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 Guaranty Broadcasting Jimmy Brooks. Jimmy is PD of WTGE (100.7 The Tiger)/Baton Rouge. The station we are highlighting today.
Jeff Lynn: I’d be crazy if I didn’t start by asking you how many times a week you play Callin’ Baton Rouge.
Jimmy Brooks: I love that song. I love Garth, and obviously, when we play it, people love it, but it’s a good recurrent category.
JL: You are in a very important big college market. I drove through only once and could feel that the college dominated the city. Is that the right impression, and if so, how do you integrate your station into that other than calling it the Tiger?
JB: Right. I was going to say the name of my station is 100.7 the Tiger. I mean, LSU is the core and the forefront of our city and the entire state, and you were right when you came here. I don’t know if you came on a game day, but it’s electric, something you can’t explain. But you can feel it when you come here. It’s a magical place. They call it Death Valley, and it never rains at Death Valley.
The Tiger has always been around as the name of the radio station. It was a rock station, but they changed it several times. It was Young Country, then Cat Country, and then they changed it to a new country format. They dropped the Cat and the Tiger altogether, and it was called Y-100. When I came back to this role, one of the biggest things was we were the Tiger. People know 100.7 as the Tiger, so I have a Tiger growl only between records in my imaging. Everything is very tiger-focused, and it just resonates with everybody who lives here. Even if you don’t live here, you get a sense that our radio station is exactly what it says it is. We’re the tiger, and we play all the songs that people that live here love, and it’s just great. It’s a great playoff off our team and our school.
JL: I love that you have the freedom to do what you are doing. You can curate a playlist that plays music specifically for your region.
JB: I can pick every single song. We’re a current station, but most of it is 90s. It’s power 90s. It is medium gold 90s. I have some 80s sprinkled in. If you come here, you’ll know every single song that I play. And that’s what makes it special, too: because we’re so different from everybody else in the market. That’ll show, too.
JL: I think many country programmers are not taking advantage of those Power 90 records.
JB: Those are just like the best testing titles every single day. Yesterday, I downloaded three Susie Bogguss songs. People know Susie Boggess. Why wouldn’t we be playing her?
Every day, I’m finding new songs. There’s more stuff that I’m not playing that I added in or tie-in. Diamond Rio is another. It’s great to be able to work at a place where they trust your vision and know that what I put out is going to be the best thing for the people.
JL: And I don’t think people are necessarily tired of hearing Chattahoochee, The Dance, or Fancy. I think any of those records are very viable.
JB: You will hear songs like Restless Heart on the Tiger. You’re going to hear the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. You’re going to hear The Bellamy Brothers and Janie Fricke. These are songs that people love. At noon every day, I do the Lunchtime Rewind. It’s only the 80s and 90s in a little bit of early 2000. I’ll pick a year, and we’ll play four songs for the year. That’s the hour where you’re going to hear stuff that you never hear anywhere else, something ain’t heard of in 20 years, and it works.
JL: You have Big D & Bubba in the morning to start the day.
JB: Big D & Bubba started here. When we turned on Cat Country 100.7 from Rock in the late 90s, Big D was on the morning show with another host, and Bubba was doing afternoons. So, then they transitioned to putting them together in the mornings; they started in this building at 929 Government Street in Baton Rouge. Then they went across the street. They got syndicated.
They were gone for a few years. We did a few local things here, but they’ve been back, and it’s never been better. They have such an awesome following here. We had a Rock the Country event in April, and it was Jason Aldean, Kid Rock, and Gretchen Wilson.
We had a free listener tailgate, food vendors, and Big D and Bubba showed up. Even though they’re in Nashville, they still have that local connection, and people absolutely love them.
JL: A university is a transient community, and you have both a longtime listener and that. How do you combine them and create this radio station that people like to listen to?
JB: After Big D and Bubba, except at 7 midnight, I’m live and local. I was born and raised here. I do middays. Brittany Rose comes on after me. Her dad was an LSU football coach, so they live here; we tell stories about her life. She’s married to a country artist. They have a new baby.
We connect with the locals from a level that our competitors can’t because nobody on that station lives here. So, tying everything together with LSU being three minutes up the road and knowing what our people like down here, we can make that connection with them through the radio. Which I think is good, and a lot of people have lost focus of that. If you don’t connect with your listener, then you ain’t gonna have anybody listening. I think that we do a wonderful job of connecting with them on all levels because they feel like they know if they come to a remote on a Saturday, they can meet us and hang out with us.
We’re active on social media. It’s not brain surgery, but it’s something that our competitor isn’t doing because they can’t do it. So, it’s a huge advantage, and we’re just happy that we’re able to do what we want to do
JL: How important is contesting in the mix of putting this beast together?
JB: It’s a big part. We did a perceptual recently, and there’s nothing more people want to win than free concert tickets. They would rather win tickets to a concert than get money because this is a chance for a young couple with two kids at home under the age of five to get a night out, and the radio station can hook them up with a weekend. An LSU football game, dinner for two, a hotel room at the campus, and tickets to the game. That kind of stuff is so important on the local level. I always have some sort of trip on the air, and I just launched one. I’m sending someone on a Jason Aldean flyway to Salt Lake City.
It’s just something local. The competitors are doing these texts to win, these keyword contests. People know that when they listen to my station, they call in or message us. They know that somebody here is messaging them back, and it’s not somebody all over the country. Every contest we do is local. There’s always going to be a local winner, and you’re not competing with a billion other people, so contesting is a big deal.
We do them on socials. We do them on air. We do website promotions. We do all that stuff, but nothing ever beats the touch of having somebody call in to win something, whether it’s $100 or $10,000
JL: So, it seems the sales team that supports you as well
JB: 100%. The sales team is young but mighty here. We’ve got great leadership, and they’re encouraged to be creative. They’re encouraged to bring stuff to me that makes sense for their business. But at the end of the day, I have a product to protect, and I’m never going just to put something on because it means getting a dollar in the building. It has to have value, and I think that since I’ve been in this role meeting with them and knowing my vision of what works, they’ve all bought into it. It’s very rare that I ever turn I don’t think I’ve turned any promotion down that was tied into a client because it just made sense because they understand the vision of the radio station and what we’re trying to accomplish.
I get a lot of ideas from smaller market radio stations that aren’t having their hands forced to do stuff by a big conglomerate. You listen to my radio station, and it sounds unlike any other country radio station in the country. It sounds hip, and it sounds fresh, and I’ve got a female voiceover. That sounds real, and it’s like you want to know her, and I have John Willyard, who complements her.
JL: So, we’ll end up where we started, sort of going back to the song Callin’ Baton Rouge. Did it really create a seismic event at the stadium that was felt all the way to Lafayette?
JB: Yeah, all the tickets were the same price. I think they were all $85 or something. We didn’t really know where the tickets were when they went on sale; nobody cared; everybody just wanted a ticket. Well, my buddy went online, and he got some tickets. When we got to the stadium, we were on Road J, which is literally it was like 11 rows from the stage, and looking up at the Tiger Stadium that holds over a hundred and two thousand people and having every single seat jumping up and down.
When he played, when you heard the first riff, it was crazy. And he played it forever, it felt like. It was like there was nothing else going on in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Listen to The Tiger here Find them on Facebook. Connect with Jimmy 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.
