It’s been more than a decade since The Woody Show took over mornings on iHeartRadio Alternative KYSR/Los Angeles. Hosted by Jeff “Woody” Fife, the show had been on several other stations in different incarnations, including afternoons in Chicago at Q101, a stop at Live 105 in San Francisco, and KPNT in St. Louis.
When the show moved to Alt 98.7, it wasn’t an instant success, and critics wondered if a show hosted by a Pittsburgh native and rooted in the Midwest could succeed in Los Angeles. But then the show broke through in the ratings in a huge way and has been rolling ever since as a dominant force in morning drive in the second-biggest market in the country.
Having worked with Woody at Q101 in Chicago, it was fun to reconnect with him to discuss what has driven the show’s huge ratings, his views on what makes great content, and how he and his team create great radio every day.
One of the first things we discussed is how the show has been able to be so successful for more than a decade in a tough radio market like Los Angeles. Woody points to his desire to never be complacent or stagnant. “I look at my dog, and I go, man, this thing eats the same food every day, and that’s got to suck,” he said.
That’s also why he’s never been a fan of having set benchmarks on his show, because people’s morning commutes generally take place at the same time every day. He doesn’t want to serve them the same food every day at that time. If you do that and they don’t like it, they’ll tune out and never get to experience any other aspects of the show.
“It’s just the same way you wouldn’t schedule music as a programmer with the same songs at the same time in the same hour,” said Woody.
Vulnerable And Curious
One ingredient helping keep the show fresh is the nonstop flow of content that comes from his team. While he realizes he’s fortunate to have a big staff working on the show, they are also carefully chosen to represent different demographics and life stages. But what’s most important to him is that the storylines that come from the cast are real.
“I always want it to be organic,” Woody says. “I don’t want it ever to be something someone invented. We don’t need phony storylines; there is plenty of real stuff going on.”
While a lot of the show’s content starts from him and the team just being curious, he says the best barometer for what makes a good story for the show is often how the person feels about telling it.
“Vulnerability is key because that’s the connective tissue to the audience,” he explained. That’s when the audience will relate to the person, not just the funny voice on the radio. His rule of thumb is when talking about a topic makes someone a little nervous, it will likely lead to the best content. “That’s probably the story you absolutely want to share on the air because the way it makes you feel means you’re being really vulnerable.”
That isn’t just true for the team—he’s on the hook to participate as well.
“I don’t care how people see me or view me as long as it’s real,” says Woody. “I don’t care what you take away from a topic or if you want to label me as whatever you think I am. I’ll share everything. It doesn’t matter. I did it. I said it. I might as well use it.”
Insensitivity Training
While it’s a great approach to content, it did make me curious how being vulnerable matched up with the show’s longtime slogan, Insensitivity Training for a Politically Correct World.
“It matches well because we are having an opinion, not just pandering to what you might think everybody wants to hear,” he explains. Having vulnerable conversations often leads to opinions that aren’t necessarily popular, but they are honest. “I like to push for a passionate response,” says Woody, and that isn’t always something positive. It could be anger. And a lot of times it will be something that some listeners have a negative reaction to. “We put it out there, and it is what it is. We often use the phrase ‘trigger warning.’”
And while being that honest can lead to complaints, in Woody’s view not all listener concerns are the same. He references the book Customer Satisfaction Is Worthless, Customer Loyalty Is Priceless: How to Make Customers Love You, Keep Them Coming Back, and Tell Everyone They Know by Jeffrey Gitomer.
The concept is that most people are only looking for the best bargain, so there’s no sense bending over backward when they have a complaint since they won’t come back to your store if someone else is giving a better deal. But there are customers who are loyal to your product—think P1 listeners—who are worth listening to when they are concerned.
When his loyal listeners are angry, Woody makes every effort to hear them out. He doesn’t always agree with them, but most feel better when they’ve had a chance to discuss their concerns. For the transactional listeners who get angry, the show has a feature called The Crossroads, during which they read the listener’s complaint on the air and suggest that perhaps The Woody Show isn’t right for them and they should move on.
He says listeners love the feature “because it’s like the craziest dumb s**t that people complain about.”
Preparation Leads To Execution
With Woody’s show being so honest and conversational on the air, it’s easy to think that the team just shows up, throws open the microphones, and magic happens. But I know from having worked with Woody in Chicago that the opposite is true—he’s all about show prep.
“The more prepared you are, the better the execution is going to be,” Woody says. “That way you aren’t thinking about what you’re going to do, and you can concentrate on paying it off on the air.”
It starts with each cast member, including himself, consciously paying attention to what goes on in their lives and making notes. Then on Thursdays, the team gets together for a planning meeting where everyone pitches their ideas. Woody takes those ideas along with the show’s regular benchmarks and forms them into a plan so that by Friday he knows what each show the next week will sound like.
That doesn’t mean that the show isn’t flexible. Woody thinks a lot of hosts don’t like to plan because they worry about something better coming up at the last minute. In his mind, it’s like an NFL team getting ready for a game.
“They come up with the game plan, and they practice based on that plan,” he says. “Then on Sunday they execute the plan, but if something comes up, they call an audible. That’s what we do every day.”
The Scariest Topic
Probably the biggest question facing any media personality today is how to deal with the fractured political landscape. We’ve entered a period where politics is pop culture, but anything with a political overtone can be incredibly divisive and potentially shatter an audience.
For Woody, the ideal would be that politics are not part of the show, but he acknowledges that it’s becoming more difficult to avoid. So, in typical Woody fashion, when it happens he goes back to what the show is based on—vulnerability and curiosity.
For example, the government shutdown was a story that he felt was too big to ignore. Instead of focusing on what the two sides are arguing about or who’s right, Woody says he asked the important question that most listeners also have: “How does this affect me?”
That curiosity and line of questioning help the average listener relate to the discussion of a political topic without it becoming about who’s on which side of the debate. They took the same approach when the Fed lowered interest rates. Woody asked, on the air, who this would impact and how. But like the rest of the show, those segments don’t happen at random. Being able to navigate tough topics like those starts with preparation.
“I tell the person who will deliver the story that I’m going to have these sorts of questions, and they need to be prepared to answer,” he said.
Looking for a way to sum up the reasons his show has had so much success over the last decade, Woody references music super producer Rick Rubin. In a famous clip, Rubin talks about how he doesn’t do projects or make albums for the fans. He makes music for himself and hopes there’s enough of an audience out there who feels the same way he does. It’s that level of authenticity that Woody strives for. He’s not doing the show to pander to the audience.
That’s not always an easy approach to take, especially with the public today feeling so emboldened to complain about everything—especially media. But Woody, a self-proclaimed collector of quotes, leaves me with one final thought that inspires him:
“The person who wants to lead the orchestra has to be willing to turn their back on the audience.”
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Mike Stern is a Classic Rock columnist and Features writer for Barrett Media. He has been with Jacobs Media consulting stations in the Classic Rock, Rock, Alternative and AAA world for more than a decade. Prior to that he programmed stations in Chicago, Detroit, Denver Las Vegas and other markets. He also worked as News/Talk Editor for Radio and Records, wrote about Top 40 Radio for Billboard Magazine and had his own radio talent coaching business called Talent Mechanic.
