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 Cumulus Media’s Chasta Michaelis. Chasta is PD of KSAN (107.7 The Bone)/San Francisco. The station we are highlighting today.
Jeff Lynn: Before we discuss the brand, how does a self-professed small-town Oklahoma girl end up programming Classic Rock in San Francisco?
Chasta: Well, that is a very long story, and I’ll try to give you the headline version. I was in Oklahoma, where I was doing radio. I started radio in college there and fell in love with it.
I quickly ended up being part of a morning show, where I was like, okay, this is amazing, and I could do this for the rest of my life because I love radio so much. Those people were so incredible. But I had big Hollywood dreams, right? So, I was off to Hollywood.
I moved, and my Program Director from the station, one of the sister stations I work for in Oklahoma City, ended up being the Program Director at ESPN Radio in Los Angeles. He called me, and he said, guess what? I’m coming to see you. And he hired me as a traffic reporter.
I worked there for four years, then moved to Northern California when I got engaged to my now-husband and started working at the traffic network here. I was a part-time fill-in for “Lamont & Tonelli” and then became a full-time part of their morning show. Then I started doing mornings and middays and took over that show.
And then, 12 years later, here we are. I have now been Program Director for three years. It’s just been a lot of diligent work, learning everything there is to know about everything that happens in this building, on and off the air.
I’m really proud of how far I’ve come. I’ve been in radio for almost 22 years.
JL: You should be very proud because not many people get to learn the PD job in market number four. Kudos to you.
Chasta: It’s wild. It’s crazy that it worked out that way. In fact, it wasn’t a position that I applied for.
Lamont & Tonelli were calling me boss lady when the position opened. I thought they were joking with me. And I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, whatever.
But apparently, they were writing emails behind my back to corporate, saying, your girl is right in front of you. She’s sitting right here. She does all the work.
She already knows what she’s doing. Yes, she’s green. Yes, this is new to her.
But she’s willing to learn, and they listened. Lamont &Tonelli have been doing this for 35 years and know a lot about this industry.
That was the best endorsement I could have ever had for a job I didn’t know I wanted.
JL: Let’s go ahead and talk about Lamont & Tonelli. With all that longevity, are they still swinging every day?
Chasta: It’s amazing to me. They do. I’ve worked with them for 12 years, like I said.
We get in here early every day, and Lamont gets in extremely early. I mean, he walks into the building at four o’clock. We go on at six, and he’s doing all his prep.
Then Tonelli and I come in, and we get everything organized together. We have a plan for the day and then see where it goes. We’re talking nonstop for five hours daily on and off the air.
Off-the-air meetings usually end up being creative meetings. What are we going to do? Do we like this feature?
Do we want to keep this feature? Now that I’m PD, I have a lot of analytics at my fingertips, which helps us sort through what’s working and what’s not.
They have been so receptive. I think that has happened because, number one, they knew me before I became Program Director, so they trusted me. And number two, I didn’t come in guns blazing, trying to make changes on the station for the sake of making changes, which we’ve all seen happen a lot.
A new Program Director comes in, and they want to change up the station, change up the morning show, dictates, you got to do this, you got to do that. That’s not my style. My style is let’s talk it through.
JL: How would you define their on-air roles?
Chasta: Lamont is the wild guy—the wild card. You never know what will fly out of his mouth, and it will likely be something shocking or crazy but also genuine to who he is.
That’s the one thing that’s just remarkable about those boys. When I started working with them, they were exactly the same on the air as they were off the air, which cracked me up. We’re all amplified versions of who we are, but there is no BS with those guys.
They are who they are. Love them, hate them, take it or leave it.
Tonelli has a really smart, dry, witty sense of humor. He comes with the zinger one-liners. He is very beloved. We call him the mayor of the Bay Area.
When I came on the show, my job initially, and to this day, is to pull them back from 11 because a great morning show is always about dynamics. You can’t live at 11. If you’re living there, it’s not funny anymore.
JL: Looking at San Francisco, the ethnic composition of the city is something like I don’t think there is anywhere else. How does classic rock fit into that?
Chasta: I love that about the Bay Area. I’m originally from southern Oklahoma, where that’s not the case so much. I love it; that’s one of the things that drew me to California, specifically to the Bay Area.
We have a huge Hispanic audience. If you want to get super nerdy with Nielsen, our Hispanic numbers are really high.
The classic rock audience is extremely loyal. People who love rock wear it, so to speak. And they’re very proud.
All of that aside, we all bond over rock. And so, I think that is another notch for everyone to feel very proud of, just like they feel proud that they’re Hispanic or Filipino or whatever the case may be.
JL: Programming Class Rock takes discipline. You can’t start tinkering and messing with the music or the formula.
Chasta: No, you can’t. But you have all kinds of freedom. And once I realized where the freedom was, it opened the door for me.
The magic sauce is what happens between the songs. We all know what we’re going to play. It’s the hits.
It’s the Classic Hits, the Classic Rock that everyone expects, loves, and knows every lyric of. That is our mojo. However, the power is between the songs.
That’s where our personality comes into play: the Bonehead spirit, that rebel attitude. I feel like it’s what has always given PD after PD and year after year, that kind of rebel attitude, that energy that exists.
So, I’ll write imaging around that. If there is a Guns N’ Roses song in a movie, I’ll write, “as heard in” blah, blah, blah, and then marry that pop culture moment that’s happening in the theaters right now with a song that may be 30, 40 years old. I’m marrying something big happening right now back to our radio station. And I think that’s important.
JL: Many programmers in Classic Rock, me included when I was doing it, struggled with integrating the 90s product, which was sonically so different from the rest. How’s that working for you?
Chasta: No one outside the Bay Area wants to hear that the Area is special. But the truth is, it is a special market. We’re not afraid to hear Metallica at 8 a.m.
Nobody’s fazed by that here. When you throw Soundgarden in, Alice in Chains, and Stone Temple Pilots, we’re having them at our L&T Ball this year. Our big concert of the year is with Stone Temple Pilots, a 90s band.
I don’t think we’re as shocked by that. It works for us. We usually have one to two 90s songs an hour.
Now, is there a strategy around where those are? Sure. I make sure that there is a balance,
There’s a delicate balance between 70s and 80s and pre-74 and 90s rotation. And I do that by hand. Every single song that goes on the air, I’m placing by hand.
I’m very cautious about the sonic energy from making a jump from a 70s song into a 90s song. That’s 75% of what I do: music management. And the 90s are at the forefront of my brain to ensure it sounds right.
JL: Hold on a second. Did you say you hand-place every single song?
Chasta: Oh yeah, I’m a maniac. I’m an absolute maniac. I live in our music scheduling system. I place all the songs. I schedule all the songs every day.
Then, I have my APD, which is also my secret sauce. He helps the whole world go round, Danny Delmore, AKA Baby Huey. I do the first pass. I have him do the second pass, which we call massaging. Then I do the third pass. By the time the day is done, each song has been examined three times.
JL: Let’s wrap up here with anything you want us to know about you or the station I haven’t covered.
Chasta: I’m proud of the Bones’s local and live element. All my jocks are here, notwithstanding Steve Gorman, but all of my jocks are live and local and incredibly invested in our community.
I have a local music program. Saturday night, three full hours of live and local programming.
It’s about the Bay Area music scene, metal, and active rock. I think there’s going back to the layers of Boneheads, our listeners. I think this radio station has a lot of layers and a lot of potential.
And I’m so excited to continue to tap into what that potential for this brand is.
Listen to The Bone here. Find them on Facebook and Instagram and X. Connect with Chasta 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.
