The Sound Off Podcast

Mandy James is the morning show host with Pat PT Thomas and Mike Dubs on Entercom's Buz'n @ 102.9 in Minneapolis. I've gotten to know Mandy over the last few years at the Conclave Summer Learning Conference. I watched as she bravely networked her way through the room in 2017, eventually giving me a gift bag complete with a Conclave survival kit which include a small bottle of something flavourful...

Amanda Logan headed west in 2008 to Regina, Saskatchewan where she did evenings at 104.9 The Wolf. Amazingly, we still have audio from that era and it makes an appearance in this podcast. A few weeks ago, The evening personality at Toronto's Z103.5, got married and in lieu of a wedding present, I figured a podcast appearance would suffice. We talked about her journey west and then back east to the...

Nat Lauzon has been a mainstay on Montreal radio for almost 20 years. Her career path has moved in somewhat tidy cycles, spending her teen years working on air in her hometown of Timmins, Ontario while in high school. Then she worked at Toronto's Mix 99.9 while she was finishing her degree at Ryerson Polytechnic. In 1999, she jumped at the opportunity to move to Montreal to with Blair Bartrem at M...

About 90 percent of this podcasts downloads come from two North American countries, Canada & the USA. But a look across the ocean shows the UK in a solid third with Australia and Nigeria tied for 4th, scoring higher than Ireland and New Zealand. I felt compelled to find out more about radio in Nigeria. EDK is Osato Edokpayi from Abuja, Nigeria. He does the breakfast show at SoundCity in Nigeri...

In late August, Jesse and Jenna from Jump 106.9 in Ottawa were restructured out of their jobs. That's probably not news as it is a regular occurrence in radio. However, their replacements were a syndicated U.S. show out of Seattle. The ensuing online and media outrage was heavier than in other cities where layoffs happen. Jenna Mosher was kind enough to spend some time talking about her career whi...

I really love Thanksgiving. In Canada we celebrate it as a tribute to the bountiful harvest. There are a lot of people who enjoy it more than Christmas which gets lost in a sea of wrapping paper and Amazon deliveries. So in my turkey comatose, I offer up a word of thanks to those who support the show every week; and that ranges to anyone from a listener, to a sponsor, to simply sharing or followin...

Graham Mosimann does evenings at Calgary's alternative X92.9. I hired Graham back in 2014 to work at Power 97 in Winnipeg and decided to call him up and see how he was doing. It has been neat listening to his progress as a performer, and equally amazing watching his personal journey as he drops weight and makes life changes as he goes. As Graham tells me, he was a mess, became a bigger mess after...

Fred Jacobs was a guest on Episode 53 in a preview to the Broadcasters Meet Podcasters sessions at Podcast Movement in 2017. I have always wanted to do an episode where we looked back at the evolution of his company and a tweet on the 35th anniversary of the company's creation reminded me that it's a good time to have that chat. We cover the creation of classic rock, his transition from the WRIF i...

Larry Gifford has Parkinson's. On his Radio Stuff Podcast last April, Larry announced that he had Parkison's Disease. If you get the chance, please give that episode a listen . Larry is known to many through his time at ESPN in Bristol, 710 ESPN in LA, KIRO in Seattle, or from his most recent home at CKNW in Vancouver. We spent our time talking about Corus' foray into the podcast space and how rad...

Jason Barrett celebrated the third anniversary of Barrett Sports Media last week, and we have an annual podcast chat to talk about the state of Sports Radio. After three years of doing anything, you have entrenched yourself into the landscape well enough to speak reflectively, so I asked him about the trials and tribulations of shifting from programming radio to partnering with radio. He blogs, po...

Matt Sutton comes from Australia. There was a time when having people with funny accents was novelty. Then it became common place. With the advent of Youtube, Facebook and people consuming their media globally, it's not a thing anymore. In 2012, I had the delight of bringing Matt to Canada as we launched Fresh-FM in Winnipeg. The best part was bringing him over from Brisbane's B105 and introducing...

James Cridland is a radio futurologist. He will tell you he got that name because he printed it on his business cards, but he does possess a keen eye to where radio is headed. He is the man behind Podnews, a daily e-news letter and companion 2 minute podcast delivered daily. He also heads up the Next Radio Conference which will be taking place in London on September 17. In this episode, James and...

Jonathan West is a passionate about a few things, including two of our favourites, hockey and radio. We eliminated all the hockey talk from the podcast but I will bring him back at some point on "The Other" podcast to chat it up in February when the playoff races take hold. It was good to catch up with Jonathan at the Conclave, and he mentioned he was going to be at Morning Show Bootcamp, so he pr...

Logan Anderson is the host of the Say the Damn Score Podcast. He loves being a sports broadcaster and found out that podcast was a great way to network and meet new people in his field. Guests have largely been the familiar voices that call games for places like Fresno State, South Dakota, Ball State, and Bradley. But there's also the Milwaukee Brewers and National icons like Bob Costas and Ian Ea...

Jonny Staub got his big break when James Stewart offered him a job at Calgary's top rated Power 107 shortly after we all calmed down from the Y2K problem. Jonny had some an incredible start to his career with big ratings at an early age at big radio stations in big markets. Then came a personal reality check. Which was later followed be the stresses of coming out publicly, and coping with the comp...

Ryan Wrecker hosts Overnight America on 1120AM KMOX in St. Louis. It has been the radio home of the St. Louis Cardinals since the mid 50's when Jack Buck became synonymous with both the team, and radio station across North America. Remember, the signal would carry for miles from Canada to Mexico, extolling the exemplary play of Bob Gibson, Ozzie Smith, Dizzy Dean an Stan Musial. I wanted to ask Ry...

Sarah Burke has been the new girl at Sirius XM for about 18 months. After a decade at London, Ontario's heritage rock brand FM96, Sarah moved back to Toronto to work at Sirius XM's the Verge and later take on weekend duties at Indie 88. If you pay attention closely to this interview, you'll note that every time Sarah made a career shift, it was because she had mastered what she set out to. Sarah h...

Dave Beasing is known for many things including a ten year run as program director at 100.3 the Sound in Los Angeles, (R.I.P.) as a broadcast consultant at Jacobs Media, and most recently as a part of the team that created the highly successful Inside Trader Joe's podcast. His company Sound That Brands has taken a lead role in creating branded content and I wanted to ask him about the branding beh...

Melz on the MIC is the Assistant Program Director and midday host (12p-3p) at 103.1 Kiss FM in Killeen, Texas. Melz posted a picture of a newspaper article with the headline, "Local Man Gives Up Career to Pursue Job as a Radio DJ". After doing some listening, it was apparent that Melz had a lot more going on than just a local radio show. It is a multi-platform engagement online and on-air deployme...

Gruff Gushnowski has been living life openly and honestly for the last three and a half years. If you following him on social media, he can be uncomfortably candid about his postings, and he revealed in this week's show about how helpful it has been. We explored his radio career which has been set in Alberta for 25 years outside of a brief stint programming CHEZ 106 in Ottawa. There are other...

Jaclyn Irwin from Kiss 92.5 Toronto and Kiss 91.7 in Edmonton. She joins me to talk about her early influences in radio and growing up Dartmouth. Yes, we both agree that Dartmouth, N.S. gets a bad wrap for no apparent reason. We talked about what inspired her to go into radio, what it takes to be relevant in a market that houses 4 CHR radio stations, and how she has expanded her brand using social...

Will Sterrett is the founder and owner of Rockcastle Media. The Kansas based network launched its first offering  Think Fast! in May 2016 on just a handful of affiliates, including KWIX/Moberly, MO, where Sterrett was first heard twenty years prior.  Think Fast!  quickly grew as did the opportunities for Rockcastle Media Networks, with the following month’s syndication launch of&nbs...

Ruby Carr from Z95.3 in Vancouver is the winner of the Allan Waters Young Broadcaster of the Year in memory of Steve Young. Runners up were Lauren Hunter 102.9 Sonic Edmonton, and Jax from Kiss 92.5 Toronto. Ruby's name came up briefly back in episode 74 where Dave Bannerman was talking about some of the great talent who had flowed through Nova Scotia Community College over the years. (Which also...

Julie Adam is the Senior VP of Radio at Rogers. Often I will receive suggestions about who they want on the podcast and her name comes up often. This episode was recorded on a morning when radio ratings for the diary markets were released so we talked methodology and ratings returns, Radioplayer Canada, Making mistakes, and how radio and podcast can coexist. I had a half hour of questions schedule...

This is Episode 100. My years in radio taught me to celebrate the milestones and accomplishments. No more so than the time I spent at 100.3 the Bear in Edmonton. Some background on why I decided to do this show. Back in January when I was planning out the shows for the next few months, I wanted to have Greg Brown aka Jake Daniels on. He and I worked together on 100.3 the Bear in Edmonton from 1994...