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e-mail About George Johns
Present - Talent
Coach and Radio Consultant. |
November 10, 2009 I had lunch with a very beautiful woman yesterday by the name of Marnie Howard. Marnie is an author who has just come out with a new book called Giving is Living.
At lunch we were talking about if my friend Delilah would enjoy the book, because if anybody understands Giving is Living it for sure would be her.
Marnie was reading a few quotes to me from her book and one of her personal favorites is #54 "Find a penny, pick it up and all day long you'll have good luck unless it's on tails." Create some luck! The next time you spot a penny on tails, flip it over to heads. Leave the penny there for someone to find and pass on the luck.
I don't know if you've ever been read to by a beautiful woman but let me assure you it is an incredible experience. But even more incredible was my discovery that Marnie turned out to be even more beautiful on the inside.
I just read somewhere that at the recent U2 show in LA preferred parking cost almost $80. I'm so pissed ! Why wasn't I informed that the recession was over and the economy is once again in great shape.
I used to be a real believer in passion on the radio, but now I'm thinking I love real emotion better.
Do you suppose that the reason sales people make so much more than most other people at a radio station might have to do with the fact that most of the people who make the decision about how much they make come from sales. Just askin'
Joe Amaturo told me that ratings were simply Statistical Justification.
Are there really right wing and left wing people? I would tend to think we're all both depending on how close to home the issue is.
Red Skelton said the number one cause of divorce was Marriage.
This week I had to rip my old radio buddy Keith Elshaw off the dance floor in Montreal where he seemed to be doing an amazing heated version of The Tango
I needed his help on a special project I'm doing that I hope to launch in January. You know, the same old shit but in a different order, this one though has a little twist to it..
Jim Brady recently wrote that me, nor my brother Reg had anything to do with the success of CFTR in Toronto. Hmmm I wonder why Ted Rogers lied to me about it.
Back in the days of quarter hour maintenance and recycling we were all trying to trick the diary. The result was more often than not the ratings went up.
I really believe it was because all the Jocks thought they were working with a secret so they just kinda sounded hotter, more emotional, and very very confident. More like leaders than followers.
As I've said before I enjoy hangin' out with radio sales people I just don't like workin' with 'em.
Jamie Gold after reading one of my stories commented ... "Editing is the essence of Art"
I have no idea why she said that it didn't seem to have anything at all to do with the story line.
I don't think I have ever been really happy, I just don't know how to get that done. But I have figured out that when I'm excited I'm definitely not sad. I think I'll go out chase me a little more excitement tonight.
The difference between a good woman and a not so good woman is ... A good woman never tells you that you've already told her that story. Apparently good women enjoy hearing them again and again and again.
I think the only kids most women like are their own.
Before the wedding money doesn't come up that often, during the marriage it comes up a lot, at the divorce it's the only thing that comes up.
Reid Reker recently told me that according to our daughters we're pretty decent guys. With that in mind he says we should stop running around with all the broken women and get someone decent. He claims we deserve it.
My Mother told me a long time ago ... George don't stay alone too long you have a tendency towards becoming a Hermit. I think she's right, I'm really starting to like it. I better start looking around.
I think the best motivation you can give a gifted air talent is to explain to them how they get what they want while accomplishing your mission.
One of the best motivational techniques I've ever come across is " Inspiration "
I've noticed that he one thing that all business men have in common is they do everything as cheap as they can. Now I've done the math on this and discovered that cheaper just takes longer. The cost of doing it turns out to be the same we're just all much older when it's done.
Recently I sent out a question to a few folks I know that said, If you saw me in the back seat of a police car being taken away what do think the charge would be ?
Impersonating Roman Polanski - Bobby Cole.
Contributing to the local FOP fund - Roy Cooper.
Someone getting hurt because of something they did/said/or implied too one of your daughters - Candis Marko Johns.
Aggressive, frightening and suspicious behavior aboard an airliner - Reid Reker.
Something to do with and involving sheep at a garden party - Ermanno Barone.
At first I thought it was because you got caught robbing a waggon but now I do believe it was because you were caught waggon your robin - Bill Taylor
DUI - Chuck Knapp.
I would think you would be arrested for something lecherously delicious - Jo Myer.
Accused by the mother of your youngest on some trumped up charge - Jim Hilliard.
Caught getting what President Clinton claimed did not constitute sex, in a booth at Ruth Chris' steak house - Russ Morely.
Obviously my image needs a little work - Geo. Johns.
Hey I'm looking for some brilliant morning type characters who just love Southern California, and want to spend a lot of the show showing that love. Love to hear from you at www.radiogeo@gmail.com
November 3, 2009 Back in the early days at WIBC in Indianapolis and KVIL in Dallas I think it was almost an unfair fight with other radio stations. Our on air talent was so much better than the competition's that it was almost scary. Even our part timers sounded better than anybody elses full time Jocks.In fact they were only part timers because they just couldn't break into the full time line up as nobody ever seemed to be leaving.
The real talent battle really went on inside the station ... Which on air talent was the best on our air. That was the question.
Barry O'Brien says I use the " I " word too much. I totally agree which is kinda tough to do with out using the " I " word.
Why are we always in a hurry to get to our destiny ... Isn't that the end ?
Bobby Bowden recently said that he can't retire because that only leaves him with one more big event.
Lawrence Amaturo said as we were roaring south on the 405 towards Orange County that he had no problem bending over backwards to help someone. It was the bending forward he was tiring of.
With all the cuts in the news rooms of all media, I wonder what news gets reported - or not.
Jack McCoy once told me the reason they didn't seem to make any changes at WNBC was because we knew they were unsuccessful but they didn't.
Is it just me or do the people who make the biggest money at any establishment seem to be the ones making the biggest noise about how little they make.
Have you ever noticed that most people look at their biggest year financially as their normal year. All the other years were just fluky bad years.
I have never met a man I couldn't make laugh, but then again I never met Hitler. I have met some radio people though that I think could have given him a good run for his money. Names soon at this same location.
My brother Reg and I have the same hang up, we are filled with rage which was genetically induced. We handle it very differently but both agree that it is much better used as a fuel for energy rather than as a motivator.
I think I do my best radio work outside the station by listening to it and making adjustments so as to better reflect the world it is trying to inform and entertain. When ever I go into the station they spend most of the time trying to talk me out of doing any of those adjustments.
When men get together they only talk about three subjects Sex, Sports, and Business. But Reid Reker claims I left a very important one out. Sex !
OK I agree so I guess that makes it four now, Sex, Sports, Business and Sex.
I was never really much into survival, I wonder what that cost me .
The only women worth dying for I figure are the ones you love.
Some people are very gifted and creative at the same time these folks are a singular force that is hard to reckon with. Then there is those who are gifted and just need a little guidance but are generally pretty lazy.The ones that are creative are usually the hardest working of all. These three talented types are followed by all the others.
Seems to me right now radio is mostly filled by all the others.
I hear a bunch of artists like Beyonce and Mariah Carey on all kinds of different radio stations, but we all only hear them endorsing one kind of radio, Urban.
Speaking of Urban, you don't hear much of that style on Christian radio do ya !
Death is the only thing that makes life worth living as losing is the only thing that teaches you how to win.
Are you sure that the NFL coaches graduated from college. We really need to see some stats on that because if they did, it had to be the same one.
Jim Hilliard asked me what I had in mind for Jo Myers, when I told him he said I know you want to do that but it's on the radio I'm talkin' about.
When I worked with Cris Conner in Indy he was so smooth that one of the beautiful Indiana Pacer Pace-Mates actually asked him to marry her.
I think telling the truth is the only thing to do unless it unnecessarily hurts someone. Then avoidance of the truth then may be the order of the day.
My favorite radio station promotions were always the ones the air talent brought me and said they would take care of everything all they needed was a yes from me. Those promotions for some reason always turned out great.
Contrary to what half the population thinks, a mere stroll down the aisle does not change a relationship from conditional love to unconditional love.
Isn't the best and worst thing that ever happens to you at the same time is falling in love.
Brent Farris told me that women are like phones they like to be held, talked to and touched often, but push the wrong button and your instantly disconnected.
PPM misses about 30 minutes of morning radio listening a day because of a technical issue.
All you have to do is figure out how many mornings a week your average listener listens to your morning show then X it by 30 minutes and add it to your ratings. Now your getting a lot closer to the truth, and a lot more money. The truth has always seemed to be an on going problem with ARB over the years.
Ken Barnett told me that dumb people will listen to smart radio, but smart people wont listen to dumb radio.
Years ago at WIBG in Philly we came up with a what I thought was a great concept.
It went like this. We ran a promo on air that said, for the next little while we're not going to run any commercials but eventually we will of course because we need to pay some bills.
If you hear us play one, be the first one call xxx xxxx and we will instantly give you a brand new 100 dollar bill, with a big ol' picture of Ben Franklin on it.
Imagine my surprise when we played a promo, the phones blew up, when we did the news, the phones blew up, when a jock did a bit, the phones blew up.
I soon found out that the listeners perceive anything they don't like as a commercial.
You try telling a disgruntled listener who thought they had just won a hundred bucks, what they heard was not a commercial.
That ended that so called great concept rather quickly.
During a recent visit to my place in Florida, Gary Russell and I were discussing ... Why does it and who decided that it should go Back & Forth, instead of Forth and Back, or Up & Down, In & Out, This Way & That Way, Faster & Slower, Up Side Down, Yesterday & Today, Big & Little, Small & Large, Backwards & Forwards, Winners & Losers, Hot & Cold, Ham & Eggs, Black & White, Good & Bad, Young & Old, Mom & Dad, Fish & Chips, High & Low, Oil & Vinegar, Over & Under, etc etc.. We obviously had a way too much time on our hands
I was once asked a great question ... Was Mr. Fairbanks a Richard or a Dick ?
What is it about my 6th decade that makes me feel more Canadian than ever before.
Warren Cosford claimed in his blog that Jaye Albright was the leading Country Consultant in America. I wonder if Ken Moultry, Rusty Walker, Charlie Cook, Bob Glasco, Etc. are cool with that.
Have you ever noticed that if proposed changes mean less work for some folks they seem to be made instantly. But on the other hand if they appear to cause more work or harder work, there are hours and hours and days and days of debate about whether or not the changes are really necessary.
When you are in a band you discover real early that what it sounds like on stage has little to do with how it sounds to the audience. Just like what comes out of the speakers sounds nothing like what was planned inside a radio station.
Maybe Barry is right, I counted using the I word 21 times in this piece (oops there's two more) that is a little excessive isn't it. But what the hell it's my piece!
October 27, 2009 Don't you wonder some time whether those radio guys have any idea what all those inspirational words really mean when they just kinda pop those Vince Lombardi type quotes into the middle of a creative conversation you thought you were having. If your a Notre Dame fan, don't you just wish your coach was as talented as his ego is telling him he is. Tom Mullane says that music is much better than religion at bringing people together because nobody dies. But he also says his research might be a bit flawed because he hasn't checked the stats on rap music yet. Joe Amaturo recently asked me how long I thought a project we were working on together was going to take. I told him I thought about six months. He said isn't that a little too quick plus just a little unrealistic. I responded with ... Nah! If I give myself more time it will just take longer. So with all the interns that were involved with David Letterman my only question is .... Was he doing them or were they doing him? Bobby Cole told me a long time ago that the definition of diplomacy is the Art of simply letting others have your way. A life changing moment occurred in my life and I think maybe for the rest of The Jury when we for the first time heard Jimmy Darin play our record "Until You Do" on the radio. I'm unconvinced that I could be convinced to let the law run it's course should anyone hurt the woman I love, or even worse, harm my daughters. If there were no birds would there be any airplanes ? If most of the people of a nation were peaceful but it's leaders were not. Does that still mean it is a peaceful nation ? Another life changing moment occurred when my daughter Candis was born. The next one occurred 28 years later when my daughter Cami was born. Have you ever noticed the most irritating thing about voice messages is the fact that you can't say "Got It" halfway through the message. Dreams are not built on logic so if you ever hope to achieve any of yours, know this ... It's going to take a lot more than logic to get them done. Radio is a mere reflection of life but even as the world has changed dramatically in the last couple of years radio has not. Bono said on an awards show that all musicians wonder if after they pass on will anybody remember them. He went on to say that in the building tonight was one musician that didn't have to worry about that because the world will still be singing his songs three hundred years after he was gone. Then he introduced Sir Paul McCartney. A big market will not listen to a smaller market. A small market will listen to a larger market. The only way to get back the large market listener to his small market radio station is two things. Eliminate completely any small market sound and add local content. There are two ways to communicate, one is to say what you think, the other is to say what you know. I prefer the latter it's much shorter. I love my daughters unconditionally, but what keeps me in total awe of them is when they do something deserving of love. The next King of England is going to become that just because he is a member of the lucky sperm club, not because he did something to deserve it. Kinda sorta like your boss maybe huh. Your job is to figure out how your going to handle it. Most of the morning shows I have had the good fortune to coach over the years became millionaires. In exchange for the bit of help I gave them, they gave me their secrets. USA Today is not a factor in any market. The local newspaper still is. I came to the U.S. because of Capitalism. Now that America has moved on to Speculism, I feel it is doomed unless it comes back to Capitalism. Thank God that I'm still a dual citizen. I don't believe the folks know in what order to put the tunes on their Ipod. That's what radio people used to figure out for them. If a person who is paid to listen to a radio show (the PD) doesn't. The radio talent begins to think there is no hope, and the show soon deteriorates. I just love the sound of a Cello and French Horns mixed together. During the 70's, 80's & 90's at KVIL in Dallas the income simply over ran the expenses so management stopped worrying about them. I think even the sales people would agree that it had a lot more to do with the on air product then the sales systems. In any successful business the formula works this way. The customer is always #1 the employees are #2 and Mr. businessman is #3. What about that formula doesn't radio get ? A long time ago and far away Lawrence Amaturo pinned a note up on the bulletin board that read ... I know how difficult it is "to get" George Johns. But the only people I need working at our radio stations are people who get him. I understand that all people don't get him so if you don't get him I will accept that as your resignation. At the next staff meeting a miracle occurred. I think for the first time in my life everybody got me. Some people have been put into power for reasons that don't seem readily apparent. But I do know this about that. Things better go their way while they have the power or you get to suffer the consequences. Don Bleu once had a great offer I believe from KFRC. The management of K101 who were paying him pretty large asked me if I could talk him out of leaving. I told Don ... Once you touch oldies it's very hard to ever appear young again. Most of the hit records of all time were never Rock&Roll. I once had a discussion with Jim Harper of WNIC in Detroit that I felt he had to become the new PD or they would just send in another fool. Let me see if I have got this straight, the price of gasoline is going up again because a few folks think that we will be using more of it in the future, Now that's good for America because ... Words fail me here. Tim Moore recently wrote that there is no such thing as business ethics, there is only "ethics". October 21, 2009 I have worked with Joe Amaturo on and off since the mid 90's. I'm sure if you've heard of the legendary Joe Amaturo, you have also heard that he isn't the easiest guy in the world to work with. In fact it's part of his legend. Joe's tough but he's always been very fair with me and that's the part I care about most. But tough as Joe is we always manage to have a few laughs when we travel together. Sometimes though I kinda suspect Joe would rather not have quite as many laughs as we do, because even though he grumbles about how busy he is all the time I think he really loves to work. Me being the type of guy who doesn't likes serious stuff much, I had enough of that growing up,try to keep things lighter and remind everybody that this show business. Joe claims I have the show part more than covered so he was going to stick to the business side if I didn't mind or even if I did mind. With that in mind I try to save some of the frivolity for the dinner table but it doesn't take long before Joe has us all talkin' business. The thing I really like and respect about Joe is he is a self made man of humble beginnings and even though he graduated with a MBA from Harvard he is one of those very rare Harvard graduates who doesn't feel a need to bring it up every five minutes. One day Joe put me in a real tough spot. During the time period I'm talking about he owned radio stations in Riverside California, Austin Texas, and West Palm Beach Florida. I was involved in the Riverside and Austin properties and it was during one of those visits that I got to meet Joe's son Lawrence for the first time. Lawrence who worked for Johnson & Johnson in the agency business for a while, was the only other Amaturo I think besides Joe, who was interested in broadcasting. In fact he mentioned to me several times that he was traveling with Joe sucking up as much radio information as he could as fast as he could because eventually he planned on buying his own stations. Seeing as his father was running some of the most successful radio stations in America, he thought what better way to learn how to do it right than to hang out and help out at a few of them for a while. As time went by I started hearing a couple of rumors that he was close to buying some groups in some smaller markets, Palm Springs being one of them. Palm Springs I thought, now that could be fun, I hope I get a shot at helping out if the rumors are true. But neither he or Joe were talking much about it so I didn't give it much thought other than to think that down the road it would be interesting to get involved in a new Amaturo project. I remember wondering at the time, what if any the differences would be with Lawrence heading up the new project instead of Joe. As I look back now I realize I was entering the world of ... Be careful of what you dream for they may come true! When I left Indiana to start The Johns Company I moved to California because that's where my first client was. Even though I now live in Florida I have always managed to keep a few clients in California which enables me to get back there quite often. Most of my immediate family still live there, so that does tend to make the long plane ride worth it. But then again who knows. It's starting to feel like maybe it's time to live there again, because I am currently working on two brand new projects that are also in California. When I first started my consulting career one of my very early clients was KZST in Santa Rosa. I just love going to Sonoma County it's a very beautiful community located right in the middle of the wine country. My on going working relationship with owner Gordon Zlot, Tom Skinner the GM, and Morning Man/PD Brent Farris couldn't be better, and consists mainly of doing a little radio, drinking a little fine Sonoma County wine, doing a little more radio, discussing and drinking a little more Sonoma County Wine etc. This special kind of consulting project in this special place has been going on for me for over twenty years now, with only one interruption. Oh and did I mention while most radio stations these days are firing people, these guys are still wandering around the station handing out profit sharing checks to the staff instead of pink slips. They must do it radio a little bit differently than most huh. It's that one interruption that this piece is mostly about. One day Mr. Amaturo calls me and asks me if I could come to his office as soon as possible for a brief meeting. Who doesn't have time for a meeting with one of their biggest clients. If I remember correctly think I asked him if right now would be too soon. When I get to his office he has some very exciting news Lawrence it turns out with Joe's help has just bought a radio group. That's the good news he said, now here's the bad news for you. Damn I remember thinking, I'm not going to get a shot at this. Joe then says to me, this group is in Santa Rosa where I know you already have a client. He then went on to say that Lawrence would be moving to Santa Rosa shortly to start running the stations and they both would like me to help Lawrence on the programming end. He claimed he knew I was in a very difficult position, but he just couldn't have me going against his son, during his first radio venture. I swear I heard the God Father theme playing as he said it Whew, I was kinda shocked and a little speechless too. Of all the markets in America who would have predicted this dilemma, and how was I going to handle it The first thing I did was get on a plane for Santa Rosa because being a lover not a fighter which is just a more fun way of describing a real coward. I decided to make it the Santa Rosa folks problem. I would let them make the call on what I should do. Isn't that what any red blooded Canadian/American coward would do. I was morally and ethically bound to them, so I figure they got the right to tell me what I should do. When we sat down for dinner and we ordered up some of that fine Sonoma County wine I love so much, they say it's good for your heart. I quickly laid out the situation for them. It got very quiet for a while then I think Tom said, well this is sure a good way to ruin a very nice red. Then Gordon turned to me and said ... You've got to go with the Amaturos, there is too much money involved in all of this. George you are part of our family and always will be. Families do what's right for the family members so we have to do what's right by you and what's right by you is for you go with the Amaturos. Wow ... Now you can see why these guys are so special to me, and probably why good things keep happening to their stations. How do you say it ... What goes round comes round and around and around. So I report to work with Lawrence and we do some pretty good work together. The outstanding result of this endeavor was, Lawrence along with the help of our good friend and mutual colleague, broadcasting attorney Betsy Cameron, sold his stations rumor has it for almost sixteen times cash flow. And I remember it the cash flow was stellar. I think maybe this was the last deal of it's kind in the radio industry. I do know this for sure, radio values started to crumble shortly there after. When Joe Amaturo and I were discussing the excellent deal Lawrence had made asked me what I thought of the deal Lawrence had cut I told him I thought it it was a bad deal for the new owners because they had no chance at succeeding. The new owners dont have anybody to put in there that was going to work near as hard as Lawrence did and I don't think he is going with the deal. In fact I think the new owners wont even try to replace him and will just try to spread what they think his work load was amongst the rest of the staff. My feeling has always been that no deal is any good with out very strong leadership to pull it all off. But hey I'm not a business guy so what the hell do I know. A little later as the new owners were in the midst of taking over, I was called to town by Peggy and Lisa the two GM's. They were in the middle of doing the new budgets and both had the same question for me ... What is it you do? We see you around here occasionally they said, but you always seem locked up in meetings with Lawrence or Joe and sometimes the air talent. We were never sure what you guys did in there they went on to say and maybe it wasn't our place to know, but now it is. We have to account for and justify all the costs of doing business here now. We need you to specifically explain to us how you are going to help us achieve our new goals so we feel a little more comfortable including your fees in our new operating budget. It is often been said that the definition of luck is where preparation meets opportunity. Man oh man, at that moment I could hear lady luck pounding on my door so loudly that while they were quizzing me I could hardly hear what they were saying. I responded with ... The answer to your question, what do I do is ... Absolutely nothing! I really don't do anything that I think you would find of value. Lets just say I'm just a good friend of Joe Amaturo. His son Lawrence knows I like radio so he is just kind enough to let me hang out here whenever I'm in town. I then explained to them the good news you are going to be heroes when you cut my fee out of your new budget because I'm sure you have other things you would rather be spending that money on. They both thanked me for being so forthright, and excitedly dismissed me. I was back at KZST that afternoon and have been ever since. October 13, 2009 When Ron Chapman said Kay, Vee, Eye, LLL, he said it like he was saying his own name, and he said it with such pride that years later when he was long gone they had to change the name of the station to Lite 103.7.
It seems a research study had come out that claimed when ever an air talent said KVIL, the listeners heard Ron Chapman.
The thing I wonder about when flying from Ft. Lauderdale to LA which takes about 5 1/2 hours. How does the pilot know to the precise second when we are going to land but more times than not we seem to be a complete surprise when we show up on the other end because nobody is there to get the ramp to our door.
Speaking of flying, who was the first guy to land a plane on an aircraft carrier or what ever it was called back then. What kind of cajones did that take I wonder?
Being very gifted is not enough, it still takes an enormous amount of hard work to ever achieve greatness.
If you take all the records that reached the top ten since the forties and put them in the middle of a room you would find some Swing, some Jump Music, some Jazz, some Pop, some Doo Wop, some R&B, some Rock& Roll, some Western, some Rock, some Country, some Smooth Jazz, some Hip Hop, some Rap, and even some Spoken Word. But you wont find any A/C Records.
Jerry Del Colliano wrote ... You can't have a radio show without radio people.
I remember with chills my first time on the air. Whenever I put the mic switch on the silence seemed deafening!
I went car shopping with Jim Hilliard yesterday. Have you seen the new McLaren Benz. 210 mph top speed, MAN O' MAN Oh Man!
It's just even seeing those kinda cars that keeps me forever car poor.
The smaller the signal the more special the programming has to be. Can you say unique ?
Lest we forget " Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely"
I think in the new world of radio advertising the word accountability will loom the largest.
How many leads did the advertising generate will be the question of the day.
In the early 70's Buzz Bennett told me that putting a winner on the air that had won something worth less than a hundred bucks was stupid. I think he's still right.
Moby told me that before he went country he was a Rock Jock for about 20 years. What he remembers of it, he thinks was a lotta fun.
I don't believe they teach a course on how to become gifted at Harvard, but I will check for sure with Joe Amaturo who is headed back there for his 60th reunion.
When a gifted person starts adding creativity to their arsenal you start calling them names like Johnny Carson, Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jeff & Jer, Ron Chapman, Scott Shannon, Delilah, Moby etc.etc.
Tim Moore says right brained creative people with a business sense, are soon going to be the " IN " people in Radio.
Why do so called programmers think that the same old tunes played in a different order is a new format.
I see a lotta young women driving a Mercedes but not a lotta young men. "Just askin' "
I do a lot of work in California but I live in Florida.
I find the big difference between the two States is in California there is two or three Starbucks on every corner but no drugstores. In Florida there are two or three drugstores on each corner, but no Starbucks.
Of all the outstanding things said to me in my life the one I remember most was said by a female. She said ... I want to do something with you that you have never done with any other woman.
If you only do your radio contests for people who wont play them, your ratings will go up.
Very talented people are very excellent at very few things but they aren't sure what they are. How you tell them what they are not talented at tells them whether you are very talented or not.
All of us are gifted at something and just what that is unfortunately sometimes remains a mystery forever.
With the diary method of retrieving listening habits, P1's were the people who claimed they listened to you more than they really did. With PPM your P1's may be folks who dislike you immensely but are forced to listen to you.
Julie Heath said she took Barry Smith's and my advice to add even more sex to her book "Private Lives Of Private School Moms under serious consideration but wisely decided instead to just to add a little more sizzle. It seems to be working well as the book is selling very nicely on Amazon.
Every time I ask a radio staff whether we should have one winner of big prize or a bunch of winners of smaller prizes, most of the time they answer ... Smaller prizes with more winners. I guess that's why the state lottery people never seek their advice.
You can see Celine Dion almost anywhere in America for about 50 bucks. But if you see her in Vegas it will probably run you about $500.00.
She sings the same songs as the $50.00 performance but they add a bunch of glitter in Vegas. That glitter costs you $ 450.00.
Maybe radio should add some glitter. I'm just sayin' !
There is a new book out that claims there are 237 reasons why women have sex. You would think with that many reasons it would happen more often.
About 40 years ago today a great event happened that changed my life, the birth of my daughter Candis.
It happened once again almost 30 years later with the birth of my daughter Cami.
I think it all really started for me back when I was about 8 years old.
I remember sitting between my Fathers legs as we were driving down the road then all of a sudden he said those magic words ... OK son why don't you go ahead and steer.
I've been addicted to cars ever since.
It's not about what you did yesterday, It's all about what you did today. Oh and you might want to throw in a little exaggerated emotion.
Al Gardner just told me The Charlotte Symphony later this month is going to perform a special piece he composed called " Music Box Waltz " Wow!
Radio just seems too black and white to me right now.
I think it needs a whole bunch of color added to it.
My voice mail message says, leave me enough info so I can call you back.
Nancy Cole recently left for me this .... I'm Five foot eight and a half, 119 lbs, natural blond, with green eyes. Is that enough info for you ? Yeah Baby! I'm turning the car around now and coming back. Tell Bobby he's out.
When my Brother Reg and I owned Fairwest together we were well aware that only 5-10% of a station's cume would participate in a radio station promotion.
As we were dreaming up new ones we always went a way out of our way to try and make sure that at least some of the new stuff we were dreaming up would at least cause a lot of talk.
Now Reg says at m2o he has figured out how to get more than 30 % involvement and even some word of mouth.
If the sales folks think it's tough out there sellin' spots, they should try the part where you have to get somebody to listen to some of what they have managed to sell.
When Jim Hilliard owned WRMF in Palm Beach we had a 7 share and he was miffed at all of us because he felt he deserved a 10 so he sold it.
Now they have a 4, but the big difference is they seem happy about it.
October 6, 2009
It is not important who you know, but it's real important who knows you.
Being remembered by quality people for some of the deeds you've done in your life is a very worthy goal. Now if per chance these same people are also your good friends they usually are kind enough to erase from their memory all the not so good things you've also done.
Isn't it funny how doing great things is never convenient.
My cousin Irving Vince with whom I've just recently reconnected reminded me that my first public performance as a musician wasn't with Shayne and The Devines. It was a solo act done in the small town of Erickson Manitoba where he lived.
As a kid I was a trumpet player so once while I was visiting him we crept out in the middle of a very quiet night and
headed to the center of town where we thought the echo would be perfect for what we had in mind.
I took out my trumpet and proceeded to blast away for several very long minutes. We then we ran for it before the police could show.
I'm sure the reviews were mixed.
I remember returning to WRMF in Florida in the 90's to do whatever I could to help bring it back to the dominance it once had.
Just winning there was never near enough. Dominance was what they liked to sell.
It seemed the cowboy station in town had just tied WRMF in all the important demos which was making everybody in sales very uncomfortable.
Once while making a visit to the market I attended a sales meeting where the GM, George Mills was explaining to the sales staff that he expected WRMF still get most of the money even though we were virtually tied with the Cowboys in the rating book.
His claim was that the Country station didn't have a chance to out bill us for one very important reason and that reason was he said, because our sales folks never had to hear those dreaded words that their sales staff hears day after day after day ... But It's Country!!!
Wanting to be great is not the solution to greatness but it sure is one of the most important requirements.
At KVIL, WIBC and WRMF we didn't do traffic reports, we did helicopter reports. We did helicopter reports for two reasons, we owned a bunch of them, and even more importantly at those stations "The Promo Was The Thing" and we just couldn't get enough promos out of traffic reports.
I wonder if NFL coaches have to sign a pact before they are allowed to coach in the NFL that they will use the Prevent Defense even though it automatically results in the other team scoring quickly.
One of the things that Delilah, Ron Chapman and Jeff & Jer have in common is they all speak one on one to their listeners even though some of them have a lot of cast members. The cast members only talk to them but only they talk to the listeners whether they are on the phone or just listening to the radio.
I notice a lot of morning shows across America seem to talk only to their fans. It would serve them much better to talk only to their casual listeners.
Their fans have nothing more to give but their casual listeners have tons of TSL waiting ... They just need to be seduced.
It used to be that radio promotions were thought up by the programming people and were aimed specifically at the listeners. Then somebody figured out how to tie the client in which was OK because usually the prize got bigger.
The promotions then evolved to the point where the programming people thought it was a programming promotion and sales thought it was a sales promotion which was even better because the prizes just got huge.
Now all radio promotions seem to be created by sales and/or clients with a very small tie in to programming and very small prizes. I wonder how that's working for them ?
John Picano just told me that kids laugh an average 200-300 times a day, adults just 17 times. Well there goes any thoughts I may have had about growing up.
The quality of life index ranks France as the #1 place on earth to live. Switzerland was second and The USA was number three. The thing about France though is I don't think they took into account the people who live there.
I had to go to the courthouse in West Palm Beach the other afternoon to pay a speeding ticket. The place was jammed, people everywhere even spilling out into the hallways.
I took a ticket and noticed that even though there were about 25 windows you could pay at, only three were being manned.
That's when I noticed the sign apologising for the delays, and thanking us for our patience. The sign went on to explain that recent budget cuts by the State had caused this. The sign even showed a pretty graph of traffic tickets increasing and people to deal with them decreasing.
As I stared at the sign thinking that cutting staff here made no sense at all because more people coming in to pay fines meant more money.
Then I noticed the strangest thing of all, the staff cuts weren't being made until 2010. I guess they were just practicing.
When I was growing up the big rule at our house was don't do anything to tarnish the family name or there will be hell to pay.
When I turned 21 my Dad said to me ... Son the family name is yours now do with it what you will and I could care less what you do with it because it's your problem now.
I hope my brother Reg is on that project because I don't think I have spent enough quality time worrying about it. As I think back I know I should have.
A couple of weeks ago I was hangin' with Ron Chapman, Bobby Cole, & Brent Farris in the Wine Country doing what you do in the Wine Country. The only distraction we had was Bobby's breathtakingly beautiful wife Nancy. She kept us from just talking about radio all night long
Seeing Ron again though reminded me of all the hours spent perfecting every second of his morning show.
The result was a hugely successful award winning morning show that sounded kinda like Ron was magically making it up as he went along.
Owners of businesses always seem to have have a little money for radio stations they personally listen too.
A hundred dollar bill wrapped around a commercial doesn't make sound any better unlike that same hundred wrapped around a new record.
Mac Anderson wrote " Gratitude is the king of all virtues, without it you cannot be happy." Come to think of it have you ever seen a happy rich guy?
I hung out with Cat Simon the other day who was in West Palm Beach visiting his son. We got to talkin' about our careers and the fact that Cat was on what I affectionately called the travel team when we were all doing the CLASS/CLASSY format and he was involved in a lot of them back then.
Cat now has a new start up company in Austin that installs alarm systems in new homes so I guess he has hung up his earphones for good. But I bet a smooth talkin' "Slick" could entice him back in.
Any way we were talking about how fragile a radio career is and how the littlest thing can seem to knock it off track.
Cat at one time had worked with Scott Shannon when he launched Z100 in New York and went from worst to first.
So when a fellow jock who was moving to LA to try his hand at Voice Over work asked for help in getting weekend work at Scott's new effort in LA, Pirate Radio to tide him over, Cat said no problem and called Scott up for him.
Scott took Cat's call even though he was in the middle of a jock meeting, so Cat quickly told Scott the situation. Scott shouted out the jock's name to his gathered staff and asked if anybody in the room was familiar with his work. A voice from the back of the room said, yeah he's light. Scott got right back on the phone with Cat and said, he's light man who else ya got ?
September 28, 2009
When your an air talent the thing to do is reinvent yourself, become someone most people generally like. You know, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, George Clooney, Clint Eastwood, those kinds of people. Why be yourself if you can become even more special and precious.
I think talent needs to be greedier, if you want more you become more. That's why it is really important to chase what you want not what you need.
Everything is in a state of destruction. Creativity is the only thing I know of, that is the opposite of all that.
If you want to be the biggest thing ever on the radio you must become what it takes to be that. Hey we all saw Caddy Shack didn't we.
You are who you act like.
A radio station needs a good strategy long before it needs promotion tactics.
Out of the box thinking is what all the creative giants use. Unfortunately the instructions on how to get out of the box are written on the outside of the top lid.
The radio station with the best staff seems to always win.
I still hate the word NO! In fact I am desperately looking for a person who is wearing a T shirt that reads; The Answer Is YES, What's The Question ?
Now if worn by a beautiful woman ... I agree, that is asking for too much.
Tom Feltenstein told me you gotta fire all the turkeys and hire nothing but eagles.
In a creative war it's your staff against their staff. Not your boss against their boss.
As an air talent when you look around at life and see exactly what your listeners see, than you need to be a listener not an on air talent.
Jim Hilliard told me that a bad plan is a lot better than no plan at all.
A small organized staff can always beat an unorganized staff ten times it's size.
It is impossible for one person to get the ratings by themselves, they must get the assistance of others, which is no small task in it's self.
The only way you can get listeners is to be one.
The ability to stay focused on all the important things that help you win, is the beginning of superior intelligence.
I always loved it when a good air talent played me a great bit they did on their show, rather than tell me about it.
The more you care about your listeners the bigger community you all live in.
Have you ever noticed in a department store the perfume counter is first, that's because they are selling hope. I think a radio station also should supply it's listeners with hope first.
The great thing about radio is you can take the smallest thing and blow it all out of proportion. Just like when Ron Chapman at KVIL in Dallas asked his listeners to send him $20. He didn't tell them why or what the money was going to be used for.
In two days he got Two Hundred and Forty Three Thousand dollars and had to beg the listeners to stop sending him the money.
Ron ended up on the cover of People Magazine, The Today Show, not to mention all the local media.
Trying to figure out on air what to do with the money combined with all the publicity, gave Ron his biggest rating book ever.
I have always said to air talent that they shouldn't open the mic if they don't know the end of what they are about to start.
I would prefer they just roll another tune because as Yogi Berra once said, "If you don't know where your going you might end up someplace else.
90 percent of what and how you say things wins the mornings so you should only spend 10% of your time on the other things, what ever that may be.
The thing I love the most about advertising is it kills bad products.
I like Billboard advertising for radio stations the most because of two things. One they make the radio station and/or it's personalities bigger than life. Two, your potential clients see them as they drive to their business location so when your sales rep shows up, for some reason which they cant remember they have heard of you. You need gigantic ratings if your ever going to sell anything to a client that has never heard of you.
Bob Vistotcky told me that when he launched highly successful Jammin' Oldies in LA a few years ago the project almost never got off the ground because the powers that be wanted to call it something else. Bob pleaded with them that Jammin' Oldies is what we do guys!
Why do all the new laws they pass always seem to benefit all the people I don't hang out with.
When Scott Shannon created Pirate Radio a few years ago my brother Reg and I heard it as we were driving from San Diego to Vegas for some radio convention. Man the station was great, the music was all over the place and we were singing along with most of the tunes. As I think back about it Pirate was the original Jack format and I loved it.
But then someone must of talked Scott into going with the researched music and that was the end of that. Damn!
I left Canada in the 70's and with time going by so quickly now and starting to pick up speed I am researching all the pension plans to see what they pay.
In Canada old age pension pays $12,144.00 a year but if your status is Refugee you get $28,920.00 a year.
So I think what I am going to do is when my Social Security kicks in here, I am going to apply for a Canada pension as a Refugee from America.
With what's left of my IRA and both those pensions I think I'm going to be in hog heaven, and might even get meaner.
Tom Watson told me that the reason Jammin' Oldies didn't have a longer shelf life was because they couldn't freshen the music. Nobody was making new Jammin Oldies I guess.
September 21, 2009 If the President's proposed health plan isn't good enough for all the people in Congress to be covered by, then it sure as hell is not good enough for me either.
In the year 2000 The Beatles were offered one hundred million dollars to reunite for one concert at Dodger Stadium in LA with potential of earning up to five hundred million with pay per view etc. thrown in.
They turned it down because they didn't think they could live up to what the fans would expect of them and they didn't want to tarnish their image.
I think all the big acts who are reuniting today would also go down on all their fans immediately following the concert, for that kind of coin.
Bobby Cole told me that he remembers everything that legendary Tom Donahue taught him while he was at KSAN.
I find that totally amazing considering all that went on there.
If anymore than three people are working on a radio project it will never be any good, if it even gets completed.
Brent Farris told me that the only thing that moves slower than evolution is politicians .
Ron Chapman recently told me that when he retired from Dallas Radio he bought a great condo on the good ship World, which was his dream come true.
But after going around this planet earth almost three times he finally turned to his beautiful wife Nance and said ... Can you get me off this merry go round?
I am the toughest guy in the world to sell your agenda to unless of course you are one of my daughters who will laugh out loud when they read my tough guy statement.
I am very proud of the results of a lot of projects that I have been involved in, but it's the ones I'm not very proud of that make for better stories.
Have you ever noticed that you cant really understand the names that they are paging at the airport, but if it's yours or even if it's the community you live in mentioned, the sound is clear as a bell. Just like on the radio.
When The Beatles first played Sgt. Pepper for Bob Dylan and before anybody else had heard it his only comment was ... Oh I see The Beatles aren't going to be cute anymore.
Is there anything more powerful and distracting than the moment a beautiful young woman walks into the middle of a very important meeting. Can you say end of meeting !
I learned a long time ago that one of the best things you can do on radio is play someone's favorite song. There is only one thing better than that. It's when a listener's favorite personality while talking over the front of their favorite tune, passionately claims that this tune is their favorite too.
An on air talent's main purpose is to enhance the music they are playing. It's kinda a lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way thing.
Tom Feltenstein recently told me that the way things are going in America it's much smarter to marry for money the first time around. You can always do it for love the next time.
Paul Martinelli told me that the only difference between making 50 thousand a year and 50 thousand a month is the knowledge of how to do so.
One of the smart things I always thought that Rogers Radio in Canada did was ... They always recruited the best GM they could find, if that persons background was from programming, they also became the PD. Then all they had to do was find a strong Sales Manager to back them up.
If the persons background was from sales they also became the sales manager with a strong PD to back them.
This all reminds me of football which of course most of radio does, not to mention life.
The head coach is usually an expert from the offensive or defensive side of the ball. When they get the big job most of them are smart enough to get a great assistant coach, who thinks about things kinda opposite to the way he does.
OK lets check my radio formula once again to see if it still will result in success when used. T+S=A+(p+i+t)xP+I=$uccess. Yep it still works!
You are where you came from.
You also are who you are acting like on any given moment.
I love it when an air talent sends me their best show ever. That way I can try to figure out how they could do that everyday or perhaps even improve on it.
It is always fun to save a "best ever" show to review in a couple of years. If you're a little embarrassed by it, your still rockin'.
A radio hosts job is to give their version of what life is all about. If their version is any good, they get paid gobs of money to do some more.
How we used to it be probably doesn't pertain anymore because all the conditions have changed.
A small change in how you language things could make a big change in your life.
My brother Reg was telling me last week while I was visiting him at m2o Labs in San Diego that the reason over 70 % of people who visit your station's web site, do so for greed, and he can prove it. No greed, no traffic.
When a woman says to you ... You already told me that story, your going to need a new woman.
When did a PD staying home and listening to his station at least once a week stop working ?
The only thing that hasn't changed in radio is what the listeners want.
The music trick on radio is to simply play the tunes the folks like more often than the ones they don't. Figuring that all out is a whole other story.
Most women found their new favorite radio station by hitting scan. Now that PPM is with us it's not so important to be her favorite radio station, but stopping her from hitting scan sure is.
September 14, 2009 In a couple of other pieces I wrote about how some folks would come to me and want me to a little construction on their stations even though they were in pretty good shape. Most of the stations I usually got to work on all needed an extreme make over.
As I have written many many times my consulting career took off a lot faster than I anticipated so I didn't have a plan in place to handle what happened.
Isn't it funny how we never seem to plan for success. Anyway one of my solutions to my new found success was to talk my brother Reg into joining me in San Diego as my partner so he could help me handle all the new clients that were coming on board.
Reg had just married his brand new bride Savvy who was from Boston and was newly working for Fairwest out of Dallas at the time.
Reg and Savvy hadn't been in Dallas that long so they hadn't put down any roots yet and the move to San Diego looked great to them.
Fairwest was owned by Fairbanks Broadcasting my old Alma Mater and was headed up by Jim West who also happened to represent me.
Mr. Fairbanks was starting to sell off his stations, and Jim Hilliard was going with them so I figured this was the perfect time to have him join me.
I think that the announcement of Reg and I joining forces was one of the few times I ever remember my Dad being very happy and proud at the same time.
The funny thing was he really didn't have any idea what Reg and I did for a living, but he was very happy we were doing it together.
Reg was quite successful in radio in his own right having being a great Jock and even better PD at CKGM in Montreal and CFTR in Toronto, where he kicked CHUM's ass.
The whipping he gave CHUM was payback for a childish act they pulled on him a few years before. Reg at the time was being hired out of Winnipeg to do production for CHUM, which was an excellent career move, and I was very excited for him.
But when they found out he was my brother even though I had left Toronto years before and was working in America, he no longer had the gig.
Hard to believe huh that a supposedly big company like CHUM could actually be so small.
But in the end it cost them big time. Nothing like the energy of revenge to keep you going for a few more hours each day.
After his CFTR success Reg joined WVBF in Boston as Program Director and was the one responsible for putting the big time duo of Loren and Wally together.
He had and had a nice run there before being transferred to Fairwest in Dallas to help run the programming side of this up and coming company.
Fairwest had a huge recording studio and did things like record local music acts, jingles, production music, plus they syndicated a few popular formats notionally like Continuous Country for George Burns, Music Of Your Life for Al Ham, and Fairwest A/C which I consulted.
Once Reg joined me in San Diego the synergy was so good that our little company exploded.
Not long after we started working together we actually bought Fairwest, the company he had worked for only a short time before.
The reason we bought Fairwest was to give us sort of a business base so we could get real serious about fulfilling our life life long dream of owning some radio stations.
I just couldn't imagine any bank loaning a whole bunch of money to two guys running a consulting business out of our basements.
Of course by then though Reg and I had already moved into new offices in La Jolla which I think by far were the neatest in California.
Our very hip and plush offices hung right over La Jolla Cove and you could even see the whales swim by on their way to Mexico.
Things couldn't have been any better even though we were very busy.
Pretty soon we bought KKCW K103 in Portland Oregon which was very exciting for a couple of Transcona lads
Then shortly there after it was The Apple in Indianapolis, Star in Milwaukee and we were in the middle of negotiating for a station in Chicago, WMET when I got a call from Jim West who neede me to come to Dallas to meet with someone very important right at DFW.
So off to Dallas I go and Jim introduces me to a man by the name of Tom Hicks.
Tom owned Dr. Pepper, 7up and some other big companies all over America but this day he was there in the airport to talk to me about how radio worked.
He asked me a lot of specifics about all the projects we were working on and was also interested in all the people who worked with me and what they did.
I had no idea where this conversation was going but I knew Jim West would not have me fly halfway across the country just to pass the time of day chatting with someone.
Tom was very gracious that day and I really liked him. He talked very little about what he did because he was there to find out what I did.
He did mention that he was very heavily involved in the stock market and explained that's how he had acquired several big companies in such a short period of time.
Finally our time was up and he thanked me for flying in to see him. Then he says, my brother Steve loves radio and we own a few radio stations together but I really think he needs a guy like you and your people to help him.
I'm going to figure out how to best do that and make it well worth your while. With that we shook hands and parted ways.I jumped on a plane and headed back to America's Finest City.
Before I know it we are merging our two radio companies together into one, which we named CAPSTAR.
It turned out Tom and Steve owned some stations in Tulsa, Baton Rouge and Austin where Steve was headquartered.
The Hicks station in Austin, KEY 103 we all figured needed a little construction work to help make this deal fly.
It was a background A/C with mediocre ratings and I felt if we took it foreground just maybe we could pop the ratings which would give us a shot at better billing which the merger really needed.
I had just split up with my wife so I moved to Austin and brought Reid Reker with me.
Reg stayed in San Diego to keep those offices humming. We were all very excited because nobody had dreamed this big. Well maybe Tom Hicks had, in fact this was probably just a tiny dream to him
According to the FCC, I was not allowed to touch the station because I going to be an owner of it. That was main reason I brought Reid with me.
He was to be the main programming guy.
I of course was just officing there of course so I could be closer to all our consulting clients in the midwest.
The next order of business was ... Lets blow this puppy up!
You know the drill, here comes the very talented bad boy travel team riding into to town like a bunch of gunslingers out of the old west.
Somehow we always had guys like this standing by for these kinds of situations. Special guys like, The Magic Christian, Jeff McKee, Mike Donahue, Mike Keneally and we brought in a brand new member of the team out of Houston by the name of Bill Taylor.
Bill was part of The Morning Zoo in Houston headed up by morning legend John Lander so we knew he had good chops
Bill became our new morning news guy and sounded just like Peter Jennings. It was just the touch of class we needed to balance out all the crazies.
Man what a sound, what a great group of guys.
Of course it was not too long before our giant mind blowing promotions hit the airways and it was also not too long until the GM was reading those now famous words to the TV cameras ... We never dreamed, nor did we anticipate ...
I'll never ever forget the look on Steve Hicks face a few short months later when he got off the elevator on the programming floor and was looking down at a piece of paper in his hands.
I just happened to be be walking down the hall at that very moment and he turned to me with an astonished look and said, George the ARB advances are out, and I don't know how we did this but we beat KASE, nobody has ever beat them before.
We are number one by a tenth of a point KASE has a 13 and we have a 13.1. But even better than that the money demos are off the chart.
The rating party was killer then the next thing I know Tom Hicks is whisking me off to Wall Street. Wall Street, are you kidding me man ! I'm from Transcona, I don't know from Wall Street.
Tom assures me it will be very good because I'm going to be the featured speaker so I'm in charge of making it good. Say what ?
Tom says yeah don't worry it's just a bunch of lawyers and investors who are interested in funding our little project.
They don't know anything about radio so just explain to them how you do your magic
They're going to love you, your a funny guy.
Up the elevator we zoom to the top of the financial world, and the next thing I know I am sitting at the end of this huge conference table looking out the floor to ceiling glass windows that over look most of Manhattan. Tom Hicks must have done meetings like this like this a thousand times because with absolutely no strain in his voice he is ever so smoothly telling the attendees about what kind of a genius I was. Yeah right, if I were a genius I wouldn't be sitting here as scared to death as I presently am.
Let me tell you about all the cold looking people grouped around the table, not even bothering to pretend they had any interest in what was going on. I remember they all had blue pin striped suits on, and were wearing red or yellow power ties. Talk about your uniforms.
All of a sudden I hear Tom say ... And now I want you to meet our star of CAPSTAR, George Johns, and I was on. I got up and hoped my trembling knees weren't making any noise as my knees banged together and I prayed didn't have sweat stains showing through my suit jacket because I felt like I was in a shower.
I looked around the conference table at all these power brokers who just sat there with a look of indifference on their collective faces. I remember wondering how they managed to have it go, red tie, yellow tie, red tie, you know much like the seating arrangements of, boy girl, boy girl, boy girl at a dinner party. Are there people on wall street that take care of those things I wondered.
They just all sat there and kinda stared at me like, hey kid we all know that your from Transcona, what the hell do you think your doing here. Exactly!
You could have heard a pin drop when I finally spoke and said ... Gentlemen when Hollywood makes a movie about my business they don't even get it close, but they sure nailed you F#^ing guys!
There was complete silence for it seemed like eternity, then the whole room just broke up and we had a great meeting except now that I think about it what followed was horrendous because I just realized that I was possibly at the meeting that may have given birth to Consolidation.
A couple of weeks later Reg said it looks like this deal with the Hicks Brothers is moving forward which meant soon we would own seven markets, and be looking for more. So now would be time to take a little vacation he said, because we are going to be real busy real soon. I resigned all my clients and headed off to Europe where I boarded The Orient Express in Paris then just bummed around over there for about a month.
When I got back the CAPSTAR deal was off and I had no clients.
September 7, 2009 I Think I Have a Thinkin' Problem Lawrence Amaturo who owns a Nissan car dealership in Santa Rosa Ca. claims he has lots of money for great radio ideas, but none for radio spots. Tom Skinner GM of KZST told me to go ahead and give him a bunch, but be sure to bring back an order.
Have you ever noticed that most of your real good stories come from most of the real bad decisions you've made along the way as you aimlessly wandered through life.
You can not overplay somebody's favorite song. Repetition only begins the very next time you play a tune they don't like.
When I was but a lad my Grandfather sat me down to explain the facts of life. According to him there are three ... Faster Cars, Older Whisky, and Younger Women, and they are what makes the world go round.
Why do I think my Daughter Candis wouldn't approve of me passing this wisdom on to my Grandson Nathaniel.
An angry woman recently emailed me that after reading my blogs and having worked with me for a short while that she has come to the conclusion that my ego was way out of proportion to my talent. She even went on to suggest I should grow up and get over myself.
Hmmmmmmmm I don't remember her, but I wonder if she was from sales per chance ?
Just because it's legal, doesn't make it right! Reid Reker recently returned to Chicago to disprove my theory that missed opportunities hand out no rain checks. He said he met up once again with the opportunity he had left on the table a few years before and after a few pops opportunity presented it's self once again. But with all the liquor they consumed ... Reid had to take another rain check. Unfortunately with all the health care reform talk that is going on you would think a lot of people like how it is now. Are you shi$ing me. We hate both. I think the pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of truth. Are you ever happier than the moment you discover a new truth. I don't think that growing up is conducive to the pursuit of happiness. I mean how many happy adults have you encountered compared to happy children. I think I will stay right where I am.
By law, lawyers are the only people allowed to lie, the rest of us have to tell the truth. Oh Oh!
Got an email blast the other day from some company asking if I would like a price quote on a new BMW. I responded with sure, how much is a new 3 series hard top convertible.
Within moments I got emails from two BMW dealers in my area, both singing their own praises and asking me what time would I like an appointment to look at all the neat cars they have in stock.
I responded with ... Nope, just need a price quote on a 3 series hard top convertible.
Never heard anything more for a while. Then I get another email from both dealers asking if I was still interested in a new BMW.
This time I respond kinda angrily saying hey I don't want any sales boogie, I just want a price quote. They both responded with, we didn't know you wanted a price quote.
Still no quote as yet, but something new did show up today.
The original company that asked me if I would like a price quote are back asking if I would mind participating in a survey about what my experience was like with the two local BMW dealers they sent to take care of me.
Someone recently told me I was just very lucky. That may be true but I have found out over the years that the harder I work the luckier I get.
In some circles Bill Gates is a very big deal until Steve Jobs walks in the room.
Plans for things we want to do move ahead at a much slower pace than plans for things we don't want to do.
Things are what they are, not what we wish them to be. But if you are not working on what you wish them to be, they will never be.
I love all the new technology but I still believe it is only a new stage for the play. I think they will watch and maybe even listen to American Idol wherever you present it.
I have often said that if you work at Pizza Hut it doesn't really make much difference who owns them until you hear the words ... We're going to use a little more cheese from now on. That's when it's time to think about a new career. Radio cut out all the cheese a long time ago.
Walt Disney got so frustrated attending so many corporate meetings about non creative things at Disney, that he and six people walked away,formed another company and created magic. I think my brother Reg may be doing the same.
Ted Kennedy had more effect on America than his other two brothers put together.
One of the only things Ron Chapman, Jeff & Jer' and Jim Harper have in common with Howard Stern and why I think they are all so successful is ... Show Control!
Controlling your own show reminds me of a tale I heard about Bob Newhart. It seems that he had a steadfast rule that he would never play the part of a Dad because those TV sitcoms always portrayed the Wife and Kids as very smart and Dad as the dumb ass.
One day the writers who were running short of story ideas after a very long run of The Bob Newhart Show approached Bob and said, hey Bob we have this funny new premise where your wife gets pregnant. May we run some of the scenes and spin off scenes by you. Absolutely he said.
During the presentation Bob was howling with laughter and at the end said, this is great stuff, I love it all, but I only have one question ... Who plays Bob ???
Tex Schramm once said ... Hey I'm trying to run a football team here and I don't think the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders have anything to do with football so I don't have any time for them. Ron Chapman kindly said(-: Hey Tex, KVIL will gladly do our part to help The Dallas Cowboys by taking them off your hands.
Tex I'm sure was forever grateful.
You can learn business, but you can't learn gifted !
September 1, 2009 Jerry of San Diego's Jeff and Jer said he needs me to make them a little bit richer. My instant very macho response was ... Yes sir! www.jeffandjer.com
Years ago when Jim Hilliard was Jimmy Darin in Spokane he had to fire one of the best Jocks of all time.
It seems that a brand new car had just hit America called the Volkswagen Beetle and Larry Lujak had a live spot he had to do every night on his show for the local car dealer that sold them.
But It seems every night at the end of the spot, Larry claimed the cars were just a front to raise money for Hitler, who he claimed was still alive and hiding.
The car dealer freaked out and Hilliard had to reprimand Larry and tell him to cut it out or he would have to fire him.
The next night most of the live read went well until Larry got into the part about where he thought Hitler was hiding, and what with the low low price they were selling these cars at how could they possibly sell enough of them to keep him hidden in the style he was accustomed to.
Hilliard had no choice but to fire him. I guess that it must all go under the heading of ... If you've got good copy you've just have to go for it !
Ryan Seacrest is living proof that if all you do is work all the time you can be rich and famous.
Radio has to get back to doing what the person who listens and shops wants, not what the client wants.
When John Lennon said ... The Beatles were just a band but Yoko was his life. I think we were thinkin' what the hell was he thinkin' ?
The reason bands break up is because musicians come from all walks of life, when the music talk dies down while your on the road together, you suddenly realize your traveling with some idiots.
They are having a big reunion in my home town of Transcona next year but I'm having a problem relating to all the old people who are planning on attending.
Speaking of Transcona my brother Reg reminded me of the Transcona Rules that we must pass on to our children.
The Transcona Rules are but one rule. You can do anything you want except be a phony. Boy a lot of people in radio would have a tough time making it through the night there is what I'm thinking.
What we have to figure out is what the wealthy want because both the Democrats and the Republicans are afraid of them. Neither of them are afraid of the rich so If we can figure out what the wealthy are telling their puppets in Congress to do we could get rich too. Not wealthy mind you, just rich. But hey why get picky, rich is not very powerful but definitely good enough for me.
When you go into a very popular crowded restaurant for lunch that is filled with those beautiful creatures radio covets so much, 25-54 year old women, but you soon discover the two subjects they are not talking about are Radio and Music.
Commercials have always been ranked third in what makes a person leave and go to another station.
The off button has always been radios biggest enemy, not another station.
The scan button has always been a new radio format's best friend, but it's a very fickle friend and will turn on you in a second.
My Brother Reg is back in his radio laboratory working on something special that he claims will last into perpetuity both artistically and financially.
David Wolfe dwolfe@wolfemedia.com, my old running partner was bragging to me that he still is getting lawyers to send him checks instead of the other way around.
He claims he is willing to share this money with special radio stations all over North America. He is so excited about all of this that he even made a movie about it. http://bit.ly/14zUW2
Bob Christy has a great plan for an AM radio station he is trying to buy. But the Mr. Business man he is trying to buy it from keeps changin' the deal at the last minute. You know nickle and diming him to death.
I told Bob he should walk away from the deal because what ever he was going to pay for it was a way too much now that C.C. has started giving them away.
Bobby Cole told me he has temporarily left radio since he became construction foreman of the pool and spa project at his beautiful new home in the wine country.
Once the pool and spa are done he claims he is going to become the design supervisor of the room he calls "The George Suite". I can hardly wait to visit.
Steve Lapa told me that Eric Rhoads had recently published the list of the forty most powerful people in radio broadcasting today.
I'm thinkin' for equal time sakes Eric should also publish the top forty of the people most responsible for the state radio is in today.
Surely the list would be different ???
I don't know why Obama isn't talking to Kiefer Sutherland about health reform, after all his grandfather invented it in Canada.
Bill Stairs once sat me down and interviewed out of me how I wanted the music texture to sound on the radio. He then typed my answers into Selector.
It was the closest I ever came to having the music sound I hear in my head actually appear on the air.
Have you ever noticed that most of the radio stations that claim hey play The Best Of The Eighties, Nineties And Today, play mostly stuff from the 2000's
I think PPM is a predictor of things to come in the diary markets.
The way things are going here in America I kinda expect to hear pounding at my door as I write this stuff. They didn't amend the free speech part while I was sleeping did they ?
Another thing I've noticed is that if your ever having a conversation with someone who graduated from Harvard it comes up in the first five minutes no matter what you are talking about.
This just in ... Jeff and Jer just walked away from a new deal at STAR in SAN DIEGO because CC wanted them to get rid of several people from their show. Jerry told the press in a TV interview that these people were like family so that made the new offer unacceptable.
While Jeff and Jer were being interviewed on camera, Jerry was holding a ratty cardboard sign that read ... WILL DJ FOR FOOD! jeffandjer.com
Neil Simon said that even though he wrote mostly comedies he never hired comedians do to do any of his plays. He claimed they were always in too much of a hurry to get to the punch line. Neil demands respect for all his words not just punch lines.
I've never been a big fan of commercials even though back when I was a kid I won a couple of awards producing them. I've always been a promo guy. Now my brother Reg informs me that even the promos aren't working any more. But thank God he has discovered what does. No that's the end of that story for now. (-:
When my Brother Reg and I bought Music Of Your Life from Al Ham I went on the road with a great guy who now is a big honcho for the RAB by the name of Ron Ruth. Our job was to inform all the MOYL clients that the tape service was going away and we were going up on Satellite.
We had a fist full of airline tickets and a bunch of hotel reservations. Ron it turned out was a great guy and in those couple of weeks a lifetime of memories happened to us.
Now besides discovering that Jim Davis worked at every station we called on, my favorite story was when we hit Baltimore. I had never been there before so Ron said I should just put myself in his hands and soon I would be in love with Crab cakes etc.
Meanwhile we were trying to check into this brand new fancy hotel and Ron was in charge of all the confirmation numbers and stuff like that and I was just hangin' back.
Of course at the front desk they never heard of us. So Ron pulls out his trusty itinerary and hands the confirmation number to them with a warm smile like only he can conger up. That smile I think has got Ron in and out of more marriages than he cares to talk about.
The front desk then informs Ron that he didn't have the right confirmation number, and in fact it couldn't be one of theirs because it didn't have the correct amount of digits in it .
So of course a rather intense argument broke out and while it was going on I caught the eye of another hotel person and pulled her aside.
Ron and the front desk were getting rather loud so I quickly asked this woman if they had any rooms. She said they were wide open, so I asked if I could have one and she replied, certainly.
We quickly did the paper work and she handed me my room key. As I was leaving the front desk I interrupted Ron who was still arguing with his two people and informed him of my room number so when ever he was finished up with what ever he was arguing about maybe he could call my room and we could get a cocktail before dinner.
August 24, 2009 Still Thinkin' Out Loud A lot of people over the years have asked me what the real secret of KVIL in Dallas was. Well try this on for size ... Most of the air talent I had the privilege of working with at KVIL are now in The Texas Radio Hall Of Fame.
I'm in awe of all the people who can do all stuff I can't do. The rest of ya ... Well that's another story.
The thing that makes running different than other sport is ... Your either running or your not.
My daughter Cami recently told me that not everyone gets my humor.
Lawrence Amaturo said not very many people get anything I say.
Joe Amaturo says that's because you speak logically and most radio people are listening cosmically.
A long time ago we tried to kill Disco but we never got it done, just ask any woman.
I think most Women who have problems can trace them back to their Fathers. We are all guilty of not telling our daughters what it was really like out here.
We chose to protect them from that much needed knowledge and just prayed that they would meet and fall in love with some man who would give up his life to protect her, like we would.
I don't know why we figured there was no need for her to know what we were protecting her from.
I'm around young teenage girls quite a bit because of my Daughter Cami. ( aren't you sorry for what flashed through your mind ) What I have noticed is they all talk very very fast, and they all talk to each other at the same time, but I noticed nobody is listening. I think they need a designated listener.
Is it just me or does NASCAR seem to be fading a tad, kinda like Country Music seems to when it gets too poppy and the core starts to erode.
I'm a much better Father than my Father was, and maybe that's just because I got a couple of shots at it. But my Father was a much better man than me and you only get one shot per life time at that.
I think I can trace back the downfall of my Marriage to Ratings. I have always loved good ratings because they always led to good rating parties.
The bigger the ratings the bigger the party. When the ratings eventually moved from good to great it seemed my marriage couldn't handle those great kinds of parties.
When I was a kid the Dee Jays were bigger than the music they played, I wonder what happened, did the air talent get less talented or did the music get a lot better?
When I worked for Fairbanks Broadcasting we were headquartered in Indianapolis along with our two great local stations WIBC and WNAP in a two story brick building that most of the local broadcasters had to drive by to get to their own stations.
Our employee parking lot was always filled with Cadillacs, Lincolns and Corvettes. But seeing as we were kinda into intimidation we decided to turn the heat up a little bit for their drive by viewing pleasure.
Hilliard got a Lamborghini, Dick Yancey our sales V/P got a Ferrari, and me being from programming the best I could do was a Mercedes.
It takes a helluva of an ego to even get started in the radio business, but it takes a little talent to succeed at it. The accountants have more than enough ego that's for sure, but counting I guess didn't turn out to be a real talent.
A long time ago Jack Collins said to me ... George your wasting your time explaining the format and the texture of the station to our sales people. They work for the clients, we just pay them. All they really care about is how many free promos your neat new format can give them so they can throw them in with the bonus spots and the rest of the value added.
Radio even though we are trying to ruin it still is the only business in the world that can call someone at randomly on the phone and say this is so and so from KWAT and the person on the other end says ... Yes ?? Everyone else just hears a loud dial tone as the person hangs up on them.
Have you ever noticed how forgiving business men and politicians are of each other.
PPM misses the first 30 minutes or more of a wearers listening habits each morning because they are not wearing it yet. So if you figure out how many days your average listener listens to your morning show and add 30 minutes to your TSL then do the rest of the math, you get a lot closer to the truth and bonus time.
Chuck Riley told me that not all Doctors graduated from the top of their class someone had to graduate from the bottom. He told me this shortly after our GP had incorrectly diagnosed my daughter Candis with having Leukemia and I was totally freaking out ... And yes I did cry.
When you put your call letters together with any other business whether it be in a promo, billboard, newspaper add, TV add, or whatever, you take on their image. They are trying to take on yours but unfortunately the image goes to the bad apple.
The dark side is at least ten times more powerful than the good side.
Most countries leaders unfortunately are measured by their charismatic attraction more than they are by their deeds.
With the economy as it is, I see America coming back to the traditional, not so glittery formats, just like in the past.
OK one more check ... Yep, NO is still my least favorite word. Isn't it weird that the stupidest people are the first ones to use it.
Have you ever noticed that the Condo boards are always headed up by someone who was no one all of their life.
It's real easy to get rich, just aim your whole life at it. What do you mean you have to call your mom, forget all that nonsense, you have no time for trivial frivolities.
A very learned man told me that unlike all the other countries in the past that were the most powerful countries in the world in their day, America would never fall from grace because we zig zag we never go in a straight line we change directions abruptly. I guess what we are going through now is a sharp left turn.
Hey I'm starting to think it wont be long now till I can serve up a little justice of my own. I mean what can they do to me ... Free room and board for the rest of my life, now that's a scary thought. But am even scarier thought is it makes me a very dangerous person.
Well hopefully if I can get that word out it will make all the Johns girls a little safer.
August 16, 2009
If
Babe
Ruth
had
all
the
special
advantages
that
Barry
Bonds
and
a
few
others
of
his
ilk
had,
he
would
have
made
them
all
look
like
school
girls.
August 10, 2009 In Construction Zones (part one) I had written about several radio stations being turned over to me for some major construction work even though they were doing quite well already. Management had their reasons, and I was up for all kinds of radio projects if they made any sense at all. When I left Indianapolis and Fairbanks Broadcasting for San Diego and the beginning of my new consulting career, I will always remember Jim Hilliard running along behind my car as I was leaving yelling ... Are you crazy, are you out of your mind, don't leave, don't leave. Don't you know that the California sun is going to get in your eyes and you'll just end up on the front cover of some magazine with your broadcasting career in shambles all around you. Well some of that wasn't quite true. But I did leave, I did end up on the cover of a magazine, and my career has always been in shambles. Hey three out of four ain't all that bad. Back then I was very lucky to start out my new career having the legendary Jim West represent me. Jim was the only sales guy I ever met that could get certified checks hand delivered to him without ever leaving the office. He was the King of giving good phone. One day Jim called me and said he just got off the phone with a guy named Bill Lacy. Bill had just bought an A/C station in Oklahoma City called KLNK. Jim had done some work with this guy in Enid Oklahoma earlier where he had owned a little station. But now he was excitedly calling Jim because as he said, hey I'm in the big time now, and I want to be the KVIL of Oklahoma City and I want George Johns, and I know you can give him to me. Jim told him I was pretty busy and he thought he probably wouldn't be able to talk me into going to Oklahoma City anyway. But he he told Bill he had some guys that had worked very closely with George that he could send and they would do a great job for him. Nope Bill said, I want George and I'll pay double his going rate to get him. Needless to say the next thing I knew I was flying into Oklahoma City and the very next morning bright and early I was standing in Bill Lacy's brand new office in his spanking brand new location. Bill seemed very excited to see me but kept pacing and muttering as we chatted ... Damn, George Johns is in my office, damn. In between mutterings Bill explained to me that he wanted to change the call letters from KLNK to KZBS for two reasons. He had visited Zuma Beach in Malibu once and totally fell in love with it. The other reason was KLNK spelled clink or clunk to him and wanted his station to be a power house not a clink or clunk. He wanted KZBS to be as close to sounding like KVIL in Dallas as he could get it and he was willing to pay what ever it cost to get it there. About then Bill turned to me and said, I am so excited about this project but one thing bothers me. I asked what that was and he said I have heard about you for years. I've always admired you and I think I have been one of your biggest fans. You have no idea how long I've wanted to work on a project with you. In fact I think I may have just bought this radio station in OK City because I knew I couldn't get you to come to Enid, is that nuts or what.. So what's bothering you I asked. He said if your as big as I think you are what the hell are you doing in my office in Oklahoma City. I responded with, don't worry about it Bill it won't happen often. Bill had just purchased this station from a big radio research guy named Bill Moyes and it was doing fairly well with it's highly researched music, and very laid back air talent. But Bill didn't care he just wanted to blow it all up and start his station with his call letters and a whole new staff. We talked him out of that by saying Bill lets just kinda evolve it, but do it in a very exciting way. I personally have never been into revolution much, I have always liked evolution much much better. I explained to Bill that if we evolve it, you get to hang on to the revenue and maybe we can save some of the decent ratings that the station already has so we don't have to start with a 0 share. This project turned out to be my favorite evolution project of all time, and it took a crazy owner crazy enough to let us do it. Little did we know at the time that what goes up must come down. I guess it's just the laws of nature at work.
The local owners in the smaller markets where they were couldn't believe they had such great talent working at their stations even if it was only for a short period of time. Just the fact that they were there for a while gave the stations a real good shot at a lot of young up and comers who were attracted to their stations because and wanted to work with some of these pretty famous Jocks. Albeit a lot of them were of the bad boy variety. I had two special guys working with me back then that headed up most of our projects. My brother Reg was one, and Reid Reker was the other. Reg and Reid were the masters at handling all the, lets just call them sometimes difficult to handle kind of talent. Although now Reg I think has lost his appetite for most of the jox and their egos Reid was the one who headed up this project so we get started by bringing in Cat Simon, The Magic Christian, Tony Maddox, Bill Bailey and if memory serves me correctly, I think even The Old Captain, Bill Gardner did a tour of duty there also. Plus we wanted keep one of the KLNK crew named Jan Jefferies who at the time was a decent jock but we had plans to turn into a newsman, which we did and sounded damn good.
Jan
later
on
also
turned
into
a
real
good
team
member
and
we
used
him
a
lot
in
the
future
as
Reid's
right
hand
guy.
I
don't
think
Oklahoma
City
was
ready
for
that
all
star
line
up.
But
Bill
Lacy
was
in
heaven,
I
think
he
felt
like
he
was
Jerry
Jones This show had our new call letters on it, new jingles, new music, plus some very big exciting promos that we had pre cut plus some great contest stuff and even some cool liners. We strung this tape up on a special tape deck in the on air studio and Reid who was in early had a cart with strange sounding static noises on it that he kept in his pocket. At around same time each morning he would walk into the studio, tell the current laid back much more music morning guy not to panic, because everything would be back to normal in a moment or two. Reid would then shove the cart into the machine, play the static on the air and fade up a portion of the new sound under it while fading down the current sound of the station. There would be Cat just honkin' talking about Oklahoma, playing cool jingles, promos, and liners, but of course selling the hell out of the new KZBS call letters.
After
a
while
wouldn'
you
know
it
the
static
would
return
and
the
new
sound
would
start
fading
away
and
KLNK
would
fade
up
again.
It kinda sounded like a new entity was trying to take over but the old thing would fight back and take back the station again. It wasn't long before the station's phones would be ringing off the hook. The switchboard girl wasn't in on the deal so she didn't know what the people were talking about. When she asked the morning guy if he knew what they were talking about he just shrugged his shoulders. By not telling the switchboard girl what was going on she didn't have to act so she acted perfectly.
But
it
seems
all
good
things
must
come
to
an
end
my
friend. They are all in the conference room drinking champagne while they wait for the limos to pick them up and take them to a big celebration dinner. They were kind enough to call me and share their joy. I wished them big congratulations,hung up and went back to my dinner feeling very good about it all.
It
had
been
a
fun
ride
and
the
staff
deserved
the
great
results.
They
call
one
more
time
still
yelling
and
screaming
as
they
head
out
to
the
limos
and
the
big
night
ahead
of
them Yep in a little over an hour it went from ecstasy to, were outta here! It seems at the big rating dinner when it came time for some little speeches Bill lacy the owner stood up on the dinner table, yes right on top of it and proceeded to tell the staff how he was sole responsible for the whole win, and he took all the credit with a mean and nasty voice.
Don't
you
just
love
owners.
Their
only
part
in
the
play
is
to
take
the
risk
but
I
guess
don't
have
anything
else
to
do
so
they
whine
like
little
school
girls
about
it
the
whole
time
and
some
of
them
just
seem
to
go
out
of
their
way
to
screw
it
all
up.
July 31, 2009 The life rule has always been ... Men are soft when they are hard and hard when they are soft.
Michael never got to be a Kid, now he doesn't get to be a Senior either.
I remember years ago attending a Sandusky Radio seminar in Phoenix. At the time they seemed to have stations every where in America and their newest one in Kansas City had been turned over to me a few months before to become the 2nd CLASS/CLASSY station in America.
The GM, Steve Dinkel and I were sitting at a table together looking a little out of place with all the rockers present. But were soon joined by Dana Horner the GM of Sandusky's AOR operation in Seattle.
Most of all of the Sandusky stations at the time were some kind of AOR except for us. I think we were looked at by everyone as Sandusky's wimpy A/C experiment at the time.
We were all sitting there listening to each station's presentation tape which were all very good but consisted mainly of a bunch of music sweeps with nice segues.
Now it was time for our little tape from Kansas City. Man it just blew out of the speakers with some very exciting sounds of crazy Jox jumping out of airplanes live on the air plus another pair doing live reports from all over the world as they raced each other around the planet in opposite directions.
Then of course there was the Mayor of Kansas City on our air and local TV spanking us for blowing up the phone system and putting the city in danger.
All of this was mixed together with some very tightly edited music which made it pop and listeners sounding like they were having orgasms as they won some very exotic prizes
I'm not sure what the rest of the Sandusky folks were expecting from us, but not this, thats for sure.
I think they were kinda expecting a pretty sweep of The Carpenters, Bread and maybe even a little Barry Manilow.
All I remember is the whole room breaking out in shocked applause when our tape ended.
The President of the group at that time was Toney Brooks who was MCing the whole affair. After the tape was done Toney brought the mic over to our table and said ... George the reason I have Dana Horner sitting with you and Steve Dinkel at your table is this, I am very proud to announce that his station is going to be our next station to do your CLASS/CLASSY format, and in fact we already have the new call letters standing by KLSY.
Now George do you have any special advice for Dana that might better prepare him for what is about to happen in Seattle. Toney then quickly shoved his microphone in my face and I said yes, Dana, your going to need to get a brand new Mercedes immediately.
Wow I just got an e mail from Mark Parr who stumbled across georgejohns.com I haven't seen or heard from him since the early seventies, so what a great surprise his e mail was to me.
What makes Mark so special was he was the person responsible for me being in radio to this day. Back in the day when I was playing for THE JURY the local radio personalities would be hired to MC the dances and throw out free records to the crowd.
Now this was pre Beatles time so the DJ's were a very big deal and were much more of a draw than we the band were.
Mark was the night time DJ from CKY, Winnipeg and was very popular with the ladies, his prowess with them was, and still is legendary, just check with Lainie Kazan.
The Jox didn't stay at the dace the whole night because some of them like Mark were very busy attending to the responsibilities of having fans. So I would have to go to the station on Monday to pay them. That's how I got to know Mark.
Mark's recent e mail brought flooding back, the memory of a very very special day in my life. I was at CKY one Monday around noon to give Mark his money from a weekend gig we did together.
The receptionist told me that he was in the FM studio and was expecting me. Now this was in the day when FM wasn't cool, and Mark had a duty at the station he really disliked. He had to be a board op on the FM station for the lunch hour, while the regular board op got some lunch.
There sat Mark behind the FM consul as I walked in to pay him, and he says to me, George have you ever thought about working in radio?
I responded with, hell yes but where do you go to learn how to run all that equipment. He said that's the easy part, here sit down and I'll teach it to you right now.
At that time in radio there was no automation equipment, so the time was on a big reel of tape as was the temperature. The liners and public service announcements were on another separate tape deck and the commercials were on two cartridge machines. The music was on four turntables.
Mark proceeded to show me how it all worked and I was kinda doing it, all nervous and very excited of course when he scares me to death with ... Hey there's Daryl B in the production studio I have to go see him for a moment, and out he goes.
A little while later the station owner walked into the FM studio giving a small tour to some business men. At that moment I have everything running at once. Different sound was coming out of all the cue speakers at the same time. Music, temperatures, times, liners, psa's, commercials all playing at once and all coming out of different speakers, I couldn't figure out what was on the air and what wasn't.
I was in a panic but didn't want to show it with the owner present, so I was casually waving at Mark whom I could see two studios away. Mark just waved back at me and smiled.
By the time he wandered back into the studio everything was back to normal, and I was a radio man forever. Thank you Mark!
My Dad had one of those great winning smiles. You know the kind, one of those big ol' salesman smiles. His smile was so good that my friends use to say ... It must be fun living at your place 'eh ? Yeah right!
After I finally left home, my brother Reg said that our parents turned to him and said ... We only took our eye off your brother for a moment and now we have no idea what's gong to become of him as he heads off to the radio world. But you, you we are watching every second of everyday. That must have been a fun ride for Reg.
My Daughter Candis and her husband Charlie are both extreme athletes. They both are very assertive and competitive. Candis also is a singer, actress and intense business person, who became a mother. Charlie in his spare time is saving Mountains.
When they had Nathaniel we all wondered how he was going to turn out, what with all that aggressive DNA churning in his body.
Candis recently told me that the wait is over and the results are in. He's a four year old teenager!
I guess most of radio missed the passing of Michael Jackson. It seems that voice tracking and what's happening right now live don't exactly go together.
Now if those hurricanes just stay away from Florida we should be OK and wont need any live radio.
Yeah thats the ticket, just turn up some Jimmy Buffet and pass me another 'Rita we'll be fine we don't need your stinking hurricane warnings.
Years ago Jack McCoy told me that he recently discovered in a research project he had done that there was only one reason a person went back to AM radio after switching to FM. It was to get the weather because FM didn't seem to do it. I think it might be true again.
Is it just me or do radio sales people seem to do a lotta lotta talking but very little listening. How does that work out for them I wonder.
The first radio sales person that I ever had any kind of strange dealings with was Cy Brownstone in Winnipeg at my first radio gig. I was the production board op at CKY.
Sy would always whine at me first thing everyday to get his stuff put up front in production, even though he followed none of the rules.
Sy was also the first to ask me who I thought paid my salary. I've been asked that many times since but he was the first. Cy also always had an emergency a day that needed to be recorded right now, you know the type, I see you nodding along and substituting a name or two for Cy's.
But hey for my extra help he would always reward me with one movie ticket, yep one! I don't think I still have an issue with any of that, surely I've let it go by now ?
When my daughter Candis was going to NYU we went out to dinner with Rick Moranis who had an office in New York at the time where he did most of his script writing.
He claimed he was working on a script about all the goings on at the early CFTR. He explained it was the perfect scenario for what was going on in the world at that time. I asked him if he was going to play a part in the movie and he replied that he was going to play the part of The Magic Christian. How are you going to do that was my next question. He said, oh that's easy I'll just smoke two packs of cigarettes during the playing of one song.
I still remember all the things that used to get my attention on the radio before I became a radio guy.
They still work to this day.
Women seem to love menus, is that because they are always hungry, or do they just like lots of choices.
I have chased women on the radio it seems for most of my life. I was forced by necessity to do a lot of research with them in order to learn as much as I could about how to attract them.
By now I think I know more about women than most men, and I know next to nothing.
Back when I was with Fairbanks Broadcasting in Indianapolis and my boss Jim Hilliard was busy flying around the country trying to sell the Indiana Pacers I had to deal with Mr. Fairbanks for the company's programming needs until Jim got back.
At that time almost every station in town carried The Indy 500 live, but the ratings weren't going during that period so we had no idea what station most of the folks were hearing the race on.
I came up with a plan that I needed to present to Mr. Fairbanks. I told him that I thought we should commission ARB to do an overnight rating survey on race day. My theory was that seeing as the national network that originated the broadcast used most of our guys to call the race in kinda sounded like it was our broadcast and hopefully we had most of the listeners but who knows. Mr. Fairbanks agreed and as I tried to continue my well thought out presentation about how if the survey showed us # 1 next year during race month we could really charge some good rates, he interrupted me with ... George you've already got a yes from me, if you keep going you just might manage to turn that yes into a no. I left his office immediately.
When I was officing in Boston a few years ago Tim Reever and I used to run along the Charles a lot and we even spent quite a few weekends racing all over New England. One winter we spent the whole winter indoors training on the tread mill for a 1/2 marathon in sunny San Deigo at the start of spring.
When we got back to Boston I overheard Tim telling Hilliard about our trip. He said, Jim you now intense George gets well I met his daughter Candis during our trip and she makes George look almost mellow as I'm sure you know. But Jeez have you met their dog!!!!!
The real person inside you is the person you are when you think nobody is watching.
I think America might have a lot of trouble getting out of this financial crises we are in. The people in Congress trying to fix it are mostly lawyers and other than charging their exorbitant fees, what the hell do lawyers know about money.
When my daughter Cami was in the 5th grade I asked her if she had any male teachers. I asked because her older sister Candis had her first male teacher around 5th grade and he had really had a big impact on her and turned her on to super grades and how to get them, which served her well all the way through college.
Cami said she didn't have any because they only taught the ungifted.
My good friends Betsy Cameron and Barry Smith have a new product out they are presently marketing to clubs, hotel bars, and cruise ships called LIQ.
It looks very much like a Popsicle but it's made of alcohol in a few different flavors. I guess it's supposed to be delicious and very entertaining to watch it being consumed. Hmmmmmm I'm keeping my daughters a long way from that kind of activity.
But I may need to check it out for my own research purposes. A guy needs to stay sharp don'tcha think.
We tend to like the people best that like us.
Toney Brooks claimed that at an important meeting, one of his PDs gently explained to me why he thought it was a bad idea to "hype" the station's call letters on the air. Toney said I turned to him and said "Get McDonald's on the phone! They've got to pull those arches down immediately!"
The legendary Magic Christian was a whole lot funnier off the air then he ever was on. In an attempt to get some of that great humor on the air I hot lined him once and said ... Magic I'm going to pay you per break today and here's how it works. After each break I will call you and tell you how much I thought that break was worth.
There will be $5 $10 $20 and $50 dollar rewards. After each break I would call him and he would of course argue with me about what he thought the value of the last break was worth.
By the end of the show they were all $50 dollar breaks and on one I even had to give him a $100, I was on the floor!
Magic was definitely the jock of the year that day.
I think the problem with the financial crises is none of the people working on it have a financial crises.
Unfortunately the man ingredient in becoming somewhat wise is the passage of time . The other day I was thinking about an old Canadian friend of mine Doc Harris. When I was just a pup PD, I had Doc join me several times at several different radio stations.
The problem getting him hired at each one of these stations was management never liked his audition tape, but they would go with my decision anyway because I was in my" honeymoon " period. Doc's first show would always blow the room away and the same management who were not in favor of his hiring would be calling me halfway through his show saying this guy is incredible no wonder you wanted to hire him, what a bargain.
What I just now realized was Doc's first show was the real gifted him. The rest of his shows were just his impersonation of what he thought a good Dee Jay sounded like.
I don't think he has any tapes of any of his first shows. Pity!
There is and old song that goes Accent The Positive Eliminate The Negative And don't Mess With Mr. In Between. What that always meant to me was that it was my jog to figure out what gifts the air talent had, then exploit them. The best way to get this done I found was through begging. Once the begging was accepted I tried to convince them to use their gifts so often that the rest of the ordinary stuff they used to do, just disappeared.
One of the biggest dilemmas in a persons life, is becoming successful.
The 3 things that a man most regrets on his death bed is #1 - Not spending enough time with his family. #2 - Not making love to all the beautiful women he could have. #3 - Not spending enough time with his real friends because he was tied up with all his acquaintances.
In a novel written by a female the novel usually ends with the wedding and takes the whole final chapter to describe it. In the same type of novel written by a male, the wedding is in the middle of the book somewhere and takes no more than a page to describe.
I think radio sales brought these low billing days on them selves. I remember a long time ago hearing the theory that 20% of your clients do 80% of your revenue, so you need to Super Serve them. Super Serve them they did and now that 20% is backing way off, and radio forgot who the other 80% of their clients were.
Bill Finginshu told me that most sales guys he gave stripes to, turned into art directors and immediately started designing the new station logo.
When I turned 50 I went back to Winnipeg for a Half Marathon that I was going to run with my young nephew Jamie Boychuck. I arrived a few days before the race and noticed that Olympian runner Jeff Galloway was there and was having a little warm up fun run a couple of days before the big event.
I have read most of Jeff's books on running so I took Jamie with me and we ran and chatted with this great Olympian runner, what a thrill.
Because I had just turned 50 I had hired a running coach a year earlier by the name of Thom Hunt a World Class Elite runner, to get me ready for my new age group.
On race day I started like Jeff's books said to do nice and easy, then started to pick it up in mile two. About mile three I caught up to Jamie and went by him.
For the rest of the race I was sure he was right behind me waiting to whip past me near the end. That thought kept me going a little faster than I wanted to.
At the end of the race as I was stretching, waiting for Jamie to come across the finish line I noticed Jeff Galloway come running in.
Later on when I called my coach to tell him I got third, I also mentioned that Jeff was there and had finished behind me. Thom of course knew Jeff so I quickly said, I bet he does these races all the time now to sell his books, and just takes it easy.
Thom said, well thats his story ... Yours is you beat him!
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July 12, 2009 I work with a couple of radio stations in South Florida one of them being a sports station, WFTL 6-40 Sports. The station recently just hired a new GM and it turned out to be Dave Manning who I knew years ago, I wondered what had happened to him. Just seeing him again brought back some fun memories of when I first met him in Nashville. The only down side to seeing him again was he still has all that damn hair. During my consulting career I've had a few stations turned over to me that I like to refer to as being put under construction with me. Some of these are stations were already doing quite well, but for reasons of their own management wanted to change them anyway. WLAC FM in Nashville was one of of those stations and I still remember how it all started. One day I received a phone call from then GM Vic Rumore asking me if I was up for doing a special secret project he had in mind. He said he had heard from the grapevine that if anybody could pull off what he had in mind it might be me. He wanted to know if I could jump on a plane and come to Nashville as soon as possible so we could chat about it before he lost his nerve. Being very intrigued by all this I thought what the hell and was soon sitting in his plush office. After exchanging pleasantries and a few radio war stories about folks we both knew, Vic got right down to business about what he wanted to do with the station. At the time of our meeting WLAC FM was a CHR station, but Vic wanted to know if I thought there was a way we could quickly turn it into an A/C station with out his owner noticing he had done so. He claimed that his ratings were pretty good doing CHR but they consisted mostly of teens and there was only so much sugar money to go around. He said he needed a shot at all those big female buys that he was currently missing out on. Vic went on to say that this project was super confidential and if we do it together there couldn't make any announcements in the trades about them being a client of mine because then everyone would know that WLAC FM was about to do my CLASS/CLASSY format. He was very worried about that word leaking because if it did the owner would soon get wind of it and put a stop to it. I told him the trades haven't noticed anything I had done so far so even if I did announce it which I wont, they would probably ignore it anyway. They're too busy reporting on the activities of their friends to worry about what we're doing. I cautioned Vic in order to pull this off we would need to do a lot of crazy stunting type activities which would hopefully distract most people from noticing all the musical changes we were making. He said that was OK with him because his only concern was he just didn't want to hear or read anything about WLAC going A/C. He asked if I thought we had any chance pulling this off. I told him it was a little weird but very exciting also, and I thought maybe we could. I then handed him a little card that I had written this liner on ... "We never dreamed nor did we anticipate this kind of reaction to our fun promotion." Whats this he asked. It's a get out of jail free card Vic, your going to need it when all the TV cameras are pointed at you and the newspaper people seem to be all up set about something your station did. Plus the Mayor and the Police Chief will probably be on their way over to chat with you at the same time and it would be nice for them to hear your prepared statement before they got there. If I were you Vic I would consider think real hard about maybe memorizing that line pretty quick. You not going to do anything illegal he asked. Not if you didn't dream or anticipate the enormous results that are about to happen, I replied. Vic looked a little nervous about all of this as he said, George if you can pull this off, not only will I pay your exorbitant fee, but I will also send you and as many people as you can get into a private jet that I will charter to send you anywhere in the world you want to have a fine dinner and maybe even a bottle or two of your favorite wine. As we shook hands on the deal Vic said there is only one other person who knows I'm even thinking about doing this project, his name is Dave Manning but we all call him Hollywood. Dave is our Sales Manager and he is very excited about the potential of all this, and your going to love him he claimed. I knew I was going to need a lot of help from sales because we might have to figure out how to limit the obvious teen spots, although a lot of them sounded fine because they were soft drink jingles which are usually pretty good. But acne spots etc. would never fit. I also need a bad boy morning man and that usually took getting them a car on trade so we could sweeten the deal. These special needs of mine usually forced me to make nice with the SM. I was just hoping this "Hollywood" character I was about to meet, was a halfway decent guy.
I've learned through painful
experience that most sales
types are a lot of fun
outside the station but
usually aren't much fun to
work with. Right on cue in walks Hollywood Dave Manning. Let me see if I can describe this piece of work to you if I may. He wore his hair all long and slicked back like, plus he was sporting at least a thousand dollar suit on his back, Dave later claimed it cost him two grand, and was hand made by a tailor who constantly comes to his office just to measure him up for new ones. I thought that that claim might just be sales talk, I mean after all these guys lie for a living But the staff confirmed the story and said, hell he even has his custom made shirts done the same way. And did I mention that he also drove a Fire Red Ferrari and owned a 45 ft.Sea Ray he couldn't drive. It sure didn't take me too long to figure out why they called this character Hollywood, I think I had it the instant I met him. Vic quickly introduced us and as we shook hands and I started getting a little nervous about the nice firm hand shake he had mainly because I was wondering if my watch was still going to be on my wrist after we were done. Dave has one of those little shy smiles and speaks with a soft soundin', slow talkin' southern drawl with just a touch of hillbilly mixed in. I was warned about these kind of people when I first moved to America but I thought they were just talking about Texans. I think your hip to what I'm talking about. You know the kind I'm talking about, the ones where you hold on to your wallet full time when ever you are communicating with them. But Dave was very cool and I just loved how he was laying it on me pretty thick with good stuff like ... So your the famous George Johns that is going to help us with this great project and I've heard your name a lot and wondered if we would ever get hooked up and Vic says you have the ability to make us all rich with your magic etc. etc. I've got all day to listen to this kind of stuff, pour it on baby! As I stood there enjoying the mental massage I couldn't help but notice that even in all his splendor there was just something a little off about his look. I checked out his tie, perfect. His hankie in the upper suit pocket, superb. His custom shirt, nice. I didn't think the belt buckled to the side was what ruined the look but something just didn't get it. Then it hit me, of course, it was his patent leather shoes. They matched his suit man! I guess he didn't get the memo from Frank Sinatra that claimed there are only two kinds of shoes black and brown. And you lose the brown ones right after the sun goes down. The shoes not withstanding I instantly liked old Hollywood, you couldn't help it, he was a charmer from the "git go" and he sure turned out to be a lot of fun for me. The part I liked about Dave the most though was he was very very connected in Nashville which I needed badly if I ever had a shot at pulling this weird project off. My next step to move this project forward as quickly as possible was find a morning man that could shake things up and maybe cause a little talk of his own around town while we were doing some huge stunting during the rest of the day that was designed to get us some of that much needed outside publicity. The whole plan as I said earlier was to try and distract everybody from noticing our big musical changes by getting them focused on all the special promotions we were doing.
I told Vic I needed the type
of morning guy who was real
talented but seemed to keep
getting fired anyway. I said
you know the type, the
listeners love him but
management doesn't I explained to Vic that the way I liked to do A/C was to play very wussy music all mixed together with very hot jocks, loud promos, and some wild and crazy promotions. The fact of the matter is, about the only thing soft on the station will be the music. Back in Texas I always used to tease Bill Gardner who was a great jock at KVIL whom I thought occasionally sounded a little too soft and sleepy for what we were trying to do with a never heard before format. I would ask Bill once in a while if he thought he could find it in his heart to Pick Up The Tempo as good Ol' Willie used to croon. Bill was doing mid days for us at the time and even won radio personality of the year while he was there. But I had this sound in my head and that special sound I heard, needed him to sound a tad hotter. Bill complained to me about how tough that was to do, what with the music being so soft and everything. I persisted though with lame things like ... Can't you just turn up the music a bit louder so you cant hear yourself, that will force you speak up a little bit I would think, or couldn't you just lean back from the mic a touch etc. I guess Bill got a little pissed at me though because one day he popped into the programming office just after his show to say he thought for sure I was going fire him or at the very least Hot Line him. Fire you I asked, why would I do that. He claimed he had screamed his whole show and was sure he even coughed up a little blood when he was screaming so loudly. I told him I listened to his whole show and thought he had some great moments that we surely could make some promos out of. But Bill you sure didn't sound like you were screaming to me, you just kinda sounded happy and up. Thanks for a great great show Bill. I know I know, I always get side tracked now where was I again, oh yeah, Music City baby, Nashville Tennessee. So we get our new morning guy Hollywood gets him a Benz, and he sounds just great. Now we are all set and it's time to start turning up the heat. It's not very long after that until I'm just relaxing in my hotel room having a toddy and watching Ol' Vic on TV in the middle of a small crowd of reporters saying my all time favorite words ... We never dreamed nor did we anticipate ... and playing softly in the background on WLAC FM was just another pretty Carpenters record.
I later heard that Vic had a piece of the station when it sold. Maybe that's why I'm still sitting in this lonely airport waiting for that private jet to show. Do you think I'm at the wrong airport or could it be that Vic really was an owner all along, and he like all owners just hate sharing that big up side. The only thing they seem to like to share very quickly is the down side. On a side bar to all of this was I was there when Bridgewater resigned, he said he was moving to Hollywood. I said Hollywood, what for. He said I was in a movie recently with Gene hackman called Mississippi's Burning and I think now I want to be an actor full time. I saw that movie I told him but I didn't notice you, what part did you play. He said he played a klansman. A klansman,didn't they all wear hoods in the movie. Yeah he responded but I scrunched mine down on the side so everyone would know it was me. So he gave the station back his brand new Mercedes and rode off into the sunset towards Rodeo Drive.
Oh and by the way, I sure
hear a lotta stations today
that need a lotta
construction work. Some even
need to be demolished ! July 3, 2009 It is said that you get a speeding ticket every 45 times you speed, so it has nothing to do with that guy who just whipped by you just before the cop pulls you over. It just wasn't his turn !
When I was the station manager of CFTR in Toronto I had a guy who did a national TV show doing mid days for me by the name of Sandy Hoyt.
Sandy was a very warm and very straight looking guy, looking is the key word here.
When we would go out at night for some serious radio philosophy sessions (drinking) we would take along one of the station's board ops by the name of Rick Moranis, yeah that one.
Rick was very funny even then as I'm sure you can well imagine. But for some reason Sandy had his number and could easily break Rick up which would cause Rick to turn right around and break Sandy up.
When all of us would be walking down Yonge Street towards our favorite watering hole, Rick and Sandy would have us in stitches most of the way.
There it was, probably potentially one of the best morning shows in Canada right before my eyes and I didn't have the balls to put it on the air even when all my instincts were screaming ... Do It !
I mean how do you go to Ted Rogers in Canada's biggest market and tell him you want to put your mid day guy on with one of our board ops as his partner.
I didn't have the balls then but I sure do now. What do you mean it's too late?
Back in the day when I first decided to get into the consulting business the first order of the day was to find a client who had a radio station in a very neat city and would let me office there. The next thing I knew I was living in San Diego and officing at KOGO doing a new format with Jack McCoy called the Radio Magazine which later evolved into the news talk they still do today.
I loved doing this format and just writing about it makes me want to do it again in today's radio world. The fun thing about this format was it was all features and you could run as many as you wanted, all you had to do was come up with a page name like The Sports Page, The News Page, The Music Page, The Funny Page, The Weather Page, The Contest Page Etc. Etc.Etc.
As the format was starting to get some traction in San Diego my consulting career exploded and I didn't have enough time left to dedicate to the project so we evolved it as I said to NEWS/TALK.
But when the format was in full swing we decided to hire a famous person as host of the morning edition of The Radio Magazine.
An actor by the name of Martin Milner who had starred in some big TV shows like Route 66 and One Adam 12 plus a bunch of movies happened to live in San Diego. I talked Martin into being our morning host explaining to him that all he had to do was introduce each magazine page as it came up.
This was all going to be very exciting and at the cocktail party where we introduced him to all the clients and media buyers they all just fawned over him so we had a tough time getting him out so he could rest up for his first show the next morning.
I'll never forget arriving early the next morning and being met by Martin who was in a panic saying nobody has his script. I assured him he didn't need a script all you have to do is say stuff like ... Now from the Traffic Page of The Radio Magazine here is so and so and you do that all morning plus throw in some of your own stuff during The Gossip Page.
Martin then turned to me and said, George I don't do anything without a script! Ahh is that why you Hollywood guys make millions and we radio guys make chump change.
I have worked for a lot of different types of radio owners during my career and none of them were cut from the same mold.
But four of them Joe Amaturo, Jim Hilliard, Ted Rogers and Gordon Zlot had a small thing in common with each other. They always seemed a little curious about what I thought about all kinds of different things.
There was no radio winner this year in The Radio Mercury Awards now if that doesn't say it all what does.
Jeff & Jer are so big in San Diego that they are actually changing some California Laws.
Have you ever noticed that all the YES MEN in the major markets don't have the power to say yes.
Has any great radio ever been created at a major market radio station.
One of the many things women have over men is, at least they don't have to waste a bunch of money on sex like we do.
McDonald's creates a new meal every once in a while just so they can get excited about saying McDonald's over and over again. I think radio should do the same.
My buddy from Transcona, Ermanno Barone is producing a new movie called Forever Plaid that is going to being shown in 500 theaters via a special simulcast on July 9th, the 20th anniversary of the conception of this off Broadway culture monster. And I foolishly thought my brother Reg and I were the biggest things to come out of Transcona.
Death makes life worth living.
A few years ago when I asked my youngest daughter Cami what had happened to my little girl. She replied, she went to pictures daddy.
Bill Gardner told me that he recently attended a VIP function in Las Vegas where Garth Brooks was featured. Garth said when he was a kid he told his Mom that when he grew up he was going to be a musician. She said ... Garth you can't do both!
As bad as radio is right now I think the worst is ahead of us.
Most Born Agains seem to come from a very very dark place.
There are very few sales people left in radio. The folks who call on agencies should all have some kind of accounting title.
My Father was on his own and earning a living when he was fourteen. As smart as all my kids are, I cant imagine them doing the same.
When I worked for Fairbanks Broadcasting I was home based at WIBC Indianapolis which was one of the greatest sounding radio stations I ever was associated with.
One of the many reasons for that great sound was the quality of the commercial content. We coded every commercial with an "A" for great sounding, "B" for good sounding, and "C" for OK.
When the station got close to being sold out we started pulling the "C" commercials and started replacing them with "A" s.
In real busy months we even started even replacing the "B"s with "A"s
The programming people loved being sold out because we sounded a lot better.
Last week I had a meeting with Tom Watson in LA and like all meetings between radio people we got around to some radio war stories.
I told Tom that I have always considered programming a radio station like trying to do a symphony. I love the way the music soars and flows in a symphony and have tried to get many radio stations to do the same.
One of the many road blocks in achieving this sound is the the unpredictable sound of the commercials and the fact that the sales department want the commercials to be an island.
There is no island in a symphony.
Of the two Johns Boys my brother Reg by far is the better business man, what with him being President and CEO of his own company M2O which has his special loyalty products on over 500 radio stations World Wide.
But, and I'm just guessing, I think he finds business work as distasteful as I do.
My old running partner David Wolfe dwolfe@wolfemedia.com was bragging to me the other day that he is NTR ing it big time popping $100,000 dollar bids on stations in LA, Las Vegas, Kansas, Chicago etc. The trick he says is, he's figured out how to make the client and the station rise in the Google listings.
© 2008-2009 George Johns
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