Rob Mack is Operations Manager for Bryan Broadcasting in Bryan/College Station, TX. Additionally, he handles the day-to-day programming for Top 40 Candy 95, R&B and Throwbacks Magic 97.3.
Mack popped onto several people’s radar recently when he reacted quickly, turning the Taylor Swift getting her music back news into a station promotion. Or as I like to say, ceasing the moment.
“The Taylor Swift thing was really on a whim. It just popped into my head. My midday guy, Ryan, is always keeping tabs on what the artists are doing. He saw the post, and he came out and told me that.”
“My immediate response was, do we go back to playing the original versions? And he goes, I don’t know, that’s a great question. We left it at that. And I continued about doing some other things that I was working on, and I stopped, and I just kind of looked out the window at some point, and I thought, you know, we could do a Taylor take back weekend.”
“I try always to have a how do we capitalize on this mindset. Running everything through that filter. Whatever’s going on in the world, whatever’s going on with the artists, with pop culture in the community. If you can try to tie that back into your brand somehow.”
“It was literally on a whim. A fleeting thought. It turned into, well, it’s 1:00 pm on a Friday. Can we pull this off? I don’t know if we can pull this off. Long story short, we got it on the air by five o’clock that afternoon. I would have preferred to do it by three, but hey, five is still fine.”
Mack believes the job of the PD isn’t a nine-to-five gig.
“I think when we sign up to be a program director, we’re on call 24/7. It doesn’t mean we’re working 24/7, obviously, but you wake up on Saturday or Sunday morning, log in, and check the automation to ensure everything is on time. Something happened on a Sunday afternoon. We better post this up on our social media. So, yeah, sometimes there’s a lot of work involved, but it’s also a lot of fun, and it’s really rewarding.”
Does programming Top 40 in a market that is home to Texas A&M and 75,000 students create nuances?
“I asked that question when I was being interviewed here, and they said, we don’t actively program for the college students, but we certainly don’t ignore them. And in this town, you cannot ignore them at all. I mean, there are 75,000 college students here in this town.”
“The town revolves around the college. And what I mean by that is that if the college is on spring break, the public schools are also on spring break. And businesses don’t want to do remotes that week. They know that so many people are gone. And everybody knows when it’s game day.”
“Do we actively program for college students? Yes and no. I’m more cognizant in my music decisions here. I go earlier on younger leaning records than I would have in previous Top 40 stations because I know that the audience here is a little bit younger.
Mack has a big job with the brands of Bryan Broadcasting while staying on top of Candy 95 and Magic 97.3.
“I’m lucky to have a lot of people, more people than other similarly sized markets. I’m lucky to have program and music directors over all of them. They’re in charge and they’re responsible. They come to me if they have questions, concerns, problems or sometimes to talk things out.”
With all that goes into managing a cluster of that size, is Mack and his team utilizing AI?
“We use it kind of as an idea starter. My morning guy will use it to brainstorm names for the little bits or segments that he does. I know our salespeople have used it to brainstorm copy before as well.”
Back to Top 40 specifically and getting young people interested in radio again, where does Mack see the challenges and opportunities?
“One of the challenges for Top 40, for radio as a whole, and young targeted formats is getting enough 18 – 34 listeners. Twenty years ago, when I was getting into radio, I wouldn’t say it was the only game in town, because you still had downloaded music and CDs. YouTube was a new thing at the time, but certainly not like it is now.”
“The phone lines were lit up nonstop, and kids were on the phones. That doesn’t happen anymore. People don’t like talking on the phone anymore. Texting was in its infancy.”
“You have to want to have 18-34s, and I think you have to do a good job of reaching out to that audience and talking to that audience. Radio needs to do a better job of hiring personalities that look, talk and think like the audience that we want to target.”
And where do we go to get the next Ryan Seacrest, Elvis Duran or Howard Stern?
“We can teach the basics. We can’t teach personality. You have to find somebody who’s got personality.”
And sometimes they might be in your backyard.
“We reach out to college students, and we hire them. She’s unfortunately not with us anymore. But Mikaylee our morning co-host last year. She stumbled into the radio station from Texas A&M and was volunteering, I believe, at Aggieland Humane Society. Our morning news anchor was volunteering there as well.”
“The Humane Society had posted something with her from the radio station. She ended up coming up here and being hired on part-time to fill in on our news department. Which kind of quickly led to, hey, do you want to fill in on Candy 95?”
“Which sort of just led into, hey, do you want to come sit in with the morning show? And now you’re our morning co-host. All this while she was in her senior year at Texas A&M. So we hired her full time when she graduated, and I was feeling really good about it.”
“Five months later, she comes in one day and goes, I think I’m going to leave. She had a side business of photography, and she was like, yeah, I just, I kind of want to focus on that. She was managing some social media accounts for businesses. And I’m like, I get it, but whatever.”
In closing.
“Anybody that knows me knows that I’m really passionate about pop Music and Top 40 Music. I’ve been in the format since 2003, when I started in the business. And I listened to it from the time since I was five years old. I understand why stations do it, but leaning too heavily on throwbacks drives me nuts.”
“There are stations trying to masquerade as Top 40 stations, heritage stations that have started leaning on throwbacks. They still play three or four currents an hour. And they’re still on the panel reporting as Top 40 stations. In my opinion, if 50, 60, 70% of your playlist is songs from 15 and 20 years ago, you are not a Top 40 station.”
“If your brand is established in the market as the station for current music. Is the station for Top 40, for hit music, for pop music, and you turn it on and you’re playing old songs from T-Pain, Nelly and Pitt Bull. I don’t think any of the stations that have gone in this direction have done anything worthwhile in the ratings.”
“I’m not saying those songs don’t have a place once or twice, or maybe three times an hour. But if that is 70% of your playlist, I don’t think you’re meeting the expectations of the listener. I think that’s dangerous for Top 40 as a format. Because now in some instances, you’re taking the Top 40 station out of the market, and so the market only has a throwback station that happens to play two or three of the biggest songs every hour.
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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.
