August 20, 2024 • 20 mins
In early August, longtime radio personalities Stan & Haney announced that they will be retiring at the end of the month. The duo have enjoyed a decades-long run in Southwest Florida at WRXK – "96K-Rock" – the Fort Myers, Naples and Marco Island FM owned by Beasley Media Group.
What made Stan & Haney iconic in this region of the Sunshine State and what learning lessons do they have to share about the power of local radio? To find out we welcome Stan Nawalaniec to the InFOCUS Podcast, presented by dot.FM.
What made Stan & Haney iconic in this region of the Sunshine State and what learning lessons do they have to share about the power of local radio? To find out we welcome Stan Nawalaniec to the InFOCUS Podcast, presented by dot.FM.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is the RBR tvb R in Focus podcast. Here's
your host, Radio and Television Business Report Editor in chief
Adam R.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Jacobson. Well, hello again and welcome to the podcast, which
is presented by dot fm streaming social podcaster Broadcast get
a dot fm domainame by heading over to get dot
fm today. In early August, Longtime afternoon radio host Stan
and Haney announced that they will be retiring at the
end of the month. The DUA have enjoyed a decades
(00:34):
long run in Southwest Florida at wr x K, ninety
six K Rock, the Fort Myers, Naples and Marco Island FM,
owned by Beasley Media Group. What made Stan and Haney
a conic in this region of the Sunshine State and
what learning listens do they have to share about the
power of local radio. Well to find out, we welcome
Stan Nawlanic to the in Focus Podcast. Thanks so much for.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Being with us, Stan, no problem, Adam.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Well, I'm a first time interviewer and a longtime listener.
I remember tuning to ninety six K Rock on some
days before pirate radio stations and FM translators for a
tavoc on Southeast Florida, and I was able to actually
listen to you guys in mornings while driving around Broward County.
Oh sure, thirty years ago. Sure you were in mornings
(01:21):
for a very long time before going into afternoons. After
all of these years, Stan, what do you believe has
kept the show fresh and the bond so strong as
you head toward retirement, as teams like yours can come
and go over the years.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Well, that's a good question, Adam. I think that we
never really went whether it was in the morning or
in the afternoon, went with the approach that we were
doing a radio show. It was pretty much a chemistry
that Hanny and I had, and years ago I had
a program director who best described the show. And I
(02:01):
think when somebody says, what's your show like, it's almost
like if you're sitting in a diner and there's two
guys sitting at a table, Hanny and myself having a
conversation and other people are eaves dropping in, and then
they suddenly have an opinion and they just start joining
in or participating in the conversation. And we don't hold
(02:25):
true to any one topic. We'll do goofy things, political things,
things that might make you think a little bit historical things.
We're all over the place, almost like a seinfeld a
show about nothing.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
But how did the show come together? Did you have
previous radio experience? Were you working for Alphas and one
day decide to day, I want to be in radio.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Actually, Hanie and I and our original partner that we
worked with, Joe Scott. He passed away several years ago,
but we originally worked together. We go all the way
back to nineteen eighty seven when we were actually first
put together in Melbourne, Florida, and Joe and I, well,
(03:11):
Joe was the host of the show over there. I
was his news guy, and Haney was the overnight guy
that would do funny voices and participate in school lunch
menus and all that stuff before he went home. And
the management over there said, hold on a second, this
kind of sounds good and kind of works, and that's
(03:34):
where it started. And then of course they blew up
the radio station over there, changed formats, and we scattered.
Haney went to o'calla, and then Joe and I were
out of work for about ten months until we went
to the competitors here in Fort Myers and we just
(03:55):
had said from the moment we had got here, bring
us Marc Hani back. We can do this show.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
The final stand in Hani's show will air on Friday,
August thirtieth between two and six pm. And as we
had said earlier, you had been in mornings for years.
Is there a different approach to your show compared to
what you were doing in wake ups? Or is the
basic formula the same, which is the really is no formula.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
You're just two.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Guys talking about fun stuff and the mice happened to
be on.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah. Well that's a good question because the one thing
that I learned after doing so many years in mornings,
not even not only just here but in my career,
was the only thing that we did differently in the
afternoon is we didn't have to do time checks and
what your weather forecast will be like today. We were
(04:45):
of the belief that if you have a morning drive
time where you want to be entertained, why wouldn't you
on your way home want to be entertained too, And
so that was the approach that we had went from
mornings into afternoons, saying let's keep the same structure, which
(05:05):
has we've pointed out here in this interview was really
a very loose structure where we just interviewed people and
did bits and talked about what we wanted to talk about.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Now, let's look at Southwest Florida, which has grown tremendously
and evolved in myriad ways over the last thirty five years.
What has that meant for local radio and the competition
for that quote share of ear as Edison Research likes
to call it. I mean, how have you struck an arrow?
No pun intended at some of your competitors.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
I know what you mean, boy, I knew going in here.
When we started, it was often compared that there were
more radio signals in Southwest Florida than there were in Tampa.
And we had to battle with a lot of those
and a lot of people tried a lot of stations,
(05:58):
tried to put something against us that that failed one
way or the other, or they didn't have they didn't
stick to it long enough. I'm of the belief that
thanks to attrition, we've stuck around. We've become a habit
for a lot of people. But we also worked really,
(06:19):
really hard at it. And when we first came in here,
Fort Myers was its own market, and Naples Marco Island
was its own market, and then they combined them and
the market got bigger. The competition got bigger. Then you
started to get the syndicated shows coming in that we
were up against. And it's really this. I always like
(06:42):
to describe Fort Myers and Naples as still a small
town mentality, but they have grown incredibly. So you've got
a pretty big market here that has grown very quickly
over the last several decades.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Stan a good local radio show can obviously build trust
with advertisers while increasing awareness and ultimately to delivering them
the strong ROI that they want at a local radio.
Is there any advice you can give to those in
sales or in the executive leadership team as a longtime
host based on the fact that, look, we're maybe looking
(07:21):
for similar value from a team like yours, but just
haven't gotten the right recipe.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Well, I think you know this better than anybody, Adam.
Let's say in the last ten to fifteen years, how
the radio business has essentially changed, where people and owners
and the like are discovering a digital radio streaming podcast
(07:52):
such as Yourself and a whole lot that local radio
really has taken a hit. I mean I can remember
you had local people from twenty four to seven, you
had local people on the air in the studio all
night long and in the weekends as well. That's no
(08:15):
longer no longer the case, and I'm a believer that
a lot of companies are going to regret that, because
if you look at the hurricanes that come down to Florida,
I mean Ian just a few years ago, the Hawaiian Islands,
(08:37):
when they had the lava flows and the power going out, radio,
local radio was the only thing people had. That was it.
They didn't have computers, they didn't have cell phones, they
didn't have anything streaming. It was you had to go
to your radio dial and tune it in. And I
(09:00):
think the mentality here in twenty twenty four is that, well,
the future is all digital, and we want to get
as many clicks as we can, and it's kind of
put a back seat to local radio. And I'm of
the belief, and I know Hany is of the belief,
and there are people in this company that are of
(09:21):
the belief that you've got to have local radio and
that people want to have something that they can identify
with as their own instead of to put it, even
in a better sense, after Hurricane Ian came through here.
The other coast of Florida had a minor storm, but
they did lose power over there for a few days.
(09:44):
And if you listen to the local radio stations on
the other coast of Florida, you'd never even know that
there was a storm there because all the radio hosts
were piped in from other places in the country. They
weren't being informed by local radio here. And I credit
(10:04):
Beasley immensely for this. They realized nobody here had power
for two weeks and local radio was here providing And
to this day we still get thanks for being the
only source of information. That's how important local radio is.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
And at this point in the podcast, I have to
give a shout out to our very own ed Ryan,
the former editor in chief at Radio Inc. Who is
now working with his wife on Beach Talk radionews dot com,
which is a hyperlocal news source for Fort Myers Beach,
and they were there front and center during Hurricane Ian.
And again you have communities within communities, and I think
(10:47):
that demonstrates the power of localism in so many different
ways because what he's doing is so micro focused on
Fort Myers Beach, but you have a Shoe County almost
three county terrain, and that you're going from Port Charlotte
all the way down to Marco Island, and there's so
many unique communities in there. But you're able to tap
into each of these communities by still being local slash
(11:10):
regional in a lot of ways that a nationally syndicated
show cannot. But let's also note that you have a
nationally syndicated morning show on ninety six k Rock, but
it's certainly relevant and it fits the overall dynamic of
the marketplace and your audience. So that's not to say
that syndication is a bad thing. It's just how you
(11:31):
use that and how you've been able to work together
in Unison.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Right, if you know that our morning show, Dave and
Chuck the Freak, they are Beasley employees. They come down
to Southwest Florida quite often to meet their listeners down here.
I know they're also in Tampa, and they go to
Tampa to meet their audience. So Beasley has a unique thing.
(11:58):
While you have a syndicated morning show in David Chuck.
You also know that they come from the same company,
and the company wants to serve the affiliates that the
Beasley stations that they're on and they come down here
several times.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
I want to take a point in this podcast before
we wrap up, to talk a little bit about Hanny,
because we understand that a few years ago he suffered
a health challenge. Yeah, and for some teams that are
on the air every day, that could be a huge setback.
So I'm wondering if you could describe but what it
must have felt like and how this show was able
to continue, because it must have been difficult. There must
(12:39):
have been some challenging conversations, but you excelled in moving ahead.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah, that was probably one of the most difficult challenges
in both of our lives. In November of twenty two,
I had a heart attack and was off the air
(13:04):
and had five stents put into my heart, and Hanie
and I had talked and I said, you know what
I'm really thinking about. I got to slow down here,
and Hane said, I want to take a lot of
the day to day pressure off of you. I want
to handle this stuff. And he did. And little did
I know and anybody know that three months after my
(13:27):
heart attack, he had a debilitating stroke. And to be
perfectly honest with you, and I'll say this, I have
said it on the air. I didn't know that he
was going to make There was a moment in time
where I didn't think he was going to pull through
to this company's credit. And I always like to say
(13:49):
this on the air. He has challenges speaking and this company.
A year and a half has gone by. He hasn't
missed a page. And that's the loyalty of this company
to us and us to them. But he is getting
better and better each and every day with speech therapy
(14:10):
and all of that. But the fact of the matter is,
I said to the powers that be here, because it's
always kicked around, do we want to go and give
him a leave of absence? Do we want to go
and bring somebody else in stand that you can work with?
And I told him no, I said, let me hold
the fork down. And then when Hani came back, although
(14:34):
he is not as verbal as he once was, his
presence to our audience, his laughing, his agreeing to what
was going on, his tone that he will go just
by saying one or two words, makes the listener think, Okay,
he's there, he's with us. You guys have been doing
(14:57):
this for four decades. Everything is okay. And to be
perfectly honest as well. We have had some of our
best numbers in the last couple of years comparative to
stuff that we did all the way back into the nineties.
(15:17):
So the audience. The key, I guess I'm trying to
say is our audience is so loyal to us, and
we just keep going. And the thing is, I'll joke
around with him that he can't say a certain word,
and I'll look at him and go, what did you say?
You want to say it again? And we can laugh
at each other, knowing that something as catastrophic as that,
(15:41):
but we can still know that we can poke a
stick at each other and be ourselves.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Last question for you, what's kind of for ninety six
k Rock? Once you say farewell? And what's next for
you in retirement?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
I don't know about what what's next for k Rock
because after August thirtieth, that's their decision. I'm thinking of
standing Haney and what our future is, and I don't know.
I'm going to take some time off and contemplate whether
(16:19):
I want to do something like you do a podcast,
or do I want to go and work like on
the weekends. Do I want to do I don't know that.
I'm even maybe I want to work a part time
job in the summer at a pool, counting people when
they go in the water and be out of radio completely.
I don't know. But there's one thing in doing this
(16:43):
interview with you and talking to our listeners and how
this is really a monumental thing because it's not a
it's not a celebration. People keep going around and saying, Oh,
are we to throw a big party for you? Guys
are there, Let's go and do this. Let's go and
(17:04):
throw this party and have this gap. And it's like
anybody that has retired knows that this is what we've
done for our adult lives. I've been in radio for
forty two years. Hanni has two. We both started in
nineteen eighty two. This is what we've done. And while
(17:27):
it is time for us to step down, while we
realize after all of our health issues and the stress
that has been put on our bodies, that it's this
is the perfect time, it's still scary, it's it's still
a very melancholy thing. It's still the unknown. I mean,
(17:48):
we're walking away from something that we've done our entire lives,
and I don't know what is on the other side,
and so to celebrate that's am I excited and happy?
Well I'm excited, but I don't know what's what's going
to happen. I don't want to go and have a
big party throwne for us because that's not the way
(18:10):
we feel. I can you understand that. I guess I
kind of been dancing around with it. But anything that
you've changed, we hate change.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Well, I just have to say that it's a remarkable
experience to I'm sure be together for thirty three years, Stan,
and I know that it's certainly melancholy, but I am
probably not alone in saluting you for not only your
longevity together but your time at ninety six K Rock.
(18:44):
Because when you guys first started, I was listening to
stations like Q ninety six at Orlando, WDIC in Orlando,
Zeta four and WSHG and Miami four Lauderdale. We had
ninety seven A one A with Hermann and McBean, And
you know, those were moments of rock and roll stations
that are now part of the folklore of the past.
(19:06):
And here you are today at a radio station that
is still rocking and talking. And you know what you
may not want a salute, but you're going to get one,
and I'm going to be right there with you. So
it's been a pleasure having you as my guest, Stan,
and best of luck to you and whatever you decide
to do come August thirty first, Adam, thank.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
You very much and it's a pleasure speaking with you.
And again I can't I can't thank you enough, and
thank you for the interview. That's all. That's all I
can say. I don't know what else to say. I
don't take compliments.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Well, well with that, we're just going to move on
then say thank you, Stan, thank you. Thank heney On
behalf of us will that we want to thank you
the listener for tuning into this Radio and Television Business
Report and focused podcast which was sponsored by dot fm streaming,
social podcast or broadcast. Get a dot fm domain name
(20:01):
by heading over to get dot fm today. From the
global headquarters of Streamline Publishing in Boca Raton, Florida, on
the other coast of the Sunshine State, this is Adamar
Jacobson On behalf of the team at Radio Ink and
the Radio and Television Business Report. We'll see you next time.
Have a great day.
This is the RBR tvb R in Focus podcast. Here's
your host, Radio and Television Business Report Editor in chief
Adam R.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Jacobson. Well, hello again and welcome to the podcast, which
is presented by dot fm streaming social podcaster Broadcast get
a dot fm domainame by heading over to get dot
fm today. In early August, Longtime afternoon radio host Stan
and Haney announced that they will be retiring at the
end of the month. The DUA have enjoyed a decades
(00:34):
long run in Southwest Florida at wr x K, ninety
six K Rock, the Fort Myers, Naples and Marco Island FM,
owned by Beasley Media Group. What made Stan and Haney
a conic in this region of the Sunshine State and
what learning listens do they have to share about the
power of local radio. Well to find out, we welcome
Stan Nawlanic to the in Focus Podcast. Thanks so much for.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Being with us, Stan, no problem, Adam.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Well, I'm a first time interviewer and a longtime listener.
I remember tuning to ninety six K Rock on some
days before pirate radio stations and FM translators for a
tavoc on Southeast Florida, and I was able to actually
listen to you guys in mornings while driving around Broward County.
Oh sure, thirty years ago. Sure you were in mornings
(01:21):
for a very long time before going into afternoons. After
all of these years, Stan, what do you believe has
kept the show fresh and the bond so strong as
you head toward retirement, as teams like yours can come
and go over the years.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Well, that's a good question, Adam. I think that we
never really went whether it was in the morning or
in the afternoon, went with the approach that we were
doing a radio show. It was pretty much a chemistry
that Hanny and I had, and years ago I had
a program director who best described the show. And I
(02:01):
think when somebody says, what's your show like, it's almost
like if you're sitting in a diner and there's two
guys sitting at a table, Hanny and myself having a
conversation and other people are eaves dropping in, and then
they suddenly have an opinion and they just start joining
in or participating in the conversation. And we don't hold
(02:25):
true to any one topic. We'll do goofy things, political things,
things that might make you think a little bit historical things.
We're all over the place, almost like a seinfeld a
show about nothing.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
But how did the show come together? Did you have
previous radio experience? Were you working for Alphas and one
day decide to day, I want to be in radio.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Actually, Hanie and I and our original partner that we
worked with, Joe Scott. He passed away several years ago,
but we originally worked together. We go all the way
back to nineteen eighty seven when we were actually first
put together in Melbourne, Florida, and Joe and I, well,
(03:11):
Joe was the host of the show over there. I
was his news guy, and Haney was the overnight guy
that would do funny voices and participate in school lunch
menus and all that stuff before he went home. And
the management over there said, hold on a second, this
kind of sounds good and kind of works, and that's
(03:34):
where it started. And then of course they blew up
the radio station over there, changed formats, and we scattered.
Haney went to o'calla, and then Joe and I were
out of work for about ten months until we went
to the competitors here in Fort Myers and we just
(03:55):
had said from the moment we had got here, bring
us Marc Hani back. We can do this show.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
The final stand in Hani's show will air on Friday,
August thirtieth between two and six pm. And as we
had said earlier, you had been in mornings for years.
Is there a different approach to your show compared to
what you were doing in wake ups? Or is the
basic formula the same, which is the really is no formula.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
You're just two.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Guys talking about fun stuff and the mice happened to
be on.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah. Well that's a good question because the one thing
that I learned after doing so many years in mornings,
not even not only just here but in my career,
was the only thing that we did differently in the
afternoon is we didn't have to do time checks and
what your weather forecast will be like today. We were
(04:45):
of the belief that if you have a morning drive
time where you want to be entertained, why wouldn't you
on your way home want to be entertained too, And
so that was the approach that we had went from
mornings into afternoons, saying let's keep the same structure, which
(05:05):
has we've pointed out here in this interview was really
a very loose structure where we just interviewed people and
did bits and talked about what we wanted to talk about.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Now, let's look at Southwest Florida, which has grown tremendously
and evolved in myriad ways over the last thirty five years.
What has that meant for local radio and the competition
for that quote share of ear as Edison Research likes
to call it. I mean, how have you struck an arrow?
No pun intended at some of your competitors.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
I know what you mean, boy, I knew going in here.
When we started, it was often compared that there were
more radio signals in Southwest Florida than there were in Tampa.
And we had to battle with a lot of those
and a lot of people tried a lot of stations,
(05:58):
tried to put something against us that that failed one
way or the other, or they didn't have they didn't
stick to it long enough. I'm of the belief that
thanks to attrition, we've stuck around. We've become a habit
for a lot of people. But we also worked really,
(06:19):
really hard at it. And when we first came in here,
Fort Myers was its own market, and Naples Marco Island
was its own market, and then they combined them and
the market got bigger. The competition got bigger. Then you
started to get the syndicated shows coming in that we
were up against. And it's really this. I always like
(06:42):
to describe Fort Myers and Naples as still a small
town mentality, but they have grown incredibly. So you've got
a pretty big market here that has grown very quickly
over the last several decades.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Stan a good local radio show can obviously build trust
with advertisers while increasing awareness and ultimately to delivering them
the strong ROI that they want at a local radio.
Is there any advice you can give to those in
sales or in the executive leadership team as a longtime
host based on the fact that, look, we're maybe looking
(07:21):
for similar value from a team like yours, but just
haven't gotten the right recipe.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Well, I think you know this better than anybody, Adam.
Let's say in the last ten to fifteen years, how
the radio business has essentially changed, where people and owners
and the like are discovering a digital radio streaming podcast
(07:52):
such as Yourself and a whole lot that local radio
really has taken a hit. I mean I can remember
you had local people from twenty four to seven, you
had local people on the air in the studio all
night long and in the weekends as well. That's no
(08:15):
longer no longer the case, and I'm a believer that
a lot of companies are going to regret that, because
if you look at the hurricanes that come down to Florida,
I mean Ian just a few years ago, the Hawaiian Islands,
(08:37):
when they had the lava flows and the power going out, radio,
local radio was the only thing people had. That was it.
They didn't have computers, they didn't have cell phones, they
didn't have anything streaming. It was you had to go
to your radio dial and tune it in. And I
(09:00):
think the mentality here in twenty twenty four is that, well,
the future is all digital, and we want to get
as many clicks as we can, and it's kind of
put a back seat to local radio. And I'm of
the belief, and I know Hany is of the belief,
and there are people in this company that are of
(09:21):
the belief that you've got to have local radio and
that people want to have something that they can identify
with as their own instead of to put it, even
in a better sense, after Hurricane Ian came through here.
The other coast of Florida had a minor storm, but
they did lose power over there for a few days.
(09:44):
And if you listen to the local radio stations on
the other coast of Florida, you'd never even know that
there was a storm there because all the radio hosts
were piped in from other places in the country. They
weren't being informed by local radio here. And I credit
(10:04):
Beasley immensely for this. They realized nobody here had power
for two weeks and local radio was here providing And
to this day we still get thanks for being the
only source of information. That's how important local radio is.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
And at this point in the podcast, I have to
give a shout out to our very own ed Ryan,
the former editor in chief at Radio Inc. Who is
now working with his wife on Beach Talk radionews dot com,
which is a hyperlocal news source for Fort Myers Beach,
and they were there front and center during Hurricane Ian.
And again you have communities within communities, and I think
(10:47):
that demonstrates the power of localism in so many different
ways because what he's doing is so micro focused on
Fort Myers Beach, but you have a Shoe County almost
three county terrain, and that you're going from Port Charlotte
all the way down to Marco Island, and there's so
many unique communities in there. But you're able to tap
into each of these communities by still being local slash
(11:10):
regional in a lot of ways that a nationally syndicated
show cannot. But let's also note that you have a
nationally syndicated morning show on ninety six k Rock, but
it's certainly relevant and it fits the overall dynamic of
the marketplace and your audience. So that's not to say
that syndication is a bad thing. It's just how you
(11:31):
use that and how you've been able to work together
in Unison.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Right, if you know that our morning show, Dave and
Chuck the Freak, they are Beasley employees. They come down
to Southwest Florida quite often to meet their listeners down here.
I know they're also in Tampa, and they go to
Tampa to meet their audience. So Beasley has a unique thing.
(11:58):
While you have a syndicated morning show in David Chuck.
You also know that they come from the same company,
and the company wants to serve the affiliates that the
Beasley stations that they're on and they come down here
several times.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
I want to take a point in this podcast before
we wrap up, to talk a little bit about Hanny,
because we understand that a few years ago he suffered
a health challenge. Yeah, and for some teams that are
on the air every day, that could be a huge setback.
So I'm wondering if you could describe but what it
must have felt like and how this show was able
to continue, because it must have been difficult. There must
(12:39):
have been some challenging conversations, but you excelled in moving ahead.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah, that was probably one of the most difficult challenges
in both of our lives. In November of twenty two,
I had a heart attack and was off the air
(13:04):
and had five stents put into my heart, and Hanie
and I had talked and I said, you know what
I'm really thinking about. I got to slow down here,
and Hane said, I want to take a lot of
the day to day pressure off of you. I want
to handle this stuff. And he did. And little did
I know and anybody know that three months after my
(13:27):
heart attack, he had a debilitating stroke. And to be
perfectly honest with you, and I'll say this, I have
said it on the air. I didn't know that he
was going to make There was a moment in time
where I didn't think he was going to pull through
to this company's credit. And I always like to say
(13:49):
this on the air. He has challenges speaking and this company.
A year and a half has gone by. He hasn't
missed a page. And that's the loyalty of this company
to us and us to them. But he is getting
better and better each and every day with speech therapy
(14:10):
and all of that. But the fact of the matter is,
I said to the powers that be here, because it's
always kicked around, do we want to go and give
him a leave of absence? Do we want to go
and bring somebody else in stand that you can work with?
And I told him no, I said, let me hold
the fork down. And then when Hani came back, although
(14:34):
he is not as verbal as he once was, his
presence to our audience, his laughing, his agreeing to what
was going on, his tone that he will go just
by saying one or two words, makes the listener think, Okay,
he's there, he's with us. You guys have been doing
(14:57):
this for four decades. Everything is okay. And to be
perfectly honest as well. We have had some of our
best numbers in the last couple of years comparative to
stuff that we did all the way back into the nineties.
(15:17):
So the audience. The key, I guess I'm trying to
say is our audience is so loyal to us, and
we just keep going. And the thing is, I'll joke
around with him that he can't say a certain word,
and I'll look at him and go, what did you say?
You want to say it again? And we can laugh
at each other, knowing that something as catastrophic as that,
(15:41):
but we can still know that we can poke a
stick at each other and be ourselves.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Last question for you, what's kind of for ninety six
k Rock? Once you say farewell? And what's next for
you in retirement?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
I don't know about what what's next for k Rock
because after August thirtieth, that's their decision. I'm thinking of
standing Haney and what our future is, and I don't know.
I'm going to take some time off and contemplate whether
(16:19):
I want to do something like you do a podcast,
or do I want to go and work like on
the weekends. Do I want to do I don't know that.
I'm even maybe I want to work a part time
job in the summer at a pool, counting people when
they go in the water and be out of radio completely.
I don't know. But there's one thing in doing this
(16:43):
interview with you and talking to our listeners and how
this is really a monumental thing because it's not a
it's not a celebration. People keep going around and saying, Oh,
are we to throw a big party for you? Guys
are there, Let's go and do this. Let's go and
(17:04):
throw this party and have this gap. And it's like
anybody that has retired knows that this is what we've
done for our adult lives. I've been in radio for
forty two years. Hanni has two. We both started in
nineteen eighty two. This is what we've done. And while
(17:27):
it is time for us to step down, while we
realize after all of our health issues and the stress
that has been put on our bodies, that it's this
is the perfect time, it's still scary, it's it's still
a very melancholy thing. It's still the unknown. I mean,
(17:48):
we're walking away from something that we've done our entire lives,
and I don't know what is on the other side,
and so to celebrate that's am I excited and happy?
Well I'm excited, but I don't know what's what's going
to happen. I don't want to go and have a
big party throwne for us because that's not the way
(18:10):
we feel. I can you understand that. I guess I
kind of been dancing around with it. But anything that
you've changed, we hate change.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Well, I just have to say that it's a remarkable
experience to I'm sure be together for thirty three years, Stan,
and I know that it's certainly melancholy, but I am
probably not alone in saluting you for not only your
longevity together but your time at ninety six K Rock.
(18:44):
Because when you guys first started, I was listening to
stations like Q ninety six at Orlando, WDIC in Orlando,
Zeta four and WSHG and Miami four Lauderdale. We had
ninety seven A one A with Hermann and McBean, And
you know, those were moments of rock and roll stations
that are now part of the folklore of the past.
(19:06):
And here you are today at a radio station that
is still rocking and talking. And you know what you
may not want a salute, but you're going to get one,
and I'm going to be right there with you. So
it's been a pleasure having you as my guest, Stan,
and best of luck to you and whatever you decide
to do come August thirty first, Adam, thank.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
You very much and it's a pleasure speaking with you.
And again I can't I can't thank you enough, and
thank you for the interview. That's all. That's all I
can say. I don't know what else to say. I
don't take compliments.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Well, well with that, we're just going to move on
then say thank you, Stan, thank you. Thank heney On
behalf of us will that we want to thank you
the listener for tuning into this Radio and Television Business
Report and focused podcast which was sponsored by dot fm streaming,
social podcast or broadcast. Get a dot fm domain name
(20:01):
by heading over to get dot fm today. From the
global headquarters of Streamline Publishing in Boca Raton, Florida, on
the other coast of the Sunshine State, this is Adamar
Jacobson On behalf of the team at Radio Ink and
the Radio and Television Business Report. We'll see you next time.
Have a great day.
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