The Sound Off Podcast

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...

Randi Chase epitomizes the lyric in the WKRP theme song, "Town to Town; Up and Down the Dial." The lyric conjures up images of jocks, successful or fired, who shuffle on to the next gig with a new town and call letters. Randi worked in 6 of Canada's top 10 markets before turning 30. After taking a year off to find out what happens when you take the radio out of Randi, she is back on air and having...

The Humboldt bus accident that claimed the lives' of 16 people on April 6, 2018 led to a worldwide outpouring of grief and support. In the hours after the crash, the lives of players, coaches, team support staff like a statistician and therapist were also lost; as well as Tyler Bieber who was the play-by-play host and worked at 107.5 Bolt-FM in Humboldt. Brian Munz grew up in Humboldt. I spent som...

When Gerry Forbes announced his retirement, you can forgive CJAY 92's competitors for letting out a silent cheer. For over 25 years in Calgary, Gerry's morning show has been in the top three in a market that is sharply country. In preparing this episode, I reached out to some of the people who had worked with and against Gerry. People like Bob Harris who was his program director throughout the 90'...

When Scott Howard made the change from on air to sales, he will be the first to tell you that he didn't get it right away. His first opportunity came at WMUZ in Detroit where he freely admitted that he made a lot of mistakes. Over time, he became more engrained in the sales world and started sharing his wisdom on a blog http://sclohonet.blogspot.ca/ and then in time on a podcast. Most episodes clo...

Lauryn Schaffner is a writer, blogger, YouTuber, and overall lover of Rock music. On this week's show we ask how her passion for rock music took her down this path, and find out what role radio played in getting her there. Not surprisingly, radio did play a role. But not surprisingly, it was her parents who listened to the radio - not her. She is living her rock and roll dreams by writing for alte...

A few more thoughts about Podcasting and its relationship with radio. Recorded in Spain as I tour the country side eating tapas and watching football. As well, I call up Bob Willette at Rock 94.9 in Oshawa and we nerd out of the branding history of Edge 102. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Gary Begin is the owner of Sound Advantage Media. His company works with radio stations across America is get their branding strategy in order. One of the things I like about Gary is how is business is always working the social media space to promote the latest. At one time that was a book called Radio Programming and Branding: The Ultimate Podcasting and Radio Branding Guide. Gary is going to be...

Lori Lewis knows how to deal with change, which makes her ideal to lead the way when it comes to navigating the murky waters of Facebook. From its changing algorithm to the overextension of selling your data to third party sources, Lori offers up her tips and expertise to great posting and audience engagement. We also touched on some best practices for Facebook Live which still remains a challenge...

We are off to the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia and catching up with Mark Burley. (SUN-FM, AM 1150 & 101.5 EZ Rock) During the 12 years as Group PD and PD of the local cluster, he enjoyed enjoying 8 years with Sun at #1 A25-54 in Kelowna and garnered industry recognition with 6 consecutive Program Director of the Year Awards and Station of the Year for Sun FM on 5 occasions. Ma...

Gregr is the morning show host at 107.7 The End in Seattle. Last summer at the Podcast Movement, Gregr shared the stage at Jacob’s Media’s Broadcaster meet Podcaster series. At dinner he had the deer in the headlights look. Turns out he had just became a dad for the first time days earlier. Throughout dinner we shared radio and podcast stories. I couldn’t believe he had 4 podcasts on top of a morn...

Raina Douris has spent her entire career working in Toronto, and it has served her well. When you love music, Toronto is a great place to live work and breathe your passion. From her radio beginnings at 102.1 the Edge, to upstart Indie 88 and now working mornings at CBC Radio 2 nationally, Raina shares her music and radio experiences with us. She also talks about her love of Twitter, her favourite...

Steve Jones is the VP of Branding & Content at Newcap Radio. (Now Stingray) He knows a thing about branding having penned two books including "Brand Like a Rock Star" and "Start You Up". His career has taken him in an east-west direction as much as has north-south to places like Boston and the Cayman Islands; and two of the most competitive markets in the country in Halifax and Edmonton where...