Marty Linck programs Hubbard’s Adult Hits 106.5 The Arch in St. Louis. The brilliantly named station has been in the format since April 2005. Linck has been with the station since 2019 and also programs sister Classic Rock 95 KSHE.
The Adult Hits format has long imagined itself as ‘you never know what is next,” or “playing what we want.” Despite that free-for-all image, there is a science to creating a station that plays everything from Sir Mix-a-Lot to Metallica.
“It’s really about balance more than anything, said Linck. “We build our clocks to ensure that we play one ‘70s song per hour, about four ‘80s per hour, four ‘90s per hour, then some 2000s mixed in. The ‘80s never play back to back. A ‘70s never plays into an older ‘80s song.”
There is a little bit of strategically placed new music.
“There’s a little bit. I had two songs a year, usually Sabrina Carpenter or Olivia Rodrigo, or just something that says, hey, we’re in touch with what’s happening today. Once it hits two billion streams on Spotify, it’s like, okay, I think everybody knows this song now.”
Adult Hits can lean Classic Rock, Classic Hits, or anything else, so where does The Arch fit in?
“I think ours is more female-friendly than most because we do have The Point and KSHE in our building, which are heavily male-dominated stations. So strategically, it made sense for us to lean a little more female. But The Arch does grab from everywhere.”
So, how do you speak to the broad lifestyle of a coalition audience?
“I think making it fun, making it sound, not self-aggrandizing, not boasting about how great we think we are. It’s a little more self-deprecating. We make fun of ourselves all the time for not knowing what we’re doing, positioning ourselves as kind of the idiots in the market. And I think it’s relatable. Like we’re just regular people and we don’t really know what we’re doing here.”
Being relatable to St. Louis is a must.
“We have imaging categories ranging from topical to local to attitude. And we do a weekly writing session with three guys here in the building, and it’s all about talking about what’s going on in the world today.”
“Some of the music we’re playing is 50 years old, but that doesn’t mean we have to talk about Archie Bunker and ‘All In The Family’ because the music came out then. We should be talking about what’s going on in the world today.”
“That includes St. Louis. We scour all the local websites, pay attention to the local news, and have a local category where we write about not just toasted ravioli, a local delicacy, but also things that are going on in the community. But it’s always with this kind of tongue-in-cheek attitude.”
“We wouldn’t put a sweeper on that, just plainly states there’s a fish fry happening this Friday at this church for Lent. We’ll talk about it in a way that might make you smile, laugh, or think about it differently.”
Adding to the variety image includes what some might call train wreck dry segues between the songs.
“We try to be strategic about it and make sure that it’s kind of a train wreck on purpose sometimes. If a song starts with cold vocals right off the bat and it’s coming out of a totally different style of song, I think that sounds awesome sometimes, as long as it’s not every segue.”
“Once an hour, I will put in just a wild card song, like a ‘Nine To Five’ by Dolly Parton, just to make people laugh and say, wow, I haven’t heard this in forever. And I’ll only play that song once a month.”
“Delight and surprise, we call it. It has to be a part of the format, but it’s still a mainstream format. It’s a mile wide, an inch deep. We play a wide variety of music from the ’60s to today, but we won’t play the third deep track from the album like KSHE might.”
The station is anchored by “The Courtney Show” in morning drive. Brando and Tim Convy are a part of the ensemble cast.
“We got lucky. She became available shortly after I got here in 2019. She’d been on KYKY Y98, and I worked with her there, too. I was the PD there when she was on, so I knew how good she was. I’m not sure why Audacy didn’t see the value in her, but they let her go, and we snapped her up three months later when her non-compete was over. She is a market veteran with a quirky sense of humor.”
“She’s from Illinois. She smokes cigarettes. She drinks beer and likes to talk about it. She’s just as real as you can get. We surrounded her with a cast of people. Brando is already known in the market.”
Giveaways, especially concert tickets, still make good currency for the station.
“I think because the way we’ve set up our station to be quirky and different, you kind of have to find quirky and different ways to utilize your concert tickets, and sometimes we just do straight giveaways. On our apps, we have the ability to do something we call tap the app and when we play a certain song from a certain artist, a reward becomes enabled on the app, and you tap it.”
“It’s encouraging people to listen online and utilize the app. We get more credit for listening online than we do over the air from Nielsen when it’s captured by the PPM unit, and so we push a lot of our contests online. We’re not taking caller ten, we’re saying when you hear the song, open your app, tap it, and you’re registered to win tickets. Then we might play that artist every hour.”
So, what keeps Linck up at night?
“Everything. I’m lucky that I work for Hubbard in St. Louis with John Kijowski and Tommy Mattern, and I feel like we produce a great return for the company, and the company supports us and gives us the tools that we need at least to the degree that they can in this climate.”
“The climate bothers me. I think it’s felt in many businesses, not just radio. I think the car business is going through a hard time. My wife is getting into real estate, and it’s incredibly difficult right now with the mortgage rates. So, the world, in general, is becoming a more difficult place to thrive in, and that keeps me up at night. But I can only control what I can control, and I have to work my butt off to make sure our product is the best it can be.”
Reach Marty Linck by email here.
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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.
