To support the launch of the new Barrett Media, we’ve created a special series titled “20 Brands In 20 Days” highlighting successful stations across the country in various formats by conducting conversations with their brand leaders. Up next is Beasley’s Cat Thomas. Cat is a Las Vegas market veteran and OM for Beasley Las Vegas while programming X1075 Extreme Radio.
Jeff Lynn: So, what makes X1075 Xtreme Radio extreme?
Cat Thomas: Well, what’s funny is we signed it on in 1996. I was there when they signed it on. I wasn’t the program director, but I was in the building.
Mike Stern signed it on. It was the notion that the music style that the station played wasn’t on the radio anywhere. It had an edge to it.
The station, in general, has a kind of nuance of being that friend who says the things you’re thinking but is afraid to say them. And so that’s reflected a lot in our imaging and that kind of, we don’t give a crap type of mentality. We’re not going to be politically correct. We’re going to be what we are, which is why you love us.
JL: You always want to have that friend and, or at least, like you said, somebody you know who’ll say the things that you’re thinking about but don’t have the guts to say.
CT: We have a new music show called “It Hurts When I Pee” and similar things. It’s our reverence for imagery and that type of stuff as well. And it has grown up, obviously. The station has been a brand since 96.
Our listeners, who were 16 to 28 years old when we were edgy, are still fans of the station. We take them back to that day. We still play music that fits, whether it’s Falling in Reverse or Papa Roach, which tends to live more on the active rock chart than the alternative chart.
We can play newer music from bands like Pierce the Veil and others that fit that rock edge. What we try to avoid is hot AC-ish tracks that maybe don’t fit the station. We try to stay with a little more rock edge than most alternatives.
JL: How important is music discovery in your mix?
CT: It’s important to discover the right song. It always has been. I don’t think it’s changed. I think people and times change, and there are different ways to discover music now. And I’m sure a lot of our listeners find other ways besides us to discover music. So, it’s important to kind of give them the best of the new stuff that they may not know about or may not have time to go search out and that type of stuff.
It’s just part of the whole brand. It’s kind of like saying which part of cooking spaghetti is the most important: You have to boil the water first. You got to put the spaghetti in. You have to check it to make sure that it’s cooked at a certain point. Then you got to serve it, and then you got to heat the sauce and all that type of stuff to make a great dish. There’s not one step you want to skip, but you need more than one to make it great.
JL: I was talking in probably more of an alternative straight-ahead play than you are to Tommy [Mattern] at The Point in St. Louis for this series. He said, “Honest to God, I may look at the chart once a month and play what is right for St. Louis.” How about you?
CT: Tommy knows his shit on that. I understand why The Point is a successful brand in St. Louis; it adheres to the market. Now that we brought X here a year and a half ago, it led me back to what made this station so successful in the first place.
When we signed it on in the mid to late 90s it was about what people locally wanted to hear. So, we got it back from Audacy, we tried to kill it with too much talk, and then we just decided we needed to go back to what the brand is and people love. And that is an alternative station that fits the listeners of Las Vegas.
I think Tommy’s right in a lot of that. And that it is a station that, fits Las Vegas. If you dropped it somewhere else, it might not be as successful, but listeners in Las Vegas love the brand.
The big advantage I have in the market is having Carlota on board., Carlota was here when we had Stern in the morning. Carlota did midday. She was a big part of the growth of the station. She went to another station in the market when she left CBS. Luckily for me, she was available when we decided to get back on track, and I could bring her in here.
She’s been a big part of that success as well. We work really well together, like brother and sister. She has a little more edge to her in that, and I have a little more mass-appeal sensibility.
JL: Las Vegas is a 24-hour city. In many ways, I don’t know of another one like it, at least not in the United States. You’ve got to have a 24-hour sensibility. How do you deal with that?
CT: It’s interesting you say that, because we do. But even when I first got to Las Vegas in the late 80s, and I was doing nights on KLUC, there was still only a certain portion of the population. There’s a reason that the third shift doesn’t have as many workers as the second shift or the first shift does. And so, it’s a more exclusive audience during those times. Obviously not as large, but, we try to continue to do things.
We got Pauly working at night until midnight, so we do actually have a night show. Pauly did nights on X for years until Audacy became more music intensive.
We’re trying to bring, , personalities back, trying to make personalities matter. And I think there’s a great night jock, and late night jocks in this market have a distinct personality that fits the people that are listening at that time. So I think that the short answer to that is, that people who are on middays or mornings or afternoons are different personality-wise than people who are on at night because people who listen at night usually have a slightly different schedule.
JL: Your senses are constantly bombarded in Las Vegas. How do you cut through?
CT: Great stations compete with themselves. It’s not a matter of how can I be more important to these people than these other things. It’s just more about how we are relatable and how we fit into their daily routines and lives.
And I think that a great station here in Las Vegas lends itself to the normalcy of their life. Growing up in Columbus, the shiny thing happened, and everybody went crazy. Oh, yeah.
There are so many shiny things that it’s almost easier to ignore and stick to your life’s normalcy. And I think that’s the key to success. We have cool stuff here, don’t get me wrong., In Las Vegas, you have U2 playing at the Sphere, not necessarily an X artist, but it’s U2 at the Sphere.
People want to go, so we can tie into those things. For example, we can tie into Vegas Golden Knight hockey games or Raiders football games.
But then we also don’t forget the important things that people do in their regular lives. For example, this week, it sounds stupid, but X-Men, X-Treme Radio, and X1075 is doing tickets to Deadpool and Wolverine. Because what? People like to go to the movies.
The cool part about what we have at the station is that we can send people to Golden Knight hockey games, Raiders games, Metallica shows on the strip, Shinedown at MDM, or U2 at the sphere.
But we also can send them to Cowabunga Bay, a water park. And we can send them to Disney. And we have the ability to fly away people to see 21 Pilots in Phoenix and Imagine Dragons in another city.
So we get the best of both worlds. There’s never a dull moment.
JL: Let’s talk about something I saw on your LinkedIn.
“Wake up, kick ass, repeat.”
CT: It’s the way you approach every day., I love motivational quotes, and people who have worked with me for a while laugh because I have my Cat’s quote for the week type stuff.
It goes back to what I tell everybody. The key to our success is persistence and consistency. In other words, we should be so consistent that we’re almost boring without being boring.
People should count on us. We’re here every day and we make these things happen. So, it’s just a matter of you waking up, going out, and doing your job the best you can, and you just keep repeating it. And that’s how you become successful in the long term.
It’s really not a difficult formula. It’s just that most people—what was the old, is it a Bobby Knight quote? He says everybody wants to be a winner, but most people don’t want to practice hard enough to be a winner. And it’s the same thing.
You keep doing the things that are successful over and over again, and guess what? You pretty much end up successful.
Listen to X1075 here. Find them on Facebook, Instagram, and X. Connect with Cat Thomas by email here.
Jeff Lynn serves as Editor of Barrett Media’s Music Radio coverage. Prior to joining Barrett Media, Jeff spent time programming in Milwaukee, Omaha, Cleveland, Des Moines, and Madison for multiple radio groups, including iHeartMedia, Townsquare Media, NRG Media, and Entercom (now Audacy). He also worked as a Country Format Editor for All Access until the outlet shut down in August 2023.
To get in touch with Jeff by email, reach him at Jeff@BarrettMedia.com.
