Kathy Dugan, morning co-host at Saga’s WOGK (97.3 K Country)/Gainesville-Ocala, FL., is hanging up her headphones after 18 years on air.
Dugan is set to become the editor of 352Today.com, the company’s online publication.
This leaves PD and morning co-host “Mr Bob” Forster looking for a new partner.
Reach him here.
Skip Bayless has never been my cup of tea, but I don’t have anything against him. I would see his face when the TV in front of my favorite elliptical at my gym was tuned to FS1 and think “oh, not for me” and throw on a podcast. I don’t recoil at the sight of him the way some people in our industry do.
With that being said, I do think it’s undeniable that his departure from Undisputed and FS1 was necessary for the network to form a viable identity. His star shined too brightly for the network to build a future. Any time he said something dumb or picked a fight with his co-host, it ate up all the conversation about FS1, of which there was precious little to begin with. There was no way to build a brand identity outside of him.
There are some really talented people on the network. Nick Wright may be the guy the network sees as its face, but between him, Joy Taylor, Emmanuel Acho, and Richard Sherman, there is no shortage of stand-out young stars comfortable giving big, sometimes wildly unpopular opinions.
Maybe you read that and think “Isn’t that exactly what they had in Skip Bayless? Why did he have to go if the strengths of FS1’s young stars are what he has been doing for years?”
It’s fair to ask, but that question answers itself. Skip Bayless had to go because he has been doing this for years. Everyone that was ever going to watch Skip Bayless has already watched him. He isn’t going to bring any new eyeballs to the network.
I compare where FS1 is right now to my teenage daughter. She will be 15 next month. It will be her first year of high school. She’s the age where you are your most paranoid, self-conscious to the point that every time you enter a room, you’re convinced everyone else is looking at and judging you.
As her dad, I have had to find ways to gently say “Do you know how freeing it is to realize no one gives a damn about you?”. It doesn’t mean no one cares. It means that no one cares enough to bring their own day to a screeching halt because you made the wrong choice or said the wrong thing.
FS1 has an opportunity here to build a weekday talk lineup that it can stick with for years to come. The network enjoys widespread distribution, and its ratings are trending upward, but let’s not sugarcoat it – there aren’t many people watching anything on FS1 that isn’t a live game.
That gives Eric Shanks and his crew an opportunity to grow by adding new faces. Maybe they’re all stars from day 1. Maybe you make some mistakes and have to start over. Who cares?
I stand firm in my belief that the “star era” is over for networks like FS1 and ESPN, but I can make a concession. Maybe that era is only over for its current crop of stars. When we say that no one is going to pay $50 per month for a streaming ESPN to watch Stephen A. Smith, maybe what we’re talking about is a mismatch of talent with the streaming audience.
We know what the national audience thinks of Skip Bayless. We know how they feel about Keyshawn Johnson. Danny Parkins is a fresh face, not unlike Joy Taylor or Nick Wright when the network first launched.
Taking chances like that paid off in the early days of FS1. The media landscape has changed a lot since 2013 and it will only change more in the days ahead. A lot of the rules have changed, but at the heart of it all, success in any form of media is about connecting with your audience.
If FS1 wants a lineup that is going to connect with a younger audience, excite them and win their loyalty, Skip Bayless had to go. He’s still capable of doing the job he has done for decades, but FS1 has seen the results that yields. The results were never going to change with the same 70-something star it has always been building around.
Why is it hard for some of us to ask for help?
The Google Psychologist will say it’s fear of judgment, pride, self-doubt, blind spots, and independence.
With the Paris Olympiad saturating our tablets and TVs, it’s a great time to point out collaborations among teammates.
Swimmers Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte had a strong mutual respect for each other, often pushing each other to stretch their boundaries and goals.
In the gym, Simone Biles and Aly Raisman often exchanged tips while the older Raisman offered advice to the emerging star Biles before and after gymnastic competitions.
Sisters Serena and Venus Williams discussed tennis strategy before tournaments, even though it was likely they would face each other somewhere in the bracket.
All these World Champions were also competitors.
A professional life story follows.
At 31 years young, I was enlisted to program the third biggest Oldies Brand on the planet – WJMK/Chicago.
Not because I was an expert on The Beach Boys, Buckinghams, and Bobby Darin. Far from it.
Infinity Broadcasting selected me because our teams created winning brands that had great momentum (see last week’s article) and mentored big-name, star talent.
Big market – big group – unfamiliar format?
I asked for help.
The first call for help was to Mike Phillips, the brilliant Program Director of the award-studded and highly-rated Oldies behemoth K-Earth in Los Angeles.
Mike took the time to school me on everything from musical styles to BIG promotions for the brand. He was a huge mentor. Success followed.
While anyone can read an Arbitron Ratings Book (yes, they used to publish rating books), it was common knowledge that Legendary Chicago programmer John Gehron—who was a competing General Manager—was wildly known as a savant at pulling granular detail out of the four-a-year rating books.
Strength of audience by Zip Code – in tab distribution – extrapolation of monthly data, etc. (long before we had digital tools to do it).
Lost in the piles of numbers, I asked John for help!
John then spent a summer afternoon pouring over details of the spring book with this skinny-tie kid.
Collaboration (asking for help) between Infinity’s Oldies brands included in-market visits from other company programmers to ‘attack’ our brands.
Example: Brian Thomas, a successful programmer from Oldies KFRC/San Francisco, would fly into Chicago, stay in a hotel room for three days, listen to my station, and take pages of notes.
What would follow was an extensive White Paper on what he heard, what he recommends, and a tactical plan for course correction.
This happened in Philadelphia, Detroit, Los Angeles, Washington, and Dallas—wherever we had an Oldies brand.
One time, fantastic free-thinker and extraordinary leader Weezie Kramer – my General Manager – suggested that all the Chicago Program directors switch stations for a week and program another brand in our cluster.
Brilliant!
Here’s why I hope you’re still reading this.
You don’t know, and you want to learn?
Ask for help.
Asking for help – is a strength.
If you’re new to Christian Radio, ask someone who’s been there and is successful to mentor you.
Country Radio has master programmers in its format. Ring one of the dozens of successful programmers and ask for their advice.
In the spring of this year, the phone rang, and on the other end was a guy named Jason Barrett. He and I were cluster mates – two doors down – in St. Louis.
Jason had boldly built two robust digital and event brands – Barrett Sports Media and Barrett News Media.
Jason said, “Dude, I’ve got a sports brand which I know like the back of my hand and a newer news platform, but I need help putting together a MUSIC brand! Can you help?”
See where asking for help can get you?
Last week 95.5 WSB host Eric Von Haessler warned conservative talkers they could lose their jobs if not careful when talking about Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. The conservative Atlanta afternoon host explained what he called “a honey trap,” claiming it’s a carefully honed strategy by Democrats waiting to pounce on anyone who makes even a passing on-air reference to Harris’ race or gender.
These are treacherous times for people who make their living providing news, analysis, and commentary. A slip of the tongue or even a carefully crafted comment can be the death knell of your career. Words taken out of context or twisted in intent have taken down many smart and experienced radio and TV commenters and reporters. It’s called Cancel Culture, and it has victimized hundreds of broadcasters, educators, and even office workers across society.
In their book “Canceling of the American Mind” authors Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott define Cancel Culture succinctly:
Cancel Culture is the uptick, beginning around 2014 and accelerating in 2017 and after, of campaigns to get people fired, disinvited, deplatformed, or otherwise punished for speech that is — or would be — protected by First Amendment standards, and the climate of fear and conformity that has resulted.
What the hell happened to our national allegiance to the First Amendment? And why aren’t broadcast companies supporting their loyal employees instead of just tossing them aside like rotten fruit?
There are enough examples of corporate media spinelessness over the past ten years to fill a book. Here’s one I know something about personally:
Grant Napear, former Sacramento Kings TV announcer and talk host on Sactown Sports 1140 (KHTK), is suing Bonneville for wrongful termination. This case has been winding its way through the courts since 2021 following the death of George Floyd in police custody. In the ensuing volatile social discourse, Napear replied to the phrase, “Black lives matter” by Tweeting, “All lives matter, every single one.” That innocuous Tweet got Napear fired from his Bonneville radio job and forced him to resign from his plum gig as TV play-by-play announcer for the Kings.
Until that moment his career was still ascending. He had dedicated years of his life to learning his craft and achieving those treasured positions in which he was performing well and successfully. Then he was wiped away like a bug on a windshield by bosses fearing backlash from people who didn’t like his words and refused to consider his intent.
When I worked in Sacramento, I met Napear on occasion. I can’t call him a friend because we weren’t close, but he seemed like a decent fellow and I admired his work. He was always opinionated about sports, but I never heard anything from him that would suggest any political, cultural, or racial bias. Bonneville either didn’t agree or just didn’t care. They had a serious knee-jerk reaction during a moment of social tension. Why didn’t they support their guy? You know the answer as well as I do.
Cowardice.
It had nothing to do with moral decency. Nor was it the nobility of a company standing up for equal rights of all Americans. It was purely corporate bean-counting cowardice, orchestrated by well-intended but confused Americans with more righteous anger than common sense.
Back up a second, did I say this case has been in litigation for nearly four years? Yep, and it still is. Mr. Napear is dead in the water career-wise. It seems from recent reports that the U.S. justice system is handling his case fairly, albeit glacially. He may eventually get some money to salt his early, unsought life in retirement. Even so, he was brutally canceled and personally damaged. No court can rectify that.
“All lives matter, every single one.”
Makes sense to me and I said it so many times on my morning shows in L.A. and Dallas. I guess I wasn’t on anybody’s radar.
Here’s another sentence that makes perfect, non-discriminating sense: “What does Kamala Harris’ ethnic background or gender have to do with her ability to govern?” That’s a fair and balanced rhetorical question you could ask on the air, right?
Eric Von Haessler warns, “Okay, bye-bye. I won’t see you on the unemployment line because I’m not as stupid as you.”
The question has no bias and no racial or gender implications. That’s exactly where some narrow-minded zealots would say I revealed my hand: by merely mentioning the words, ethnic background, and gender, they would charge that I implied they might be problematic.
An aside: I find it weird that we can still call our presidential candidates Nazis, racists, misogynists, and idiots; we can claim they’re doddling old boobs suffering from old fogey dementia and we only get counter insults, not cancellations.
Political name-calling is nothing new. Throwing victims to the wolves is.
Make no mistake, a social war is going on and you, as a public speaker, are squarely in the crosshairs.
Don’t expect the company that praises and pays you well in good times to have your back. When you open that mic and start talking extemporaneously, you’re out there on the high wire without a net.
In presidential election years, you’ll often read projections and forecasts predicting a ballyhoo of riches from political campaigns to media entities. But Gordon Borrell, founder of Borrell Associates, knows there’s more to it than that.
In 2024 alone, the words “unprecedented” often coincide with reports on just how much money is being spent on campaigns. Some projections show as much as $10 billion will be spent between presidential, congressional, and local issues in 2024.
But there are limits on avails. Television, both cable and over-the-air, has limits. Radio is in the same boat. And with “unprecedented” levels of spending, many sing the praises of this time on the political calendar.
However, that robust campaign spending leaves local advertisers in bit of a pinch. They rarely can afford to squeeze in between the multitude of political messages and can be forced into less desirable stations or dayparts to get their messaging across.
But, as Gordon Borrell points out, the options now pale in comparison to what was previously available.
“It shows up in some of our data that there are basically twice as many choices — maybe a little more than that — than there were for (local advertisers) 20 years ago, and it continues to expand,” Borrell said. “If you look at just the formats of advertising, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, this didn’t exist. There’s now paid search, there’s now banner ads, there’s now targeted banners. There’s now Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all of social media.
“All these formats and then there are things that are not advertising, like search engine optimization, which kind of looks like an advertising expense, because it certainly drives traffic, and they have competing expenses with advertising that are internal to them that involve marketing like their own website and maintaining their Facebook page and crafting an email and sending it out.
“So the plethora of choices that they have in marketing has — I don’t say stagnated, but curtailed — the increase in advertising that we were all expecting to see. The money is going elsewhere,” Borrell continued. “Typically, internally, to their own, what we call, owned media channels. It might be their YouTube channel, it might be their Facebook page, or their Instagram page, their website, or their email marketing lists. Those are all owned media channels. Those all require resources. Where does it come from? The advertising budget.”
Coinciding with those newfound options for local advertisers is a willingness to try new things. According to data from Borrell Associates, 41% of marketers on the local level are willing to try new forms of advertising. And Gordon Borrell thinks that’s a positive.
“It shows advertisers are willing to experiment,” he shared. “So it’s like, yeah, I think I’ll try that this year.”
However, maybe conversely, advertisers still have a certain level of expectation that comes with their investments.
“Advertisers are like Wall Street investors. They like certainty. They don’t like uncertainty,” he said. “So they see inflation that worries them. It’s deflating, but not as much as they had hoped. And they’re just a little risk averse. I don’t want to paint a bleak picture of it, but the increase, or the continued bounce back from COVID, has not been as strong as it we had expected it to be, and they’re just a bit reticent.”
That word — “reticent” — is one Borrell pointed to as a great descriptor of the current local advertising market. Just Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 1,000 points, leading to questions if a recession was imminent. That, coupled with fears of growing tensions between Iran and Israel, plus a contentious presidential election, leaves local marketers weary of investing too much currently.
“We have seen for about 12 months now local advertisers just holding back. They’re optimistic. Their optimism has been growing. They believe the next six months will be better, and they started believing this in August of last year. The remainder of 2023 looked pretty good to them, but they didn’t spend as much as they said they were going to spend the first half of this year,” Gordon Borrell said.
“When we polled them again in January, it looked good to them, but they still are holding back. And then we just polled them again, I believe, at the end of June, and it was the same thing. The market is okay. It’s not as positive as we thought it would be. We’re forecasting local advertising to grow only about three and a half to 4% this year, and that is way out of line with what some of the big national firms are saying for overall advertising.”
Radio remains a strong platform for local advertisers, especially those who have been pushed out of local TV purchases due to the presidential election. And while radio remains willing and ready to accept those dollars, Gordon Borrell — who will speak at the 2024 BNM Summit in Washington D.C. next month about the role traditional media still plays in the advertising ecosystem — believes election years are a great opportunity for radio to showcase what it can provide those marketers.
“Local advertisers are a bit cold-hearted,” Borrell said with a chuckle. “They wouldn’t buy radio if it didn’t work. That said, terrestrial radio continues to be either flat or decline year after year. So it does suffer a lot of competition from all these other platforms — specifically digital — and all the other aggressiveness that other traditional media companies have in selling their own product, and that includes cable, TV, outdoor, newspapers, etc… (Radio) is holding it’s own, but it’s transition into becoming broader marketing reps and selling a lot more digital products and packaging them with radio has served them well.”
Paul Marshall has now been on the Sacramento airwaves twice in his career via 98 Rock, with 20 years between stints. Now accompanying listeners for their morning drives, “The Paul Marshall Show” is just the most recent venture in a broadcasting career jam-packed with formats, timeslots, and cities.
“A journey it has been,” Marshall recalls of his career beginnings. “I started out doing college radio outside of Boston. I would wake up around the crack of noon and go to the campus radio station, wait for my friends to get out of their classes, meet them downstairs in the cafeteria, and go right back up into the radio station until we shut the transmitters off around 2am.”
The only glitch in Marshall’s plan to be on the college radio station was remaining a student at the college, which proved to be a difficult feat while missing classes. “If you do that for a semester, they put you on something called ‘academic probation,’ which means you haven’t gone to class enough and you are in trouble and in danger of being thrown out of school.”
With a goal of staying enrolled, Marshall got his act together only to find himself in the same position once more. “I got my grades up enough to do the same thing for the second semester… spending all my time at the campus radio station, and then they give you something called ‘academic suspension,’” he remembers.
But being out of the academic setting wasn’t the worst thing for Marshall’s interests, so when he returned to campus again, it was another futile effort. “I knew what I wanted to do from day one, so I did the exact same thing and got thrown out of college.”
From there, Marshall focused his efforts on music and making a living. “I did the band thing for a while, hurt my back working in a warehouse, because that’s what you do when you’re in a band. You have to have a job that pays your rent,” he says. He once again set his sights on a career in broadcasting.
Getting into radio initially felt right for Marshall as someone whose radio had kept him company through many of his early childhood years. “It really was about the connection… I come from a broken home. I’m also my mother’s only child… When you’re by yourself and you have no brothers and sisters, you look for companionship. And I was fortunate enough as a 9-year-old to win tickets from WRKO in Boston…to go see Beatlemania,” he recalls. “The radio was a constant companion. And it still is. We are the first social network.”
“They were always there,” he remembers of his local stations growing up. “It was something I could rely on. I could turn on the radio, and I wasn’t alone.”
“It really was about companionship, and it still is,” he says.
When it comes to the common debate over radio stations and streaming services, Marshall’s stance is pretty clear. “You can get the music anywhere. You cannot get what comes between the music anywhere else,” he says of music radio, suggesting that people don’t listen to radio for the same reasons they might turn to their Spotify Premium accounts.
Marshall believes that if an on-air personality can really connect with the audience they serve, they’re already providing something that a streaming service’s algorithm lacks.
“That’s really what this is about,” he says. “Ozzy is always going to be Ozzy. Sublime is always going to be Sublime. People don’t listen to radio for music. They listen to radio for a connection. That’s what we’re doing. We have to connect. Emotional. Radio is not soda. Radio is not beer. Radio is not sneakers or cars. Radio is emotion. And those who are the best storytellers and who can hit emotional triggers with the audience are always going to exist. It’s the difference between a personality and an announcer.”
On the heels of being kicked out of school and dabbling in musicianship for a while, the next move for Marshall became clear. “I went into WZLX in Boston and spoke with the APD and said, ‘How do I get a job here?’”
His first professional gig was alongside a storied on-air pro that showed him the ropes. “I basically took an internship with the morning show with an on-air talent named Annalisa… She was my radio mom, so to speak, and gave me some amazing experience.”
From there, Marshall went on to contribute in a variety of timeslots and roles to nearly 15 different radio stations across the country in Boston, Portsmouth, Amherst, Memphis, New Orleans, Kansas City, Phoenix, and Sacramento.
His career has included 5 different stints at Audacy radio stations, of which Marshall notes the importance of bowing out with grace when things inevitably shift and change. Despite the fact that “people like to badmouth big companies,” Marshall says, “I find that Audacy has done a fantastic job of adapting.”
The reality for Marshall in a constantly shifting broadcasting landscape is simple. “If you haven’t been fired, you don’t work in radio.”
In terms of Marshall’s own music tastes, the stuff he reaches for varies so much day-to-day that he’s more interested in how the station adapts to diverse music tastes than the specific formats he serves.
“I’m fortunate enough to work for a station right now that understands that listening tastes are varied,” he says. “Years ago, we would think that the guy that likes Metallica wouldn’t like Public Enemy, but that’s just not true. Musical tastes are varied. It depends on your mood.”
For Marshall personally, it’s hard to call out even just one favorite artist or genre. “I love all kinds of music, so as far as a favorite goes, it’s difficult to say. Depends on what day of the week and what mood I’m in,” he shares.
He goes on to say, “All the audience wants is their favorite music, whatever that is. Now, that said, I don’t go to McDonald’s for pizza. I don’t expect to listen to whichever hip hop station is in LA to hear Metallica and vice versa. But as far as musical consumption goes… there is no real line.”
In simpler terms, Marshall quips, “There’s a much bigger world out there than three chords and a bottle of whiskey.”
To support the launch of the new Barrett Media, we’ve created a special series titled “20 Brands In 20 Days.” Highlighting successful stations across the country in various formats by conducting conversations with their brand leaders. Up next is Hubbard’s David Moore. David is the PD of Classic Rock KSLX, Phoenix. The station we are highlighting today.
Jeff Lynn: For as long as I can remember, KSLX has been Classic Rock for Phoenix.
David Moore: KSLX is a longtime Classic Rock station in the market. It’s been here since 1986, and I got here in 2016. The station was successful and pretty well-programmed.
However, I think that there were some maintenance issues on the radio station, and it kind of needed some personality, if you will. So, we were able to get Mark and Neanderthal, which was the morning show, into a pretty good place. They were, for the most part, almost always in the top three and key demos. But a couple of years ago, Mark retired, and at the same time, we changed out some air talent, and we were going to the pandemic and all that kind of stuff.
We ended up hiring Dave and Mahoney from Beasley in Las Vegas. Obviously, they’re a syndicated show, but they do a KSLX custom show here in the market for us, and some of that content goes out to the network as well. They’ve been great. They’ve been on for a little over a year. They were voted Best Morning Show by Phoenix magazine already.
They’ve had pretty good numbers. It’s been a real pleasure, and the Mark and Neanderthal audience have responded to them well. In addition, we have Karen Dalessandro doing afternoons. LP is the midday guy. He was the music director afternoon guy at KNAC in Los Angeles, and he used to work at KUPD here in the market. So, it’s a pretty powerhouse talent lineup, and we run “Alice’s Attic” with Alice Cooper, which for us here feels like a local show because Alice lives here.
There’s a really big part of the community. I would say that a lot of people in our audience think that the show is done right here on 52nd Street in Phoenix. We’ve been able to maintain pretty good numbers. We’re still competing 25-54, which for a Classic Rock station can be a bit of a challenge these days. We are maybe a little harder, I think than some Classic Rock stations, but not by much. It’s designed for Phoenix, and we’ve been successful with it
JL: Are there 70s product in the mix?
DM: The 70s Classic Rock is still a big part of what we do. There’s plenty of 70s Classic Rock on the radio station. We get into the 80s, and we play a 90s song an hour roughly. There are some 60s on the radio station. We don’t shy away from Jimi Hendrix or The Doors or even some of the later Beatles stuff. CCR is huge for us.
JL: How do you make that 90s product fit?
DM: It’s easier today than it was a few years ago. It fits in better, but it’s a challenge. About as hard as the radio station gets is “Man In The Box” and “Until It Sleeps.”
I try to surround it with big mainstream Classic Rock hits from the 70s or 80s. A very typical kind of thing might be to go from a Led Zeppelin song to “Man In The Box,” and then come back with something that might be like The Rolling Stones or Boston. I don’t want to come back to Elton John or Fleetwood Mac for obvious reasons.
JL: I’ve known your afternoon person, Karen Dalessandro, forever. I think the best word I could come up with for Karen is a dynamo; if I had half her energy, I would be in a much better place.
DM: I worked with Karen as a part-timer in Detroit when she was full-time in the mid-80s. I was in college, and she was doing things. I just loved her energy. She’s a great human as well.
We would have had a much tougher time during the transition out of Mark and Neanderthal if we hadn’t hired Karen and really had an anchor in the afternoon. It’s a Classic Rock station. These people aren’t noted for loving change, and she was the key; she was the person who kept it all together during that time. She is phenomenal at social. She is phenomenal on site, and she’s phenomenal on the air. So, you can’t get much better than that, and to your point, energy, she came into the market, and she made more connections than anyone I’ve ever seen. It’s amazing.
JL: Let’s talk a little bit about social media. What’s your strategy? You’ve mentioned it a couple of times.
DM: It’s always a challenge because things change, as you know. I would say that we attempt to use social media to drive the audience back to the radio station as much as possible. I’m not sure exactly how effective that is, quite frankly, but that’s the first thing in terms of a long-term strategy.
It’s a lot of videos and a lot of being in the moment. We throw a lot of stuff against the wall and see what sticks because it doesn’t cost anything. It’s a great place to experiment.
I still haven’t been able to make a determination as to what social media success means to the actual operation of or ratings.
I’m just not always convinced that they translate to listening to the radio station or if they’re just more or less people who are interacting with your brand via social media. It’s hard to monetize. It’s hard to quantify. You don’t know what looks like success, and so many times, you do something that you think is hot on social media, but it doesn’t translate, and it doesn’t make any difference in Nielsen.
JL: Has AI impacted how you do your job or how the station functions at this point?
DM: Not yet. We have a lot of talk about it, but it really hasn’t that I can point to. You can have it write some promo copy for you if you like, but it’s pretty rough. I think a year from now, I might have a different answer for you.
JL: Any final thoughts?
DM: It appears as if we have been able to take this body of music that is, in some cases, over 50 years old and still have it be appealing to people for whom they weren’t old enough for it to impact them when it was originally released. The library of a Classic Rock station is kind of the great American songbook. Americans grew up with these songs, and now you’re getting into what I call second-generation classic rock listeners. This was the music that they grew up with in the same way that you grow up with songs at church. There are 40-year-olds for whom the Eagles are as relevant as they are for 65-year-olds, and there’s no 40-year-old that was able to consume Hotel, California in 1977, yet they listen to these radio stations.
They participate in these things, and it’s astounding to me that we’ve been able to maintain that appeal. I think part of that appeal has been that these radio stations have been playing this music forever.
We were dealing with the last vestiges of mass popularity. I mean, even by the time you get into the late 90s, things are much more siloed, and it’s easier to kind of avoid certain things. This music was unavoidable. If you were around, you couldn’t avoid it, and the quality of it still stands up. I also think that there’s an organic nature that is appealing to younger people in terms of real instruments recorded on analog equipment. I think that there is a romanticism to that that appealed to people who weren’t necessarily there when it was happening, And to me, that’s the most amazing thing in Classic Rock.
Without getting too far into it, I got my meter report, and we’ve got plenty of 25 54-year-olds spending lots of time with the radio station and again playing songs that are often 50 years old. No one predicted that in 1985, when Fred Jacobs signed on WMMQ in Lansing, we’d still be playing “The Joker” by Steve Miller every day. I have to tell you there are times when I thank Mr. Miller, Mr. Hendricks, and Mr. Page for providing me with a living because I played their art. I have used their art to craft radio stations for 40 years. It really is sometimes astounding to me that that is still going on and still has appeal. I guess the most amazing thing about doing this is that I didn’t expect it to last this long, and not only did it last this long, but these stations are among the top radio stations in every market.
Listen to KSLX here. Find them on Facebook and Instagram. Connect with David here.
Former Magellan AI Chief Revenue Officer John Goforth has been named the Vice President and General Manager of Podcasts for Hubbard Radio.
Before serving in his role with Megllan AI, Goforth worked at CBS Radio, Midroll Media, iHeartPodcasts, and HowStuffWorks.
“I couldn’t be more excited to join the amazing team at Hubbard and help grow their already impressive portfolio. It’s thrilling to be at the intersection of local and national in the podcast space,” said Goforth. “As we’ve seen in other channels, cracking the code on local is the key to explosive growth.”
In his new role, Goforth will work with Hubbard Radio’s local markets to grow sales strategies for the company’s already existing programs. He’ll also be tasked with creating new partnerships and podcast initiatives.
“The minute I met with John, I knew he was the right person to lead this important initiative. Hubbard Broadcasting has been creating engaging audio for over 100 years. We are proud of our heritage but are also embracing the next century as listening evolves to include digital and on-demand platforms,” said Hubbard Radio President/CEO Ginny Hubbard. “John’s background in sales leadership, strategy, and analytics makes him the perfect leader to work with our local markets.”
With his new position, John Goforth will be based in Chicago.
“We fully understand and embrace the evolution in our business from radio to audio,” said Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Dave Bestler. “We are creating must-hear content in all eight of our Hubbard Radio markets, and listeners are increasingly accessing our content on demand. John will help expand our podcast offerings, while growing revenue with the podcasts we already have.”
WCCP 105.5 The Roar has made a change in its mid-morning slot. Station General Manager John Henis has confirmed to BSM that Brad Senkiw is no longer with the station and that it was “a mutually agreed upon decision.” Henis said a new local show will now fill the timeslot which will be hosted by Faxon Childress.
Fax on Sports will air weekdays from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. Childress’ father Mark is also a host on the station as well as for the Clemson Athletic Properties Network.
Senkiw had been with the station since July 2017.
The Roar has been the flagship station for Clemson University athletics since 2003 and have announced they’ve extended that partnership for several more years. The station airs football, men’s and women’s basketball and baseball.
“Signed, sealed, delivered,” the station posted on X. “We’re THE flagship station for Clemson Athletics through 2030.”
FOX Sports Lakeland has launched after Hall Communications flipped 1230 WONN to the sports format.
The station will air the entire nationally syndicated FOX Sports Radio lineup. Additionally, the station will feature Florida Gators football and men’s basketball broadcasts. It will add the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from sister station Talk Radio 96.7 when the NFL season begins.
“We are excited to embark on this new chapter in Central Florida media. The move to Fox Sports Radio allows us to deliver dynamic content that resonates with sports fans across Lakeland and Polk County. Fox Sports Radio has an amazing line-up of the most popular sports talk shows, and we’re so pleased to be a part of their family.”
In addition to airing on 1230 WONN, FOX Sports Lakeland will also be heard on 107.1 FM.
