Radio needs radio guys. It’s great to have a passion for sports or music or politics, but it’s the people that really have a love for communication and the medium that make it special. Indianapolis is very lucky to have one of those guys. They call him JMV.
Sports fans hear him every afternoon on 93.5 & 107.5 The Fan. The people that want their music with a little side of nostalgia hear him Saturday nights on B 105.7.
“You’re hassling with politics or the latest news or worried about the markets or something’s going on in your family, maybe your kid’s not getting any playing time on the team or whatever. You can get away from it with music,” JMV says. “The thing that I’ve always understood is there are no two things that go better together than music and sports.”
He may have to take two different approaches, but for JMV, it’s a pleasure. Every time he steps into the studio, he’s truly free to create. In an age when so much of what we hear on the radio comes with corporate structure and strategy developed by algorithms, JMV is completely unencumbered.
That isn’t necessarily rare in sports radio. You may know what the hits are for the audience, and you make sure to build topics around them, but it would be hard to think of any station where the program director or market manager are plotting out a host’s entire air shift. In music radio though, there are playlists…well, playlists for everyone but JMV.
“Sean Copeland (B 105.7 Program Director) and David Wood (Urban One’s Ops Manager in Indianapolis) allow me, this clown, to come in on their number one radio station in the market on a Saturday night and clear out all that they have programed and do whatever I want,” he says of his Saturday night request show. “That’s a radio dude’s dream, man.”
The man is well-versed in the music of the 70s, 80s and 90s. If a call comes in from someone that wants to hear Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Call me the Breeze,” he can tell that person that the horns on that track were performed by Bobby Keys, who can be heard on hit songs by everyone from the Rolling Stones to Barbara Streisand to Sheryl Crow. If a caller knows what song they really want to hear but can only remember that it goes “never trust a big butt and a smile,” JMV knows they are talking about Bell Biv DeVoe’s “Poison”.
But it’s not hard to see that JMV’s real wheelhouse isn’t sports or music. It’s Indianapolis.
This isn’t just where he ended up. It’s not like he was bouncing around all over the country and happened to find a town he liked. He always had his eyes trained on Indianapolis.
“I grew up in Southern Indiana. I always thought that Indy was the pinnacle, because there just wasn’t so much that was offered,” he explains. “It was so many different avenues of content, and I always thought, ‘Man, this is where I want to go.’”
There are plenty of reasons that JMV will tell you he is lucky. He ended up in the town he wanted to be in. He works for the people he wanted as his bosses. He’s survived in a business that isn’t always kind. No matter how talented someone is, shrinking budgets, consolidation and changing tastes can leave them behind.
As so much changed around him on The Fan, JMV stayed steady. First Jeff Rickard and then Big Joe left the morning show. Afternoons stayed the same. Dan Dakich exits, leaving very big shoes to fill in the middays. JMV was still there in the afternoon. New talent comes in and the station shuffles who is on when, but JMV stayed put.
“I kind of wonder if everybody doesn’t think that I suck so bad that I’ve completely ruined the afternoons,” he jokes. “’You know what? There’s really nothing we can do. So, you go ahead to maintain this level of suck for the rest of however long his life is. It could end tomorrow. It could be the next day or further down the road.’ Yeah. I think that my whole sucky way of performing has just, I guess, dug a canyon in which they think maybe they can’t get out of.”
Connection matters so much and JMV is really good at connecting with his audience. Whereas a lot of talent view remotes and live shows as pains in the ass that come with a decent check, JMV looks forward to them. That’s why he is untouchable.
Here’s a guy that at the height of Covid, thought it would be cool to get in a studio for a sixth day each week and just take requests. It’s the same guy that sees his city and its sports footprint growing and knows it will still rarely get coverage from the national media. Being Indianapolis’s guy on the radio isn’t a job. It’s a duty. It isn’t cool. It’s an honor. JMV takes it and what it means seriously.
“I remind people here all the time of this, and this is really what [93.5 & 107.5 The Fan] in general is about. People outside of Indiana don’t give a s*** about what people around here care about. They don’t,” he says. “I mean, if Andrew Luck retires five minutes before the start of the NFL season, then Mike Greenberg or somebody is going to swoop in and they’re going to have opinions on it, but for the most part, nobody gives a s*** about what we do except for us. On my afternoon show, we care about what people around here care about, and there is always going to be that option, and there’s always going to be that listener interest because they know that you may get sports talk someplace else, but they don’t give a damn about what you care about around here. And that’s why we take the air nine hours a day on The Fan. That’s what makes us different.”
Demetri Ravanos is a former columnist and editor for Barrett Media. He is the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host of the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
