Radio and Podcasting: Evolving Media Landscapes with Lou Pate (Episode 400)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What I wanted to do to celebrate four hundred episodes
and roughly over eight years of doing this program. I
want to go and introduce my next guests who's actually
had me on his various enclays into radio himself. And
you might know we've had some of those episodes inserted
right here on the Broadcasters podcast. So yeah, here we go.
I'm going to give the proper introduction for my guests.

(00:21):
He's a season radio broadcaster known for his talk show
The Lupey Show and lou payn Uncensored, which was in
podcast form, airing on various platforms including Fox News, Talking WBT,
and Charlotte. A career spanning decades, he has hosted overnight
in daytime programs such as The Overnight Reality Check, engaging
audiences with discussions on politics, social issues, and current events.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
He's a journeyman in the radio industry.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Listen wit These The Filling fill In and Radio Significant
Time at Cairo AM in Seattle, where he was a
top rated host before leaving in two thousand and six,
and known for his dynamic presence, ability to connect with
listeners and also not being able to stop him from
talking if you try to get on the phone because
he has a lot to say. He has stilled then
for prompt a hostite Michael Savage and the Savage Nation.

(01:02):
We're deep understanding of radios evolving landscape and traditional broadcasting
to the rise of podcasting because he's been in both.
Lou Pay, thanks for being on the Broadcasters podcast. We've
been looking for this for a while.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Now, Yah, yeah, a long time, and it's it's an
honor to be here for your four hundredth episode. It's congratulations.
I'm glad to finally now be on the other end
with you. But I appreciate that introduction. I thought you
were just gonna say, lou Pay talk show hosts. But
I'll try and I'll try and live up to that.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
I'm gonna, I feel like to say, for as long
as I have doing this show for you, I should
give you a proper introduction.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
That's what goes to listen. I appreciate the hype. I
feel like arch Manning, but no, he's overhyped. I'm that that. Actually,
you just gave a brief history our arch Manning's overhyped.
But that's that's for the sports Talk podcast. We'll save
that but later.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Exactly now, we are going to talk about the transition
from radio to podcasting, because I've always wanted to have
this conversation with you for a while now and now
we're going to finally table.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
And do that.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
But it wouldn't be a program where you're on or
that you've had me on one of your programs without
a little bit of the debate entertainment. And so if
you were to tell me, hey, Lou, you know you're
gonna say, you know what we need you go? Can
you come on to the WPHT or WCCC or wherever
you're gonna be on the air ad you. I would
always come up with some topics. A topic will bring

(02:16):
up to you right now, which is, you know, smacked
up in the middle of the fall of twenty twenty
five genes, all about genes because right now I don't
know what's going on, But like every major genes manufacturer
out there, American, Eagle, Gap, Lucky Brand, levi As, they
have all come out with ads, marketing campaigns for gens. Okay,

(02:39):
let's just make this one thing clear. All the women
are very attractive, beautiful, Dela great in jeans. But of
course politics, we can't get away from the fact that
politics has to be added or inserted to everything. So
while I'm watching on my x feed right now, the
latest thing is after Sydney Sweeney put out her ad
for American Eagle. You know she has great genes and

(03:00):
let's go into the time out of this because I
also pulled this back up real quick. It's all started
back was a July twenty second was when she got
her campaign going. And then just recently, just last week,
the K pop group Cats Eye put out their campaign
for Gap called betteran denim the Killy's Milkshake song I

(03:20):
bring the boys of the Yard and I'm like, It's
better than yours. All that kind of stuff, A great
choreographed kind of deal that got brought in last week.
Addison Ray, who's a big TikTok influencer also singing her
own bell, has her own ultra low rice flair jeans
from Lucky Brand that got pushed out last week as well.
And earlier this month, beyonescely put out a new denim

(03:41):
cowboy campaign for Levi's. She had a campaign I think
last year for Levi's before during her cowboy carter campaign,
and now she's back out there again. Hey, look, I
just think it's all great looking.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Women wearing jeans. But I don't know, we're.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Politics into this, but like I kind of figure you've
been following along with this, Loui, Sidney Sweeney now and
the new Cat's Eye campaign. So KATSI a very universal
listen to. Every girl's gorgeous in their own right, but
also just it is inclusive and diverse. That was the
idea of it, and you know.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
People are trying to pick sides on it. What do
you think, Well, it comes back to everything old is
new again. This what they're doing now, what we're experiencing
now to the you know, the people in high school,
college into their early twenties, this is all new. Sydney Sweeney,
you know her her breasts poking out of denim, and
you know Beyonce following suit and the others you had

(04:35):
mentioned as well. You know, nothing beats the original, which
if you go back and do a quick Google search,
will show political controversy of the sexual nature behind Brookshields
where the quote nothing gets between me and Mike Calvins,
which she was only like sixteen years old. That was
a million years ago. But the point is that was controversy.

(04:56):
You know, political of the sexual kind, but Calvin Klein
was the master of that back in the late seventies,
throughout the eighties and into the nineties. He even had
on the mail side a long haired and I like
the long haired mail model type. But there was a
guy by the name of Attila, and it was like,
what do you mean. You know, usually they're using the

(05:18):
the Dolph Lungern, high cheek bones that this was a
very handsome man, but long hair. His name was Attila
and he did Calvin Klein at So Calvin Klein mastered
this forty fifty years ago, so we're basically revisiting it
now and it was more controversial, but then because it
was new. Now this is kind of I know it.

(05:41):
I hate.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
It feels a trial where it's like, okay, now we
have to go pick. There's gonna be people to be
picking sides. And you can tell there's a bias between
some of the people that are going online commenting about
this when I want to be in the middle and say,
you know what, look at these gorgeous women and jeans.
If that means more women are gonna be buying jeans
by the truckload, God bless them.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
I do it. That's all I most like. I agree
with you, George. Like most controversy today, this feels contrived.
It is contrived. There is no real controversy anymore. Everybody
is thrown in front of marketing groups. They talk about
it in conference rooms. Let's do this, let's do that.
To say that like Sydney Sweeney has good genes, somehow

(06:20):
is racist, it's really it's like most controversies today, it's
a stretch. If you have to think about it, there's
no controversy there. So then everybody jumps on the bandwagon.
And let's face it, in twenty twenty five, if you're
going down the racist bandwagon, you've really you've got no
bullets in your gun because that's been done a billion times.

(06:41):
It's been beaten to death, mostly when there's not racism involved.
And then true victims of racism, you know, meet their
own peril because the media doesn't cover it. But it's
much ado about nothing. If I could quote Shakespeare, it's
a it's an old controversy, it's a fake controversy. Everybody
knows Sidney Sweeney, everybody knows American Eagle are not racist

(07:02):
in their brands. They're just trying to sell stuff. And
now they when he's with.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
A completely different route in twenty nineteen, going for someone
that might have been more of a different person of
color or a different body shape as well. So they
were definitely pushing body positivity, they were pushing person of color,
they were going for diverse and inclusiveness at that time,
they're just going to a different route. But they also
know listen, it's a year long setup for these kind

(07:26):
of campaigns. This is not overnight. You're not gonna just
get Sidney Sween all of a sudden you just say okay,
coming to do this campaign. It has to be structured,
it has to be negotiated. Same thing with k with
the Kat's Eye group to come into HISS. It all
took time for all these brands to come into play,
and they planned it for the fall, which is the
one time you want to go ahead and start selling geans,
especially that time of year. That's all being planned and

(07:47):
this was probably done well beforehand. So now you're the
point where it was a part where Sidney Sweeney's campaign
came out first before all the other ones.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
And as you said, this is planned long ago and
about a year ago is when you know, Sidney Sweeney
really hit the scene and became white hot with her
production company and a slew of successful movies and the
successful TV show that she's in was a euphoria. I
believe it's called and So she was super hot a
year ago, a year a year later, she's even hotter,

(08:18):
both looking and you know, as a marketing brand. So
they they went with her. You go with what's hot,
you go, what's going to appeal to your target market,
your demographic. Look right now T mobiles using Zoe's el
downa why because they want to appeal to the Hispanic market.
She's of Dominican descent. Plus she speaks fluent Spanish, so
she's doing ads in both English and Spanish. It's you go,

(08:42):
she's hot right now because of a slew of movies,
her oscar to first Dominicans. Yeah, the Lioness, she was
the boss lady in that from Washington, d C. I
forget the title, but it's you know, she's hot right
now and they're going for a market that she appeals to.
Sidney Sweeney's hot and they're going for market she appeals to.
That's it's all about selling stuff. And you'll tell you what,

(09:04):
there's no such thing as bad publicity. The more controversy,
the more you're gonna sell. So, you know, good for
American Eagle and good for all the other brands. But
run back to somewhat of a conventional culture.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
Okay, we're not we're not going for the you know,
like just check all the boxes on things like when
I look at right after COVID Victoria's Secret and seeing, okay,
there was one add up they had up there for
women in underwear, and it was like, here's one woman
that's older, one woman that's of color, one woman that's heavier,
one person that's this.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
It was like six different women. Embrace your bodies. Now
we see.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
Like, oh, here's the collegiate kind of feel to it.
And as all these young, skinny, beautiful women and the
kind of woman that other women would go ahead look
up to it. And Myers said, I want to have
a body like that. I want to look good at
Victoria's Secret underwear like that too. We're back to beauty
is what beauty is to the beholder, to everybody around there,
what the universally considered conventional beauty is. Right now, I

(09:56):
think we're back to that and I'll take it one
step further.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah, we'll go We're back to sex cells. Yeah, it's simple,
beautiful women with large breasts skim scantily clad sex cells.
Victoria's secret is back to using models that give teenage
girls eating disorders. Were wearing.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
But we're getting closer to that, which is a good thing.
But I think I call it retro. But it's coming right.
But the other thing they don't talk about as well
is that, Okay, all these other Genes companies, they knew
what the other marketing campaigns were being done. I'm sure
there was somebody finding out in the know. So Sidney
Sweeney's campaign comes out first, of course, the rage comes in,
and then all the other ones fall up after that.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
It was a well time plot for all of this.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
Okay, now you've got the the the polarizing view of
Sidney Sweeney out there in jeans that got it was
rage bait. We all know what was done like that,
and you can see there's certain things that are out
there being marketed now just for that purpose, because you
know there's a certain audience that will get triggered by it.
They'll do it and then all of a sudden, here
we go everybody else follow suit and say Okay, we're
gonna now sell because jeans are in the thing right there.

(11:02):
It didn't take much time for them to launch, but
they took the right timing for it. All those are
the ones I got to give a lot of credit.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
To and George at the risk of being redundant. As
I said, there's no such thing as bad publicity, and
I have my my bachelor's in marketing. How I got
into media, I still don't know, but we'll figure it
out one day, maybe the next life. But don't be
so surprised if the controversy wasn't planted by the public
relations people behind American media. Because it's a gift. So

(11:31):
if no one's going to give you the gift, why
not create it yourself. I'm not saying they did it,
but if it came out later that they planted the
controversy of Sidney Sweeney has great jeans, Oh my god,
that's racist. It's a gift. It's a gift to us,
So don't look a gift horse in the mouth. So
if it's if it was natural and people were actually offended,
or it's the usual suspects, skinny white girls who are

(11:54):
liberal from Manhattan with big clunky glasses. If it's the usual,
you know, fair a fine. But if they planted it,
fine too. Whatever sells. That's all they're trying to do
is make money and sell product. Yeah, like everybody else.
So I wanted to get that out there.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
But now we're gonna get into our plan a certain
topic and where you're just you know, I always had
to go into a tangent.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
First. Wait one second, is well I got to you
know me, I always drag you down the rabbit hole.
In no disrespect to Calvin Klein, because I give him
credit for a lot of the advertising and how it's
done today from what he did, you know, decades ago.
Is is he still alive? I don't even know, and
I don't mean that in a disrespectful way. Is Calvin
Clin still with us?

Speaker 1 (12:32):
But you know, the other person always think about when
think about Vin Klein is Mark Wahlberg because when he
was the market mark character, he also got himself put
up in a big you know, yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
He was all jacked up and he had ripped abs
and they had to edit out his third nipple. Do
you remember that? That was the big controversy evidently Mark
Wahlberg has a third nipple and they had to edit
it out of his Markie Mark and the Funky Bunch
underwear ad.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
You know, I know he doesn't like to go and
play up that part of his career, but listen, A
Good Vibration Show was the number one song. Okay, can
never take that away from him, and it's a great thing.
It never took away from his career. Listen, he goes
Intoes Fear with Reees Witherspoon and he launches a career
that has been going on.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Forever and he's been doing it. Calvin eighty two years old.
Eighty two years old, God bless he. You know, before
I got into media, I worked in construction in Manhattan
and on Central Park West and sixty fifth Street. We
did Calvin Klein's apartment. Oh, it was very interesting to
be up in and it was an occupied space. We were
doing it in phases, so he was living there. I

(13:34):
never got to meet him, but he was met Halston
and all of that. I've told you that. We'll talk
about that another show. But I never got to meet
Calvin Klein. But it was interesting to be in his home,
as in Trump's home.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
She met him outside you know, where you're doing construction,
and not in one of the uh and not as
one of the bus boys at such studio before being picked,
you know, as one of the guys to go into
the VIP suite.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
Okay, I was in Calvin Klein's house when you know,
the shower was still wet from when he showered that morning.
But I never met him. It's just kind of weird,
just saying fifty four stories about the guys in the
sat in shorts. You know, Oh, so, who's gonna get
to be with Holston or Truem Capodi or you know,
or Eddy Warhol. There were pictures. There were pictures. Although

(14:15):
Calvin Klein is a you know, known gay guy, homosexual,
there were pictures of topless women in certain areas of
the home that were not visible everywhere. Some people said
that was his daughter, but I was never able to
confirm that, not not like underage. I'm grown, you know,
legal age and all of that. But I was never

(14:35):
able to confirm.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
This was the seventies, early years ago, a mired view
of like what.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
It was, it was it was it was later His
ad campaigns began in the late seventies come on, George,
I'm not that old. Look at me now, But go on.
I'm sorry, I don't want to. I'll let you add
of the rabbit hole. Oh yeah, we'll get back out
of the rabbit hole house.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
So first of all, okay, radio once to what year
was it exactly that you started into anything that was radio,
got yourself into a radio station studio.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
Ksdo San Diego screening phone calls for former Mayor Roger Hedgecock.
I had moved to San Diego from New York, drove
cross country with everything I owned, which included two pairs
of cowboy boots, and was going wanted to get a
start in rock radio because I'm stockpiled but useless information.
I could talk forever about the old what's now called

(15:28):
classic rock, and couldn't get a job in rock radio.
Couldn't get a job in any music radio, although I
was well versed in a few different formats. And I
saw this ad for a phone screener, and I really
wasn't big into talk radio at the time, and I
answered it. They called me up, George, four dollars and

(15:49):
fifty cents an hour. I jumped at it. Oh I bet,
but can you told me what year that was, like,
was early May, that was nineteen it was it was
below minimum wage. I'm gonna have to call the California
Board of Labor there on that one. But it was
I had come from working construction. I was making great
money construction of Manhattan. I was working, and then I

(16:09):
went to four dollars and fifty cents an hour, and
I was so happy, couldn't believe it. I was the
happiest guy in town at nineteen ninety four, okay it was.
And I was screening phone calls for Roger Hedgecock and
listening to Roger Hedgecock love him or hate him. I
fell in love with it, with the genre of talk radio,
and I said, I want to be the guy on
the other side of the glass. So, you know, long

(16:31):
story short, phone screening assistant, producer, producer. Finally made my
way to the other side of the glass. So and
I still always wanted to do like my little itch is,
like you know, Johnny Depp always wanted to be a
rock star, even though he's a super successful actor. I
always had that itch that I still wanted to do,
you know, music radio because it's fun. Now one of

(16:52):
the things that was going on.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
Was that talk radio is just starting to get really prominent.
I mean, yeah, of course we had it throughout the eighties.
It was a transition out. And the one thing is
when it comes to rock music, by that point we
were already the transition into grunge and to alternative. So
you're run in the mill album oriented rock, the rock
that we would have all remembered, you know, classic rock
up unto the current day. That was all changing by

(17:13):
that point.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
And also people stopped putting out Yeah, people stop putting
out good albums, is what happened. I know, really, people
stopped putting out good albums at that point. I don't
all of all of these monsters of rock, super talented people,
no disrespect intended, but you know they hit the nineties,
theyld Jim, Nirvana, sound Garden. You know, they were new.

(17:35):
The whole grunge out of Seattle thing was a new sound.
More like, it took a.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
While for us to go and appreciate the music because
it was still rock at the end of the day.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
It's just that I think that.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
Culture shock changed just because we're coming from Seattle and
that whole field of like they're not they're not the
big hair bands. They're not like the classically the guitar,
so you would see out there like a Lenner skinner
or lead lamp or something like that. It was just
it was a different It was an arena rock. It
wasn't the you know, it wasn't anything like that. It
was just something that was much more grungey, a little
much more of a different vibe. But after a while

(18:07):
we realized, you know what, it's really rock.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
At the end of the day.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
But it was just changing and the certain type of
people that they needed to be on the radio for
that they needed to find somebody, I guess, you know,
because even then, by that point, music was already starting
to change, because we were already starting to get into
everybody buying up stations. And the thing was, that's the
part where.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Well the Telcom Bill of ninety six hit.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
Right, and but the thing was, right before all that
came up to the play like you already had stations starting
to be bought up anyway, because the caps of ownership
started changing already. And so by that point, yeah, Bud
PAXs is start going to make his way and he's
starting to go and buy up one hundreds and hundred
of stations that would be sold the Clear channel after that,
and Randy, they just started changing anyway, and you know,

(18:50):
there wasn't much. The local aspect was getting swept away
from us more and more by that point we got
in the radio, sure yourself and.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
For me, but just one one more point. But is
that you said, it's still rock and roll. It's the
Billy Joelsong, next wave, new wave dance craze anyways, still
rock and roll to me, some name stuck, Punk didn't.
Sting didn't stick. Excuse me, and you know, grunge for
some reason, that name stuck. But it's all a new

(19:18):
wave you know, that was around for a while and
that kind of went away. But it was all just
you know, it's all the same thing. It's still rock.
It's all rock and roll. It's all music though.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
But you know, you when it comes to radio, is
that when I listen to music from other parts of
the world, when I think about the UK and the
kind of culture that's over there and the music that
would go in and appreciate and enjoy. Punk rock was
very well accepted, you know, Disco was very well accepted.
It's like an America here was always.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
I think if the.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
Corporations that own the media, they're only going to allow
something else that's outside of the mainstream to linger for
a little bit, but it will not stay forever.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
And that's what they always do. Well, America tends to musically,
America tends to ride the heels of other nations. For instance,
an American from Seattle, Jimmy Hendrix, we all know them,
we all heard of him. He had to go to
England to hit it big. He couldn't make it big here,
so his manager took him to England. He hit it

(20:14):
big in England, and next thing you know, who's this
great guitar impresario. Jimmy Hendrix, always from Seattle. He's been
kicking around for years. He had to go to England
to get noticed. That's just the way it is.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
Well, think about it. What Blondie was the same way,
The Pretenders were, the same way, the Ramones were the
same way, because they all had to go and find
they were bones somewhere else to get noticed, and then
they come back and then become something big. And then
also like if they go to Japan or something like that,
just another country and just sometimes you wait to go
and find your way to America. It's always like America
that's where you need to end up to become totally successful.

(20:46):
But it's like there's always this part about going from
somewhere else because there's more creativity, more chance to flourish
and shine. But America only gives you so much of
a window, and it's very limited. And I think that's
where radio has always been at. Where you know, if
you could have been around during the free form radio
of the sixties and seventies, it's like, say, if you
had WNW and you wouldn't have gone in the construction

(21:08):
where you obviously did very well, but imagine if you
would have gotten out of high school, went right.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Enough to enough. I did well enough to save enough
money to survive doing the four dollars and fifty cent
an hour radio dase early on.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
But it was also that was the timing. The calling
wasn't there yet. But if you could have been at
that time, I think you could got in the radio,
but you would have struggled your way through because radio
is a cruel mistress that way.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
But I wasn't. I wasn't old enough because any W
launched WNW New York rock radio Scott Muni May Rest
in Peace, and so many other great names. They came
about nineteen sixty seven. I believe that launched. And that's
when a lot of these creative forces, your led Zeppelins,
your Black Sabbaths, the Doors and Tommy with the Who

(21:51):
and How all of that became a thing. One album
rock put well, I'm talking about seven to eleven minute songs.
They would play the whole thing, and other bands that
have that's eighteen minutes, right. But anyway, you mentioned that
the loss of localization. If I can get myself back
on track, the loss of localization for radio, talk radio,

(22:14):
music radio has all been done. It's it's really the
beginning of the end. And even though it started to
happen like thirty years ago, and it all it was
all happening, George, because of greed. Greed where people said, oh,
we can have a station out of New York and
do the whole East coast. We can have a station

(22:34):
out of La or San Francisco and do the whole
West coast, and you know, make this this the rock
station in San Francisco. It's the same exact personalities, the
same everything, except we have to change the news and
weather as La as San Diego, as Phoenix, and they
tried that. That was to eliminate jobs in order to

(22:55):
increase profits, and it didn't work. It devastated the radio
industry all over. They did the same thing with syndication. Now,
God bless people, you know, Limba and others who had
monster syndication. May he rest in peace too, monster syndication deal.
God bless them. They made a fortune. That's what capitalism
is all about. I'm not against that, but the thing

(23:17):
is that it killed local markets, it killed local radios,
and most importantly, George, it killed the bench. And what
I mean by the bench, I know you know what
I mean, But for those listening to your broadcasters podcast,
the four hundred episode, I might add there's no farm team.
There's no minor league team to use a baseball reference

(23:39):
to make it up to the bigs. No one's in training,
No one's cutting their teeth in a smaller media market
and then making it to a larger market, and then
making it to a major market then possibly being sit
in the No. No one's doing that anymore because there's
no place for anybody to go and jobs are very limited.
And that's where my head peeve comes in of you know,

(24:02):
nepotism and cronyism, which is across whether you're an accountant
or a janitorial service, nepotism and cronyism comes into play.
But when you narrow down the number of jobs to
almost none, it really comes into play. And the product
suffers when people who are not talented, not qualified, or
at the most mediocre at best are the ones getting

(24:24):
the jobs. And we see a lot of that, and
it's unfortunate, but that's just the radio world that we
live in now. You know.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
One of the things I think about is that radio
people that were radio people that really cared about the
medium itself, they never took themselves to the mindset of
becoming management or becoming the business. Because I think that's
one of the mistakes that radio didn't correct itself on,
is that you have all these people that are outside
of the radio business that really weren'ten interested in radio,

(24:53):
that you just sawt as a medium to make money
off of the monetize.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
And that's why we're now.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
Inundated with all these companies of people that never really
cared about radio in the first place. They might have
had an interest in it. But you know, when I
think about the people that are in radio now that
might be in a higher stages of management, I always
bring up Bob Pittman. Hey, he did come from radio, yes,
but and no, I've gotten as I've grown more to
like listen to him and hear things. I think of

(25:19):
the fact that, you know what, we just didn't have
the people that were in radio that were Okay, become
the program director, go find yourself, be entrepreneur and realize, hey,
the radio industry needs to have people that can actually
be in charge, have control of the books and say,
you know what, if you're going to be an owner
of a radio station or a radio station company, that
you should still have a radio mindset to it. But

(25:39):
we don't have any of that. And that's what's really
ruined the industry, which is why podcasting is going to flourish,
because radio never held on to itself because they didn't
have the right people in charge to keep it the
way it was.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
You're making me think back to Mitt Romany during his
run for presidency was a twenty twelve and bane Cap
you know, Baying Capital, for which he was a major
player in, was a major player in buying up radio
stations and leading to you know, the demise of radio.
That there's a combination of so many things that have

(26:13):
hurt radio. Radio is its own worst enemy at the
beginning of the day. Mismanagement, poor management, you know.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
Before you get the bang capital Thomas Stachley Partners, which
I can talk about that it still comes down to
what Clear Channel, Okay, bud packs and buying all these stations,
and you know, he got lucky found somebody going to
be a buyer.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
Lowry Mays and the.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
Mains family, they're initially the ones that decided to take
up all these This guy was a car dealer before
all this. And then he picks up w Ai and
San Antonio and says, okay, I'm going to take up
all these stations, and then he got himself to the debt.
The thing is, no one ever cares to take care
of the debt that someone else left over. And that's
where private equity can can just come right in and
they get hold on to the debt for as long

(26:54):
as they want, and they can stretch it out for
as long as they want.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
And that was the beginning of the decimation of the newsrooms.
I think newsrooms are the heart of any radio station,
whether it be news, talk or music. The newsroom is
the pulse. When you know, you've had news personalities on
music shows that became big names. You have news personalities
on news talk shows that might sound redundant, but it's

(27:18):
not because they're different than the host when the anchor
comes into the room. I worked with the great Bruce
Anderson at WABC. Taught me a lot of lessons, and
you know, he was his own entity. He was the
news guy in the morning at WABC. It was during
the years of Lionel being the morning man. They're another
great host actually back at WABC now doing overnights. Yes,

(27:42):
I mean gonna prop up that week line up there
at WABC. He's going a huge addition there. We come on. Look, look,
look at the fund of a story there.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
Because WABC is no longer owned by all argentity. They're
now owned John Catserpatitis, who owns the Grassities supermarket Empire.
So he's small operator but has an affinity for radio.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
So at least I got to listen. John Katsimatitas, I
remember his name from when I worked construction. Grocery owner,
self made billionaire, Greek guy came from nothing, and I
tipped my hat to him. Although he's had a few
of the wrong people whispering in his ear, hire my son,
hire my nephew. That's just the way it is. But
he is trying to make WABC and so far very

(28:25):
successfully because they're they're doing great numbers and they're doing
great revenue. What radio used to be prior to the
aforementioned you know, consolidation and syndication and things. He's got
all local hosts on there, so to his credit, he
is I think he's more than he's more than a
businessman who has an interest in radio. I think John

(28:47):
Katsimotide says, if I'm pronouncing his name to say the
cat Man, as he's known. I think he truly has
a passion and a love for radio again, and he
just has to stop listening to powerful people who want
their relatives on the air. This is my opinion. No, yes,
I wish there were more people out there who would

(29:09):
put their money to good use and make radio what
it should be like he does right now.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
I remember, and I told you about this when I
first got the interview, although they couldn't do it. Was
when I spoke with Michael Harrison Talkers Magazine, who worked
on WAW and worked in radio records. It was the
manage to getitor there for a long time, and I
remember talking to him about when it comes to radio
and how podcasting is to get away from radio. One

(29:36):
of the things is that there's a couple of things
that podcasting gets right, and that's where I want to
get into now. Is the freedom of content, the creative
idea of what choices, what.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
Topics we can talk about.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
That's wonderful and I love the fact that we have
so many different more topics that get talked about all
the time. Hopefully you just want to make sure you
have somebody that's going to talk about whatever these topics are,
be well read informed, have the education, hopefully the expertise
on it.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
But the other thing one is.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
That the structure of radio allowed for people to go
ahead and consume it easily. We don't have that now,
and that's the part where I think podcasting is missing
its part. They've got to have a little bit of structure,
and you know, you got to just be cognizant of
the amount of time that you have for your listeners.
So when my program is on here. I all ow
an hour. I don't think anybody's going to listen to

(30:25):
more than an hour of me talking about it. They might,
but I want to make sure the most audience is
going to be consuming it. And also for the fact
that you know, we all cared about the measurement time
spent listening right TSL, Well, what was it.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
Used to be TSL AQH average quarter hour? Wrecked? So
and they don't go now.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
Metrics that should be considered in podcasting. The metrics we
have today in podcasts don't even think about that. I mean,
it's the wild West right now. I love I love
streaming and I love podcasts.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
It is the future and the technology is only getting better.
It's very exciting. As you know, you do multiple podcasts.
You're a pioneer in the podcast movement. Was it been
now nineteen years, twenty years? You've been doing pot.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
Now year thirty one years in media altogether. So college
radio did ninety four the Super Bowl Sunday in nineteen
ninety four, and then moved on into the area of a.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
And then and then got into podcasting two thousand and five.

Speaker 1 (31:20):
Now, I want to bring up to this point here
that when I talked to Michael Harrison, and I bring
up the transcript where I talked about this where when
there are shows out there, I remember bringing up Coast
to coast, they am with them because okay, you got
a couple of breaks in between, but really twenty five
minutes segments, two of them an hour, and then you
get this long edge of time for people to go
and get into a really good topic and you have

(31:42):
enough time and that time to really get through a
whole lot of to cover a lot of ground. And
at that time Michael talked about you know that any
conversation about the arts comes down to the balance between
form and content, the stick and the stick and the
stick of the performance, framing things, describing things, giving something structure,
a blueprint, a plan. Otherwise, when you do free form

(32:03):
for its own sake, the medium exists for the people
participating in it.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
Not for the audience.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
And once a medium exists, we get to play whatever
we want. We get to express ourselves. And that's where
it comes down to. It's like there is form and
structure and then the freedom of doing things. Where do
you land on that? Knowing that you've been and also
you've dulled into both and the podcasting for a while,
but radio is still at the end of the day, that.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
Is where you do your most work. Yeah. Well I
did have the podcast Loopaid uncensored, ID the deal with
the Spotify and we can get into that later. But this,
you know, just was during the Biden administration and they
shut me down for taking part in quote unquote conspiratorial
content end quote, because I basically said that the January

(32:49):
sixth ers were political prisoners. And more importantly, they had
a problem with saying the vaccine didn't work. So they
didn't shut down the podcast, they demonetize it, which has
happened to a lot of eight podcasters out there. And
I could have, you know, sold out and moved on
and kept doing it and abided by the draconian rules,
but I just decided to walk away from it, maybe
revisited another day. But to Michael Harrison's point, yes, but

(33:14):
it's about it's about you have to be entertaining at
the end of the day. Whether you're terrestrial radio, you're
a podcast, whether you're serious, you have to be entertaining.
It's all about entertaining people. Whether you're funny, whether you're morose.
You could be morose and still be entertaining. It's a
it's about entertaining, That's what it's about. What's appealing about

(33:34):
podcasts is the convenience of it. You don't have to
have your your radio set for six am for a
certain morning host. You don't have to have your it's
set for noon for a certain afternoon host or after.
You don't have to be in your car leave run
out of work at a certain time to catch the
last hour of some you know, wanna be morning Zoo
in the afternoon. You don't have to do that. It's

(33:56):
all at our fingertips. You just listen on your phone
at any time. You could not be able to sleep
in the middle of the night and pull up a
show from a month ago if you wanted to hear
it again. The convenience of podcasting, the freedom that you
mentioned with podcasts, which is limited like anything else. But
now that Biden's out of office, it's it's probably opening

(34:17):
up since they're getting the corruption out of the FCC
as much as they possibly can. I want to give
you a couple of things on this. Number One is
the content, all right.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
So when you're looking at when you were doing podcasting,
One of the things you told me about was that
it is feel the same as doing a radio show
because the way you get your feedback is so much different,
and the formatics is just feel like you're kind of
talking to yourself.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
I mean, you're always used to doing a one on
one conversing, verbal body verbal masturbation. I used to call
it verbal masturbation, sitting in a room talking to myself. Right.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
And so there's a part where for some people that
are in radio that trying to make that transition to podcasting.
You know, radio never really got to figure it out
in terms from a corpus sense. First of all, they thought,
we can just repurpose our content on the morning show
or whatever we're doing, and we can just reapply it. Oh,
we'll leave the traffic breaks, we'll leave the weather stuff
in there. And they'll just think, oh, we don't have
to cut all this stuff out. People will just go

(35:11):
back and listen to it, and we'll get clicks, we'll
get downloads. And then he realized, no, that doesn't work.
And now you got to realize it. You got to
do some original programming. So you're not going to pay
extra to the talent to go and do it. They're saying, no,
we need to do another podcast on top of that. Okay,
come on, Kevin, you got to do Kevin's other show.
So Kevin of Kevin and Virginia fame over in WRMF
working there. Yeah, so hey the KVJ Show if you

(35:34):
might hear it now, which I think is a little
bit syndicated well locally. But the thing is, you know,
they have to require more things of the contract already
has so if they ask him to do something else,
it's not something extra he's getting for it. He's just
being asked. He's required. They got to have a podcast presence.
So in that part for those that and it's not geting,
that's a barrier to entry for some people that are

(35:55):
in radio to be able to make that transition is
because what do you tell people the you know, if
they are looking to go and do it, but they
want to see where radio has done it right? What's
missing about the feedback part, the part about race participation
that radio used to give but podcasting doesn't.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
I don't want, I don't want to dump on radio
too much. But radio has always been late to the
whatever the latest technological party it is. You know, like
if you go to any radio station now, they have
their podcast, but is it really a podcast. No, it's
just a replay of that day show. Very few have
separate podcasts that they do. When I was over at

(36:36):
Fox News Radio for five years, they were just starting
their podcast division, and they would have say, you know,
just to grab a name from the sky. You know,
Bill Hammer was doing a podcast. Well that had absolutely
nothing to do. It wasn't like a rebroadcast of the
news show that he did earlier in the day. He
would do a podcast, and so and so and so
on and so forth down the list of names there.

(36:59):
But so many radio stations now, both music and talk,
their podcasts are just replays of that day show. That's
not a podcast. That's a replay of a radio show.
And then you get to the gray area of you know,
what's the difference between a podcast and a radio show.
But anyway, I digress back to the original point.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
I want to take a point from that because there's
also the point where certain people that want to host
a podcast, you know, you couldn't get them to do
a radio show because they wouldn't be good at it.
And the thing is, there are just certain people Okay,
you're gonna give a podcast to somebody based on name recognition.
Like for you know, a good part of the twenty
tens when podcasts are gonna start to make its way,
you have a lot of people that are hosts, or

(37:40):
you have like a major celebrity or whoever famous person,
but they have company that with somebody else that's the
producer or someone else has to kind of.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
Because you're a Whoopee Goldberg or because you're a socially somebody,
you know, I think about the head to have somebody
that shit Chevy chase. All of them because they're big
a list names doesn't mean they can do a radio show.
None of these people prep. None of these people, you know,
bring content such as audio and video to it. They
think that they just have to show up because I'm Shock,
I'm Whoopee, I'm Chevy actually.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
Fits in that too, because he's one of the first
ones that became popular and became famous for them where
he was the most famous person to become and starting
a podcasting very early on.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
But for him it's the same thing. He had a
lot of money behind him. Nothing against Corolla, but he
had a lot of money behind him. He failed when
they don't you know, he dumped him in there to
take over for Stern that hailed scape Goes for howardster leading, right,
so they dumped him in there. They dumb David Lee Roth,
David Rod should have never been there. At least Corolla
had some chops and could do it. But then he fails,

(38:42):
and then all of a sudden he starts this podcast.
He's got like ten people around him. But when you
talk about the celebrities, you they put them in a
studio and then they hire someone like for Whoopee, they
hired Paul Kubby Bryant, and who's good friends with Tom Polman,
and which is how he got a lot of his jobs,
taking no talent away from Kubby. He's a good guy
and a good talent. Hunt had worked a lot of

(39:03):
New York for many years, so there's you have to
know he had to know the right people to get
those jobs. Tom Pulman was the one. I'm not criticizing
him for that. That's just the way it is. I
wish I had a Tom Polman. But the point is
is that these you take a talented guy like Kubby
Bryant and put him in with whoopee, because Kubby's going
to carry the show. Whoopy's there for name recognition only,

(39:26):
and that's the only thing she brings to the table.
And so he's her crutch and he is her. He
was her whole. It only lasted a year that I
think she got tired of getting up every morning and
having to go to work.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
Beau film it for podcast hosts. I mean, that's part
of the freedom of it is great, but I think
there should be another part where like, Okay, if you're
gonna have you know, various shows are going to be
out there that you have celebrities kind of basing it
on themselves. But then again they need to have like
an entourage to even do it.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
Celebrities always think they just have to show up. That's
the problem with celebrity. Yeah, and but work for it.
But I get what you're saying that the beauty of
a podcast is that your neighbor can start one the
next day and be super successful. There is no structure.
Though I was doing a show on a now defunct
network which was streaming. They had a vision. Their vision

(40:19):
long term was good. Their vision short term on what
the content should be was terrible. So today's news. TNT
Radio went out of business, but I was doing shows
on there, and they were getting a lot of influencers,
a lot of podcasters, people who had high numbers, a
lot of downloads, lots of followers to their credit, but
they didn't know how to do a radio show. And

(40:41):
I remember I came on, I filled in for a
first I wasn't appearing as a guest, and I started
filling in, and I remember one host saying to me,
I handed off to his show, and he said, that's
very great show. That was very professional. That's exactly the
way he said it. And you know, I've listened to
a lot of great podcasts. I'm enjoying it. I'm listening

(41:04):
to this woman, this man. I'm going you guys are great.
What's your name? They never say their name. It's like,
I want to know who you are. What's the name
of this podcast? Okay, I can look on the screen
and see it, but that's not the point. The point
is they have to They don't idead, they don't go
through the mechanics. There's no mechanics. And maybe that's a
little old school, but I think when you're listening to someone,

(41:25):
you like to know who it is. You know, if
you're listening to the Dateline con Dateline podcast, we all
know Keith Morrison's voice, but you like it when he
says I'm Keith Morrison. You just want to hear the
person say their name because that's part of it. So
in you know, just turning on a microphone because you've
got you know, two million followers on Twitter and five

(41:48):
million followers on Facebook and six million on TikTok doesn't
mean you know what you're doing and they just start
talking and I don't know who you are a lot
of people do, but you know it's there. Needs to
be more structure, but not too much. Start with the
basic mechanics and I think you got a great deal there.
But I think the fun part about podcasting is it

(42:10):
is the future. As I've said a few times, the
technology is only going to get better and anybody can
do it. You don't have to listen to any program director, George.
We've all sat across a DESKM program directors who have
never done a minute on the air telling you how
to improve your show. They don't have to sit through
that the way we had to do it, and some
people still have to do it. But it's the wild West.

(42:34):
Podcast right now is in its golden era. We'll call it.
In twenty years, they'll call it the golden era. It's
the wild West. And there's something very refreshing about that,
because as much as I love radio, it's gotten stale,
and it's gotten predictable, and it's gotten too corporately controlled,
is a good way to say it. I mean, I

(42:55):
know a lot of friends of mine who are program
directors on the music and talks, and they don't have
much of a say in their station. I know, you're
not supposed to say the quiet part out loud, but
they're basically babysitting stations and scheduling board ops and other
things around the station. I would say they were ordering
ordering supplies for the news room, but no one works

(43:17):
in the newsroom anymore, so there's nothing to even oversee that.
There's no more news directors, very few. So it's kind
of a sad time. Corporate needs to give radio back
to the radio people because radios, you know, kind of
in hospice. When you compare it to the youth that
listens to and the youth that's putting out content on podcasts.

(43:39):
Podcasts are so refreshing and they're different, and you could
just pick you want to talk about this, ABC, XYZ
and everything in between. You go pick your favorite genre.
Whether it's some type of sports, whether it's true crime,
whether it's gardening, it doesn't matter, and you just go
find it and you can listen to it rather than Gee,

(44:01):
I hope my favorite radio personality can make me laugh
today while talking about something that I'm interested in. It's
a dying genre. It's it's kind of dead, I hate
to say, as I still work in it right now.
I think about the fact that.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
With radio, I wish that we would have certain people
like you said that were they still have the kind
of mind stuff for radio that they can understand what
radio house posts to sound and how they can try
to teach and console and help develop talent. We don't
have a talent development department and podcasting or radio. So
the thing is some of the things that radio could

(44:37):
have been doing to help, you know, ease the any
declines you've had because technology, just like every other medium,
has been in decline because what's happening. But I always
will say, at the end of the day, I told
the Michael Harrison that radio doesn't have to be in
full decline. There there's things that can happen right now,
And then I'm gonna get back to my point.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
That it should say, it doesn't have to do it.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
Can radio can be working together in lockstep because right
now music needs the royalties has but the music would
be giving back to radio to do the right thing
with the talent and with the music they have out there,
to go create new music discovery, which is where radio
is supposed to be meant to be for the most
and for most not all.

Speaker 2 (45:12):
These stations will just play the same stuff over and over.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
If you want to have older music, older catalogs, let
people stream it at their own leisure. We don't have
to have a radio station that has to play older catalogs.
But if it's for new music, let's get the new
music out there, get it up in front and center.
Let's get the talent upfront and center, let them play live,
let them be heard, and find a way to go
ahead and discover new music. That's what radio should be
doing here, and that would be the purpose of it.

(45:37):
But the other part is that we don't have anybody
developing talent right now. That's what I do for a living, Okay,
I have to find people that are basically raw, might
be good public speakers, might be CEOs of whatever companies.
I'd have to mold them into talent. And I've done
a pretty good job of doing that. But it's not easy.
It is a long task. But nobody's willing to go
and take the time or have the patience to go

(45:58):
and do it.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
Need to make a living, you know, it's you have
to pay your bills, and everything now is so expensive
that you can't You can't start at the bottom and
work your way up. Like when I when I was
screening phone calls overnight at WABC from ten pm to
six am, I was also doing a split shift doing
airborne traffic reports for Metro Traffic in New York. I

(46:23):
didn't sleep for two years. Basically I was I was
cross eyed most of the time. But in order to well,
I wanted to live alone. So in order to have
my own little tiny apartment, I had to work those
two jobs in New York to make that work. That
that's not even something that people can do nowadays because
everything is so super expensive and wages, especially in media,

(46:46):
unless you know the big names, it's uh, you know,
ground ground level stuff, a board operators and if there's
even phone screeners left, what are they making you make
more working at the wahlaw. So what do you do it?
They're not going to put in the time.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
We grew up on, you know, seeing radio presented in
a way that was fun and imaginative and quirky. It
was very kind of campy as well. You think about
the movie FM, you think about the big care pieces,
and now do you think about I think on news
radio in the most recent, uh a more current example,
and I think about the fact that you know, we
had or even Fraser, I would even put that example

(47:23):
to where you just kind of had fun. You had
the people that were out there, You had contests, you
had interactions, you had these quirky, you know, off the
wall type personalities. There was a camaraderie remote.

Speaker 2 (47:35):
And remote broadcast, right they don't have had no remote here.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
It was amazing. That was what made radio special. But podcasts,
he's never picked up done on that either. Now, well,
here's the thing.

Speaker 2 (47:47):
There's there's dare I say, too many podcasts out there.
Everybody's echo it's an echo chamber. Most people are doing
the same thing. Talk radio to the terrestrial radio side
is kind of similar. Everybody gets it's their content from
the same place. If you're conservative, you get it from
Fox News. If you're you know, and if you just
want to see what the other side's doing, you got
MSNBC and CNN. No one is breaking stories. Let me

(48:11):
give you an example. I was trained by by some
of the best, okay, and it didn't feel like I
was learning. That's why I knew I learned a lot.
I mentioned the aforementioned Bruce Anderson. Ron Mitchell, who was
producer for Lionel at that time is now a big
executive with Fox News. He was the producer there. He
taught me a ton of stuff. Out in San Diego,

(48:32):
I worked with the you know, I said, Roger Hedgecock.
And is Mary Aila out there now? Who's the program director?
Chris Olinger who was basically a mentor to me. She's
no longer, she's now retired. Some some of the greatest
minds in radio, mostly female, I'll tell you, George, which
is rare because they've been kept down at our business.
Have you know, taught me some of the you know,

(48:54):
the greatest lessons and how to do great radio? And
I applied. Look, just recently, I was on KCM, I
hosted the morning show k CMO in Kansas City. I
hosted mid days on WBAP in Dallas, and then I
hosted a midday show at WPHT in Philadelphia. Not syndicated.

(49:16):
Three different markets, three different personalities, three different shows. So
you have to prepare for those three different markets. You
can't just do the national stories of the day. Trump
said this, and you know, so on and so forth.
It's boring, it's predictable. Everybody's saying the same thing. So like,
for instance, just a quick example, Ron Mitchell had taught me.

(49:37):
You know, you read a news story, you find a
principle in the story, and you try to get them
on the air. And I still apply that to today
because it's brilliant. The case actually had to do the
story had to do with domestic violence, and I found
the name in the story. It was an organization in
town in San Diego, which kept it local. I called them,
took a few phone calls. Who was on vacation anyway,

(49:58):
some juggling, scheduling, negotiating, coordinating, and I got this great
guest on who works at this domestic violence place in
Kansas City, and it applied directly to the story, which
was a local story. So here you have a principle
in a story talking about what people can relate to
who are listening locally. And I've done that, did En

(50:21):
Dallas did it in Philadelphia numerous times. But that's gone. Now.
What a lot of people do now is just have
their friends on. If you look at talk radio, if
you look at the you know, cable TV news, who
are these people? They're friends of the producer, they're friends
of the hosts, or it's the same. You look at
News Nation, it's the same guests over and over and

(50:44):
over again on every show, multiple times a day. It's like, okay,
no one's you know, you shouldn't really be watching it
for twelve hours. But the point is nothing's different. Everything's
the same. If you watch Fox News or CNN, they
cover the same stories for twelve hours in a row,
and a lot of times they have the same guests
talk radios the same way. They're not. They just have

(51:06):
somebody on who has an opinion about the story, instead
of doing the legwork that a producer should do and
bring a principle from the story on and the guy
I was hosting Mornings for a while with Kim Kerrigan
at WRKO Boston, and there was a big story out
of the Southwest. I think it was the Rio Grande

(51:28):
or Nogala, has something to do with immigration border crossing,
and I made a few phone calls locally to the
border patrol agents down there, and I was managed to
get one of the heads of that you know, will
help precinct or whatever they call it, and he came
on the show in Boston. So now I have someone
directly involved in the story talking about the story, and

(51:49):
I personally think that's better. I think that resonates with
people instead of just oh, here's NYPD retired detective tell
us how you would handle this. It's just another guy's opinion.
And I think radio's lost their way on that where
producers just I know many producers friends of mine, sorry
to say who just am not sorry that my friends,

(52:12):
but that they do this. They have a rotation of
the same guests over and over and over again just
to fill time. And these people, nice people, some of
them are better guests than others, have absolutely nothing to
do with nor do they have any expertise on anything
that they're talking about and I think I think the
content suffers there.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
There's one way to be filling time and what you
do just to go and fill whatever content you're trying
to do. But I think it comes down to this,
and I want to bring up one more thing after this,
but this is one area I want to go wrap
things up with. Is that we before technology became so
convenient first for night. Now we can find any podcasts
on anything we want. Okay, the access is incredible, the

(52:57):
quality is incredible, but we were accustomed to the time
where something was so good. If you had to listen
to on a scratchy FM or AM radio station, you
had to go ahead and you know, move the antenna
or go to some spot, go up to a hill
or whatever you had to go and do catch something. Okay,
if I was running with something on TV, I remember
when Morton Downey was on and Howard Spire would be

(53:19):
on eleven thirty at nine, I'd have to put on
the b dzl KL thirty nine of Miami, which is
sixty miles from my house, and the antenna is not
gonna be that.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
Good, but I would work for hours to try to.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
Get that signal just to a certain point just enough
for I can well watch it, or if I want
to hear a station from out of town, and I
wanted to go and tune into it all the days
when I would have out right the Hipopa shield right,
you'd hold that thought.

Speaker 2 (53:42):
Hold that thought, George, hold that thought. I guess got
it just before Morton Downey when he was at Channel
nine WR in New York. I was working on the
construction within that building I was in there forever met
Morton Downey Junior. Nice guy, great guy. Dozens and dozens
of times. I sat in on his show dozens and dozens,

(54:03):
maybe over one hundred times, because I would just stay
when work was over. I would just stay sitting on
the studio because I had access, and you know, they
taped in the afternoon. Sometimes they did it live. A
lot of times they did it live, actually, and it
was pretty interesting to be able to see how the

(54:24):
sausage was made behind the scenes because I had that access.
And he was just just a great regular guy who
loved doing what he was doing. No ego, and a
lot of fun. It looked like the staff was always
having fun. I never heard anybody complain, and I talked
to many of them on numerous occasions. But I just
wanted to let let you know that part.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
You know, and there's something to be said about just
as a great example where ww or TV nine in
New York, in the Sweden's and Counguston Jersey and to
the point where that station got so popular, it did
get syndicated, became a superstation for a while, and that's where.

Speaker 2 (54:56):
It used to be. By the way, that building used
to be a racquetball club. I was the first first
one to open up the door. There must have been
ten thousand racket balls and tennis balls. It was racket
and tennis club balls all over the building. They had
to clean those up before we started a demo.

Speaker 1 (55:11):
Yeah, and I can think about the fact that after
Morton Downey, we had Richard Bay, who was also a
really quirky, crazy show host.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
But we had fun watching those shows. But it was
rich Bay when I was there. He was there in
the daytime. Richard Bay was there in the daytime.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
But the thing was it was when you had to
go out of your way to find something so interesting,
is so compelling. We don't have that kind of programming now,
and that's what's missing.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
So I'm saying it's an echo chamber. Everybody's doing the
same thing, and most if your show prep is cable news.
Nothing against cable news, but if your show prep is
cable news, then you need to rethink how your show
is going to be put out there because you're just
doing what everybody else is doing. I don't need to
watch or listen to you. I can get that anywhere.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
And everybody has to be better than the clips you
put on social media. You can just have a couple
of good clips on social I mean, I say, all
of a sudden, Okay, then people are gonna go and
catch your show because.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
You don't want to disappoint the audience. You gotta be
good at it. But here's the thing. Joy can short
for him. Here's the thing. I have tried different things,
even recently. I have tried you try different things, you experiment.
I was when you mentioned my time at Cairo. I
was there for six years. Six years in Seattle. What
a god forsaken suckhole. I'll never get back. But it
was a great radio experience and I did make some

(56:24):
good friends there. But I was on overnight one am
to five am. By the way, I used to h
beat the pants off of Coast to coast regularly, but
I was I was able to experiment one AM to
five AM program directors sleeping Chris Oliga. She called me
up the next day and say, I received a lot
of complaints oh on my messages when I came in

(56:46):
this morning, and I paused because I didn't know what
to say. And then she'd say, great job. You know
now they don't say great job now. Program directors are
afraid for their job. So you try something new, They're like,
what are you doing? You know, why are you trying that?
That's not what we do here. So, you know, when
in Rome, do as the Romans do, and it's kind
of like everybody's kept into this cookie cutter mold. So

(57:10):
everybody's talking about you. Put on ninety five percent of
the terrestrial talk shows today, they're talking something about Trump.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
Well, and I'm also saying Trump is talking about They're
something to be said about. And I meant to leave
this up before, but of course the rabbit holes of
tangents censorship because of the facts.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
You want to say this, I know this. You If
you need extra time, I'm I'm I'm having I can
stay along with an hour. I don't want to for
the people to death either. We're coming up on an hour.
But so a couple of things I wanted to cover,
just real quickly. Censorship.

Speaker 1 (57:40):
There's sting to be said, which can be another conversation
in itself. Probably might need to get table that for
another time, because there's what the SEC has made us honor,
and i'd here too when it comes to content. And
now there's what social media has in their terms of
conditions where there are certain things I want to talk
about and other people want to talk about on their programs,
but we can't because we're gonna get censored by it

(58:01):
if we want to try to put up on YouTube
or put up on TikTok. I mean, listen, I have
my the praise of the Boscher's program, and it goes
into certain directions that are pretty much selections.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
That's a great podcast.

Speaker 1 (58:11):
That's a program right now that I get a couple
of comments, and you know what, I have to be
careful with my TikTok fee because I might get penalized
for it. Because I talked about one person on that air,
which I wasn't even favoring him, but I got a
warning for it, and then the same thing goes for
other content. I'll get and I'll get it removed because.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
We look at my Spotify story. I told you were
exactly you know, the worst type of censorship, the worst
type of censorship, and we could. I can come back
and be love, love to come back. We don't have time.
You have me if you have, If I'm fortunate to
be invited back, I'll come back. But I'll just say this,
the worst type of censorship is not from the government.
It's not from corporate. It's not from your program director
or your operations manager. The worst type of censorship is

(58:51):
self censorship that comes from fear of the aforementioned program
director you know corporate or you know FCC. And I
think a lot of hosts and a lot of program
directors are so scared today of losing their jobs. And
I know a lot of hosts who are you know,
high profile. I won't see any names who are making

(59:13):
a lot of money who tell me they watch what
they say and they don't talk about certain topics because
why I have a mortgage, I have kids, and they
don't want to they don't want to be fired. So
that's sad to me because self censorship is the worst
type of censorship because self censorship comes from fear, and
we shouldn't have that. It should be like stand up comedy,

(59:33):
which by the way, George, you didn't mention that I
do when I can get stage time. So my next
my next introduction. I had noticed that the stand up
comedy was left out, but there should be like stand
up comedy. There should be no boundary. Remember, just during
the COVID years and the Biden years, stand up comics
were afraid to talk about certain topics. Uh. I was
told I was doing some improv shows that you know,

(59:55):
if you do don't do politics. Try not to do
politics because you're going to suck the oxygen out of
the room. And I don't think anybody should ever be
told what to talk about. But I did notice that
some comics who are very talented, who brought up politics,
people didn't want to hear it at that time, and
you could feel the life going out of the room
and they would have a poor set because of it.

(01:00:16):
Gone right now, But that's gone now. It's comics. Comics
are loosening up. They're feeling bolder, they're feeling braver. They
know they can make fun, and it's making fun, whether
it's trans or this that they're just making fun of
it and they're not like making some statement of society.
They're just having fun with Their job is to make
the people watching, whether on stream, on TV live, trying

(01:00:41):
to make them laugh. And they're getting back to it.
And I hope that talk radio can get back to
it now because there's too many restrictions on hosts from corporate.
And by the way, let me say one little note
to corporate if any of you guys watch this, the
way to raise revenue is not by laying off people,
because they they think, now the way the rais we're

(01:01:01):
gonna raise revenue, We're gonna eliminate three jobs. Oh now
we've got X amount of dollars more. No, that's not
how it works.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
Well, but remember the state. The companies that are doing
that are the ones in the balance sheet to have
a debt. They all have a debt. You'll never all
cover that delaying people off in micromanaging and downsizing.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
All of these huge companies no names mentioned, who have
gone through restructuring, none of them are ever going to
pay off that debt. Ever, put quality content on the
air and the advertisers will come. It's gonna be hard
to get that money demo though, because they're over there on.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
So they can get the money and the industry again,
I really do believe that. But I also got to
say this too as we wrap things up here on
the in terms of censorship and content and what to
say and what not to say, follow the words of
tomkas don't apologize. Don't have a reason to apologize for
what you say. And that's one thing I'm happy to
go and say that in my time doing all these

(01:01:54):
podcasts here thirteen years coming up in December, I'm not
gonna say something I'm not at the apologize for. That's
the way I censor myself that you don't have to
be a You can hold yourself accountable for everything you say,
and you stand behind everything you could say without getting
in trouble for it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
I still love Tom likeas even though he didn't hire
me as his producer. When I was a producer back
in the day, I did one with he and or
whoever he wants. He wants this certain people I know
it's okay, and he was listen. I didn't get that job,
and it turned out it tended out to work out
for the best, and I got to meet him and
we stayed in touch for a few years after that.
What is it? How did he used to do?

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
One eight hundred, one hundred five hundred, Tom, one hundred five,
one hundred eight six.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
But he's right, Tom, likeas is right. Never do not apologize.
I'll add to it. Never apologize. Self censorship is the
worst type of censorship. Agreed.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
I gotta ask this too because it's just popped up
today and this is interesting. So if we're gonna have
in the world of music radio, okay, we're not gonna
have local stations like we had before, but I've talked
about it for a couple of years. In other countries
they have a national model where they have a camaraderie
where they can have you know, live programming, and they
can have you know, feedback, and they can have audience

(01:03:02):
participation and you can have contests and things like that.
Radios should be paying attention to this. Apple Music they
actually have their own, you know, with talent embedded music stations.
They have now just taken their content over the top
tune in, which is one of the largest streaming platforms
there is for radio and audio in general. They just
moved six of their stations over. They're now commercial free

(01:03:25):
and made available, so unlike what satellite radio does with
Serious six M, same idea, but the thing is, no satellite.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Serious XAM was very was for about a minute had
no commercials. Then they weren't making any money and they panic.
But the thing was you.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
Still got a paywall behind them for subscriptions. But right
now there are six Apple Music stations, Apple Music one,
Apple Music Hits because the right called musical Uno Music
Club for EDM music and Apple Music Chill, Calm, mindful tracks.
But now these they have DJs, they have content, they're
playing current music or they're playing something of a current

(01:03:59):
format to draw to a younger audience. Radio should be
paying attention to this and see what you're told. This
putting on this platform because Apple didn't want to keep
it behind their own kind of paywall or their own
kind of way, because you had to be a subscriber
to Apple to be able to get to those stations.
Now is the billabon tune in commercial listen.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
Earlier today I mentioned to a friend that I was
appearing with you today on your four hundredth episode, which
I'm honored in privileged to be here. And I said
about you, and I'm not just saying this because I'm
talking to you now, is I said to them, You've
been doing various podcasts for nineteen years. Now you're doing
four of them, and they're all successful, very successful. And

(01:04:39):
George has the talent of vision. And you really have
numerous talents, but one of your talents is the talent
of vision. When you talk about you know, Apple Music
branching out and growing, That's why I said earlier, the
technology is only getting better. So it's it's all. It's
very exciting, even though a little bit of it as
the wild West. Like you, George having the talent of vision,

(01:05:03):
they have the talent of vision as well. They see
the future and they're applying their product to it. Radio
is not doing that. Radio follows very late. Things are
getting stale already. Remember how late was radio to websites,
how late was radio to streaming, how late was radio
to podcasts. And as I mentioned earlier at the beginning

(01:05:24):
of the show, their podcasts are just rebroadcasts of their
day show. There's nothing different. So radio is always late
to the party. In ten years, someone will be talking
about how radio is doing now what Apple Apple Music
did ten years ago. I swear when they don't get it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:40):
These conventional media entities do not embrace technology, are not
good at embracing technology. So radio going into the podcasting
still don't have a down pat yet they've had to
end up buying other companies that were doing podcasting and
taking them into the fold. But for radio itself, it
goes just the same way we're streaming out for television

(01:06:01):
or for music. You're not going to music labels are
not gonna make that much money on streaming. They're just
not because I know they're gonna pake the money off
of podcasting. They're only going to make a tenth of
what they could really be making. If they want to
make some real money, they need to go back to
working with each other. So music and radio should go
back to working with each other. And as for talk radio.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
Radio used to be used to your radio used to
be used to sell records. I with with you know,
no one, no one's putting out albums and CDs anymore
unless it's a symbolic, you know, temporary thing. So you know,
they released their they released their albums online. Now it's
all streaming, so you're not going to be getting you know,

(01:06:39):
our record company still as they used to do back
in the day hitting up radio stations for spend. No
they aren't, No, No, they program postal departments have all
been stripped of radio promotions.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
They're all doing streaming right now. But I think they
need to go and do something where they get back
to working with each other to make money.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
There's got to be a way to do it. I
really believe that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:59):
And as for talk radio itself, you know, they can't
improve that medium until the ads.

Speaker 2 (01:07:07):
Structure is broken down. They have to get rid of
the ads the way they are. They take the handcuffs
off the host. They have to take the handcuffs off
the host. And honestly, that will in the door for podcasting,
for people from podcasting to move over, or to take
a podcast and move it into the radio atmosphere. That's
what's gonna happen. When one thing, one thing we didn't
touch on, George, and I think we we have to
mention it. I know we're way over on time, and

(01:07:28):
I apologize to bring up something new, but we've talked
to music, we've talked news talk, but the What is
doing very well in terrestrial radio, to their credit, is
sports talk, Sports talk by color commentary. Yes, I find
it fascinating that a baseball or a football game could

(01:07:49):
last two and a half to three hours given what
transpires during the game, and then people will listen to
people talk about it for another three hours and it's successful.
Sports talk right now is so super hot. I tip
my hat to them. I salute them to their credit,
because there's a lot of jobs available there now. If

(01:08:10):
you're one of those walking sports almanac guys, there's a
lot to be said there on the terrestrial side, which
makes the podcast side even bigger, more limitless.

Speaker 1 (01:08:20):
So good for them, and it's amazing where there's been
there's been a lot of surveys and studies about the
fact of you get a younger audience with sports play
by play, and for the sports forgimming itself, it's growing
to that. And the thing is that in the play
by play realm, Yeah, you might have commercials in between,
but that's because it's embedded to the game. You can
find a way to put it in there. Talk radio
and other formats that don't need to necessarily have that

(01:08:41):
much of an as structure is because they have the
hope the witch We'll thinking they're going to be able
to sell all that ad inventory and get it done,
but they're never getting rid of it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
They need to go and.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
Break that down, and when they do, then maybe things
can finally go into the right direction.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
Anyway. One thing I disagree with though, is and with
the this is with the NFL as well. I think
Roger Goodell has done a very big disservice to the
NFL and their fans. Is for sports talk radio and
the NFL and Major League Baseball, any sports soccer, whatever, hockey,
NBA is getting in bed with the gambling and advertising

(01:09:14):
the gambling, draft Kings, duel you know, duel kings or
whatever they're called. Uh, you know, gambling. Gambling is a
problem for a lot of people. And I'm not one
of these prudes who doesn't want people to have vices,
but to advertise the gambling is out there, people who
want to gamble will find it. And I don't think

(01:09:36):
it should be illegal or anything like that. I just
don't think it should be advertised in our face the
way it is now. But like I said, no one's
gonna listen to me because it's capitalism a lot of space.

Speaker 1 (01:09:47):
It's one thing, but I think it's also something a
little more telling when you have the branding of these
gambling outlets where ESPN Bets coming at or Fox Sports six.
That's the part where I really feel like that's too much.

Speaker 2 (01:09:59):
That's over.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
You know, that should be where you see the association
with the networks with the gambling. So if one a
fan duel or you know Caeizears or whoever else or
you know, you know all.

Speaker 2 (01:10:11):
Those others, if they want to go in, come on
in and jump in on it. Fine, Okay, they're gonna
do it. MGM.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
I know they're gonna come in. They're gonna going by
their time, just like I was reading the story. I
gotta do that on my broadcasters podcast as well about
the amount of injury lawyers that are getting airtime on
a radio and how well they do on those as well.
But those kind of ads we want to have is
you know, all these salacious frivoleges.

Speaker 2 (01:10:32):
Not only are they not only are they ads, a
lot of them are buying time on Saturdays and Sundays
and doing whole programs on it now as well as
buying time during the week.

Speaker 1 (01:10:41):
How many of those are on the top of the
hour from the Steiner is going Green Studios or Finer
that's down here, that's right, Steiner's confind are de mesment
over it, like all these law firms are all studio
names now for all these radio stations as funny as well.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
Here and here in Central Florida, it's Dan Newlan. Dan
got me five hundred thousand dollars. Dan got me one
point four million dollars. And it's funny because I feel
like I live with Dan Newlan because he's on my computer,
he's on my TV, he's in my movie theater. If
I go see a movie, he pops up. Guy's brilliant
when it comes to marketing because he's buying so much advertising.
And then Trump made an ambassador to Columbia. It's like

(01:11:18):
the whitest white guy ever. He's ambassador to Columbia. You
can't make that up. Dan Newlan, God bless him. Really well.
Hey Morgan and Morgan, we've heard about forever now they're
national of all things well made. How much money did
Dan Newlan have to donate to Trump's campaign to get
an ambassadorship battle Yeah, I wish I had that much
coin as they used to say.

Speaker 1 (01:11:40):
Oh yeah, he had to put Sherman Sheldon Adolson type
money to get into that kind of role.

Speaker 2 (01:11:44):
Oh god, yeah, this is a blast from the past.
Sheldon Adelson unbelievable. All right, at Loupey, Hey, we're gonna
do this again. This was fun. It was fun.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
It just I wanted to try to keep it an hour,
but we didn't do it. I knew we're gonna go along.
That's why we kind of a looted ninety minutes for
this thing right here.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
But well you could you could, you know, go through
it and cut the stead and I get it out
stuff that may hurt you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
No, no, this is all staying in. I'm not doing
any work exture like that. I trust. I just trust
my content. I trust what work.

Speaker 2 (01:12:12):
I just I just want to finish by saying, and
don't follow up on this thought, George please the last
Thank god, we didn't talk about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey. No.

Speaker 1 (01:12:23):
I brought that up on my my other program earlier
than but I'll talk you about that off the air anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:12:28):
So I can't go online for the next three days otherwise,
because it's just swamped with it. I thought they peaked
when they won the Super Bowl a year ago before
they got beat by the Eagles. Anyway, but we're gonna
now see them. Hey, she's gonna go be a mom.
She's gonna run off and have her nice new album.
Is My Life is a show Girl. She'll go be
a mom. And you know they think, no more sad

(01:12:48):
love songs for Taylor, So that's good for her. I
wish him to the last. I have a feeling with
that meathead. There's going to be a divorced song coming
up before long. Well, that'll be a hell once the
camera's fade. He's there for the fan. He loves the fame,
he loves the attention. One of money. Come on, now,
he's he's not to her. He's got big money compared
to everybody else he is. He's a pauper compared to her.

(01:13:10):
He's rich compared to the rest of the world. He's
a pauper compared to her. Was he worth maybe one
hundred million dollars?

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
What happens when he has to retire, because that's in
a couple of years down the line. He's not going
to be out there playing full time for long but you.

Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
Know what, I can never forgive him. I will never
forgive him for uh sponsoring Pfizer ads, getting the shot
and getting paid reportedly twenty million dollars. Screw him, eh,
you know again, don't be doing things you have to
apologize for it. That's the point I always remember that,
you know in bring immedia, very important rule. Tomkas was

(01:13:44):
right about that. Never apologize No louke pai, Thank okay, Jorge,
thank you for having me. I appreciate it, look forward
to being back on Have a great day. Do it again.

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.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}On Purpose with Jay Shetty

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Radio and Podcasting: Evolving Media Landscapes with Lou Pate (Episode 400)

On Purpose with Jay Shetty