Last week, Josh Innes took to X to announce he had been let go from his position hosting afternoon drive at legendary St. Louis rock station KSHE 95. Innes posted, “I really do appreciate the opportunity to have worked at KSHE 95. I made some great friends. I enjoyed my time. Budget cuts are the way of the world. I’ll be back somewhere. Maybe sports? Rock? Who knows.” While he was in the market, he would also occasionally fill in on Hubbard sister station 101 ESPN.
Prior to his time at KSHE, Innes had spent two years hosting morning drive for iHeartMedia’s 105.9 The Rock in Nashville. Prior to that, it was mostly sports. And while he isn’t ruling anything out, he told BSM, he does miss a lot of what you get from being in sports talk radio.
“I miss talking more and being able to grow an audience that way,” he said. “Everywhere I’ve worked, I’ve had a really loyal audience, people in sports radio that are into it. We have a common denominator, a common factor as well. One of the things that’s hard about music is finding that common denominator. When you go to sports, you know we’re talking sports, and then we’ve got other things that are there to entertain. The hard part about doing music radio, and particularly if it isn’t talk-intensive music radio, is you try to find what people find interesting. The reality is some of these places, they just find classic rock music interesting. There’s only so many anecdotes and things you can say.”
Innes said sometimes doing talk segments on music stations makes you feel as if you are imposing on what most of the listeners really want. In some cases, it almost didn’t matter what the subject was he would talk about, the audience was there for something that had nothing to do with any talking unless you were introducing the next song.
“They just want to hear the music, and they don’t need your wacky anecdotes about stuff. Whereas in sports, they’re coming because they want to hear you talk about sports, or you talk about lifestyle stuff, or you talk about guy talk. I miss just being able to talk and having fun with an audience. I legitimately miss the kind of tribal mindset of people that are in the sports world. I miss that a lot.”
While Innes believes he could be a really good rock station morning show host, if it were a talk-intensive show, he would like to do sports again now or in the future, that is what he is most passionate about.
“My ambition is this, and I’ve never truly executed as well as I want to, but I want to be in a great sports city, and I want to do a great sports show, and then I also want to do a podcast where if something like what happened to me happens, I want to have the podcast to go along with it. But I want to get back on the radio and I want to get my pod fired up again because a lot of people have been asking for it, and I want to grow it.”
Innes said he realizes some people only know about him from when he was, “a young, immature, dumba**.” He started in the business at a young age and admits he made mistakes and didn’t realize the need to connect with the sales team, advertising clients and everything that goes into being a top talent at a radio station away from just the content. He said he always felt like there was another job he could get so he wasn’t going to change who he was. Several years now into his career, he realizes it’s a team effort and as the talent, he has to be a big part of the team.
“Listen, I’ve done a lot of great stuff, and I loved radio the whole time, and I was passionate about it, but sometimes I did dumb sh**, and I didn’t always work well with others, and I didn’t always make the right decisions,” he said. “After the pandemic, I gained a different perspective on just how you have to handle yourself, what do you have to do, how you treat people, how you have to approach salespeople, how you have to be interactive with people and be engaging, and I didn’t always think that way.
“I think I understand the overall business better, and I understand how to approach people better, and I understand how to approach sales better, because I didn’t always have the right mindset. Now, I try to collaborate with people a lot more, and I try to have better relationships in that way.
“I’m 38 years old, and I’ve grown a lot from a lot of this, and I’m tired of moving from place to place, and I’m passionate about radio, as passionate as I’ve ever been, I’ve always wanted to do it, I grew up in it, this is what I wanted to do. I want to entertain people, I want to be back in the mix, I want to have fun, I want to engage the audience. My passion is getting on the radio and talking and entertaining people, and sometimes pissing people off, sometimes making them laugh their asses off, that’s what I love to do.”
