Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Lee Abrams

Transcript

Lee Abrams · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: My guest today is legendary radio programmer Lee Aprils, who
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: literally created the A O R format that's album oriented
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: rock for you young uns, and was not only the
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: chief programmer at XM Radio, created the channels there on lead, Great,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: to have You, Great, to be here, Fantastic. Okay, So
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: what's the future of radio in today's world? Well, I
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: think it's, um, it's gonna be just a big pie
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: that's split up between satellites and streaming and whatever other
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: technology comes along. Excuse me. I think the problem with
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: the restrial radio is they're stuck uh in the nineteen eighties.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just insane and to me, it's unlistenable.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: And I think unless they go through some radical transformation
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: uh in their programming, um, they're gonna be a pretty
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: small part of the pie over time. Okay. So if
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: you were in charge, what would you change? Well, i'd, uh,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: first of all, explore a whole variety of new formats.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Some of the formats that around the year today were
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: created decades ago and may have been valid then, but
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: really haven't aren't that valid now? You're seeing even some stations.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: There's one in Chicago, and there's some other emerging stations
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: that aren't taking some risks and uh playing a wide
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: range of music within their format rather than the hundred
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: and fifty tested songs and getting great results. And I
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: can see any album rock world, I mean getting back
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: to what it was all about in the first place, UH,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: which was you know, expansive, taking the major artists and
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: opening them up like when was the last time you
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: heard low Spark of High Heeled Boys or Hurricane or
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: just so many travels going through a list uh from
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: the mid seventies just for fun, and I'd say about
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: a fifteenth of the songs that were on there that
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: were very popular get played today. And I think they
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: need to go into creative overdrive as far as what
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: happens between the records. With all of the competition that's
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: out there today, it's amazing that they're creatively on autopilot.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: You still hear two for Tuesdays and block party weekends
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: and things that were Coolber October and fifty years ago. Awesome,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: But I mean, come on, and even the names of
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: the channels, you know, Fresh, they sound like detergents. Um.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: So I think it really when they started calling a
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: big variety, this is Is there any positive connotation to variety?
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: It's ridiculous. Yeah, there's I think an FCC law that
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: says you have to be when you launch the States,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: you have to be the new and most variety from
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: the seventies, eighties and nineties or something goofy like that. Um,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: but I think, um, unless you're making a lot of
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: money doing what you're doing, this station will need to
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: blow it up and UH bring some inventive people in
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: there and realize that it's uh in almost two thousand
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: twentiess not one anymore. And I think a lot of
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: them are relying on research that I think is uh
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: generally invalid. I recalled times that we UH in a
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: single market, did three research projects from different companies and
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: they were all completely different. So and if the research
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: was so accurate, we wouldn't be they wouldn't be in
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: the situation here and now, which just uh. They don't
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: have fans, they have users. When was the last time
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: you saw a bumper radio bumper sticker in a car? Well,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: I just remember, you know, kalo s here be used
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: to be in the seventies and eighties, there'll be a
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: competition where in Los Angeles, of course, between the stations,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: and they would give out bumper stickers and you would
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: know when the show was in town. Not only do
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: we don't have those bumper stickers, were not clued in.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: It wasn't that. It's not longer the culture the way
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: it used to be. Know, and you listen to the stations,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: there's no connection with the concert events. I saw you
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: know e l Oh recently a couple of weeks ago,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: and uh no station presence, and nobody talked about it
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: on the air a couple of weeks in front. And
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  Speaker 1: when a new record comes out, even by an established artist,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: chances are, at least in the rock area, it doesn't
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: get played or it doesn't get highlighted. I mean, you know,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Springsteen sting Yes have come out with the new records
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  Speaker 1: then maybe not be as magical as their original ones,
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  Speaker 1: but I think you owe it to at least give
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: it a spin and talk about it and inform the
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: listeners about it. And that doesn't happen anymore. They've taken
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: their eye off the music ball, the creative ball, all
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: the balls. Let's start from the beginning. Sure, of course,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: when there was only terrestrial radio. We were locked in.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: Especially in smaller markets, there weren't that many opportunities. But today,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: the younger generation lives in an on demand culture. I
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: always say people say, kids today have you know, a
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: short attention span. I don't leave that. They just have
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: an incredible ship detector. They click until they find something
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: they want and then they might stay on that forever
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: or click again. You know, every year somebody dies in
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Asia from playing video games three days straight. So with
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: inherently advertising on terrestrial radio, will the younger generations, millennials
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: and gen Z who never grew up with good radio,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: would they listen to this kind of radio? No? I
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: doubt it. I think, Uh, the smart broadcasters again, if
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: they're not doing really well, uh what they have should
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: focus forty plus where the natural audiences. I remember when
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: we first started XM, we're talking to people. A lot
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: of people said that, oh it's gonna be the kids
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: that are really into satellites and all that, And we
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: talked to younger people and the general responses, you know, hey,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: radio sucks. What do I want? You know, a hundred
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: channels of what sucks? You know. I talked to somebody uh,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: you know forty and up. And they were like, oh
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: my god, you mean a station that would bring back
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: the magic of any WFM that I grew up with,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: or uh, you know WSM and Nashville if fair country
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: fan and I said yeah, and I said, oh my,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: sign me up. Okay. So in today's radio market, there's
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Top forty, which is basically pop and hip hop, mainly
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: hip hop, and there's certainly so R and B stations
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: which are basically hip hop hip hop, and there are
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: some adult contemporary stations. But the the alternative stations, the
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: rock stations, the NPR stations, what they play almost never
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: crosses over, right, I know. That's uh, that's an interesting observation.
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  Speaker 1: It's it used to be where the those formats fed
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Top forty exactly. And so is this the problem with
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Top forty or is it problem with rock? No. I
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: think it's a problem with rock because they're not exposing
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of the new uh and interesting material that
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: could cross over. Um. Yeah, I think it's rocks problem
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: because I think a lot of these younger skewing stations,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: if they these songs got played just like they did
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: in the old days, Uh, they'd see it in their
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: their research and their phones, and they'd probably added. But
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: so you're saying that if we played rock on top forty,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: it would ViRGE in. It's just a matter of exposure. Yeah,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: and again selective the right songs, but absolutely um okay.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: But many people will say rock is dead. Where is
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: what's your view point on that? Well, I think it's
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: on life support. Um. I think rock as rock as
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: a genre is very much alive, but it's all based
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: on the old stuff. The Lords. You go to an
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Eagles concert and you know, there's a million people there, uh,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: but they're really you know, reliving their path, which is fine.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: And uh that's why I see all these you know,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: great concert attendance for these bands, and not much in
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: the record sales department. So I think rock is alive
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: in a well, it's just there's not a lot of new, interesting,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: experimental type stuff coming out. Now. You're a person who's
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: famously literally been involved with these bands like yes, yes,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: So if you were going to give direction to young
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: rock acts today, what would you say, Well, it depends
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: on the band. In the case of yes, no, no, no no,
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  Speaker 1: I'm talking about younger acts. Forget these legendary acts that's
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: a whole separate topic. But if it was someone you know,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: where the players don't have a history, they're starting out,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: whether they're you know, eighteen to thirty five, so to speak. Players. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I don't think you can understand the future until you
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: understand the past. So I would get them just immersed
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: in some of these classic records to where they really
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: learned the spirit and soul behind them, and uh in
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: the musicianship and the quality of the musicianship and the
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: production and the cleverness that a lot of these most
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: of these records had. Uh. So I would immerse them
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: in that and see what they come up with. And
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: then what records would you recommend? Oh my god, it's
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: quite a long list. Every think from the Dark Side
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: of the Moon. They s album that mentioned favorites. Um,
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  Speaker 1: I would even go back to you know, Harvest, Neil
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  Speaker 1: Young certainly, particularly the late Arab Beatles stuff, Um some Rush,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Um you can tell my my favorites, the Genesis, Crosby
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Stills and Nash Okay. So what was so magical about
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: those acts? Well, I think um they had they balanced melody,
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  Speaker 1: amazing melodies, just memorable melodies with incredible musicianship and fantastic production,
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  Speaker 1: and the arrangements were just clever. You don't see the
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: clever arrangements anymore as much anymore, um and I think
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: they they're sort of experimental. Everybody was trying to outdo themselves.
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  Speaker 1: I remember in the late sixties everybody was trying to
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: out use an arms race in in amplification and technology.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: And one band would have the sized marshal and excellent
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: there one band would have as face shifters and and
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: so there was this desire to be new and different
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  Speaker 1: and to push it. And I think you heard those
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: and all those records. They evolved. But when I asked
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: whether it was the time, the were just a year
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: a part in age. So we came of age. Let's
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: call it with the Beatles. Okay. Now, in the sixties,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: radio was the tribal drum. If you want to know
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: what was going on, first was AM, then it was FM.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: You wanted to know what's going you literally listen to
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: the radio station. But ultimately in the eighties moved more
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: to video and it certainly blew up backs into in
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: a way that made them worldwide uh uh superstars. But
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: was it a moment in time that can't be replicated.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: I think it can. I think the whole culture and
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: that spirit will never be the same. It won't be
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: seven again. But I think we're in a similar politics
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: going cultural situation now that is makes it ripe for
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: for this. I mean, there's practically civil war on the streets,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: you know, the uh. I'd like to say that information
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: is the new rock and roll. There's so much going on.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: I've never heard it put that way expand that yes, okay,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: back back in the day, um rock and rolls would
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: drove culture. It was just what everybody what what it
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: uh determined what people look like, you know, how they talked,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: hey boss man, and how the you know, how they acted.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: It was just the drumbeat of an era. And now
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: I think it's more information instead of the walkman or stereo.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: We've got our devices, instead of the water cooler talking
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: about who's better Jeff Becker, Eric Clapton, there's discussion on
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: you know, Trump and is it gonna be Biden. Um,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: there's uh um certain swagger that the artists had that
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: you don't see anymore. Now. It's the politicians and the
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: you know, they seem to have the swagger. So I
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: think it's just a um it's where what was driving culture?
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: You know, it was rock and roll and now it's
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: more information. Okay, let's not because I I used put
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: it in a slightly different way, and I wonder if
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: it's the same Rock drove of the culture. Certainly from
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four to the late seventies got a reinjection
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: as a result of MTV. Then starting around or so,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: we had twenty years were tech drove the culture. You
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: were constantly people first had to get computers to play
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: on a O L. Then of course we have the web.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: There was always a new app, there are all these things.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Now it's solidified. We have what are called the fang stocks.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: They control everything, you know, Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google, uh
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: and certainly Microsoft to agreed. Now, So I was saying
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: that politics drive the culture. But is that too narrow? Yeah? Uh,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: I think it's a big, huge part of it. But
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: I think, um, information as a whole, even even just
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: surfing the web and finding out things that and statistics
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: that people never even cared about years ago is another
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: component I could say. And I you know, I've I
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: lost many years to the web, and I'm still losing
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: because you get on there, it's just amazing stuff. It's
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: all there. It's incredible even to this day. Everything And
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: so I think that's a big part of it, just
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: the access to all this information. And uh, but let's
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: stay right there, because one thing I know is, starting
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: about five years ago, we had to internet cacophony. I
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: mean I was there very early on the web because
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: I had a free subscription to a O well when
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: you're paid by the minute with Warner Brothers Records now
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: called Warner Records. Interestingly, but as I say, we lived
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: through these things. Now it is almost impossible to reach people.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: They're bombarded with messages. How would you reach people, whether
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: it be information, music or what. Yeah, I think, um,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: the shock factor, it's got to be shockingly different. It's
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: sort of like family Guy is shockingly different. Um. I think, um,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: even the Tool Record sort of shockingly different. I'm a
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: huge fan of the Tool Record. I love it more,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: I listen more, just get into it. That's experimental. They're
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: pushing boundaries. Um. But you know, of course Howard isn't
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: the shock jock anymore, but still, you know, he has
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: a bit of a shock factor going. So I think, um,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: in movies. You know, the shocking movies cut through, So
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: I think you have to be Is that why The
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Joker is successful? Not that I've seen it, but just
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: reading about it, Yeah, I think so, it's just shockingly
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen you know, they say it's like taxi
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: driver on steroids. But going back, so we live in
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: an era where you kill somebody in the morning, it's
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: news to about four o'clock if you're lucky. So is
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: shock inherent in what you're doing? Or do you have
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: to plan it? Oh? No, I think you have to plan.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: It has to be in in your DNA to be
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: you know, shocking. And that doesn't mean evil or anything.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: It means just like, wow, the fun shocking. Okay, So
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: let's just assume you have something shocking in the first
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: decade of this century, people would find it. Today, you
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: can be great and people won't find you. That's true.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I think you just gotta go where your target is,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: and it's on the Internet's on Facebook, just blanketed and uh,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a marketing question. I think it's different
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: for every product. But I think you just gotta go
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: where your target audience is and uh, let him know
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: about it. And slap him over the head with it
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: and hope that the you know, buzz is enough to
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: cut through. Okay, wouldn't you say? And I granted it
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: was a smaller world in many ways, but in the
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: late sixties, certainly in the very early seventies, no marketing
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: was necessary. No, it was all self marketing. Uh, come
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: out with a great record, and uh it takes care
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: of itself. I mean there was some that, you know,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: flipping between the cracks. I can't think of any offhand,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: but generally, yeah, you come up with a record. That's
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: the power of rock and roll as a culture. People
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: were talking about it. And you hear that new band
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: called Spirit. Oh man, you know, really, I'm gonna go
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: buy that? And uh so there was a Well, since
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: you've been on the creative end, this may be a
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: little bit out of your purview, but if you were
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: advising an act today, do they need an album? Do
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: they want an album as opposed to singles or singles
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: on a regular basis? You know, I think they do?
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: And um to really explore and to uh, I mean
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: we're talking about not somebody's after the quick, quick hit,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: but the band that wants to establish themselves. Yeah, I
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: think absolutely, Uh creates something that's a statement and you
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: know the thing that will flow from that. But then
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: you've got to get out of this mind set of
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: you know, three minute disposable songs based on fashion and
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: look and uh, what's what's hot? This what this week's
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: flavor is and get back to where artists are making
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: real statements. Uh. And again that's one of the things
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: I like about Tool. You listen to the whole thing,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: it's it's really a statement, right. But you know the
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: other thing is talking about young pop and hip hop acts.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: First thing they'll say, is there a brand and the
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: music that not only will they play privates will have
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: a perfume line, a clothing line. Is that a good
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: thing or a bad thing? Um? No, I think it's
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: just reality. Uh. I think personally, Uh, great artists don't
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: need that. You know, they can rely on the music
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: and what that does to people. But they might say
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: they can only make a limited amount of money. Yeah. True, Um,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: but I think the the headphones lines and the cologn
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: and it's just part of the there's a distraction. Okay,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: So just being very specific back in the air, we're
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: talking about sixties nearly seventies. Literally the acts were God
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: and what they said frequently in print and Rolling Stone
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: we really paid attention to. So does all this, you know,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: what's in the number, all the you know extras other
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: than the music, Does that hurt credibility? I think so? Yeah.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Here it's musical credibility. It's probably uh has its commercial
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: upsides and uh can help the bottom line for the brand,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: but musically it does nothing. And uh, okay, So let's
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: go back here we're talking about radio formats. Do you
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: believe if Top forty radio broadened its playlist it would
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: become more popular? Uh, that would have more listeners? Yeah,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: I think it would. Um, but I think again, it's
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: not their fault that nobody's feeding him. What do you
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: mean nobody's feeding well, you know, the rock stations aren't
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: giving him great songs to play, and and the country
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: stations a little bit, but mainly the rock and alternative
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: stations aren't, you know, creating the hits that it would
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: appeal to a mass appeal station like a Top forty. Okay,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: let's go to streaming. Now. All these streaming sites Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Deezer, Title,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: they're inundated with playlists. If you were chief programming director
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: at one of these streaming services, what would you do?
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Um Well, it's funny because I did a whole thing
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: on that. First of all, I get into news and
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: information to um, well, it would be very specific because
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: of course Spotify is a standalone company. Stock has been
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: up and now it's down, and they went into podcasts,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: So if they went into information, what would it look like?
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: It would be, um, a wide range of different information
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: information genres from international to local, to food to so
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of different choices, but all uh, talk
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: driven and um so you're talking about essentially radio stations. Yeah,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: information on all those topics. Just to be clear, because
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: on Apple they have Beats one Radio Zane Low and
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: they have other famous DJs. Uh, that is not something
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: I listened to because that's not how I listen to
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: radio anymore. I like. I mean, you know, satellite, you
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: have a hundred odds stations. You have so many options
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: on the streaming service. You can go what you want
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: if you're going to have these stations. Because one thing
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: about talk talk is in the moment. It's not something
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: that can be pre programmed. Etcetera. Do you believe people
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: would listen to those stations if they were purely information
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: no music, Yes, I do, and it might be an
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: older audience. And uh, but I think that's part of
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: the completeness they need. And i'd also i'd have radio
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: channels on there, you know, for people who don't just
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: want to vege and listen to a great um aggregator. Well,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: then let's go to Spotify specifically, No tune in has
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: varying radio channels, but a lot of these good, right, Okay, Uh,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: but that's that was gonna be my question if you
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: go on all of these. Uh, certainly Spotify the Big
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Cahuna has a Pandora like feature where you put in
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: a track and it will generate a station for you.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: What is that good batter? Otherwise? Oh, I think it's
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: just part of it, you know, part of the mix.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: That's that's probably good. But I'm thinking great, uh radio
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: stations that are against super targeted and have amazing production,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: theater of the mind and just take people places. Let's go.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: John Marks was on x M. He's a country programmer
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: and now he went to Spotify a couple of years back,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: and one could say he's got the best choices in
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: country music. And you can go through a couple of
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: his play Let's say this is what he's listening to.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Are you saying that if he went back to being
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: a DJ, that would be a great edition. Yeah, it
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: might not be the same format. It might be more
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: production heavy where there's magic between the songs. Uh, in
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: form of you know, interstitials and uh yeah, and he
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: talked and uh uh present a passionate viewpoint of why
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: he picked the music. Okay, so why do production and interstitials,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: etcetera hook the listener? Uh? Theater of the mind. It's
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: just magic if done right, which it isn't lately, but
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: uh in the golden days, and I think it's still valid.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: It just transports you. It takes something from you utility
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: to to magic. And I'm not talking about promos you know,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: listen now and win um, but just really beautiful little
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: segways that are in full stereo and are just cinematic
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: and elevate the whole experience to uh to a higher level.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Do you think that you know, if let's say one
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: of these outlets was going to do this, how many
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: music stations would they need? I would say, Um, you know,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: ideally probably about a hundred. Okay, So like satellite radio, okay,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: after but that you know, satellite radio, which people pay for, uh,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: is very labor intensive. So if a streaming service was
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: to hire these people cost a lot of money. Well, um,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: you know, but when I was at U at XM,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: some of the better channels had one person. Remember our
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: Top Tracks channel had one one guy. Our sixties channel
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: two DJs and one of them was a program director.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: And I remember it was a channel of fine tuning,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: which was pretty adventurous that had just one guy. So
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: I think it's if you rethink it, it's doable. Okay.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: So let's just we have these streaming service. Let's say
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: we have these information channels, we have these music channels.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: What's your view on playlists which these outlets are inundated with.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: I think they're valuable. Um uh, just again another component
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: of what these find it overwhelming. You know the Spotify
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Top fifty which is basically hip hop and pop. Yeah,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: listen to that. You listen to the electronicals? How many
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: tracks can you listen to? You? Right? That's why I
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: like the radio station thing it uh, you know, you
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: get the very focused channels and really just you know,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: if you want progressive rocky, go to that progressive rock
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: channel and you get you know, magic between the songs.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Somebody really intelligent talking about it. U uh. You can
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: even have you know, live broadcasts, recorded broadcasts of concerts,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: and it's instead of spending so much time with playlists,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: you can just go to the source and it could
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: be expertly programmed. And okay, let's go back to the source.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Speaking for you, where were you born Chicago? And what'd
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: your father do for a living? It was an obstetrician, okay.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: And did your mother work outside the home? Your father
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: delivered babies too. You're the older, the younger, I'm the younger.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: You're the younger. What's the how much older? The older?
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Five years? So what's he up to? He is a
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: industrial designer out in Connecticut. Really, so your father, if
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: you're an obstetrician, you might get a call any day,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: any time and they have to run out. Yes, three
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: in the morning was not unusual. Okay. So was your
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: father a big presence in your life? Yeah, he was.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: I was always into radio and music going way back,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: and he is from the uh, the generation where music
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: you know, that's that's not a good good business. Uh.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: And radio, well, nobody listens to radio anymore ever since
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Jack Benny went to television. So it wasn't particularly supportive,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: but it was about your mother, very supportive. She used
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: to take me down when I was six seven eight
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: years old down the radio stations downtown to watch the DJs.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Really now, could you would they let you in or
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: just since you were so young? And okay, so when
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: did you start listening to radio? It was, well, it
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: was always on in the house, but I really started
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: What kind of radio was on in the house? Uh?
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Beautiful music? Okay, because one thing I certainly remember my
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: father was into beautiful music in the car. But they
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: used to play a lot of show tunes. Show tones
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: is big too. But I remember it was December. Line
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: was my first. It was w LS What happened on
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: December eleventh, inteen sixty two. That's when I first really
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: got into radio. Okay, let's slow down a little bit.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: In that early part of the sixties, most people had transistors.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Did you have a transistor radio at that point in time?
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: We got this for Christmas and my parents didn't want it,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: and they put it in my room, and that's so cool.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: And so what did they put in your room? The radio?
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: What kind of radio was it? It was an admiral
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: so it was like one speaker, how big one speaker
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: and size of a shoebox? And what how old were
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: you when they put that in your room? That was ted.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: I was always into into radio and music. We had
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: a juke box at our house. But we had a
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: juke box at your house. Well, my uncle, who I
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: never really knew that well, owned cash Box. Cash Box,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: the legendary trade magazine. Now on a business it was
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: cash book, cash Box and Billboard. And then along came
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: record World. But he owned a cash Boody owned cash
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Box and uh did he own it when it went down? No,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: he owned it. I think the mob blotted from Uh
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: he owned it in the fifties. And did he do
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: well selling it? I think so because he lived in
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: a fancy high rise in downtown Chicago. Okay. And this
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: was what your father's brother, your mother's brother, mother's uh
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: sisters brother okay, me and your her husband right. So yes,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: at that time, people don't forget, you know, cash box
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: literally was the bible not only of records, but have
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: jukeboxes and other vending things. Okay, So he gave us
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: a jukebox which he had, and I used to send
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: over records and I remember listening to the records that
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: came in. He just would send a care package, and
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: so I was listening to records. And this was before
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: you had your radio, and you personally would change the
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: records in the jukebox. Yeah, how did you do that?
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Just it was unlocked and it didn't take the coin
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: box was disconnected. I just opened it up and put
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: the records in there. I remember the first record, uh
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: six we had sixteen tons We had in the Middle
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: of an Island by Tony Bennett, which I really liked.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: And just all these sixties and how much we do
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: listen to the jokebox a lot. I'd go down there
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: and just listen to right. Yeah, we had a pinball
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: machine from like nineteen o nine. We used to be
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: down there. He gave us one of those two. But
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: remember what the what what was the theme of that?
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: It was a beach theme with all these sort of
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: bikini girls on it, and it was a Gottlieb and
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: that's all I remember. I remember. We had Lady Luck. Okay,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: and it was a Gottlie ball. So so you get
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: this radio, it's in your room. What happens on December eleven?
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: In December eleventh, I'm tuning around and I hit w LS,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: which of course is a clear channel station in Chicago. Yes, powerful,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: and it's once again, what's where do you live in
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Chicago at the time. We live a place called Flosphore,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: which was about twenty miles south of year But didn't okay,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: I remember being in Chicago usually the wealthier suburbs or north, Yes,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: So why did you live in the south? This was
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: kind of inro It's pretty wealthy at the time, and
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: it was just surrounded by non wealth I don't know
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: how it happened. Oh, I know how it happened. It
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: was the place where Illinois Central Railroads executives lived because
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: there were all these golf courses around, and it grew
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: from that into this, uh sort of little executive retreat
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: is known for its at five golf courses. And again
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: it was surrounded by rough neighborhoods, but it was this
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: little oasis. And do your father play golf? Yeah he did.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Did you tried it and got piste off at it? Okay?
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: So and you're in school now you're dedicated to music.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Are you a kid who has friends? Yeah, lots of friends.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: You're a popular kid. I was always kind of, you know,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: a little eccentric, but uh, and I think people like
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: that about me. And then just going forward in high school,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: good student, bad student. I was so immersed in music
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: and radio. I was a terrible student. We ditch and
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: go downtown and buy records and again go to w
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: l s and w CFL had um windows where you
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: could watch the DJs. We go down and do that.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: And uh, I made appointments with all the gm s
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: and pds and met them back when I was in
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: high school, and usually that what would happen during school days?
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: And what was your pitch? What was your agenda? Ideas?
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: I got some ideas. Okay, you wanted to pitch um ideas? Yeah,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: and I wasn't thinking money or anything, but yeah, it's
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: far as to talk to and meet him. And uh,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: well let's go back. You got the radio room. What
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: happens on December level? Okamber ten um, turn it on
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: w LS and it's like nothing I ever heard in
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: my life. It was magical and it's funny. I remember
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: when the Jingles would come on, I actually thought that
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: the were singers live in the studio, and how do
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: they get it right every time? And that's where I
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: really got into theater of the mind, the production and
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: the personality and guys like Dick BEYONDI back then, and
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: it was I get chills thinking about it. It was
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: just magic. And that's when I just became completely addicted.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: And I remember we were talking earlier. My dad would
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: get up at three in the morning to deliver babies. Um,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: that would be my signal to check out the all
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: night show called The East of Midnight with Clark Webber
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: and UM, so you know, listen to all night radio.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: And then eventually I discovered, just to be clear, you
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: never listened to w LS before that? Okay, No, I was,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: uh and they had only go into rock two years earlier.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Were you a guy who listened to the baseball on
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: the radio before w CFL. I was a big White
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: Sox fan, and uh also radios to explain it, because
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: the Cubs were terrible? What made somebody a White Sox
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: fan as opposed to a Cubs fan? Uh? Background, it's
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: usually a family thing. You know, your parents were into
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: the White Sox. The Cubs were awful, run by Wrigley
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: who was a Nazi, and it was terrible, and you know,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: don't I could never support the Cubs. There's a reason
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: they lose every year. And uh and it took me
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: to White Sox games early, and you know, kind of
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: got into the whole vibe of COMMISSI. Okay, so now
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: you're listening to w LS. You know, you have this
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: amazing moment. At that time, were there any other top
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: forty stations in Chicago? There was one with a very
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: bad signal at ninety called w y n R for
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: just for a minute, but their signals so bad I
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: could barely hear it in my house and they lasted
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: about a year or so. And before that, in the
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: late fifties, there was w j j D and w
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: I n D playing popular music. But LS was the
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: first real, full blown balls to the wall top four. Okay,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: so now you're addicted. What happens? Well then I started,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: uh really about the same year, dialing around to see
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: if there were other tough forty stations. That's where I
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: discovered stations like w ABC, Yeah, another clear channel stations,
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: and uh so I became a d xer, meaning and
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: you know, listen around the dial and find stations from
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: kf I in Los Angeles came in back then, and
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: I was enamored by even though they weren't top forty,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: just finding other stations around the country. Yeah, I think
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know what it stands for, but it means
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: a radio listener, sort of like um of of distant stations. Okay,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: so you said that you would go downtown in high
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: school with your friends, so you had other friends. Was
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: anybody is into it at least half as much as you? Music?
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: They were in two It's a matter of fact. In
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, I managed rock bands around Chica Ago
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: and um, I was Irving as Off, still working in
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: Chicago at that point. No, he wasn't. He wasn't there yet.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: This is uh and uh. And these were again not
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: not the Buckinghams or anything like that. They were just small,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: you know, playing the bar mitzs and sock ops. And
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: it's funny, that's really the roots of the A O
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: r idea because what we used to do is me
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: and my friends we'd say, um, you know, these bands
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: played little at in Loopy lou midnight hour and Louis
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Louis over and over again. Is that what people want
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: to hear? So we'd hand out these questionnaires, what would
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: you like to see the band played next week's sock op?
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: And an amazing thing happened and that was the top forty.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Audience started to fragment. We noticed a lot of guys,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: mainly between about fifteen and eighteen, saying, don't play that
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: w R Ship. We want to hear the Yardbirds and
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: the Birds and the Beatles and the Stones. So Dan
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: started playing that and became pretty popular. But that movement
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: really grew in sixty six. And so if you knew
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Hendricks were, you were in the or cream, you're kind
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: of in the know. If you know who Graham Bond
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: organization was, you're really in the know. Then sixty seven came,
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: this movement got bigger and bigger, and sixty nine all
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: hell broke loose and that's when I started working in
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: Earnest on the on the format. But as far as friends,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: they were in the bands or just people who you know,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: we're just okay, are you the entrepreneurial sort? I mean
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: being a manager. A successful manager has a certain personality. Yeah,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: I don't think I could do it. I don't think
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: I'm mean enough to do it on a professional level.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: But back then, as far as guiding the bands and booking, uh,
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: you know, the local venues and just general guidance something.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: So did you make any money doing it? Yeah? What
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: about that? When you told the bands to police specific music?
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Would they listen to you? Oh? God, they were into it.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: They were like, yeah, okay, how many bands did you three? Okay? Managed? Okay?
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: So but other than management in high school, you're not
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: working in radio? Actually, I Um, I worked at a
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: station in Miami when we'd go there on vacation, station
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: that I just loved in like sixty six w q
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: A M, which was a fantastic radio station. And uh,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: I actually wrote to them and said, well, you know,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: we'd go down to Eastern Christmas and I'd say can
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: I come by? And uh, you know, I love your
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: station and programmers insured So I I went went by
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: there one time, had a meeting with him, give game
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of ideas and feedback, and um, they hired
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: me for whenever I was on vacation. They paid me
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: with the news tip of the week money, which is
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: five dollars and sixty cents unless somebody set a fire
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: and reported that I wouldn't get paid. But yeah, I
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: filed records, got them. Okay, So were you more of
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: a music anim more of a radio fan? Really both? Um?
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: You know I have to say fifty okay, okay, so
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: graduate from high school. Your parents want you to go
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: to college. Um, but I didn't. I did that go down? Well?
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: I and about sixty nine, I created this format and
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: sent it to everybody, all the group heads and all that,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: and one guy called me back, these are all radio
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: group heads. Yeah, actually ninety. When I got out of
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: high school barely, I went to Miami and had a
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: job at w q A M, which was where I worked.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: That was seventy and uh. Then when I was working
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: at q AM, I I told him I was really
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: an FM. Just just just not for one second. You're
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: a teenager coming into these uh and talking to these
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: radio station execs and giving them your ideas. What is
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: their reaction? You know? It's interesting? Uh they were Okay,
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: it was a combination of this guy knows what he's
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: talking about because I got all the N A B.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Billboard conventions, but he sure looks like an actually a teenager,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: so I think it's might be worth listening to because
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: they get you know, hippies coming in and say, dude,
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: play more mothers and I was no, no, here's the
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: direction you need to go. Here at the demographics, stalk
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: the language, and I think they were pretty impressed. Okay.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: So in high school you would go to the billboard
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: conferences on Billboard and uh N A b s and
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: where were those located? Billboard was usually in New York
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: and the N A b s were usually in Chicago.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: And your parents just gave you the money or you
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: have the money and just went you the money and
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: use my youth card, and uh went to the conventions
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: and it was again it was like really cool. Was
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: there anybody else your age? No other college students, but
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: nobody quite as young. Okay. So now you graduate from
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: high school, you're working at w q A M. Yes,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: and uh, they knew I was into FM. So I
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: was sending out these proposals to all these people group heads,
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: and most of them wrote very nice letters back, and
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: it was fine. One guy, Buzz Bennetty you may have
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: heard of, call and said, hey, dude, I got your proposal.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: We're starting a station in Miami. You know, they just
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: bought the Bartel FM stations and he said it's Top
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: forty and said, that's okay, it's FM, and so I
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: gotta meet higher there and we're just a little bit slower.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: You're interested in FM because oh, the fidelity and you
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: can see the future was there and okay, but it
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: was the sound as well as the different programming because
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: what year was at sixty seven when the government said
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: you have to have different programming on AM and fight
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: because a lot of companies held both. Okay, and at
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: this point in time, with these you're literally pitching a format.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: That's the first thing you're doing, yes, and the format
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: is what ended up being a O R okay. So okay.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: So you take the station in Miami, the Top forty
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: and play lots of Partridge Family records and uh, it's
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: funny because entire staff were stoners. I mean, we're just gout.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: We all, um, there's a new station. Um. And the
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: entire staff came from different parts of the country and
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: we all met one day and said, you know, instead
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: of getting shitty apartments, why don't we all get a
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: mansion like in Coconut Grove and pitch in and we'll
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: all live there. So we did. It was a que house.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: It was in Coconut Grove and it was ground zero
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: for getting high. All the record guys would come over
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: every night and it was it was amazing. And uh
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: so you were never in front of the mic. Yeah,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: I was on the air at w m r Q,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: but I was also a music director and assistant program director.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: And um, our attitude was, you know, these are little kids,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: were we can easily you know, get them crazy in
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: a good way, you know, just by doing you know,
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: just a supercharged kind of radio. And we did that.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: It was very successful. And then one day one of
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: the people I had sent a proposal to was ABC. Now,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: were you still sending them when you had your job? No? Okay,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: so they This was actually maybe a year or two later,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: like a year later because I was a dem or Q,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: which was the top forty station, about a year and
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: it was Alan Shaw from ABC. He said, you know,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: we've gotten your proposal and we've had a chance to
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: look at it, okay, and would you like to talk
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: to us about being a program director of one of
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: our stations. Yeah. So um he flew down to Miami
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: and we met and the next day they offered me
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: uh w r I F and Detroit, which said, yeah,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: all going from Miami to Detroit and February was it
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: was difficult, but so now you were also gonna be
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: on the air. I was making two fifty dollars a
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: year a week. There was a wage in price freeze
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: that Nixon put out and they couldn't give me a raise,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: and they said, you know when the raising wage in
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: price freeze cancels will pay you more. But yeahs So
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: you got at w R r F. What is the station?
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: Before you get there? It was underground mishmash all over
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: the road and run by um like revolutionaries. It was
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: just they were more interested in uh creating um mess
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: um revolution than they weren't winning. So that was interesting.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Way who was creating mass revolutions? Well, the existing staff
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: which was okay, what year seventy early seventy two and um, okay.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: I was there for a while and I was doing
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: the ABC format, which is a lot. It was great,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: but it was a lot different from what I had mind.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: And then one day what was the ABC format? It
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: was a very tight it's kind of a O R format,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: but very restrictive, none of the none of the magic.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: It was very um and we did go to number
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: one in teens, beating c KLW, so it worked. Um.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Then our afternoon drive JOCKET w x y Z, the
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: sister station the Riff w RF, came to me and said,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: you know, I have a friend in Raleigh, North Carolina,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: and I told him about what you guys are doing
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: and all your ideas, and he wants to do something
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: with his FM. His a M was w PTF we
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: Protect the Family and big monstrous uh southern middle of
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: the Road station and they had this FM they doen
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: running just background music on. I said, well it sounds great.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: So as guy Carl Venters flies up to Detroit we
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: have dinner and on the spot said come on, do
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: your format. Uh great, So I did the format Darren.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: It went to number one like in one reading book
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: and a B. It was in the Hamilton's Report, which
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: was one of the big trade papers. Then did like
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: a cover story on it. You know, QDR and rolling
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: number one and ABC sit for wait a minute, do
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: you work for us or for them? And basically they
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: gave me an ultimatum, you can either get rid of
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: that client and work with us, or you can go
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: your own way. And I decided I'm gonna go my
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: own way and do uh so w qd R and
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: and they were just a consultant in North Carolina. How
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: much were you charging the station? Thousand dollars a month? Yeah,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: I think that was it. And then got another station
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: down in New Orleans w R and Oh how did
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: you get them? Um start after w R w qd
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: R success just um uh sent letters around, but then
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: the big break came New Orleans. You did get take
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: that station over? Yeah? And the big break, Well there
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: are w qd R and Rawley was repped by a
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: company called Crystal, which was our national radio representation firm,
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: and a guy named Gordon Hastings who ran it, called
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: one day and said, you know, can you do what
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: you're doing? And for all other markets? Says, oh, absolutely,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: no problem. So so, well there's the TAFT Broadcasting chain.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: And I'd like to introduce you to Carl Wagner, who
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: runs the operation, runs the radio group because they don't
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: know what to do with their fans, but they see
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: that's the future. Would you meet with them if it? Sure? So, Carl,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: and I met at the n A B in New Orleans,
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: and he said, I love it. You can't love it.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: I want you to talk to all of our general
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: managers at our annual manager's meeting, which is coming up
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: in a couple of weeks. Don't keep this gain. Can
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: you be there? Yeah? So flew to keep his game
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: and TAFT broadcast. It was so funny because again I
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: had long hair and a beard, and these guys were
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: all very preppy, and um so I did the presentation
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: and signed almost all and signed Buffalo, Kansas City, Columbus, Pittsburgh,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: all in but Cincinnati because they were happy with their
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: top forty direction. Um So anyway, um we went in
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: and uh did most of the TAFT group. And what
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: really helped me at that pitch was these guys. Again,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: we're all really preppy, you know, the EAD shirts and uh,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: short hair. Me and another guy who were the only
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: two guests. They're guy named Ed McLaughlin from ABC. Uh,
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: we're doubles partners in the tennis tournament. And we won
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: and they were laughing at us. You know, McLoughlin is
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: an old guy in this hippie you know, and we
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: kicked their ass and I think that the only thing
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: better would be if I would win the golf tournament,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: which it didn't even enter. But that cemented a really
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: good long term relationship. And all four of those more
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: five of those markets. Uh boy again, first book just exploded,
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: and um that's what really when it really took off,
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: because that got a lot of attention, and that's when
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: people started calling and uh saying, hey, can you be
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: in San Francisco tomorrow, Seattle, whatever, And it also started
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: becoming a business with contracts and all that and how
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: much did you charge? Um, it was usually uh at
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: that time thousands and two thousand a month, and uh,
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: you know I didn't know what to charge if that's
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: why I'm asked him. Yeah, it's just you know, I
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: had a guitar case in the suitcase, and but I
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: knew this guy kept seeing this guy Ken't Burkhardt, who
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: was scoring a lot of success at AM Radio, and
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: I actually had met him at one of the conventions
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: and I called him up, said, Kent, you got the
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: A M thing down, and you're you know, you've been
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: a group had and you're you know, old in your
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: forties whatever, and I got the FM thing. Maybe we
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: gotta put put things together. He said, great idea, can't
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: Let's meet in in uh St Paul. So we met
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: literally a couple of days later at KSTP and St.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: Paul in a conference room and just hammered out a deal.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: And that's when I, uh, you know, a couple of
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: days later, moved to Atlanta and we started Burkhard Abrams.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: So he was in Atlanta and CASTP was his station,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: and I was in Chicago. Okay, so you make a
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: deal fifty fifty partners and what is what did you say?
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: You hammer out a deal? What elements are in the deal? Well,
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: he would handle all the business side, all the contracts,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: uh all the front of the travel expenses, um um,
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: all of his contacts and uh, I would go ahead
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: and you know, you sign him up all I'll get him,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: get him ratings. Okay, So what happened? It was great. Um.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: He did again did introduce me to a lot of
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: his UH group heads that were otherwise tough to contact,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: and it was a great relationship and uh we just
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: really exploded. He got to the point in the mid
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: seventies when it was like, oh no, not another news
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: stations just getting so many and I just really took
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: off and kept going. And you know the rest of
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: the sort of history. When it was his pet comedy stations.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: Did you have, uh, rock stations, probably about a little
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: over a hundred, and what other stations you have, like
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: a M Top four. He had to you weren't doing
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: anything with that, Okay. So the funny story is in
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: ninety nine he uh my stations were blowing up disco records.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile he was consulting w K to You, which went
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: to number one doing disco. So people thought we were
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: fighting and okay, so what was your pitch then? Um,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: the pitch, which UH did a lot of, was talking about,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: first of all, identifying the audience. We call them vulnerable
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Top forty listeners. These are people who listen to Top
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: forty and there's cums are huge, but really didn't like
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: it when Bread or the Carpenters came on, but loved
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: it when Santana and the Moody Blues came on. So
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: what if we're creating a format that eliminates Bread and
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: the Carpenters and all that stuff, which is you know, fine,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: it's not us, and really focus on this new generation
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: of artists and change the familiarity factor from song title
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: to artists. So instead of just the hit songs, you'd
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: hear those, but you'd hear so much depth. And it
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: was called the oh wow factor. So people would hear, well,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: let's uh Santana, but it's not oh ya coma a again.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: You know, it's some other cool track that's some moody blues,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: but it's not Knights in White Satin. And so we
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: had tremendous depth and yet didn't sacrifice familiarity. Of course,
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: we did introduce new artists. What we did is we
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: really got into him. And because I found a lot
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: of the progressive stations, would you know, add a new record,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: but play it, you know, infrequently because the morning guy
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: didn't like it. The night guy loved it, so he'd
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: played it a lot. But you know, so we added.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: So we talked about the audience, the basic nature of
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: the format. Um talked about the importance of image enhancers,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: which were the special features which enhanced the image of
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: what we were trying to create, which was as commercial
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: as possible without losing progressive identity. It's real commercial, easy
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: to listen to for those vulnerable top for your listeners,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: but still had that progressive edge. It was because it
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: was you know, Yes and Jethro Toll and um. But
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: the image enhancers were a big part of it. That
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: was the Beatles, A to Z and uh. That was
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: you know things you still here now which were new
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: at the time. You know too for Tuesdays midnight album
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: hours will play a whole album, you know, uninterrupted so
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: you can check it out, and um, you know all
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: those things. And so we talked about again the audience,
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: the sort of structure of the format, and then we
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: talked a lot about their market and where the listeners
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: would come from, which is very important because they didn't
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: want anything syndicated. They wanted it to be you know,
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: adjusted for And we talked about staffing and um, usually
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: a long Q and A where they just have questions
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: and okay, so let's soon a station bought it. How
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: much marketing was necessary, you know, um, really not much.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: A lot of these stations didn't have much budget. It
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: was either a big am station and there's FM, which
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: they wanted to run cheap, which we were able to do,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: or was mom and pop stations. It just so some
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: stations later on, particularly when it started getting ratings and
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: making money a lot of television, but initially it was
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: word of mouth, okay, and uh and little things like
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: we'd fly banners over concerts and stuff like that. Okay,
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: how much Let's say I was one of your stations
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: after I bought it? How much? What would I get
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: from you? Would you call me, would you send a letter?
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: What would happen? Okay? We would have. First thing we
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: do back then was the program director, who was either
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: the existing guy or somebody we'd help help them find,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: would come to Atlanta for two to three days, usually
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: over a weekend for an orientation or I just explain
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: everything to him and they asked questions and it's just
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: so when we're done with that three days, as p
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: D is sort of brainwashed, gets it. And then together
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: we'd fly to the market and spend about a week
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: setting it up. And that would include, you know, just uh,
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: introducing the format obviously, meeting with the staff a lot,
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: meeting with the sales department, going on sales calls if
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: they they wanted that, and um. And after the first
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: week it should be pretty much you know, coming along
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: and then would usually come back uh every six weeks
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: or so, and spent two days. So you were on
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: the road a lot. I was on the road constantly.
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: And when in this picture did you get married? Uh?
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: Right in the middle of so the fact my wife
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: was a DJ at w q d R, which is
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: where I met her. Hu and you're still together. Yeah,
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: pretty amazing. How many years have been I should know this,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: U Uh, forty will be forty four years right? Okay? So, uh,
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: many people would say that you killed FM rock radio
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: because you codified it. What's your reaction to that. Well,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: a couple of things. One, no one person can kill
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: as big as FM radio. But you know, I think
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of people thought we went in and change
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: each free form station to this real tight format and uh,
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: you know, get rid of those free form guys. Now
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: our attitude as we had a formula. It was aimed
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: again at the vulnerable top forty listener, recognize that there
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: are a lot of people really passionate about music. Uh.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: We just went to the clubs and all that that
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: didn't really want to hear you know, Foreigner or led Zeppelin,
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: and they had their stations, the progressive stations, and it's
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: really not our fault and a lot of those more
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: adventurous progressive stations just uh shot themselves in the foot
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: with lack of discipline or whatever. So our attitude is,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: you know, we had a style. Everybody knows what it is.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: It was the soundtrack of America, got huge ratings, made
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of people happy. But it wasn't at the
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: expense of anybody else. It was everybody, any station, any
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: person was free to come in and try to do
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: something better. And at the time it was labeled Superstars. Yeah,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: that was kind of a handle for never on the air,
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: but for the station owners and stuff. And how did
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: somebody come up with a O L do you remember?
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: You know? Uh, we always called an album rock and
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: I think it might have been Mike Harrison who came
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: up with roblem oriented rock. Mike Harrison now was in
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: the talk field. What was he doing then? Was he?
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: I think he was program director of like kPr I
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: and Sandy. Okay, so you had a trade sheet from
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: you're doing this, yeah, what are there must be competitors?
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: Early on there were a lot of local people who
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: tried it, and it was usually we know our market better,
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: Uh Van Halen is not big here, or just something ridiculous, uh,
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: and they just you know failed, but later on about
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: nineteen I guess was about eighty. We had consulting competitors.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: There was Jeff Pollock and John Sebastian and I think
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: a little later on Fred Jacobs mainly, and then there
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: are a lot of sort of second tier guys. So
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: you basically owned the seventies. Yeah, okay, At what point
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: did you stop working as a radio consolant? Uh? I
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: joined Satellite Music Network, which actually our company started, or
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: co started, And because then I saw the future. I
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: was getting a little burned out on the travel for
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: one thing, but also saw the future of satellites. And
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: this was not satellite radio like XAM, but it was
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: a dozen for ten formats broadcasting from Dallas, beaming up
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: to satellite, then beaming down to local radio stations that
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: would rebroadcast it. And I just thought there was a
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: lot of potential there. And we started the z rock format,
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: which was unfortunately, um it was too scary for a
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: lot of people. We got a lot of to tell
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: my audience, what is zerock format is? Z rock was
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: a heavy metal, really hard rock. It was you know,
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: we played led Zeppelin and Hendrix, but the real meat
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: of it was Metallica and uh and Motley Crewe and
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: like that. And it was hard in your face. It
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: was really great. It was like a party. It was insane.
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: And then it started working on their other formats too,
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: and we had about stations, mostly in smaller markets. And
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: make a long story short, ABC Era, Yeah, ABC bought
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: it Cap Cities, No ABC, and they really kind of
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: screwed it up, you know. Okay, wait, how many years
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: if you went there at eight eight, how many years
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: later at ABC buy it about three or four years
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: into it? Okay? And just to be clear, you're beaming
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: down seven or just programming to use real time? Okay?
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: And where where were all the stations? They were everywhere? Um,
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean the stations were. Where was your
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: headquarters in Dallas? In Dallases? Okay, So let's go back. Uh,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: disco comes along. What was your viewpoint of that? Ah,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: excuse me? That was interesting. Disco was about we thought
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: it was a hundred eighty degrees from rock and roll.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: Whereas rock and roll was about real drummers sweating, disco
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: was about drum machines. Rock and roll was about festival seating, crime,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: your way up to the front. Uh, Disco was about
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: you know, a bouncer who if you didn't look right
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: when you let you in. Rock and roll was all
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: about tremendous musicianship and guitars and disco no guitars. Rock
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: was about long hair. Disco was about short, greasy hair,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: and uh, so we knew it. And then we also
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: had some research just to back up our belief. And
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: just stop here for a second. Where are you at
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: on research? Because I lovel you're researching in high school,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: you're researching then, but you're talking about today's radio stations
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: have research which is wrong. Yeah, in street research is
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: what I call it, uh, whereas the more traditional research
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: is heavily flawed. The three research things we got got
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: involved in UM early on in like or so we did.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: I did hitchhiking studies or I'd wake up in the morning.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: Couldn't do that now, but back then you could hitchhike
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: and watch people's uh reaction to the radio. That's one
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: thing I learned real quick was in radio circles talking
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: up a record, you know, up to the vocals was boy,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: that was good. People hated that. Shut up. So we
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: found a lot of things like that, and so you
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: would get into state, would you tell them you were
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: checking out or were you just observed? Just observed? Then
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: we did a thing called callback cards were at participating
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: record stores. Whenever anybody bought a record, they fill out
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: a card, put their name, age, phone number, and the
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: record they bought, put it in a box. There would
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: be a drawing it's huff uh, and then we'd collect
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: the cards and call back the people who bought a
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: given a record, and two things we want to find out.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: Mainly one was okay, you bought the record, you lived
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: with one of the cool songs, and so that really
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: helped us figure out whatever three four or five songs
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: to play from the album. The other one was to
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: find out if people who bought albums just because we
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: were album rock didn't mean play any album. And then
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: I remember there was one band, Graham Central Station, which
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: was a pretty cool band. But we called the people
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: back who bought it. They didn't listen to us and
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: they never listened, just not our audience. So that was
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: helpful and we um and then uh, there's still a
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: lot of exit polls outside of concerts, again just to
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: get a feel for the people. But that's the sort
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: of stuff we did. We never what are people doing today? Oh?
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: Now it's he's um, you know formal you know, Manhattan
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: telephone book sized reports on testing songs and focus groups
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: and things like that, where I just find them pretty useful.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: I think they're one of the problems that radio is
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: so tight. It's like with call call out research, I remembered,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: because not everybody's okay, yeah, that's where you um, I'm sorry,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: not call out, but auditorium testing. That's where you invite
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: jet people into an auditorium, give him a form and
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: you play to this group of people, uh different you know,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: a couple of seconds of different songs, and people rate
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: it one to five. You know one I hated, five,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: I love it, and that's all. Then uh uh put
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: together in into a book and I remember it sort
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: of forced Greed. And when it first came out, uh,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: because we were playing everything by the Beatles, it said
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: that there were really about forty Beatles songs that really
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: you were, you know, fives and alright, so station would
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: go and play those forty and then they do another
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: research project and say, you know, we're playing forty, some's
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: our competitive let's take it down to twenty see what happens,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: and then they go down to ten and finally they're
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: playing Hey Jude, maybe day in the life. Um. So
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: these were your stations, as we said, just like please
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: um and uh. When disco happened, um, we obviously did
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: the callback cards and would find it. People didn't dislike
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: the disco, people didn't dislike rock who bought the discor
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: they hated it. You know, it's just no this this
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: is the beat Man and uh so we decided to
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: take kind of anti disco stance and what it really
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: meant was reinforcing our rock and roll heritage and all that. Um.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: And then Steve Doll uh took it a step further
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: at our client was he was he a client? And
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: were you aware of what he was gonna do? Yeah,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: tell us your viewpoint. Um, he was doing it on
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: the you know. We went into the Loop and Loop
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: was at that time a great state Chicago. Yes, and
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: we had the opportunity to just build it from scratch.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: So we every element of that station. We adjusted. The
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: logo you know, looked like graffiti in an underpass in Chicago.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: The station just had a rock beat to it, you know,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: and that didn't play James Taylor, but played a lot
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: of you know, Ted Nugent and Heart and all that. Um.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: But anyway, Steve really caught on with caught onto it,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: and he started blowing up disco records on the air
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: and people would call him, hey, blow up that Donna
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: Summer and he'd blow him up. And then, um, it
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: was I think the idea of some any of the
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: White Sox we're having attendence problems, why doesn't he do
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: disco demolition live? And everybody's thought, wow, great idea, Sox game,
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: and of course the rest is history. But it was unbelievable, Um,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: I mean everything from on TV. There were Bill Veck,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: who owned the White Sox, um face to face with
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: Steve Doll and you know Bill ember one line. Bill said,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: you know that was terrible you did this and Steve said,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: what are you complaining about? You haven't had that many
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: people in misty parks in UM and thenny Kid kick
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: I got kind of weird because people would send in
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: broken radios. So some asshole, you know, playing his disco
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: here's what I did do in Steven. And then they
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: took the disco demolition on the road and would do
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: it in front of discos. This was even after Steve
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: Dollard blowing up the record, so he kept going, uh no, no,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: eventually ran its course. But the station from a two
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: three to a seven to inlay with that is I'm sorry,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: that's a rating service one one three or so. That's
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: kind of a low share of seven two percent percent
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: of the audience. Um, seven two is huge seven two
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: in Chicago particularly. And then we looked at the diaries,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: which are the things that people filled out to determine
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: the ratings, and uh, it was unbelievable. People were putting
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: six am to midnight the Loop because it rocks, and
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: the next person long live the Loop, you know, and
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: it just listened all day because we thought that was
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: almost flukey, that kind of rise, but really hit a
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: nerve with the Blue Collars Chicago. Okay. I also remember
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: there are a couple of things there used to be.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: This was in Jimmy Carter and I ran and the Hostages,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: and it seemed like a lot of these rock stations
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: moved to the right where rock stations historically been left. Yeah,
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: that's true. Um they did, uh you know, I remember
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: there were novelty songs Bom Bom, bomb. That what I
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: was thinking, And uh, yeah, they were not all the DJs,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: but a lot of them were very pro USA And
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: so how I'm talking about Steve Dhal. How important were
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: the DJs on the air at the Loop and ideally
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: at all stations, but it wasn't always a case but
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: Loop they were critical. They were again the they tied
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: it all together. They were rock and roll at Kaizak
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: Skid annuals and uh and um Mitch Michael's and just
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: every So what would cause them to get fired? Uh,
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: in the case of Steve Dhal, usually ownership, So they
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: just like, this guy is gonna get us in trouble,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: He's gonna lose their license. Other than in that end,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: you know, radio they uh there's a Harry Chapin's song
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: about it. Very few people have a long tenure. What
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: is that really out? Uh yeah, it's funny about radio.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: Guys just keep moving to bigger markets and bigger markets
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: and then one day they can't work at all. And
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: then they can't work at all they go into real
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: estate or or someone going to record promotion whatever. But yeah,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: it's weirdest business. I remember reading uh want ads for
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: DJs and everyone it had not a floater meaning you know,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: floating from station to station. But there's a website I
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: think it's called Satisfaction for forty that takes uh, pretty
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: much everybody has been on the air and shows you
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: where they've been, and it's unbelievable. People stay for a
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: year in the twenty stations over ten years. Okay, So
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: then h MTV now listen on the on the record
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: end of it. In seventy nine, records went totally down. Okay,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: Black Friday at CBS records is that was Black Monday?
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: Can't remember? And uh, they fired all these people. Did
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: you feel that at the radio stations at all? No,
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: not really. Okay, So then MTV comes along. How does
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: that impact you? Well, we were very much guiding our
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: stations to avoid the MTV inferiority complex because there were
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: some people who said, I'm PP will never last. Others,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: oh my god, we're fucked um, and I was like, no,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: you've got like ninety seven percent of America listens. You're
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: to radio, your dominant. Um, they're not gonna go away.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: Just you know, let them do what they do. You
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: do what you do as great as you can. And
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: it's just a better experience for everyone. Well, I certainly
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: know in America, I mean in American Los Angeles we
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: ended up getting top forty on the FM, which, kay,
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: you know, the stations of flip format a couple of
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: times and call letters, but they would play basically the
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: MTV hits and only the MTV hits, which we never
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: had that at such tight playlisting on FM. Yeah. I
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: don't think that's necessarily smart idea. I think station is
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: gonna do what they do and do it great and
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: the in MTV blessom, let them do it, Okay. But
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: there are stations, you know. That's when k Rock became
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: Rock of the eighties. It was a three format station
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: with a week signal from Pasadena before that, okay, and
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: then in Los Angeles where peaked, there were five they
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: o our stations, Okay. They would play things like Soft
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: Cell and Human League and Klos and Kmet would not
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: play it, and they eventually went on them. So what
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: was your viewpoint about what was going on? Then? Oh,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: pay a lot of attention to it. And in fact
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: I went to England right around that time and just
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: to see what was going on, and some of the
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: bands were just they weren't gonna happen in America, but
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: the U two's and obviously the Polices, and there were
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: a lot of bands that, hey, we need to pay
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: attention to these guys, and MTV also opened a lot
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: of you know, the men at works and stuff. So
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: we were careful and we used the callback cards a lot,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: but we were careful about what we added and just
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: made sure that even though it falls under the MTV
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: slash New Wave banner, that the right for us. And
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of stations that you know, played
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: records that were new waves just to have a new
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: wave category and they weren't really right. That didn't fit
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: well with Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, but there were some
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: that did, and obviously the you twos and Polices and right. Okay,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: so MTV is rolling. Uh. A couple of questions, when
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: would you decide to change coal letters when you change
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: the format, Um, it really depended on the station if
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: they were already a rock station, usually keeping what they
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: were if they were going, which a lot of them did,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: from adult contemporary or beautiful music to rock. We try
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: to do it right in sync with when we were
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: launching the new format. Okay, you also started to become
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: involved with acts. How did that happen? Well, um, it's
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: uh a couple of ways. One, there's some information and
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: insight I think we had on the American audience that,
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: you know, if they found it helpful. Again, yes, Moody
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: Blues bands like that made the English ones who were
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: in some cases getting bad advice. I remember people telling
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: the Moody Blues kids are dancing, now you gotta make dancer,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: or telling yes, uh, make short records. Nobody wants to
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: hear the long stuff anymore. Uh. So I'd come in
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: as a sort of the voice of reality and you know,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: established and credibility with him. And then um uh Chris
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: Blackwell at Island hired me to just do sort of
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: reports on a lot of their bands, in which I
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: did everything from I think it's freak he goes to
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: Hollywood too. Uh. I think we did some YouTube stuff
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: and all that, and uh, Capital asked us to get
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: involved with Bob's Seager. So we do these um thorough reports,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: but very unlike you know the traditional research of hardcore numbers,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: these sort of painted, living breathing pictures of what people
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: how people perceive the artists. Now you were were not
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: involved in the jeth Row tull Uh. You know, they
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: up famously decided what was gonna be on the radio,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: what we're gonna be the singles based on research. No, okay,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: that was the one that but okay, so let's continue.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: So now you're on the other thing is you're a
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: big guitarist through all this, right yeah? Yeah, so you
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: could connect with people And did you spend time in
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: the studio with these bands? And you know, because you've
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: got some producing credits, but would you actually give input? Yeah? Absolutely,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: Like what kind of input? Um? Usually before the fact. Uh.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like ever with General Giant, the record
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: wasn't a hit, could have been. Um. I remember playing
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: him Kashmir and not saying, make a song like this,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: this is the kind of heaviness you need, uh, And
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: um I'd play him a lot of stuff that they
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: hadn't heard. And with Yes that was very deep, particularly
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: Chris Squire. It was a good friend. We argue for
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: hours about the future of Yes, and with John Anderson too,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: and they were really in a tough position because they
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: had management and at that time even the label steering
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: and what I thought was the wrong direction and uh,
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: the biggest problem was they had such a fluke smash
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: with nine five that was says, oh, they need to
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: make more records like this. No, let that one Live
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: and Breathe. But there's other, you know, kind of yes
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: is ms that need to be in the mix. We
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: also had a label, two labels, uh, one called Voyager
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: and one called Cinema. Yeah, those were who were on
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: those anybody successful. Voyager we had Dave Mason and Johnny
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: Winter and on Cinema that was more of an electronic
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: music label. We had one that got a lot of airplay,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: which was Pete Barton's I don't remember so called in Dreams.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: The problem with that the label, that's a full time job,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: and who was running that for you? It was sort
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: of self run and they were let's go back. So
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: now you sell the satellite distribution company, and where does
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: that leave you. In the early nineties, I went right
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: to UM. Well it was UM sold to ABC. I
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: stood up, stayed around, and then eventually ABC was sold
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: to Cap Cities, And with each reincarnation it became more sterile.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: And I had heard about satellite radio and the other
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: kind accent and you know, there's nobody to talk to.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, they were just like these companies, but you know,
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: they had no offices nothing. So one day I actually
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: um called a recruiter who I had heard was I
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: was doing business with them finding people. I said, well, uh,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: I need to be there, and uh. The someone flew
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: out to l A for the and UH talked to
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: them and they said, oh, yeah, you sound like a
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: perfect candidate. And went to UM Washington to meet with
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: Gary Parsons, who was the telecom guy who was the
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: chairman of the company, and a guy named Lan Levin
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: who was sort of his right hand man, and spent
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: the day and I did the pitch of the century
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: because I really wanted this one, and I got hired.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: I was actually the first person they hired. Really, what
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: was your pitch? The oh, the pitch was really defining it.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: Z Again, we're telecommunications guys whose idea was rock would
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: be rock one rock to rock three country one know
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: and uh and it would be like music just no DJs, no, no,
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: just music audio service. That's what they call it. No, no,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: you're missing it. They should be amazing radio stations. Uh
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: give them names, given character personalities. Let's the time is
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: now looking at Terrestra radio to hand and just the
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: industry in general, to hand pick amazing people to do
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: radio for the reason they got into it in the
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: first place, rather than what it's turned into. And gave
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: me examples of names of formats and what the channel
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: or channels, what the channels might be, and um talked
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: about how we'd go ahead and put it together and
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: how we do boot camps and things like that and
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: re educate people and uh all so you know, provide
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: the company with just this whole attitude this is not
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: an audience or this is a cultural musical broadcasting revolution,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: and let's get people excited. Because again they they just
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: come from a different area and they were very uh
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: you know, like telecommunications guys. You know, we get some
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: tape machines and just okay, so what year did you
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: start working for x M? Okay, how long after the
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: pitch did they say? Yes? Next day? Okay, so you're
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: working at x M. X M is slaughtering serious, which
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: launches Leader. Then Howard comes up. What's your viewpoint on Howard?
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: And then how it played out in satellite radio? Oh god, Um,
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: I went on a rampage to get Howard I said,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: it's all over. We have sevent in the market now
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: we'll have if we get Howard. We gotta get him,
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: and me and the CEO went up there and talked
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: to Don buck Wald, this agent yep, and met with
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: Howard a bunch of times. And I'm still piste off
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: about this. But the board said, no, was it gonna
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: be a similar deal to what Sirius ended up giving
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: him news, which is less right. It was gonna be
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: like a hundred million. They end up him a hundred
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: millions for I think for five guaranteed years or four
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: guaranteed years. Right, it was half of that, okay, But
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: we were the early game and done. He wanted to
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: be with us. He thought the other guys were lame.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: This is before mel Karmson came aboard serious and uh
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: he was ready in the kind of we penciled out
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: the terms and uh again the board and the senior
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: management of x M just thought, uh, you know, not
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: gonna be worth it. Uh you know, it's we can
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: we can get Oprah for that kind of money and
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: uh no, no, you don't understand. And they're non radio
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: background sort of shine through and I lost that one.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: And then Uh. Karmason joined Serious. Of course, he and
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: Stern had a great relationship. He brought him board right away.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, so back when Serious was
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: offering double what you were, Okay, Howard didn't go with
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: you because of the money. No, Howard didn't go because
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: our our board said no. They said no to the
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: half the money. They said no to the idea of Howard.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: Money wasn't a problem. They were afraid that Howard is
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: going to stink up the station. Howard, he's trouble. Uh
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: didn't he say uh bad things about the FCC commissioner
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: And we don't want to lose their license and uh,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: you know these guys, there will be another Howard that
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: comes along. And yeah, right, yeah, okay, how did you
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: get Bob Dylan to do with show on X? Okay,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: that was a good one. I had a list of
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: people I thought, you know, really would be great and
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: Dylan was right at the top. And tried for a
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: long time to find out who to talk to and
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: talk to the label. They weren't really too helpful. Talk
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: to another guy who kind of manages tours. Finally, a
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: guy named Jeff Rozen. Somebody said, oh he handles Dylan's affairs.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: So I called Jeff and he said, uh, wow, that's
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: interesting Bob Dylan and next M Bob loves x M.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: He has like twelve videos. Oh great, so you mind
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: if I come This is him talking about if I
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: come down and talk to you guys in d C.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: He was coming down to check us out, see if
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: we weren't you know, okay in retrospect began DC as
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: opposed to New York or l A. Did it hurt
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: x M? No? Okay, And we had a presence in
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: New York at the Lincoln Lincoln Center, the Jazz at
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: Lincoln Center, so we did lots of broadcasts from there,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: and okay, so Rosen comes down. Rosen comes down, and
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: he really we hit it off immediately. We're going through
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: old Melody Maker magazines and old billboards and I kept
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: in my office and uh. I took him on the
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: tour like did with with you, and he met you know,
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: the Eddie Kilroys and all the characters, and he met
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: our c EO Hugh Panero, who I was afraid might
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: be a little corporate, but now he was great. He
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: was like, Hey, we're all about music. Bob's you know, God,
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: you know and all that, and he said, this is great.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: You know. I spent a couple of hours and he
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: went back to New York. That I met him, I
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: flipped in New York. We had lunch and he said, uh, yeah,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: you know, I talked to Bob, would really like to
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: do a channel. And as I said, how about a show?
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: You know, why a channel? Do you realize what that
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: would take? You know, I mean that's way too adventure.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking about, Bob, you can't channel and do you
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: want to hire all these people and all that? And okay,
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: I see your point. A show and uh, make a
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: long story short. He got together with Bob again. They
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: came up with the idea to do theme time radio hour,
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: and then it went through about we did a conference
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: call every week. Bob was sometimes on those. It was
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: a Jeff Rosen and his sort of team and really
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: pot plotted and planned how we're going to launch it
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: and all this and um. Then the lawyers went through
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: the contracts and it was pretty hard, pretty um harmless,
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't any big surprises. And then finally
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: the contracts were signed to pick a launch date, and
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: again we talked at least every week and then he
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: goes on the air, and it was just amazing how
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: much of the show idea was his or how much?
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: How much input did you have because it was a
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: unique show. Oh no, it was he had total creative control.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: It's like, you know, I'm not gonna tell you what
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: to do. Okay. Did you end up meeting with him?
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: And what was he like to deal with? Great? He
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: thought that the radio was cool. He's one of these
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: guys who, you know, like all of us, listen to
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: the fifty thou Wealth stations on his Friends to radio
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: and underneath the covers late at night, and was enamored
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: with the dub l I C in Nashville and you
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: know those kind of stations. And but it was all him,
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: all the the ideas and the themes and all that.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: And um we helped sort of the publicity of it,
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: which didn't need. It's kind like front page of New
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: York Times and Wall Street Journal And uh was it
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: a lucrative deal? Yeah? That was great. It was funny
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: for them. Were they making money on it? Oh? Yeah? Okay,
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: So how does it end ultimately? How does it end
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: for you? And how does it end for x M.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: Basically there's a merger in Serious ends up running the
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: whole thing. Yeah, I was supposed to be a merger
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: of equals, which is a laugh. Uh. You know it
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: was clear that even though they had less audience and
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: our subscriptions, the next time, uh, when it was announced,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: you could see the writing on the wall, this is
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: gonna be crazy. And about that time, Randy Michaels and
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: Sam's l called and wondered if I wanted to come
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: up to Chicago hometown and help revolutionize newspapers and uh
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: some of the TV stations who say hell yeah to
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: perfect timing. So that's when I went to Chicago. It
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: was I guess it was two two thousand nine. What
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: do you think of Serious today since you were the
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: programmer at x M. Well, I'm a big fan of
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: it as a concept, but I think they've gotten very
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: uh traditional. Uh they're more like terrestrial radio with the
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: less commercials and uh so I think, well, again, i'm
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: a fan and a subscriber, I think they've gotten a
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: little corporate. Okay, so you famously go with Randy Michaels.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: He's radio guys who run the Tribune newspapers. What is
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: the vision at the time. Okay, the vision of the
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: newspaper side was um, streamlining it. I mean, you know
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: some of these papers had five restaurant reviewers. You know,
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: no wonder they're losing money, streamlining it, updating the look
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: and feel of it. So it's just modernizing a little bit, um,
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: making sure you know, they were on the right topics. Uh,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: because I remember, you know, one day, Um, Jimmy Buffett
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: was coming up to Soldier Field, which is a huge
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: you know, sixty thou seats, and that got about half
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: an inch, you know, and there was a change in
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: the cello player at some symphony orcs they got four pages.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: Um in the White Sox played the Cubs. It was
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: like civil war in Chicago back then, and uh nothing
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: nothing on the front page. They were talking about the
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: perch infestation in the Chicago River or I think so um,
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: and you know, they just trying to change the attitudes
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: a little bit. Uh. There was one guy who said,
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: you know, nobody does investigation investigative journalism like we do,
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: so just you know, not to be uh you know,
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: jerk about it. I just said, well, you know, sixty minutes,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: that's a pretty either, that's not journalism, that's garbage, that's television. Okay,
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: but you kind of face in that world, and there
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: were a lot of people. You took a lot of flak.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'd say about Actually, when I look back,
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: sevent we're kind of an agreement. Um l A Times
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: in Chicago Tribune was a little higher percentage or a
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: lower percentage of that, but generally throughout the company about
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: seventy in agreement. We gotta do something, Let's move forward,
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: let's stick around another twenty years. Uh, We're like, I
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: don't know where this guy is coming from, and I'll
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: give it a listen in ten percent where this is
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: horrible in terms of dealing with the newspapers themselves, was
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: it only you were You were the king guy on
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: that pretty much? Yeah, okay. Then there's a front page
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: New York Times story and the whole thing blows up. Yes, um,
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: that was about Colonel McCormick, who was the founder of
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: the paper, owner on the paper, and it's heyday, had
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: a m uh sort of a sacred office. I'm surprised
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: he wasn't like stuffed in the corner there. And then
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: nobody went into um up on the top of Tribune
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: Tower and uh, Randy and a couple other guys actually
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: wasn't involved in it, but Randy of a couple of
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: other guys, uh, decided to have a poker party up there.
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: I went and it was great. Uh, you know, a
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: lot of fun, a lot of people and um. Then
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: one of the guys who was there posted pictures of
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: it in Facebook. Those pictures got around to some of
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: the real hardcore you know, tribute lifers. And then and
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: the boy they told this car guy in the New
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: York David Car and they created all sorts of problems
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: and yeah, you know frat uh uh it was it
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: uh frat like behavior and the Tribune company and uh,
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: poker parties. Alcohol there wasn't an alcohol but alcohol, and
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: you know hookers or no hookers either. But you know,
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: it blew out of proportion. But then it ended. They
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: blew everybody out. Yeah I um, I was first. Uh
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: then everybody else followed. I was probably the most visible
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: one there. And uh yeah, they said, this is our opportunity,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: that the ten percent, this is our opportunity to you know,
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: bring real you know, traditionalists packing into the fault into
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: the leadership, get rid of these these other guys and
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: they were successful. To what degree did that negative publicity
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: hurt your image, hurt you in further business? Um? You know,
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: I don't know because I didn't really go out and
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: talk to me anybody, but probably didn't help um, even
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: though I claim, you know, innocence, But uh, I'm sure
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: there was enough coverage people would look at put a
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: little asterisk by my name. That just because that's essentially
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: about eight or nine years ago. Yeah, okay, So what's
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: been going on since? Well, UH did a company, uh
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: a news station, information station on digital television and it
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: was online called Touch Vision. Did that with Wi Good
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: Broadcasting was a big broadcast in Chicago that lasted a
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: couple of years, and they brought us out because they
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: were traditional TV people and our idea was just too
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: bizarre for him. We had no anchors and we had
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: real We were really flashy. It was great. I should
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: send you some some video of it. But it was
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: a little too scary for them. And it was five
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: very I mean amicable. Uh. Then put together a plan
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: for a company called V like the v so like
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: the peace Sign, and it was gonna be uh five
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: different news information channels but broken into totally new formats. Uh,
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: an African American channel which would be to information what
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: hip hop is to music really not not be et.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: A comedy channel but not stand up but cultural comedy,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: condom commercials from Russia and uh, stuff like that. Just bizarreness.
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: It's so bizarre and culturally strange. It's funny and um,
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: a kid's channel, but one aimed sort of a sixty
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: minutes for ten or thirteen year olds. This is where
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: we might take. It's not pop cultures where we might
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: take I don't know, um, pick up pick a record
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: and instead of talking about the red carpet and all that,
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: we deconstructed and talk about the publicity machine and the
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: promotion behind it and all that so be really for
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: a smart uh nine, ten or thirteen or fourteen year olds.
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: Then we have a political channel where everybody's full of ship.
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: We're not right, we're not left, it's just uh. And
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: we would do things like MST three thousand, Mr SADS
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: Theater three thousand type presentations of debates, and it would
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: be uh, we sort of model ourselves after the old
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: National lampoon. And then uh, what's the other channel? Um
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: uh no, I guesaid was it. So anyway, we found
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: an investor and got out of Westport, Connecticut, um and
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: we had the term sheets done, everything done, just they
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: did a year of due diligence and it was really, uh,
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: just ready to go. One day I got a knock
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: on my door at home and it's the FBI. What's
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: this all about? And they said, are you doing business
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: with bart Stock at Signal Lake Media so Adventures? And
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: I said yeah. I said, well don't and they came
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: in and grolled me for forty five minutes and saying,
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: the guys under investigation for fraud, for lying to the
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: SEC in the Justice Department and un to make you know,
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: a long story short. A couple of weeks later and
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: he's indicted and he's going away for forty years. What
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: year is that for you? This is like last year? Okay?
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: So where does that leave you today? Still looking for money?
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: Or are an organization that could get behind something like this? Okay?
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: Any thought of retirement? None? Zero? Okay, Financially you're okay? Yeah, okay,
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: So let's go to news and information. What what does go?
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: What do you think about the newspapers at this point
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: in time? It's really the Washington Post, the New York Times,
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal, and a lot of papers that
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: are way down the chain. So what would you advise
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: people who own newspapers, whether it be the big guys,
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: a little guys to day. Well, I think they're still uh,
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: still valuable. Uh. Certainly increase their you know, digital presence.
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: But I'd say the same thing I've talked to the
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: Tribune about, modernize your look, make sure the content is
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: exactly in sync with with who your audience is, and
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: do a self audit. Really look at every page, every
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: aspect of the paper, and say how can we do
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: it better and in a more contemporary way. So I'd
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: say you can't just go in there and change the
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: look of it, but really audit the thing from where
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: creative audit and um and uh. I think a lot
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: of changes would come out of that. Okay, but you know,
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: physical papers on life support. So if you have it
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: on the web, what would you change if it's a
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: web page or an app Um, I think I'd make
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: it uh well, some of them are doing a pretty
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: good job of it, but I'd make it more interact
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: of uh and uh, more opportunities to dig deep into
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: a story. You really like, okay, and what do you
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: think about paying for news? You know this week or
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: last week? Zuckerberg says he's gonna have you know, these
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: news taps whatever. What's your view point on all that? Yeah,
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: I think it's uh, it's best free and ad supported,
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: because I don't think people like to pay. Okay. Now,
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: as a cultural critic, you know, it's very different. And
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: we start with music. It used to be in the heyday,
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: if you made it, certainly everybody in the demo would
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: know you, and generally speaking, everybody would know you. Today
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: we have these celebrities around TV shows and a small
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: fragment in the audience even knows who they are. Yeah,
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: it's overkill. So what do you think about that landscape,
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: the celebrity landscape? Yes, I think it's sick. Uh, there's
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: so much celebrity worship. We had a feature on the
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: Touch Vision which would probably have uh on our new channel, Uh,
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: celebrity crimes against humanity, which instead of just embracing these people,
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: really you know, if they're deserve embracing, fine, but if
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: they don't really call them out okay, and then we
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: have a very divided country. What's your view went on that. Politically, Yeah,
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: it's uh, I think it's gonna stay that way for
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: a while. Uh. It is so divided, I mean it's uh,
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: I've really never seen anything like it. Uh. This division
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: has happened in the past, but it's magnified by the
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: Internet and bloggers and and all these different sources. Uh.
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: So I think it's again it's it's been this way,
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: but never this extreme and never so magnified. I mean
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: it's it's unbelievable. People are like un facebooking people because
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: you're a Trump fan or vice versa. Okay, so let's
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: start with the Republicans. If they want to maintain control,
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: what would your advice be to them? The Republicans, I
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: would uh, well, I'd get behind Trump, just rally behind
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: him and get him in there, because I don't think
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: the Democrats putting up anybody. Okay, so let's sum. You're
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: a consultant to the Democrats, what would you tell them? Oh, uh,
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: get off this ultra progressive thing, get back to the
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: middle a little more. I think the you know, I
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: mean there are people who think they're communists, and it's
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: a lot of that self inflicted. So I would definitely
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: get back to the middle and find somebody really powerful.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: Uh not not ultra progressive and not milk toast, but
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: you know somebody who can stand up there to Trump.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: And who might that be? I don't know, that's the
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: big Let's assume if Bloomberg ran, do you think he
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: fits that bill? Probably? Yeah, I haven't heard enough of him.
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: I mean just just a really make a final decision,
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: but somebody like that. Okay, Just do you keep up
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: on the new music? New music? Um, I'll tell you what.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: I'm still learning to love. There's so much old music
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: I've been getting into, like early country music, big band.
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: So I really when I listened to stuff, a lot
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: of just going back and rediscovering or discovering stuff from
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: the past. New music that's very selective again like tool, Uh,
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: just kept hearing so much about it. Check this out.
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: So if you're one of those heritage bands, as they say,
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: what would you advise them to do in terms of recordings?
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: They're all doing well on the road, Yes, I think
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: get back to their their roots. That's a problem I
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: know with Yes, they they lost track of what their
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: roots are and make very push it. Leave take off,
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: take off where you left off and just push it
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: into new directions, um, maintaining your roots and remembering what
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: got you there in the first place. But just i'd
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: love to see like a bad like Paint Floyd take
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: it to the next level, and pretty much every band
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: from that era. So I think it's all about expect
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: that record. How would you market, how would you let
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: people know? I think you just gotta go nuts on
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: the Internet and social media and ideally ideally in a
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: radio would play it, but you can't rely on that.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: But so you're really much more focused on the information
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: world than the radio or music world right now. Yeah,
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: pretty much. Although I do think if the opportunity existed
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: to really blow up radio in a big way, you know,
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: jump at that. But I don't. I don't see anybody
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: doing that. I mean, I list want to buy one
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: of the groups. But the information again, in version is
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: the new rock and roll in my opinion, I think
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: that's for a lot of excitement is in video. Even
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: listening to Lee Abrams, we heard his history in the
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: radio business, the news business. I think we hit all
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: the highlights. Anything that we didn't cover. Uh okay, Lee,
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: thanks so much for doing this. Thank you great. Until
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: next time, it's Bob left se