Whoever said you can’t go home again didn’t know Ken West. And, in this case, they were completely wrong. Home has turned out to be a really great place to be.
After thirty years in Boston radio — ten with CBS Radio Classic Rock WZLX/Boston and twenty with Beasley’s Boston cluster — West was downsized. His roles included Programming, Music, and Marketing Director for Classic Hits WROR and Rock 92.9 WBOS. That’s when he went back home. He took a position as Brand Manager at Emerson College’s radio station 88.9 FM, WERS-FM. West had worked there as a student. Now he’s helping tutor young broadcasters.
The station has been around for more than seventy-five years. It has a professional staff of ten people with anywhere from forty to seventy-five students depending on the semester. Most importantly, the station maintains an extremely loyal listening audience.
“I never realized the sense of community a radio station could have,” West says. “I’d seen it with personalities where people would say listening feels like hanging out with my friends. That makes perfect sense for a show. But I’ve never experienced people talking about the radio station in that way.”
West believes trust drives the feeling of community. “It’s about curation,” he explains. “The listeners trust that when we serve something up it’s been vetted. So, whether they like it or not, it isn’t just from an algorithm. And people appreciate that.”
There is also a sense of investment for supporters. As a non-commercial entity, a lot of the budget comes from listener donations. “I think people cared about other stations I’ve worked at,” West notes. “But it’s different here because they’re actively putting their credit card down.”
Understanding the Target Audience
That monetary investment from listeners brings up an interesting point. While the station’s staff is primarily students, the target audience is not.
“Our donors are not 20-somethings,” West explains. “The core is people who are forty plus. Many are fatigued on what commercial radio has to offer. They used to listen to WBCN, WFNX, or WBRU. But those stations are gone. They still prefer a deeper experience from the radio. So, they trust us to give them something they will not get on other stations.”
That doesn’t mean they don’t play well-known songs. “I haven’t heard listeners say stop playing hits,” West says. “I’ve only heard them say keep making it interesting. We play hits, just not five or six in a row. Instead, we scatter them throughout each hour. We mix them with new or surprising older songs that WROR or WZLX aren’t going to play.”
That mandate to keep things interesting gives West and the team freedom to make creative programming choices. “I came from 250 songs in the library,” he notes. “Maybe stretch it to 251. Here, I stopped counting when I got to around 2,100 titles.”
Being interesting goes beyond a big library. For International Woman’s Month, the station spotlighted a different female artist each day. Then on International Woman’s Day, it was female performers all day long. Similarly, on Juneteenth, they featured African American artists. And on 617 day, the station played all local music. “That’s one of the fun things about this station,” West says. “You can stir the pot like crazy, and people aren’t going to go running from it. They crave it.”
That sort of programming helps separate WERS from its closest competitor, WXRV — a commercial AAA station. While the two overlap musically, it’s important for West to differentiate WERS in other ways.
“It’s not like two top 40 stations where we are trying to match them song for song,” West says. “But we have to be cognizant of them. I don’t want people to say, ‘why would I pay money to you when I can get that exact thing at the river?'”
Enter the Students
Another thing that clearly sets the station apart from its competition is having students on the air. While you might think that works against WERS compared to a polished commercial airstaff, that isn’t the case.
“We aspire to be the things our audience would like us to be,” West explains. “That includes being real human beings on the air. And we do have students on the air. It’s pretty obvious when you listen that they are learning. But our audience tells us they like it and they support that mission.”
West says the professional staff spend a lot of time coaching the students. They build systems to create the best possible learning experience. For student hosts, it starts with teaching the basics. This includes how to talk on the radio and follow the clock. “Working with the students is fascinating,” West notes. “We provide them with something like training wheels. This teaches them how to do the format correctly.”
Once they have that down, it becomes about helping students find their personality. “I’ll hear them say something about a band they are a fan of,” West says. “And I tell them I want to hear more like that. Hopefully by the end of the semester it becomes about music-related content and their personal experiences. It’s very similar to what you would teach a professional. But you have to teach them all of it.”
Looking Back to Commercial Radio
Speaking of professional broadcasters, West says he did bring a few things with him to the new position. However, he had to tread lightly considering the station was doing well.
“There wasn’t anything broken when I got here,” West explains. “But I did bring some things commercial radio does. Clear, concise imaging for example. Adjusting the clocks so the music flows better through different eras and tempos.” He continues, “I wasn’t saying let’s pare this down to 250 titles. But we can make it perform a little better.”
Just like some of what he learned in commercial radio was helpful at WERS, some of what he has seen in this position has led to thoughts about what commercial radio is missing. “I’m not here to bash commercial radio,” West says. “But I do think maybe we’ve told ourselves some stories that aren’t completely true.”
West thinks the industry convinced itself that young people don’t like radio. That hasn’t been his experience. “We always thought they only listen to streaming services,” he says. “But they actually use both. They listen to Spotify, but they also want to participate in the human connection part of it. There is a host, and we’re listening to music together.”
Contrary to what’s been said about colleges selling off their stations due to lack of student interest, West says there is no shortage of people who want to be part of WERS. “I was concerned coming in,” West admits. “But every time we do an open house, easily over a hundred applications come in. Every time there are more people interested than we have open positions.”
And it isn’t just students pursuing media careers. “Some are radio listeners, some are music fans, and some say they don’t know anything about radio,” West says. “Some don’t listen but are genuinely curious. I’ve seen writing majors come in with zero knowledge about radio. They come out on the other end as the Student Programming Coordinator. That’s basically the Assistant Program Director. Even if they never work in radio, they’ve learned how to manage a team and other important skills.”
Suggestions from the Non-Commercial World
That experience leads to West’s first suggestion for commercial radio: create opportunities for young folks like he sees at WERS. “I was a student broadcaster,” West says. “I was an intern. That’s how I got my start. But I didn’t see that many interns in my last few years before coming here. How are they going to be interested if they can’t experience it? And that doesn’t just mean having a street team who never sees anybody at the radio station.”
His second suggestion is to listen more to what the listeners are saying. “You can’t listen to every word everybody says,” West explains. “But the audience will tell you when you’re genuine. The audience will also tell you when you’ve missed the mark. If you tap into those things, you can nurture a community of people. They will be less transactional and more engaged in what you’re trying to do.”
Finally, he suggests broadcasters try to recapture something that seems to be missing from commercial radio: fun. “When did we lose the fun of being in radio?” West asks. “Most people I know got into it because they love music. They wanted to have fun, or both. And it’s okay to do that. You can be disciplined and professional. But we don’t work in a bank,” West says. “It’s important because fun is contagious. Fun can trickle down to staff and trickle out of the speakers to the listener.”
And if all else fails, having fun might be the best way to go out. “Try something fun, try something stupid, and stand on the hill for it,” encourages West. “I’d much rather go down saying, ‘I got blown out because I tried this thing that was fun and it didn’t work out’ than for some other dumb reason.”
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