John Flint & Tammy Lee have been waking up San Diego on Audacy Country KSON/San Diego for thirteen years.
The John & Tammy Morning Show” started 24 years ago at Mid-West Family Broadcasting’s Country WWQM (Q106)/Madison, WI. I recently caught up with them and discovered several keys to their longevity and success.
Jeff Lynn: Everyone who knows you says that one of the show’s pillars is that you are good friends.
Tammy Lee: When we were first put together, we didn’t know each other at all. I was trying to leave radio and the Program Director at the time, Mark Granton, who’s unfortunately no longer with us. God bless him; I miss him dearly. He took me out to lunch and said, “I really think the two of you would be a really good team. Can I be your boss?”
He talked me into it because I was trying to get out. I had filled in a couple of times for my younger sister, who was the News Director at the time at that group and who is still a News Director now at iHeartMedia in Madison at WIBA. I had filled in for her, and so I had come into the studio and done a couple of shows with John, and we just had this instant chemistry.
John Flint: Everything changed in my career when Tammy was hired to be my partner, and we are a true partnership. And yeah, this is the longest relationship I’ve ever had, frankly. We have to be best friends to survive all that: marriages, babies being born, babies graduating, babies being sick, divorce, death.
I mean everything you deal with in a relationship, even fights. I say it’s harder than a marriage. As a person who’s been divorced, it’s harder than a marriage because if you’re in a good marriage, you fight, and then if you do the right thing, you step away for a while, get your own space together, and formulate the things that you want to say to move on with your relationship.
But you have some time to do so. We have three minutes until the song’s up, so it’s a bit more difficult. We’ve worked on that.
JL: You practice being brilliant at the basics. Because if you’re not brilliant at the basics, you can’t build on anything else.
TL: Well, there have been many changes in how people consume radio, and the ability to adapt to that is key for anyone. And knowing now what an audience is like today versus when we first started, it’s completely different. People’s attention spans are way, way shorter, and we’ve learned how to edit ourselves and get to the meat of things.
It’s different from when we first started when you would talk for eight or nine minutes. Now, it’s like, what do they want to hear? What do they want to know about it?
Let’s get it to them and get them involved as quickly as we can.
JF: Well, and frankly, when it comes to things that we used to hang our hats on, like pop culture and news from Nashville and Hollywood news, no one needs that anymore. They have it in the palm of their hand or around their wrist. They don’t need us for that.
So, we have to find other ways for them to need us.
JL: You guys hit the streets. Something that may be lost in a PPM market. You work hard at things like 100,000 high fives, and the value in that shows.
JF: If you’re not doing it now, you probably aren’t doing your job very well or not for very long. And by the way, if you can get by and just skate, I mean all the power to you. It’s just not in this business.
I’m sure you know that it’s not possible. It doesn’t matter what market you’re in. In fact, this feels like one of my first radio jobs in Mankato, Minnesota.
There’s no stop we won’t make. There’s no hand we won’t shake. And that’s what we have to do.
JL: You are very good at interviews as a team. I heard you interview Jon Pardi on the show and came away feeling I knew more about him. Can you give a tip on how to do them well?
JF: Well, first, and I mean, no disrespect to the people that do their jobs for their clients, but don’t pay too close attention to the bullet points you’re getting from the publicists and the label. You could do that on your own time. When you have the opportunity to speak to somebody, no matter who they are, A-list to, to just getting started, what you just said, you want people to get to know that we can tell all the, all the bullet points and the X’s and O’s when we’re done having the meat of the conversation.
Tammy’s brilliant at delving deep into their socials and bringing up things that they have no idea are coming up. I love hearing the authenticity, their answers, their surprise, and what’s there. I think they’re very impressed, but I think that they’re thankful that you took the time to look into their lives more than tell us about the single.
TL: And that’s the key because we’re all a bit of a music nerd. And there are some questions that we want to know that the average person doesn’t give a shit about, excuse my language, but they don’t, and that doesn’t help.
If the people don’t care what they’re being asked and what their answer is, that’s a tune-out. So, finding things that humanize them, make them laugh, and make them comfortable is the key to finding something that someone can relate to. Like Jon (Pardi) talking about his little girl with the rainbows and butterflies, every dad out there has got a little girl related to that.
JL: I’m going to guess the answer is 24/7-365, but how do you prep for the show on a daily basis?
TL: The true way to do it is to make notes. That’s it. You don’t have to sit there and deep dive into a bunch of stuff or take notes on something silly.
John and I will do this. We’ll text each other, “Hey, such and such happened to me.”
Do you think that would make sense for the show? Is there somewhere we can take this and make it a story? Some of those have turned into a week-long story arc.
JF: We journal, and many morning shows do this. I don’t know if they do it habitually like we do, but every weekend, we journal and send each other what we did on the weekend.
It might be nothing. I mean, it might be very chill. I don’t think we took too much out of this past weekend.
We call them our diaries. But sometimes, it comes up with weeklong, monthlong, or quarter long story arcs that are just stemmed by one of us sitting down in front of our computers on Sunday night or afternoon and sending us an email. I think it’s very important for my prep process to decompress.
JL: Is there a morning show that influenced you now or earlier in your career and somebody you admire that you could cite?
JF: I didn’t realize I wanted to be the morning show host until I was working for the city of Apple Valley, Minnesota. I was mowing a big field, and I had my headphones on. I was listening to Tom Bernard and the KQRS morning crew on KQRS in Minneapolis.
He just retired last year, but I was such a huge fan of his. And I remember a jock who I think is still there named Wally Walker coming on saying I’m on for two weeks because Tommy B’s off. And I remember saying to myself, what am I going to do for two weeks?
That is when it hit me, sitting on a tractor in a field. I want to be the person that people miss when they’re not there. So, for sure, it was Tom Bernard and the KQ morning crew.
TL: When I was younger, (Madison personalities) J.D. Barber and Andy Witt—these are old school names—used to be in my house, and I would listen to them tell stories in the living room. You know, big men, big drunken men telling big drunken stories. And they were hilarious.
And I always admired that. And then, I had the opportunity to be part of a morning show with J.D. Barber, the legend. And that really opened my eyes to what radio could be.
Cause I was always putting it as a serious thing. And I really got to experience the fun part of radio.
JL: Tell me about the (Country Singer) Drew Baldridge coming to play a listener’s wedding reception.
JF: This is a Valentine’s Day promotion that we came up with called” Reception Before The Reception. We did it a few years back.
But what we do is we have a quarterback throw bombs to prospective brides, and whoever makes the best catch or catches it at all, we provide them with a reception. So, you get a reception, you get a reception. We kind of did a little bit differently this year.
The woman who won was already married and we renewed her vows instead, which is a lot easier. And Drew Baldridge is a friend of the show and was here during COVID when everyone was locked away and they were doing drive-through graduations. At the time, he had a graduation song that he was literally traveling across the country, performing at these drive-through graduations.
TL And his song [She’s Somebody’s Daughter] is perfect for it.
JL: Last question. What is the show’s FOMO? What is the fear of missing out?
JF: Oh, what’s the stupid thing I say?
TL: Is Tammy going to lose in Tammy’s College of Hollywood Knowledge? Damn it, it’s been a couple of weeks. She hasn’t.
JF: Will John ever be in a stable relationship?
TL: You’re going to miss out on Somehow We Make You Laugh no matter what it is.
Listen to John & Tammy M-F 5 – 9 PT
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.
