Most radio careers are measured in decades. Bru’s is measured in rocket fuel.
He cracked the mic for the first time in 2015. Eleven years later, Josh “Bru” Brubaker is heard every weeknight on more than a dozen Audacy Top 40 and Hot AC stations from a studio in Los Angeles, hosts a national Sunday night show across the company’s country brands and — since March — handles nights on New 102.7 in New York. He’s interviewed Taylor Swift and Harry Styles, worked red carpets and built a social following big enough that the industry crowned him the “CEO of Radio TikTok.”
And yet, ask him how he got here, and he starts with a little tape recorder and a long drive to school.
A Pocket Recorder and a Long Drive to School
Bru grew up in Ida, Michigan — “really small, about 45 minutes south of Detroit, in like the sticks, very farm town country.” Its claim to fame is an annual holiday parade, Christmas in Ida, that crams thousands of people into a one-stoplight town. “I might be one of the more notable ones now,” he laughs. “I guess a lot of farms. I guess milk, good milk.”
The school he attended was a hike from home, which meant a daily commute with his mom, brother and sister — and the radio. “Radio is such a community thing that you kind of just don’t even know it, but you’re building like a second family that you wake up with every day,” he says.
His grandfather, who had a habit of giving him “quirky gifts,” handed him a pocket recorder — the kind people used for grocery lists. Bru turned it into a studio. He pulled sound effects off an iPad, put his sister on as a game contestant and talked up songs. At family get-togethers, he hosted, ran skits and served as “the announcer guy for when dinner’s ready.”
“It was never something that I thought would be a career, though,” he says. “It was just like an outlet for creativity.”
SportsCenter Dreams, Radio Reality
That changed at a college fair, where he discovered the Specs Howard School of Media Arts in Southfield, Michigan — a one-year program teaching the ins and outs of broadcasting. He enrolled right out of high school with his eyes on sports television.
“I thought SportsCenter would be an amazing path, as delusional as I could be,” he says. “But on the off days of TV, they would teach you radio, and I just fell in love with all the technical side of it. It felt like a safe space. I felt like I could be my true self and really unlock a different level of creativity.”
Internships became part-time gigs. At 18, he landed in Bad Axe, Michigan — “which also sounds fake” — at WLEW. It was, by his own description, radio from another era: AM, news at the top of every hour, switching the transmitter power at night and pulling out CDs when the system crashed. He did a polka hour. He did Ladies Line, essentially an on-air garage sale.
“It was one of those places where I really got to mess up and find my voice,” he says.
Bru knows how unusual that résumé line is for someone his age. “Who can say that, even in 10 years, I was on AM radio?” he says. Now he hears from kids on social media asking what radio even is. “I’m so honored to get to introduce that to maybe a generation that doesn’t even know what it is anymore.”
Cold Calls, Country Music and a ‘PhD in Radio’
Bad Axe was the classroom, and Bru knew when it was time to graduate. He started “bugging program directors” around his home region and set his sights on Toledo, right across the state line. He tracked down the number of a Cumulus PD and offered to do whatever it took.
They gave him part-time weekends at Q105, which grew into nights and then afternoons, along with shifts on the cluster’s other brands, including K100 and WRQN.
Toledo led him to Robby Bridges, who brought him in part-time at Detroit’s Nash FM 93.1, later New Country 93.1. Bridges remains a friend and mentor. “He gave me a true PhD in radio,” Bru says. “He took the time to teach me about radio — where it started, who was the most influential, how it came to be — and then also back that up with the opportunities and, more importantly, the confidence to really execute and become the personality I am.”
There was one catch. “I did not like country music at the time,” he admits. He grew to love it. More important, he understood what producing a morning show in a market like Detroit could teach him.
The Pandemic Pivot
Then COVID hit, and the car — radio’s living room — went empty. Bru went looking for another way to reach listeners. He started posting videos: aircheck snippets, breaks and little nuggets of what the show was doing for the community.
The goal was simple: “to remind people we’re still here,” he says. “And that just really took off and became a thing of its own.”
The exposure brought calls from cities and companies. He picked Los Angeles, joining Audacy in March 2021 at 97.1 Amp. “I always thought, I want to try one of the biggest markets that we have, and it’s been the best,” he says. Five years later, LA is home. He met his fiancée there.
The national run followed: Audacy’s Top 40 and Hot AC footprint, the Sunday night country show and live events like the company’s We Can Survive concert. “It’s a dream,” he says. “All the things you dreamed about doing.”
Small-Town Tools, Big-City Stage
How does a 2015 rookie connect in a crowded, fragmented marketplace? Bru says it starts with who he is.
“Even when it is these things that seem outlandish — getting to host a red carpet or have an interview with Taylor Swift or Harry Styles — I’m still just a normal guy that can kind of relate to the average listener,” he says. “I think that just makes it way more digestible and builds that connection.”
The tactics run both ways between platforms. Ideas that work on social get converted for the air, and vice versa. An Instagram post asking people to call in feeds the radio show. “At the end of the day, we’re storytellers,” he says. “It’s content all around.”
New York is the newest test. Nights on New 102.7 meant learning a brand-new market. “Every market’s so specific and unique; you got to have the respect and time to understand what you’re doing to make it work,” he says. When work takes him east, he does the show from the city and talks to people on the street.
That small-town instinct hasn’t left. “I’m only doing what I’ve always done, and who I am as a person hasn’t changed,” he says. “I think that’s a big secret to the success. I’m still the same person that was super excited in Michigan, just getting started.”
Say Yes to the Door
Bru is honest about the advice he’d give the next wave. There aren’t as many seats as there were 20 or 30 years ago, and in some markets there’s barely anyone in the building to cold-call.
“But I still think there’s ways to work your way in,” he says, pointing to the promotions teams in LA that still hire young people and get them through the door. “It’s not going to be maybe the most glamorous thing when you start, but it’s also not forever. Sometimes you just gotta say yes to the things that get you in to meet the people that can help move you along.”
He isn’t in it for the paycheck, either. Plenty of opportunities could have pulled him away from radio, as they have for many of his peers. “If I didn’t love it, I would be done by now,” he says. “But I love it so much, I will do it as long as I can.”
For an industry that has spent years wondering where the next generation went, that might be the most encouraging line of all. They’re out there. One of them started with a pocket recorder in Ida, Michigan.
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