For 26 years — almost half his life — Tommy Mattern has programmed 105.7 The Point in St. Louis. Even longer, he’s been part of the St. Louis radio fabric itself. Since 1993, when he started at a local top 40 station as an intern, Mattern shaped the market’s sound. He worked every job available in that early building. Then he moved through programming roles before landing at The Point in October 2000.
These days, Mattern wears multiple hats at Hubbard Radio St. Louis. He’s the Operations Manager for the cluster — five major FM brands under one roof. He programs The Point day to day and oversees WIL (the country station) as OM/PD. Additionally, he handles sports programming at 101 ESPN. Yet if you ask him what defines his career, it’s The Point. That’s the station where he’s had the most freedom to think, experiment, and — most importantly — fail without fear.
The Rizzuto Standard
The most visible proof of that philosophy is the morning show. Since April 2014, The Point’s morning slot has been anchored by the Rizzuto Show. This program has essentially never left the #1 position. “I don’t know if there’s been a year since 2014 that we’ve been anything less than number one,” Mattern says. That show is a direct descendant of Woody and Rizzuto. This pairing dominated the market before Woody moved to iHeart in Los Angeles in March 2014. Rather than panic, Mattern doubled down on Scott Rizzuto, the co-host who’d become the show’s emotional center.
Rizzuto, whom Mattern hired from Sirius and K-Rock in New York around 2003, had already logged years with Mattern at The Point. However, the morning slot required something different — a talent capable of holding the station’s entire morning identity. Rizzuto rose to it. “That show is an elite standard in the market,” Mattern says. It’s the kind of statement that could sound like hyperbole. Yet Mattern has the ratings and revenue to back it up. For over a decade, the Rizzuto Show has been both the critical and commercial engine driving The Point’s dominance.
What makes Rizzuto’s success particularly interesting is what it reveals about Mattern’s hiring instincts. Notably, he’s drawn to people who understand the market viscerally — not as outsiders analyzing data, but as natives who’ve felt the community’s heartbeat. Most of his talent comes from St. Louis roots. He himself was born and raised there. Ultimately, that matters when you’re trying to program music that connects rather than merely complies.
Finding the Right Music, Not the Right Chart Position
This is where Mattern’s real philosophy emerges. Walk into The Point’s studio, and you won’t find a programmer obsessed with where a song sits on the alternative chart. Instead, you’ll find someone obsessed with whether a song feels right for St. Louis. “I tell people all the time: don’t look at my list, don’t look at my station,” Mattern says. “If you took my list and just played it where you’re at, chances are it probably won’t work.” He’s being deliberately anti-prescriptive here. Too many programmers fall into the trap of treating charts like gospel. They add songs because they’re bubbling at alternative radio, not because they believe in them. Mattern and his music director, Donnie, do the opposite. They look at what’s charting, sure. But they also hit clubs. They see bands live. They trust their gut.
That willingness to diverge from consensus has become The Point’s signature move. Look at the way Mattern has treated cross-format artists. When Jelly Roll’s “Son of a Sinner” was starting to move, Mattern didn’t wait for permission. He added it to WIL in the country format and added “Dead Man Walking” to The Point in the same week.
Notably, virtually no other station was touching him across either format at that time. “Not that I’m a very small part of that,” Mattern says, with characteristic humility, “because he was going to be a star regardless. But I think it just speaks to the willingness to take chances.” Shinedown’s “Searchlight” is another example. The song was positioned for country audiences. However, Mattern recognized it as Shinedown doing what Shinedown does — rock, fundamentally. “We made a track that we thought would connect with the country audience,” he says. “We did too, and being in the middle of the country and what a big Shinedown market this is for The Point, it made it really easy for us to say yes.”
The Country Station’s Hybrid Approach
WIL, the cluster’s country station, occupies an interesting middle ground. Mattern and his team take some of The Point’s experimental DNA there. Yet they do so with a lighter hand. Morgan Wallen, Ella Langley, and Luke Combs get play — they’re the format’s anchors. But so do artists like Red Clay Strays and Flatland Calvary. These bands can fill venues and sell tickets. Still, they’ve historically struggled to crack country radio playlists. “You know, everybody’s going to play those guys,” Mattern explains. “But we take chances on bands like Red Clay Strays and Flatland Calvary and those types of artists that they do really well selling concert tickets and selling out venues, but they hadn’t been getting a lot of airplay.” It’s the same philosophy applied to a different format — look for good music and trust that St. Louis listeners have better taste than the data suggests.
A Career Built on Trust
What’s remarkable about Mattern’s 26-year tenure is not simply that he’s held the same programming job for longer than most people hold careers. Rather, it’s that he’s been given the autonomy to do things that shouldn’t work according to industry logic. Additionally, he’s been proven right so consistently that his bosses stopped second-guessing him.
Rick Cummings, his longtime leader at Emmis, set that tone early. He said: “Do what you think is right. Find the music that you think connects and roll with it.” That directive could have been window dressing. Instead, Mattern made it sacred. “Thank God we’ve never had, or at least we’ve had very few conversations about which direction I should be going with that over the years,” he says. Even after Hubbard acquired the cluster in 2018, that culture persisted. “Hubbard’s been great about it,” Mattern notes. “They have the trust in us, and we keep it going.”
That freedom is rare. Most programmers operate in an environment of constant justification — defending song adds, explaining format direction, building PowerPoints to prove their instincts are right. But Mattern’s track record has earned him the autonomy to simply trust his gut. Ultimately, he’s let St. Louis listeners benefit from three decades of someone who’s refused to mistake data for judgment.
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David Hill serves as a Music Radio Editor, Columnist and Features writer for Barrett Media. A radio lifer with more than 30 years behind the mic, in the control room, and in the program director’s chair, David’s career spans influential stops at brands such as WIYY 98 Rock, WBAL-AM, and 99X. He has worked across multiple formats and ownership groups, including iHeartMedia and Cumulus Media, developing talent, breaking music, and navigating every major industry shift from diary to PPM and terrestrial dominance to streaming disruption. When he’s not writing or analyzing the industry, Dave runs The Tune Farm, a marketing firm built to help artists and brands grow audience the same way great radio always has—by creating connection, not just impressions. He can be reached at David@BarrettMedia.com.