Questions with Tom

We get to talk to the President of Programing Tom Poleman about all things music and radio life! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
What would you talk about on your on your podcast,
firm Elvis represent fifteen minute morning show. Who's starting this?
I just want to be the one that jeffers looking

(00:27):
over here though it's the fifteen minute your podcast, and
then now you're suing you started. It's a fifteen minute
morning show, stolid right from scary, snatched it, go for it.
I don't have anything to say. We gotta introduce everybody, right, Oh,
everybody's here, smiling. Danielle Hi, Danielle Monaro. We have garrets.

(00:48):
This is like it being like going mountain, uh, jumping
out of an airplane without a parachute. We're just like, oh,
let's just do it every day. We didn't check. We
didn't check if we have a parachute. We didn't even
check for topics if we had. It's all we don't.
We have Froggy on the screen, we have some people,
we have Scary right there. And then Deanna, do you
ever turn the camera around so that people can see you?

(01:10):
Can I say something? Take a video of take a
shot of Nate in the other room trying to purposely
avoid doing the fifteen minute morning show right so, right now,
this is doing some production. So Elvis is busy in
the room, and Scott he's recordings fell a Ship because
he thinks he's pretending he's trying to be busy on

(01:31):
my phone to do like why does Nate have to hand?
Not even still reading that. I would go in there.
And Tom, Tom Pulman just walked in. He's about to
walk into one of these one of these rooms. He
always comes in during the fifte minute morning show. Then
someone says something inappropriate and he leaves because we need

(01:53):
them join us. Let me see. They just texted me.
He can't, He wrote, I can't leave because Elvis is
is reading commercials Phillips ship. You can. You can come
out very quiet, Okay, sit down, we need an extra body. Okay,

(02:13):
we don't have enough. We're talking about we don't know yet.
Just Tom would leave this okay, but nobody say anything.
But don't anybody say anything inappropriate because then Tom, we'll
get up and leave. Yeah. Tom, We had the runner
of how long you would be in the podcast for
before you be like, I gotta go. Guy, Well, I
don't know the Yankees one. No Yankees. It's a good

(02:37):
time to be a New York sports fan, right, How
are the joints five and one in the second place.
That's crazy to me. Well, also the Jets are in
second place, right right? Four and two. Well, we're just
we're just happy when the Jets win. Let's care about Tom.
How's your fantasy football team doing? How's what? How's your
fantasy football team? Five? Five and one? It is the

(02:57):
Waiver Warriors. Well are have two and then on the
Q and of four league across the hall, which I
don't even think anybody from Q and A four still playing.
Eric Well got disgusted and left. But I'm four and
two in that one. What's you do? You have a
fantasy out this year? Because I had too much going
on and I didn't do it this year either. No,

(03:19):
I didn't do it this year. I have the Westfield Diabetics.
Sounds like a party. My team name is shown me
them t D S. I used to be the mayor
of t D City. Tom. Could you take us through
a day in the life of being president of you know,
I heart rates of everything, my heart media because people

(03:41):
always ask, I mean people know you can you hear him?
He's not close? Okay, what do you have? Does anybody
even listen to this thing? You should know that. Wait, Ron,
you've been surprised. If we go less than fifteen minutes,
people get so upset you went twelve minutes, they get mad.
So people do listen. There are some days that this

(04:03):
show does better than the on demand show in its
entirety good because we can curse here. So this is
a safe space for you. You can say it's okay. Yeah,
one more of those and I'm gone. Yeah. So so
talk talk. Well, it's the overall strategy of all the

(04:26):
radio stations basically that I work on. It's a big job. Yeah,
started here at one and then kind of spread from there.
Now I heard this. This used to be your office. Yeah,
it did the studio. Yeah, we're sitting were sitting at
my desk. I am Yeah, I'm Tom Holman. Yeah, and
that was my conference room and that was my assistant

(04:46):
over where Scott he is. Yeah, yeah, you know it's great.
Scotty can't hear us. He thinks they're talking about right now.
So if you keep on looking at Scotty, he gets
really awkward. Yeah, because Elvis in a nicer studio. So
I was evicted. So now where is your office? Now? Well,
now I'm up at West where you're going to go, right,

(05:09):
But now so when you come here, you just kind
of wander. Oh, I'm over at the empty office at
key to you. Okay, I got some other questions. So
are you guys trying to force us out of this
building with the heat or what is going on? I
know it's hot, because by the way, at the other end,
it's freezing. I wish I think I would take this work. Actually,
I actually said I'm going to come to this office
and I'm wearing a sweater. You have that sweater off

(05:32):
by the end of this podcast, I get to because
right now it's sitting at seventy five in the studio. Look,
we pushed the Yeah, no, I thought it was the
other way around. I thought I thought we were freezing
people out. You're melting us over here, You're freezing people
out there, always like that. No, this is like this week.
This is new this week, and I have a complaint.
I'd like to lodge another one, another complaint. I went

(05:53):
to our engineers and I said, man, it's so hot.
And you know what, Jeff told me to stay out
of the studio. I'll be talking to Tom about it.
I love Jeff. Well, you guys have a nice studio uptown,
that's for sure. It's beautiful. I think it's bigger than this, Yeah,

(06:15):
definitely be Could you talk to us about some artists
that are on the ride to tell it's a big
week for music obviously, Taylor Swift is coming out. What
is today? Is tomorrow Friday to Tomorrow night? Yeah, and
it's nice to it's great, you know what I mean,

(06:36):
Like I heard a piece of it. Um, well, everything
she does is kind of good. Yeah. Well, and then uh,
there's new Rihanna on Friday to right the next week
next I think it's the next Friday. Is she making
studio visits asking for fun? I don't know. Maybe you've
got to convince she likes it warm though, so you
might have for Rihanna now. And then uh, Selena Gomez

(07:02):
has a really good new song with her documentary We
Love Her Like That. Oh my gosh, the preview of
that documentary made me cry. Yeah it so it looks
like it's gonna be so good. Well, I feel like
we've been with her her whole you know, childhood to adulthood,
and there's been times where when the mics were off,
she was so honest with us about how she was
feeling mentally and what she was going through and how
she was not trusting people. And I remember her saying that,

(07:24):
and she talks a lot about about all that stuff
in the documentary. Thomas has a lot of artists from
the very beginning when they become super famous. Who are
some of your favorites. Well, it's funny because we were
working on the artwork for the new building and I
saw so many really old pictures of Justin Timberlake, you know,
and to see him, I mean, he was a baby

(07:45):
when he first came up here, like six or seven,
when he used to wear the pantyhose. Oh yeah, and
the Beavers the same way. Beaver was a baby. Taylor Swift,
she was just a teenager. You know. Don't school closs
over the fact that you and Justin timber Lake could
have been a couple. You know, that was a long
time ago. I said, no, let's just move on. Well.

(08:08):
Rihanna was one to also remember she did the party
playing with us in St. Lucia and she was like sixteen. Yeah,
that was fun. Do you remember that party playing where
we charged all the drinks to one of the DJ's
rooms and then then it was the awkward conversation after room. Oh, Cobby, Oh,
I think I do remember that. Tom. Do you remember

(08:29):
the party playing where we went on Elvis's boating and
I left my passport back in the States and we
almost had a real problem. All I remember is spilling
a diet coke on Elvis's boat. So it's like the
brand new boat and I could see it like seeping
into all the cracks of the boat it was, and
I was like, this isn't I got more questions. Being
the president of programming sometimes during the course of your

(08:52):
day you have to have some difficult conversations. You have
any difficult conversations coming up today every day? What time
is it? Why on your schedule? To his office? He
just asked for the raise you're getting it like you're asking,
You're you're building up to that. How do you handle
how do you do how do you handle difficult times

(09:14):
at your job? I mean it's very stressful what you do?
I mean it is, but it's just another day at
the job, you know, kind of kind of keep focused
on the good things because there's a lot of We're
really lucky to have the jobs that we have. I mean,
let's just be honest. I mean, we can complain, but
we get to have fun of your time. Do you

(09:35):
feel is putting out fires as opposed to actively working
towards something else, because that's part of our job. It's
like something comes up and you've got to deal with
it real quick. Yeah. Well, the fires, I mean, the
fires are also like needs, you know what I mean,
Like a client comes and they say, oh, you know,
like I want to figure out a solution for X,
Y and Z, you know what I mean. So the urgency,

(09:56):
you know what I mean, jumping on stuff that's urgent.
I feel like that's like seventy at the time, But
I don't know, that's kind of what we signed up
for because like a guy like you, as important as
you are, the fact that you can just stop down
and take fifteen minutes of your time and chat with
us that would never happen in other businesses, right basically

(10:16):
the boss's boss. Yeah, it's like, well, this is the
stuff that I love, to be honest with you, and uh,
I love being around the studios and I never get
enough time of that, you know what I mean? So
I do enjoy this. Have you ever gotten like the
crazy request from a like from a jock, like they

(10:38):
wanted to do some crazy promotion or do something crazy
on the air, and you were just like, are you
out of your mind? Oh yeah, I mean that's that's
like at the time, that's what Nate was talking about.
Uh jeez, I mean I have to think about that.
I mean it was probably Elvis induced. But what about

(11:00):
when he gave away a car and then we had
to go find a car that So you share a
lot of moments with artists, Like what was the last
cool moment you had with an artist where you got
to break some news to them about something break some
Oh well, Jack's uh she she you know, as you know,
because she's a friend and she grew up listening to
this morning show. You know, she always wanted to play

(11:22):
jingle Ball. She actually said to me that, oh, oh
now I'm in trouble. Go ahead, artists ahead, and oh
so um what she said it was more important for
her to be on jingle Ball than it was to
win a Grammy, and that she had always dreamt of

(11:44):
that moment and she knew she was going to do
a lot of the jingle Ball shows, but she didn't
know she was going to be on stage at Madison
Square Garden, and so you know, I took the moment
while she was there with her parents and all that. Yeah. Yeah,
I gotta tell you, out of all the just we've
met of late Jack's is the story that is just
really a heart grabber. Yeah. No, she's fantastic. I mean,

(12:06):
she very self deprecating, you know what I mean, Like
she just she doesn't care, you know what I mean,
And she's just very innocent, and there's a there's that
parental connection as well. Her parents are so proud of
her parents are a fan of our show, our show,
I mean, we love Jack's. Yeah, great move to be
able to do what you did and say, by the way,

(12:27):
would you join us on the stage at Madison Square Garden.
You know that that's going to be something she's never
ever going to forget. Yeah. And then it was kind
of like when you got your full time job. It's
like Danielle like fell on the floor, literally fell on
the floor. Took me into his office and he's like,
we want to offer you a full time position on
air blah blah blah. And then and here's your contract

(12:48):
and he pushed it over to me and now you
have to remember I was making four five and hour
back in the day. That's what the minimum wage back
in you know, the early days. Anyway, I swear to gosh,
I got took up a dollar. I almost I fell.
I literally fell on the floor. I ran around his
office and he said it will be one of the

(13:10):
best memories he's ever had. It was amazing, ridiculous. Yeah,
here we are. How many years later? Years are you kidding? Damn? Wow,
it's crazy's been that long. Yeah, well, Jack's fell on
the floor. To right, People follow the floor, people who
touches you, Let's follow the floor. Right. The actually went

(13:38):
down on the floor down here. So hasn't been fourteen
and a half minutes yet? Can I go back to work?
I think we went over froggy, where are we? We're
thirteen and a half again, they're going to complain has
not walked out on our podcast? Did well? What we

(13:58):
never talked about his conversation to me. Oh, he also said,
if you said for one more time like curse once
and he almost walks, that's it. He's got it too

(14:19):
fun doing love Tom. I wanted to ask him about
the time when I got called in his office because
I said blow my wad on the air, really say
that on the air. I don't know if you remember,
but like in the in the nineties, we had a
show called it was the Chat Room or whatever. That's

(14:41):
when Scotty you can ask him now he's in the studio. Yeah,
I thought this was a safe room. I remember getting
called into Tom's office because we had the chat Room.
It was the It was when like A O. L
was first a big thing and the Internet was still
in its infancy, and I was a computer called sy
her Boy, and I would go in the air at

(15:01):
night and I would have this computer voice, and when
they wanted to kill him off, I went on the
air and like I blew my wad or something like that,
and Tom got pissed and called me into his office
the next day. But I'm I'm happy that I'm still
here and I live to tell about it. What was
your questions? I just I I just want to know
if he remembered that. Yeah, now he will. Yeah. The

(15:34):
Fifteen Minute Morning Show