratings. What were people really interested in hearing this day? Previously, ESPN was the big four letters that you would always tune into, but who do you want to hear talk about the stories that you care about?
That’s really what I care about, is what people want to hear. Tapping into that is not that easy because there’s so many mediums that you could pay attention to, and you can’t focus on one tweet, one text, one email, you have to really see what the majority of people care about. But also not forget about that one person that might care about this one high school championship game that’s going on. I really like that KJR focuses on not just one team, they focus on everything that’s going on in the state in the sports world.
BN: What’s the biggest battle you’ve had to fight in your career?
JM: I think that honestly, the pandemic presented the biggest challenge without sports going on. We’ve got to be on air every single day. What do you talk about? What I did not like to bring up were things that were controversial related to the pandemic. People do not tune in to us for that, there’s plenty of other stations that they could listen to if that’s what they wanted. I don’t mean to always call sports an escape. I don’t believe that that’s what they technically are at all times, but sometimes they are. Especially when it got scary, when sports shut down, that was frightening for a lot of people.
It was a challenge for me to come up — I was the producer at the time — come up with things that we could talk about, while we had nothing to talk about. That was the biggest one. It was a personal struggle with me to put my hosts in the best position that they could be in. That was definitely my biggest challenge during that time. I came up with creative ways to at least let us have fun and hopefully our audience did too.
BN: You started at a competing station. Being in that same market, does that have any impact on how you view the entire market now?
JM: No, I have dear friends. I mean, at this point, having been in this market for this long, it doesn’t matter if you’re a writer, a talk show host on my station, a talk show host on another station, if you’re a television host, I pretty much know everyone and you’re going to have a hard time getting me not to make you my friend. I think we are all working for the same thing. I am more focused on what we do where I am, than I am on anything else anyone else is doing.
When I came out here, I was very competitive. But instead it shifted for me to focus on my team and what we’re doing. And that’s really what I care about. I’ll never say a bad thing about the people that you might consider competition. I just think that we’re all trying to do the same thing and entertain people with talking about sports.
BN: You covered Mike Leach at Washington State. What are your thoughts about him passing away recently?
JM: Well, I was heartbroken. I was very close to him. I had talked to him throughout the football season. We texted quite frequently. I think that people who were close to him and the entire sports world lost someone very special.
BN: Yeah, absolutely. As an APD, is there a particular area of the radio operation that you focus on the most, or that you would like to focus on more going forward?
JM: I think that we need to be more cohesive between shows. That’s not saying that it doesn’t exist already. I just think that we can completely work as a whole team together. We have a lot of remote shows. Shows are all over the place all the time. Not everyone’s in the building at the same time and things like that. That’s one focus. I want us all to be a team. I think the team that we have is so strong, and we all do work for each other right now. But being new in the building, I want to be the glue between everyone during all of that. I’m taking that all upon myself because they’re all doing such a great job of it already. I would just like to be the connection point that I don’t know is always there, but it’s a great thing when we’re on site doing things. That’s just a first look.
I will say that everyone there is so kind, and always treats each other with respect, so it’s not a problem. I just want to make sure that we’re all touching points at all times. That’s difficult when you have a morning show that starts at six and an afternoon drive show that starts at three. As an APD, I try to be there in the building to touch points with every show throughout the day, so that I’m at least there seeing all four shows. I would also like to make a point to be present for our newest partner, which happened last year before I was there, but the Seattle Kraken, who are having a fantastic season right now. That is something that I need to focus on as well because they are brand new, and I haven’t worked with them that closely before. That is another thing that I’m going to work on.
BN: It sounds like such a simple thing, just crossing over or acknowledging other shows. What do you think helps put hosts in the habit of doing that?
JM: Honestly, I think producers are the biggest part of that. I think they do such a good job. Let’s think about something that the morning show did. Well, that was a great thing that they did, let’s talk about it in the next show. And, hey, we have this great audio from a guest we had, or let’s say breaking news happens in the middle of a show where the producer is running the board. The hosts are focused on what they’re talking about. Someone else can come in and let them know, hey, just making sure you saw this.
Like you said, it does sound so simple. But having each other all rushing towards this one thing that is a big thing that happened or multiple things that happened. I’ve done simple things like starting to communicate more via email, hey, this is what happened on our show. Here’s some great audio if you want to use it. It’s just the little, simple things that can go a long way. It really is all about communication. It’s not like I’m seeing a lack of that at all. I just want to make sure that I’m infusing myself in it.
BN: What’s important to you? When your workday is done, what gives you a sense of, hey, today was a good day, I did a good job, I provided some value. What is it that gives you that feeling?
JM: For me, I want to see everyone walk out of that place feeling like they did a good job today. That makes me feel like I did a good job. If I see everyone’s happy with their show, this was great, and I try to communicate what I heard that was great on their shows as well. When I see people walk out of that place like, yeah, that was a great show. That’s what I want to see every single day. That’s honestly more of what my focus is, it’s making sure that everyone feels that way when they walk out.
BN: As far as your future goes, what’s something that would personally make you happy, or something that you want to check off your list if there is such a thing?
JM: You know what, I don’t have that kind of list. I always wanted to be a sideline reporter and 11 years later, I’m still sideline reporting for Washington State. I have done that and I absolutely love it. I never had management goals before. I get goals when I get into a place. That’s when I make them, but I’m not a five-year-plan person. I would be really thrilled to watch this place flourish even more than it has after I got there. I want to see people who are happy to work there. As far as I know and can see, everyone really is. I want to help them reach their goals, and that would make me satisfied.
Brian Noe is a columnist for BSM and an on-air host heard nationwide on FOX Sports Radio’s Countdown To Kickoff. Previous roles include stops in Portland, OR, Albany, NY and Fresno, CA. You can follow him on Twitter @TheNoeShow or email him at bnoe@premierenetworks.com.
