The Sound Off Podcast

I always have a strong sense about what's going on in P.E.I. Every morning I wake up and Corey Tremere's twitter account has all the latest from Prince Edward Island flowing. I'm two hours behind in the central time zone, so his midday show is my morning show. Ocean 100 has been the Island's #1 commercial radio station since it went on the air in 1974 at the 1190AM position. It then got a new addr...

Chris Cruise never had a radio career; he's always been a content creator. The Detroit native was let go from Entercom's Amp Radio 98.7 and attempted the sales thing before returning to his roots as a teacher at Chris can be heard on a number of station's across America already, but you're about to hear a lot more of him with the launch of Throwback Nation 2K in January. The original classic hits...

Paul Kaye is the VP of Music Brands and In House Production at Rogers. When he was hired in July of 2017, it was mentioned that his position is an evolving one. True to that statement - his position remains as fluid as ever given the accelerating change for the medium and for the content creators who work in it. The last time we had Paul on the show, it was December 2016 and he was fulfilling a ro...

Kevin Getz is the swing announcer at 102.1 The Edge in Toronto. He recently came out with a brand new album. What makes the album unique is that it is a spoken word album full of his radio breaks. The collection of audio is an attempt to make his audio more durable, sustainable, marketable, and less disposable. In this episode, Kevin and I talked a lot about how breaks are put together, but what h...

Lili Wexu is a voice actress based in Los Angeles but started in Montreal. You might say this is all Howard Stern's fault. Back in the late 90's Howard Stern was syndicated to Q107 in Toronto and CHOM in Montreal. The result for the former was a failed venture, the latter was a near disaster. CHOM's longtime competitor at the time was Mix 96, who courted disenfranchised francophones to their stati...

I never realized how lucky I was to work alongside Maureen Holloway - until I no longer did. Mo is now the morning host with Darren B. Lamb on 98.1 CHFI in Toronto. Maureen is brutally honest about her career, her family, her relationships and her 2005 battle with cancer. I was working in Montreal at the time and she was quite open with the Mix 96 audience at the time. I did not know that she had...

Matt is on the road in Quebec this week and explains that the spoken word has more than than music to radio programmers. Canadian radio regulations need to be reviewed and instead of focusing on Cancon for music - maybe the CRTC should be focusing on regulating who is doing the talking and from where. In this episode, we made mention of Kevin Getz's from 102.1 the Edge. He just releases an album w...

Tom Webster is a Senior VP at Edison Research. There are a few spots on our company calendar we circle in anticipation of Tom. It's either a data release for Edison's Share of Ear, an Infinite Dial Study, or an address at Podcast Movement. This month we would have heard Tom at PM20 but with 2020 being as it is, this episode will have to serve as our fix. In this episode you will hear about some of...

How did Pete Marier become Bad Pete? He tells us. I spent my teenage years listening to Pete Marier on my clock radio when he was at 980 CKGM and 95.9 CJFM. The next decade Pete was a co-worker and we've been friends since. We are not strangers to Winnipeg and Montreal radio, nor the task of raising three boys, So we always have lots of talk about. A lot of people don’t immediately associate Pete...

In this episode Julie and I talk about working from home, having to adjust while doing multiple radio tasks including imaging, music programming, music meetings, and building a home office. It's the little things like an extra monitor or a chair to endure prolonged periods of work. I also asked Julie about the AC format and how it has evolved over the last few years, some of the tools she uses to...

Alan Cross loves music. Over the last few months we have done a few episodes discussing radio on a pandemic planet. But what about the music industry? What about the business side of music? It is especially curious given that music's entire business model has been turned on its head since 1999. Income has shifted from selling physical music to subscriptions and live touring; the latter of which is...

If you're a Gen Xer, you likely know Stu Jefferies. He was the host of the venerable CBC TV show Good Rockin' Tonight which ran from 1983 to 1993. The Canadian reply to NBC's Friday Night Videos carried it's weight and powered the Cancon to kids whose parents were too cheap to spring for MuchMusic. Yes... this was a thing. If all you know about Stu is his stint on TV, then here is the rest of the...

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...