The Sound Off Podcast

When we had Jenna on our podcast 18 months ago , she was in the throes on getting ousted from a gig she loved on a station where they were working hard and building a following. It's a tall order to compete in a market like Ottawa where their direct competition is #1 and have been for 15 years. Since then, Jesse and Jenna launched a podcast and with the help of Blast The Radio , they have found th...

Here's something you need to know about Jay Richardson. He's a really nice guy. Know what else? He's a true empathetic soul who cares. Which is why he always feels a little uneasy about the present and especially the future. However, we spoke a lot about the past in this episode. Jay is the afternoon drive host at Power 97 in Winnipeg, which is where he started the on-air portion of his radio care...

Lochlin Cross is the morning show host at Cruz 95.7 in Edmonton along with Grant Johnston and James White. He spent time in Winnipeg and Edmonton programming two heavy hitter rock stations in Power 97 and K-Rock 97.3. Which got switched back to K97 at some point but we were too lazy to look it up. He also did on air stints at other rock powerhouses like 100.3 The Bear in Edmonton and the Max in Pr...

Abe Hefter and I finally crossed paths in 2002. I recall hearing him on CJFM (FM96) in the 80's, and in 2002 we convened on Fort Street at that station when CHOM, Mix96 and CJAD merged itself into one entity. Abe began to transition into academia in 2003 when he received an opportunity to teach part time at Concordia University. There's something about teaching that brings out the energy in Abe. V...

Mistress Carrie spent 22 years on air and a handful more working in promotions at WAAF. She spent most of her life before that listening and loving the station. She figured one day it would all end with her "moving on" as many in the business do. But what she and many did not expect was for its parent company to sell the frequency to K-Love for ten million dollars; something that also happened to...

Heather Osgood is the founder of True Native Media and answered all of our questions about podcast advertising. I first met Heather back in 2017 and was fascinated with the vision she had for her company. While the idea of media buying was not new, being a media buyer for podcasts was. It is believed that podcast advertising will hit a billion dollars by 2021, and I took interest in the methods us...

Jillene Khan is the afternoon host on Magic 98 in Madison, Wisconsin. Her story to radio is rooted in Minneapolis. From growing up listening to great personalities like Tony Fly from KDWB and Tom Bernard on KQRS to a time when her family was apart of Dave Ryan's Christmas Wish back in the 90's. Jillene is an ideal guest to bring on at a time when many people in her hometown are struggling with dea...

I met Carrie Doll in the late 90's at CFRN Television in Edmonton. She was a reporter and later a news anchor. She covered the events of 9/11 from the anchor desk in Calgary and learned how to report without a script. The youngest of ten children from Fairview, Alberta, Carrie was a natural when it came to communicating and public speaking. She had an incredible run on CFRN-TV in the anchor chair...

I met Kim Blair back in 2013. He was looking to make a change in his radio career and was leaving Australia behind in search of a more a country that was going to offer more of a challenge for him. Consolidation has caught up with Australia and Canada as well. In the months after we had dinner together, he found his new home in Auckland, New Zealand, where the radio is as competitive as any radio...

Evo Terra is the host of Podcast Pontifications . A short form podcast providing insights into the future of podcasting. As luck would have it, news of the Joe Rogan signing to Spotify broke the day before recording of the episode. I met Evo in Orlando at Podcast Movement last August and he shared some of his tips and tricks with me regarding how to refine solo podcast presentation. There were als...

Jason Barrett returns to answer my sports related questions. Normally I don't bring Jason on until this first week of September when we look forward to the new NFL football season and talk about Sports broadcasting. However, these are not normal times for Sports radio and now is a good time to unpack what's going to happen. Jason's company, Barrett Sports Media has unveiled two initiatives to help...

Dana Marshall loves radio, loves the music of Prince, and has found the perfect audio life balance with both. He does mornings and is program director at 103.3 WKFR in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is currently seeking a co-host for that morning show, so if you think that is you - apply within. Much like Melz On the Mic , who was a guest on the podcast in June 2018, Dana knows local, social and vital. O...

This week, Sheryl Worsley from KSL Radio in Salt Lake City. While being a news director for around 20 years, she shifted in 2015 to audio and audience development in the Bonneville cluster's digital space. Sheryl and her team saw the value in podcast when a news series they were putting together was better suited for podcast than radio. Thus the hit podcast COLD— a true crime series cove...

This episode is a little different. Over the weekend, a 22 people lost their lives in a mass murder spree that covered 100 kilometers in Nova Scotia. Monday morning, Q104 in Halifax and a number of Stingray radio stations came together to pivot programming towards the hearts of their listeners. To understand what it takes to make those changes, you need to understand the people affected. Nova Scot...

There I was flipping through Facebook and seeing Steve Reynolds comment about hearing something he felt was out of place on the radio in the era of COVID-19. This is not to be confused with the non-COVID comments about Sirius Yacht Rock playing a lot of crappy B-Sides on their channel. (He's right. No one wants to hear B-Grade Little River Band song. Ever. With so many radio people and radio shows...

It's no wonder that Kipper McGee wound up in radio have grown up in between two great radio markets in Milwaukee and Chicago. He's a broadcast consultant, author and host of the Brandwidth on Demand podcast alongside David Martin. The show has been in production for as long as this show has, and it has an A list of broadcasters appearing for what turns out to be, "not your average quarter hour". I...

Sunni Puric works weekdays apart of the Joe Clair Morning Show on Rhythmic/CHR radio WGPC 95.5FM. Her journey to radio is unlike any other. This marks the first time I have asked what it was like spending your teenage years in a refugee camp in Bosnia. While the world saw a picturesque Yugoslavia during the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics, it was 12 years later that th country fell into civil war. S...

Susie Erjavec Parker knows lots about social media, blogs, communication strategy and working from home. At one point she had 3 children under 5 years old in the house while juggling clients, and appointments and everything else that comes with running a business. With so many people working from home for the first time in radio, I though it would be a good time to bring Susie on to talk about wor...

It's been nearly 20 years since radio has had to shift into crisis mode. The Corona Virus or COVID-19 has arrived and broadcasters find themselves having to write rules, redo formats, get more information sourced, while dealing with staffs that have children coming home and everyone faced with the challenge of working from home. In this episode, I spoke about the importance of working from home, a...

Josie Dye is the morning host at Indie 88 in Toronto. The longtime 102.1 The Edge personality who also did hosting duties for Cosmo TV, and W Network took a chance on jumping to Indie 88. It has paid off well. You can hear it in Josie's voice. She is having more fun than ever at a station that has all the sounds and feels of any successful alternative radio station. In this episode, we spoke about...

Dave Jackson is the Owner/Headmaster at the School of Podcasting and also a support specialist at Libsyn. He was there back in the early days of podcast and has helped thousands launch their podcasts with his talks, online tips and podcasts. Dave is a Hall of Famer and a regular contributor to Podcast Business Journal . In this episode we discussed some of the many stages of podcasting's evolution...

Radio is a lot like the mob: "Just when you thought I was out, they pull me back in." Okay, that's an exaggeration but for Carlos Benevides, leaving 91.5 The Beat in Kitchener and transitioning to Conestaga College to teach radio just made sense. So does his new lunchtime show for the Jack radio stations "Jack Up the 80's" . which can be heard in Halifax, Calgary, Smith Falls, London and Victoria....

Zenga McCurdy called me back in May of 2018 and asked for some feedback on his morning radio show. Since then I have made a point of listening to the show every once and a while to hear the progress. I meant to grab a beer with him in Toronto last year but we only had enough time for a "Hi, How are you?" and then we were off to whatever we were off to. I am very pleased that I got to have this con...

Jon Gay has a radio story that is probably not unlike yours if you have worked on the programming side of radio. It involves a little bit of the WKRP theme song, "Town to Town. Up and Down the dial...". Jon's radio career started with an internship at Kiss 108 in his hometown Boston. His stint at Syracuse University got him even closer to his dream on being a top radio personality. His tenure in V...

David Phillips from NLogic is an admitted nerd when it comes to data. He really loves it. Something he is very good at is deciphering how data should be applied to your brand, your radio stations, your strategies, and your ad sales. However, one thing you should definitely not have is a data strategy . He speaks about numbers having blind spots and becoming too attached to the data we love and not...