Latest / The Radio From Hell Show - Best Of / Best Question - Future of Radio from August 21st, 2026

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Best Question - Future of Radio from August 21st, 2026 · The Radio From Hell Show - Best Of

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: It's best question of the week, and we got a
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: couple that are similar, So maybe we can just have
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: a general discussion about our blessed radio. You got this
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: one that says, Hello lords. I was just curious throughout
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: your careers in radio, what are some of the changes
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: you feel have made it for the better or for
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: the worse.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: What era of radio.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Work did you enjoy most, spinning records, hitting a button,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: bringing in an iPad full of sounds you recorded the
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: night before.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: What advice would you have for anyone wanting to get
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: into modern radio?
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: Don't Yeah, there are various aspects of any of those
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: sort of decades that I that I enjoyed. I enjoyed
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: the first, the first, you know, let's say ten years
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: or so of or maybe a little more of doing
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: things by the seat of the pans, having to scramble
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: to get things done, the difficulty, but the satisfaction you
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: would get from editing tape which you had to cut
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: with a razor blade. And now you can just do
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: it all electronically, and it's much easier and better now.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: But there was a certain satisfaction in doing that, you know,
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: doing things, making things up for little or no money,
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: and then but then I started like, as we got
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: more technologically advanced, I came to appreciate that. But I
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: would say probably the last twelve fifteen years and twelve
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: fifteen years have been really the bat right now, this
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: is the golden time. This has been the best time
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: for me in radio.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: I remember speaking of the technology and changing and stuff.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Bill and I used to do the news by getting
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: the newspaper in the morning at the Maverick a Tribune
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: in a USA today, and.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Bill bring is New York Times from home.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: And we would sit down at a table with a
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: highlighter and scissors and cut out stories. And I remember
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: when Bill brought in a laptop for the first time.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Don't you don't remember.
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: I don't remember the first.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Time you had your own personal laptop that I thought
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: was just super fancy.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: That Wow, you just brought your own computer from home.
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: M M.
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  Speaker 3: And it's you know, it's gotten easier to do all
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: of that. That's good.
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: I miss, I mean, I I the technology that we
• 2:40
  Speaker 5: have now is you know, computer and everything that makes
• 2:42
  Speaker 5: makes it easier.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: But I miss.
• 2:47
  Speaker 5: Queuing up the records, playing the commercials individually, the promos individually.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: Uh. It was on.
• 2:55
  Speaker 5: It was on hand, you know, by hand, and when
• 2:58
  Speaker 5: you listened to the radio, you could hear somebody who
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: was really good at what they were doing.
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: And now it's all taken care of for you. I
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: miss not smoking in the studio. Yeah, still to this day,
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: after all these years.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: When I first started, my first job at KJQ was
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: overnights and carrying bill were the morning show, and I
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: worked the night before and we would get a paper
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: list of here's all of the songs are supposed to play,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: and all of the commercials that are supposed to play,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: and the songs some of them were on vinyl and
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: some of them were on CD, and all the commercials
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: were on like eight track cartridges.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I, as a service to Carrie.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Jackson, would take that log and I would pull all
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: of the music and have it in stacks in the
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: studios so that you could come in and do the show.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: You know, the computer does that for you now, Yeah,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: but I would have it all in stacks so they
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: were ready to go for radio from hell show.
• 4:09
  Speaker 5: Well, and even before that computer print out list, there
• 4:14
  Speaker 5: was a time when you had file cards and each
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: file was a different had a different letter on it,
• 4:24
  Speaker 5: and then there was a clock that somebody had drawn
• 4:26
  Speaker 5: up in the studio, and you knew that you had
• 4:30
  Speaker 5: to play an A at the top of the hour.
• 4:33
  Speaker 5: A was usually the new songs, the hits, you know.
• 4:37
  Speaker 5: C would be you know, your gold old classics, you know,
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  Speaker 5: and you would have to individually go through the file
• 4:44
  Speaker 5: card and you would you would pick the songs using
• 4:49
  Speaker 5: the file card, because that's the rotation to make sure
• 4:52
  Speaker 5: that you weren't playing the same songs all the time,
• 4:55
  Speaker 5: and you were able to pick songs that would segue
• 4:59
  Speaker 5: together pretty well.
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 5:01
  Speaker 5: The rule was you can't go more than three deep
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  Speaker 5: in the file card, and you can't skip the a's.
• 5:08
  Speaker 5: You had to play the a's as they came up.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: And now it's all just programmed.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: What's the What are some of the other aspects of
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: that question?
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's see what advice would you have for anyone
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: wanting to get into modern radio.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: Although you say that as a joke, it's not a joke.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Don't we want to keep this going? Katie?
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Hello, Katie's like, hello, I love it when people still
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: care about this.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: I like it they still care.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: But I mean, just I would just say expect, don't
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: don't it what don't expect. Don't expect anything but heartbreak,
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: you know, heak, I'm talented, but lucky.
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: I am very lucky. I'm I I put that out
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: there the world. I am very lucky. I know again,
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: it's not always what you know, but who you know.
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: But also if we get younger people keep pulling new people,
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: guess what radio will still.
• 6:12
  Speaker 6: Grow seeing amen, you can change it your way. I
• 6:15
  Speaker 6: just started my own EDM show.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: Come on, guys, here's the argument against that. You get
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: new talent in here, and you get new people and
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: the people who who manage you don't know what to
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: do with them.
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: Well, yeah, that's that's why this my age group where
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: we're coming up in the.
• 6:36
  Speaker 6: Company. There we go. That's word. We we want it
• 6:39
  Speaker 6: to change for the better.
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: But we also need to bring our generation into it
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: now that we're in our thirties. And but there's also
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: different interests out there, which is why I started the
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: DM show.
• 6:48
  Speaker 6: And people are hear the.
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: Saturday nights one to two am technically Sunday mornings, it's
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: called Elevated Evenings, and it's on the beat our sister station.
• 7:00
  Speaker 6: Point five.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: I love that there are still young people that are.
• 7:04
  Speaker 5: Interested in the problem that the industry has right now,
• 7:07
  Speaker 5: and the industry as usual can't self examine and figure
• 7:12
  Speaker 5: this out. They keep firing on air people.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: M h, there's been a lot of that lately.
• 7:18
  Speaker 5: But management and sales never get fired. Okay, here's the
• 7:23
  Speaker 5: problem with that. You're affecting the product that you're selling.
• 7:27
  Speaker 5: You're making it worse, and then you then you have
• 7:31
  Speaker 5: to run promos and say we're not AI, we're real,
• 7:34
  Speaker 5: you know, stop firing the on air product, stop damaging
• 7:40
  Speaker 5: the on air product.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Well, they feel like because it is all run by computer,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: that you don't need real people. And that's the thing
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: that makes real radio good radio different is having real
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: live people and your studio.
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: Well, but there's there's no training ground for them, you know,
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: you just throw them in there and then it doesn't
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: Then it doesn't work, I mean.
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: Not necessarily. I mean, if you're really passionate about it,
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: you do what Gina and I did. Go to you
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: go to the radio over at the university or radio
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: or here, and you start from the basics.
• 8:15
  Speaker 6: I mean, we started in KU radio. So grateful for.
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: That, but also it's something that I wanted to do
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: so I was willing to do the training no matter
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: what it took.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: It's a miracle that I've been doing this for forty
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: seven years. I think it is.
• 8:31
  Speaker 6: It's incredibly impressive.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: It's it's it's it's it's just luck. It's a miracle.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: I could have been gone any number of times. But
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: early in my career, I could have been gone because
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: my paychecks kept bouncing, you know, oh yeah, why didn't
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: I just say I can't do this?
• 8:48
  Speaker 5: And where we used to race each other to key
• 8:51
  Speaker 5: Bank to make sure that our yeah checks.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: And then later later on you know, it was it
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: was anty confrontations with management. Why you know, well what
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: why don't you just fire me? Then?
• 9:05
  Speaker 6: No, I won't fire you, and you can't quit.
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: Actually said to me, yep, the name of the cassette. Yeah,
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: they won't fire you and you can't quit.
• 9:18
  Speaker 5: Yeah. I keep reading every morning about more on air
• 9:22
  Speaker 5: people being fired, and I'm like, that's not the problem.
• 9:25
  Speaker 5: The problem is is the management and sales. That's where
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: they're falling down.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: What you know, Spotify, you can play whatever song you want,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: whatever you want.
• 9:33
  Speaker 6: All of our podcasts are on Spotify.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: But I mean, what can't you get the people exactly.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: That's what you can't get.
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: It's it's you know, we're we have very we have
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: really good salespeople there, and they know, they know how
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: to they know how important the product is that they
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: have to sell. They really do know that, and but
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: I think a lot of times they're just and it's
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: but it's harder for them too. I mean, it's it's
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: become a harder job for them.
• 10:01
  Speaker 6: Look, COVID screwed everything.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: Up, well even before that is because there were so
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: as because there are so many outlets. You know, there's
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: there's there's there's some video games, there's there's streaming, there's
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: all this music services. It's just it makes it more
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: difficult for them to sell the product.
• 10:21
  Speaker 6: The rise of social media.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but we've.
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: Got our stuff figured out. We're doing and performing. It's
• 10:28
  Speaker 5: their problem they you know, they need to they need
• 10:31
  Speaker 5: to self examine and figure out a way to do it,
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: not not fire the product.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Our blessed radio. Yeah, our blessed radio.
• 10:39
  Speaker 6: Don't worry, it's still going. Well, keep it going, Okay,
• 10:43
  Speaker 6: keep it going.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: Are you looking for a job.
• 10:47
  Speaker 6: From you case, Okay, I'll hire you on the spot.
• 10:49
  Speaker 6: You can be my intern.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's best question of the week.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Email us your questions radio from Hell at X ninety
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: six dot com and we'll we'll yamra and about whatever
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: you want.