Bobby Bones hosts Premiere Networks’ syndicated “Bobby Bones Show.” He is also heavily involved in podcasting, concerts, comedy, and philanthropic causes.
Recently voted Country Radio’s #1 show on Barrett Media’s Top Country Shows of 2024 by radio industry programming executives, I wondered how Bones felt about the recognition.
“I am always surprised whenever anybody likes me in general. That’s probably a driver, and all my deep insecurities are probably my biggest superpower. So I was very surprised and very grateful, obviously, especially peer-driven. I mean, that’s the hardest and also the most rewarding because everybody knows what it takes to have any sort of sustained success. So it was really cool.”
Though his show airs across the country, and is very familiar to music radio professionals, gaining affiliates to air the show is a never ending process. The team at Premiere Networks handle those duties, but of Bones had to do the work himself to receive clearance from local outlets, how would he pitch and describe the show? His answer was surprising.
“I did have to do that. When I started syndicating my show, I syndicated it by myself with my own money. It was just me buying Comrex boxes and giving them the show for free. That was part of the pitch.”
“The first market that ever picked us up was Wichita, Kansas. And I said, ‘hey, I’ll do it for free’. I mean, that’s the loudest, most substantial thing that I could possibly say. And then they were listening. So I said, ‘I’ll do it for free. If you give me a year, I can not only promise you that the ratings will be just as good as they are now, but revenue will be up because I’ll make sure it’ll be a priority for me to talk to your local clients’.”
“I think at times, even locally, we kind of take clients for granted. They think, well, they’re here. We don’t have to spend much time with them. Being syndicated has actually shown me how important it is to be hyper-local, not only where I live but to my individual markets. I spend an hour every single day doing local reads, local videos, and any sort of content that markets want for me. So, I would say I will do it for free and hyper-localize around your music.”
The second factor involved the content of the show.
“It was super personality-driven, but the personality will seep through over time. It’s not going to be a humongous splash of personality all at once because, with radio, change is difficult. So that’s how we did our show.”
“We played a bunch of music and had an outlined plan of success based on if we hit this threshold. We’ll then pull back a bit of the music and do more personality. It was free, and it was good in that order. That’s how I pitched the show for a year. We had 14, 15 stations. We were running out of a back room.”
I asked Bones who inspired him to want to do what he does.
“My hero, my inspiration has always been David Letterman. I saw a guy that looked a bit awkward from a part of the country that wasn’t New York or Los Angeles. He lived in New York, but his sensibilities weren’t New York City or Los Angeles. He’s an Indiana guy.”
“I’m an Arkansas guy. So, it felt like if he could do it, there was a shot for someone else like him to do it, which was me, kind of a goofy kid from Arkansas. It was Letterman.”
“I didn’t know anybody in radio. I’m from a very small town, and we didn’t even have personalities that I grew up listening to unless it was Little Rock, which was an hour and a half away. So, my inspiration as far as career-wise has always been David Letterman.”
Philanthropic causes are a big part of what Bones does, particularly St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Children’s charities are personal for Bones.
“If I boil it down to why, it’s a very selfish reason. I was in the hospital a bunch as a kid. I didn’t have cancer, but I was in the hospital. We didn’t have any money growing up. So, if it weren’t for people taking care of me when I was a kid when I ruptured my spleen, I don’t know what we would have done.”
“That’s what St. Jude does. It’s a hospital for kids who have cancer. It doesn’t even have to be cancer. They do great work with not only cancer but other diseases as well. And you don’t have to pay for anything. That resonated with me the most and the hardest, meaning they pay for your treatment, food, and travel. That’s why my relationship with them started on such a fundamental level.”
Podcasting is another significant priority for Bones. With the space rapidly growing, creating additional digital audio content is something Bones knows is important.
“The podcasting space is such a priority. I am fortunate in that, much like in the book Outliers, there are examples of people where things just happen to match up randomly. An example that I’ve used before is Bill Gates, who lived in a town where there just happened to be a computer. It was the only computer for hundreds of miles. He was interested in it, and it was close.”
“I was really young in this industry. And I learned and started using technology and podcasting very, very early in our industry. It wasn’t because I was any smarter than anybody else. I was just very fortunate to be very young, and using what I was using anyway.”
“So, podcasting has always been of utmost importance for the past 18 years of our show. That has always been a priority to me, to not only make sure that our show podcast is significant but the ancillary podcasts that we have are too.”
Bones hosts several podcasts, including “Bobbycast,” “Lots to Say with Bobby Bones and Matt Cassell,” a venture with the NFL and former quarterback Matt Cassell, “25 Whistles” with DraftKings, and a “Yellowstone” podcast, among others.”
“For ‘Bobbycast,’ my goal was for it to be a critical piece, not bring on humongous artists, but to bring on songwriters and creatives that people knew, but only through other people. Or it was talking about the big things, but the things they rarely get to talk about.”
“I knew that wouldn’t be a big click generator because it wasn’t supposed to be. But we’ve been doing this show so long now that it’s actually quite a large podcast. And that’s great; that’s a result of consistency more than anything. But right now, it is significant.”
But though podcasting earns a lot of his attention, Bones hasn’t lost sight of the foundation for everything he does.
“If I enjoy it, I spend more time focused on it, and dedicated to it. I think that’s been really fulfilling for me. But the driver of it all is ‘The Bobby Bones Show.’ Without that being at a hundred percent, nothing else happens. I also still know that and have to never reprioritize because that’s the number one focus. I constantly have to remind myself that if that’s not right, nothing else goes right.”
I asked Bones, given all his work, if there was still something on his list he wanted to do.
“The easy answer, the true answer, but also kind of the corny answer, is sleep. There are times when my wife has to check me and say, ‘hey, let’s make sure we’re being healthy’. And she’s right because if I’m not healthy, then I can’t work as hard, right?”
“Initially, it’s let’s just go as hard as you can, get everything done, go balls to the wall. But the problem is if you do that for so long, you will begin to get sick. Then I start to get sick because I’m not getting any sleep.”
“Then I’m not working as hard because I physically can’t. I’ve got to maintain that. And that has become more of a priority over the past couple of years, just to maintain my physical and mental health, which in this industry is a difficult thing to do. I wouldn’t be in this industry if I was mentally healthy. So, there’s a screw loose, but it’s the right screw right now.”
Something that gets discussed on “The Bobby Bones Show” is the mysterious drone that flies over his home.
“It’s one massive drone. It looks like a VW Beetle. It’s humongous. I did some research to figure out what I could do, and the answer is nothing.”
I asked if maybe it was a TMZ-type thing.
“I don’t think I’m famous enough for that. And a couple of people have said that. Honestly, in a town where Keith Urban and Luke Bryan live within seven minutes, why are they flying over my house? You’re going to see one of my dogs pooping in the backyard.”
“And you can’t shoot it. I honestly thought, if it’s over my house, I’ll just take my shotgun and shoot it down. You can’t, that’s illegal. It’s FAA-regulated airspace.”
In closing, I asked if there was anything that he wanted to talk about that I hadn’t asked.
“That’s a good question. I don’t even know how to answer that. I think a lot of people ask and hit me up on DMs, other radio people. And I think that it looks, at times, very Instagram glamorous. If you look at my Instagram feed, it’s a picture of me and George Kittle at an award show. That’s pretty cool.”
“It’s a picture of me on stage doing a comedy song in Atlanta. I just put a comedy special out on CMT, and it’s my first standup special. And so, that’s cool.”
“But I tell people that the main thing has to be the main thing, which is your show. Your show has got to be first and foremost. And then that is the platform that you jump from.”
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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.
