In 2005, Michael Brown was the Director of FEMA in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The government’s response to the heartbreak in New Orleans was not exactly what the people of Louisiana were looking for. This led to the much-remembered and somewhat controversial comment from President George W. Bush, who said, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”
In the years following Katrina, I saw Brown speak at a radio seminar, where he addressed the need for radio managers to have a plan in place for tragedies in their markets.
What sent a chill down my spine and left me shaken was when it said, “It’s not if it happens in your market. It’s when it happens in your market.”
For the Minneapolis/St. Paul market it happened last weekend with the politically motivated killing of Minnesota state Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and the wounding of State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette.
Last month, I wrote a feature story on KS95 Minneapolis morning show “Crisco Dez & Wes.” (BMM 5/15). The show promotes “Wake The Fun Up,” and was described to me as three people “being ourselves and goofing off and having fun like that.”
So naturally they came to mind over the weekend, with me asking myself, how will a show like that pivot during a tragedy in their market? I circled back on Tuesday with show lead Crisco to find that out.
“There’s really no right answer,” Crisco said. “You have to balance it. We’re lucky enough to have KSTP Channel Five right here in our building. Matt Belanger, who works there, said, ‘Hey, I can come up. I can give you guys all the breaking news stuff.”
So, how does the tone of the show pivot to match listener expectations?
“You can’t just ignore it. You can’t just not talk about it. It’s too big a thing. What you try to do is take moments to honor those we’ve lost, who were the Hortmans, and be able to also still go.”
“We also want to make people smile in an awful and devastating moment of tragedy. Sometimes you need a break from it. Sometimes you need to be able to go, okay, I have all the details.”
“I know exactly what’s going on in the world because KS95 helped us out, thanks to KSTP Channel Five. But I also walked away, going, they said something silly or they tried to make us laugh and try to be goofy and things like that.”
In cases like this, there is an intangible, unknown line that you can’t cross, to appear tone deaf to the situation, but also not violate audience expectations. Crisco agrees it is a balancing act.
“There is that line. We also want to be ourselves and make jokes and still do stuff like that. And sometimes the best recipe for sadness is laughter. And that doesn’t change what happened. It doesn’t make anything go away. But in those few moments of laughter, it can help you kind of go, oh, okay.”
“Bucks for Babe” is a charity fundraiser for animal rescue born from the loss of Crisco’s dog Babe. In its fourth year, the campaign launches today, and this year it will have another deeply personal tie.
“Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark had a dog that was a bit of a foster fail. That foster fail happened with their dog, Gilbert. The accused shooter also killed their dog.”
For Crisco and KS95, it made sense to include the local organization Helping Paws in this year’s fundraiser.
“I said, take a terrible dark day in Minnesota and turn it around and really help and really do what we can. Thanks to Blaze Credit Union, a local sponsor, they’re matching $30,000. Helping Paws is a place near and dear to the Hortman family, who are obviously going through an immense amount of grief and sadness on their own right now.”
“Anything we can do to brighten their day. Our listeners take those sad moments and go, let’s help. We’ve had our laughs over the years with KS95, and we’ve had good times, but now we need to help. And when it’s time to help, our listeners are second to none.”
Coming from my background as an OM during the 9/11 attacks, I asked Crisco how he would know when it was time to “get back to normal.”
“This is something we’ve never dealt with. And never had a type of grief, like having two people shot to death in their own home. You don’t even know how to wrap your head around it.”
“I think the fact that ‘Bucks for Babe’ landed on that same week, you almost turn the corner right there. Once “Bucks for Babe” is complete on Friday morning, we will give a grand total of what we raised in the two and a half days.”
“I feel like that’s the community coming together and going, obviously we still have a long way to go to unwrap a lot of these answers, but together we did something pretty incredible.”
“We did something pretty amazing for not only the animals that are going to be saved, rescued and helped here, but the Hortman family to hopefully help them start healing. Because we need them to begin healing before we can even start healing and moving forward.
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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.
