Bob Willette: Back From the Beach, Back on Radio

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The sound of podcast. The show about podcast and broadcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:12  
I get to welcome back Bob Willett to the show. Over the last few years he was in Kingston working for course radio before being let go. Then came some time to reflect and figure out what was next. Well, we now know what next is he's working at Indy 88 in Toronto, and you will hear how he tailored the gig to meet both his needs and the stations. Bob's radio work is extensive, going all the way back to his time with humble and Fred at the edge. Oh, and the last time he appeared on the show, he left behind this awesome quote, which I've never forgotten, because it's so true. Everywhere

Bob Willette  0:49  
I've worked, I always hear, Oh, you just missed the best days. The best days were just everywhere, no matter where it is. CFO wise, the same, same thing. Oh, you know what? Oh, those were the days. But I have not worked at any place where we haven't just missed the golden era. And

Matt Cundill  1:05  
now Bob Willett joins me from Toronto, pure radio person, that's what you have been doing for years. Anyways, 321, let's go,

Bob Willette  1:14  
yeah, pretty much, yeah, yeah. That's true. And the funny thing is, with radio, I don't think we ever learn like we throw away so much stuff. Like, every break is thrown away. It's like, you do it, it's gone. And when I was a program director, it was bothered me the morning show would do a great break at 610 and, like, would never touch it again. Would I would like replay that break that was great, and it's less work for you.

Matt Cundill  1:36  
So that's been cited as one of the biggest problems in radio over the last 10 years is that we only play things once. And not only is it like you did, had a good break at 610 but you got to bring it back again at 710, or 810, but then it's like now. You got to repurpose it for social. Yeah, a

Bob Willette  1:56  
couple things. So isn't it ironic that we, you know, like a top 40 station will play a song 100 times a week, but we'll only the morning show will only do a bit once. You know, it's ridiculous. You know, we know that repetition and then that we we sell repetition as advertising. You know, it's all about it's all about occasions. So anyways, but then the talent doesn't want to do something twice, or doesn't want to play something twice, and I understand that you don't want to be bored. You know, I got 20 plus years as I think I was over 20 as a program, I had music director in there too, but as a program director and my what I have seen when it came to post on air, stuff going out into socials and on to SoundCloud or whatever, if you're just repurposing your stuff from the morning show, you're not going to get any traction at all, at all. Nobody does. You have to offer something new. It has to be something different. You know, it has to be like, give me 15 minutes of uncensored morning show right after the show. Throw it down. I don't care what it is. In fact, I'm not going to come down on you if I was the program director. I'm not anymore, but if I was, I'm not going to come down on you for not being prepared. Just be yourselves for 15 minutes. Mind you, if you're a good morning show, you're already yourselves on the air.

Matt Cundill  3:01  
So I remember when we launched fresh in Winnipeg in about 2012 one of the things we really tried to do was to repurpose the content across the fresh network, well, the fresh network, but also repurposing it along the shifts. So if it worked well in the morning, it'll work well in the afternoon, and so you'll bring something in from the morning show to the afternoon, the midday person, and we would all leave our content behind to share and rerun across. It felt a little bit ahead of its time. Yeah, humble and

Bob Willette  3:33  
Fred did that as well. We had the humble report way back in 9798 on edge, 102, the I would you know, one of my job first jobs as an intern was to take the humble report and cut it up and load it into DCS so that it would play, it played every day, and it was a sponsored feature at like, 1130 and 130 or something. So that makes sense, but you have to have the mechanisms in there. And people are lazy, like, if you don't have it set up, people don't want to do this stuff, and that's the Pro. You know, I don't think we have enough people right now because we've gotten rid of all the good what we certain people have gotten rid of the good people, and you're left with, like, people who try, but maybe just don't have it. You know,

Matt Cundill  4:14  
what's it like in a creative space? And I'll use your time at Kingston, because I thought this was, this is really the most excellent place to look at Kingston is this market where talent was on the way up. There's multiple stations. It is competitive. It is a whole bunch of things. And you're the program director at chorus, and your job is two things, is to get this content out to people, and you have to nurture talent, and at the same time, you have to determine whether the content is still valid six hours later, in a world where, like, time is just speeding up, the news cycles just spinning like crazy. So tell me what it was like to be, PD, inside that building in that market. So

Bob Willette  4:53  
Kingston's an interesting market. You know, Kingston's is a medium market, so it's in in the same realm as Ottawa, which. Doesn't make sense. Ottawa should be a major market. And Kingston is a good medium market. Kingston, London, I think those are great medium markets. Kingston's interesting because there's a lot of heritage in that market. There's a lot of old, you know, they flipped the fact that we have fresh, we had fresh there. That's the old, you know, the one of the first radio stations in the country, you know, an am signal. So the issue I had two stations. I had big which was like a classic rock boom style radio station, and then had a fresh, fresh radio as well. I started during the pandemic, and within the I didn't even like seven months in, I still had never been to the radio station. I'd been doing everything remotely. So getting to know the talent was very interesting there. You talked about talent coming up. Well, what's interesting about Kingston is a lot of talent just wants to stay there. They actually really love it. I had a producer there. He's, I don't know if anybody picked him up. He got blown out a few months after I did the whole everybody did right? I got February of last year, I got blown out. And then in June of last year, the it basically shut the two radio stations down, and the Global TV station too, as well, with the exception of a couple videographers. So you think it could be a good feeder market, but I think the talent there, they've got Ben and reed on the bell station, which I guess has been, has been sold to the My FM people, those guys have been there forever. You got Sideshow who was at K rock. He was there forever. And I, as soon as his non compete was done, I hired him right away because he exactly the talent. He's so good, but they don't want to go anywhere. Bill wilicka, he, you know, he called himself, you know, he's a these are big fish in little ponds, and they were really good to work with, to be completely honest. You know, it's its own little world. Everything seems so much more important than it really, when you have some perspective, when you come in from outside and everybody's freaking out about something, it's like, guys just chill. It's okay. It was a really challenging market. But, you know, in the three years I was there, big went from number three to number one, and fresh went from number four, number seven and number four. So, you know, I did what I what I was supposed to do.

Matt Cundill  7:05  
Tell me about the ratings. Like, ratings are good, but it's not really everything when it comes to, you know, making decisions, right?

Bob Willette  7:13  
No, no, it's not, no, it's only the ratings are everything. When it comes to money, you know, like it's, that's your national buys are all based on your rating. You know, you've got, you know, you've got these people. They literally just look at the top three stations. Oh, I've got shoppers. Drug Mart wants to advertise. They're just going to take the top three. They don't care. They don't know. They don't care about the people. They're from Toronto. They don't know. They don't know the relationships that we have with people. So, you know, it's like any it's a diary market, man, like, I mean, at least you can fill out diaries online. Now, you know, it's not like you have to fill them out with like, pen and paper. Sample was 1100 people, so it's a decent, you know. And statistically speaking, I did take statistics 101, in the one year of university I did. That's a good sample size for the size of the market. It gives you a representation that is accurate. They say, I think a lot of that market really is a recall market, big time, you know, because fly FM was the the heritage kind of top 40 station, and when Bell flipped it to a move, they flipped it to a move, their ratings went boom. It's the exact same lineup musical tweak. That's why, how big did so well, to be honest, it was just before I got there they flipped. They did this, you know, cross Canada rebrand over these heritage stations, another sign. They just didn't give a shit. And they clearly didn't. They've sold them, you know, how many of them now, and so, you know, the ratings, you know, you live and die by two books a year, win or lose. You know, we booze, you know, like, it's like, you know, one book I got this crazy bump with big and it was, like, insane. Like, it was, like, I was getting double digits across the board, and it was a sample issue, for sure. So you take that with a grain of salt. So then if you're gonna take that with a grain of salt, you gotta take everything on the bottom as a grain of salt too. Like, hey, you know what? There are more people listening to fresh than what we got credit for. Yeah.

Matt Cundill  8:59  
So Bell really didn't care about what the station was called. They were just happy to move it along. And the great example was right here in Winnipeg. Bob was the founding classic hit station back in 2002 it was number one. And Bob, you're

Bob Willette  9:11  
now bounce. Yeah, they did the same. So I was, before I was there, I had a contract position. I was running K light in Hamilton. Now, k light is like the brand in Hamilton, that's like, Coca Cola, K light was everything. No, we're just gonna blow that out. You know, let's be like, in London, Rogers changing chime to some to whatever. No, then chime is, like, there's power in branding, obviously. And you'd think they would get that, but they, I'll just say they don't. I mean, they're divesting themselves of the stations. They just, they're not meant to be broadcasters. I'm sorry they're just not.

Matt Cundill  9:43  
Tell me, inside Kingston, who is your competition when it comes to radio in a market like

Bob Willette  9:48  
that, are you talking about like the actual companies or the stations? Or what do you mean?

Matt Cundill  9:54  
Well, you know that radio is, you know who you're up against, radio wise. But outside of radio. Yeah, no,

Bob Willette  10:00  
you know what? We were lucky. We had the TV station, right? So we had global so we could package it all together. And that really helped, because the six o'clock news, they stopped raiding in, like television in Kingston ages ago, but the numbers were like through the roof, like Global TV, their six o'clock newscast, they had the, you know, the Kent Rockman, you've been there forever, Guy and walks around town, he has a cool, whatever butter, you know, it was insane. So that we didn't have that competition, the Kingston wig standard would have been the print. And it went, you know, it's kind of like a mere shadow of itself. So, you know, the and the other thing that actually did come up is the kingstonist the website, actually was a bit of competition for us, not necessarily for dollars, but the fact is, they were hungry. They had journalists, they had kids who wanted to get some they had kids who were hustling and going out to things, whereas I got eight people running two radio stations, and I'm trying to be as live as possible. And it was a union shop. So that was a different kind of challenge as well, you know. So it's like, oh, I can't send you out to that, because that's not that's going to be overtime. So I can't do that necessarily. So Kingston, this was an interesting little cog in the in that machine out there, and you got three years out of it, and then you got blown out. Yeah, I got blown out in February. Did you see it coming? I did not. Well, no, okay, that's not true. I did see it coming. I didn't see it coming then. So when I started, so chorus had a different, yeah, I think you would know this like, and they didn't have general managers, right? So they got, ages ago, they got rid of that, 2015, yeah. So remember Astro? Everybody was a brand manager. Nobody was a program director. Because So, course, did the same thing they get. They changed everything around. So the regional program director to this, and then local then locally were program managers. So I was Program Manager for those two stations. And I think across the country, when I started, there was about 12 or 13 program managers. When I was let go, there was three of us left. So like I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming. I'll be honest, I thought they would would have wanted me for the edge in queue. At some point, that was the idea. I made no secret of that. I wanted to run edge in queue.

Matt Cundill  12:07  
Yeah. And I would have thought that a market like Kingston would be a great feeder for talent moving up. Talent didn't

Bob Willette  12:12  
want to move, though that was the problem. Like no talent wanted to move. We had lifers there. Two of my hosts, Derek and Monica, on each station were both like, they're both there for like, 10 plus years.

Matt Cundill  12:24  
It's like tenured professors who just, they just want to go to Cornell or Dartmouth or, you know, Bowdoin or retire in some, you know, Maine Community, and enjoy the life,

Bob Willette  12:36  
exactly. So, yeah, so I saw it coming. That's why I actually started. I just graduated the Second City program here in Toronto for sketch and improv. And that was a, you know, kind of a two year thing. I started it while I was the Program Director in Kingston. Because I was like, You know what I'm going to need? I may have to enter the gig economy, right? Because the way radio is going, my plan kind of was like, maybe I'll start teaching. I'll start, you know, I'll start. I'll start teaching improv on the side, you know. And, you know, be do a few of those a week. Plus I DJ, so, like, then I so do a couple DJ gigs a week. And then I was, I have a, you know, I'm trying to get voice gigs. I've got an agent and all that. So I'm like, maybe I'm gonna, maybe I'll do that. I was definitely heading in that direction. I was unemployed for almost all of last year. So, yeah, okay.

Matt Cundill  13:21  
So this is important, because anybody who's listening to this, whether you're on air, you have a live show that you do, or you want to become a voice actor and get into the voice business, tell me about the value of improv.

Bob Willette  13:33  
Oh my gosh, yeah, it's funny. You know, you get your scripts. I mean, I'll be honest, I'm coming up on a year of doing self tapes, and I've had three callbacks. I haven't booked yet. I haven't booked. My problem is so the acting thing, they want people who sound real right now, you know, back in the day, it would have been, you know, kind of that 80s movie trailer, Hey, big ballsy voices and stuff, if you listen to radio commercials and cartoons too. They want real. They want people who can show inflection and do different things. My problem is I have a I didn't realize this. My voice sounds like a broadcaster's voice, and whenever I try to act real, I'm like, No, that's how I sound. Like they're like, You're too announcing. I'm like, No, that's how I talk. So I'll be honest, the improv thing helps a ton. I did, I mean, I did improv all through high school. I used to go back and coach my high school team as soon as I kind of saw that this radio thing might have been coming to an end, and I was fully prepared for it last year, I was definitely thinking I still needed a performance of some sort in my world, and improv will help you as a broadcaster. Oh my gosh. I mean, nowhere you know what happens when you know, all of a sudden, you know, we lose, you know, whatever media touch crashes, or whatever, you know, whatever you're using, and what are you going to do? You got to talk for five minutes while the engineering tries to get it going. Because, guess what, there's no CD anymore for the backup, or, you know, whatever. So improv is great, and I highly recommend, not necessarily, Second City anywhere you can take a little improv class. Go for it. Yeah,

Matt Cundill  15:00  
that's one of the things. If you've been in radio for a long time, and you need to get into the voiceover world, to go from announcer style, voice over into, you know, real life, real conversation, conversational type person, that's a long trip, and it involves unlearning and relearning, as opposed to somebody who's never been on the radio before, who can just sort of show up and

Bob Willette  15:21  
do it? Yeah? I mean, you know, we have a certain way of presenting things, and I have a certain energy that I have. I've been told I still haven't. I've come close, like I said, I've got a couple callbacks and stuff, but I know people who went who have gone years without it, so it's a good thing. I wasn't relying on it full time. That's for sure.

Matt Cundill  15:38  
I would recast you as just a high energy person and just remove the oh, he's not an announcer. He's just high energy.

Bob Willette  15:45  
Yeah, no, well, exactly. I mean, they don't even look my understanding is these casting directors, what I've been told my daughter is an aspiring actress as well. She's grade nine, goes to an art school. They don't even look at your resume. They literally just, they asked for the tape. You know, if it's something that's camera, they let's look at the picture and listen to your and watch your tape in radio. They don't even look at your resume and your background everything you've done. They literally just listen to it, nope, nope, nope, and that's it. So I think it's like anything remember, remember when PPM came in and we all lost our minds and said, Oh, we only got four seconds to catch their attention. I feel like it's that way with the casting directors a little

Matt Cundill  16:21  
bit. Well, I think with any demo, whether it's, you know, for radio or for voiceover, you know, you want to have a good demo at the same time. You know, there's a lot of casting people out there who are looking for versatility, and so, you know that big, $2,000 demo that you had made is good, however, you got to be able to show your versatility, either inside that demo, or maybe there's other things you can do, because I do see producers go especially when this comes to radio imaging. Show me more. Show me you can go off script. Show me you can go sideways. Do you have a favorite imaging person that you Jamie? Jamie Watson's brilliant. Okay, you can't take him because he's mine. So find someone else. No way,

Bob Willette  17:00  
Matt he's everybody. Is you kidding me? Jamie's the best. We worked with Amanda. Mattie and Todd, her partner there, they gave us a really good deal at fresh in Kingston. They were terrific. She actually just posted on her Facebook. I love Amanda. She's great that, like, the weekend always uses her for all his stuff. And yeah, like she's she's legit. But I mean, if you're talking about the ability to do that, like, here's a script that my overworked creative writer. He writes six promos for, you know, six different things. It's kind of flat, and then you give it to you give it to Jamie Watson, you get a ticket to the next level. That's the kind of person you need. And the thing is, those people are far and few between. Now, while I was the last time I looked for, well, two years ago now, when I first started at fresh I wanted to freshen up the imaging there. I'd fight to get that done, but I did get it done eventually.

Matt Cundill  17:49  
It's bizarre, because I think it's one of the greatest advantages radio has, is to be able to write and promote and to, you know, to make great promos and to get a great producer to do it, but we're just looking to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, and this is the, this is just the absolute wrong area to cut.

Bob Willette  18:09  
Well, you know, so, yeah, I mean, I always say, you know, if you're your imaging voice, literally, is your radio station talking. That's the way I always like, that's the radios that. That is the personification of the radio station, is the imaging voice and, you know, there's music marketing and mornings. I always like production, promotions and people. Was what I always talked about with my team, because I think that production and promotions are just as important as music marketing and mornings and the people in the station are the most important.

Matt Cundill  18:36  
Yeah. And, you know, one of the things in podcasting that they're really struggling with, and they do very, very poorly, is audio promos, myself included. I'm not there with it like I don't have my and this is eight years after doing this that you know you really do have to drill down to an episode. You've really got to drill down to what's the purpose in this podcast. You've got to appeal to people's emotions. You just can't say, Well, this is a sound off podcast, and this is Matt gundle, and it's been going for eight years, and you eight years, and you really should listen. It's got to be better. Got to be stronger, and it's got to be worse, something we're fighting for people's

Bob Willette  19:08  
time. Yeah. What is the mechanism in which you are marketing? Because I have a podcast, I'm having a hard time figuring out where it's going to land now that I'm on air five days a week, because I'm doing some voice tracking for the company too. So I don't know where the podcast is going to land for me. But I've been, I started during the pandemic. I'm a, you know, I'm like, approaching 90 episodes, which is more than most people with podcasts. But what is your mechanism for marketing it like? What do you like? Are you talking about taking clips and turning it into like, what works?

Matt Cundill  19:36  
So I've got the mechanism to take a promo and I'll do a promo for this episode and put it out through a bunch of other podcasts. When people get to the end of some podcasts, let's call it like, let's say whether it's the broadcast dialog podcast or any of the other ones in the network, that people will hear a promo saying, Hey, have you checked out this episode that I did with Bob Willett, because it's really, really good, and you should listen to it. And I'll try to appeal to people. Those emotions. You should listen to this so that you don't become unemployed like Matt did. But there's also more to it. So, you know, and then there's a little bit of presence and reels, if you put a reel up, I think that's like a billboard on a highway sort of thing. Because people are, you know, they're, they're scrolling all the time. And I think that there's, you know, the platforms like LinkedIn, so the business people will see stuff. There's, you know, doing a video of the episode, so you can put that on YouTube. Maybe somebody trips over it while they're, you know, going through the world's second biggest search engine. So it's sort of a collection of things, but marketing wise, and this came from a voice over talent at a conference in Toronto, years ago, we were trying to figure out, what's marketing. We're marketing ourselves as a voice talent. We're doing this. In the end, marketing is really just being involved and inserting yourself into something,

Bob Willette  20:46  
some community, right? Like, what? Because we're talking about communities here, it's not, I mean as much as just digital. Somebody asked me, What's this podcast you're going on? I'm like, Oh, Matt, I've known him, you for years, off and on, and you know, I said, Hey, I his podcast is always on. Broadcast dialogs, weekly email out, and that's big. And broadcast dialog has been so good to me over the years with following my career, and they gave me the Program Director of the Year award. And, you know, like, I said so, and I said, I like, Matt, we've been talking off and on. I was like, now that I'm kind of settled in what I'm doing, I'll be glad to talk to business and I'm I work for a company right now where I don't feel like I'm going to get punished for saying anything. I wouldn't say anything derogatory about the company because I've only been there three months. There's nothing derogatory they hired me. I don't have anything derogatory to say. But, I mean, I got, you know, as you know, there's not a lot of positive things to say about what's going on on the broadcast side of things and on the podcast side of things, I still like, there's still not a lot of people making good money. There's people making money, but not a lot of

Matt Cundill  21:41  
so I look at podcasting as a marketing thing. I love that you said community, because I think we're in the community building business. Now I will talk about your podcast in just a sec, but I do want to talk about that time between when you were let go in Kingston to getting on an indie 88 how long

Bob Willette  22:00  
that was. So I was like, oh, in February, I started on November 3. I was like, so it was not, it was a long time, man, it was almost a whole year. They offered me two months severance. I'd been there for three years, and, you know, and I had worked for the company before for three years before that. Not that that really matters. Thankfully, my brother in law is a lawyer, and we sent a couple letters, and I ended up getting, I think I got four months severance, which is pretty good. I kind of rode that out, and then I went on unemployment, man. So I decided, when I was let go that I was done with being a program director. I do not want to be a program director again the way the system's set up right now, your middle management, you have no real power. You have no creativity. You're essentially a babysitter, and you are administering other people's ideas that you have no idea. You have no input in. That's not why I got into radio. I didn't get into radio to become an administrator. I got into radio to entertain people. I love entertaining people. When I was at proud FM, as small as that radio station was, I did some I was involved in and worked with some of the most creative people I've ever worked with, and made some of the best radio I've ever made, we've ever made, not just me, because the owners literally just said, do what you want. Just don't cost us any money. And that's what we did, you know? So I was like, All right, here we go. And it was a bit, a bit of the Wild West. And I know that's not everything. You do need those other tools. You need research, and you need and I want all those tools if I'm going to be the program. But I want to have a modicum of control, not control say, I just want some say in things you're completely dismissed now, at least in the corporate side of things. You know, I did a year at Bell, and that was a matt leaf cover. So that was a little weird. You're holding, you're keeping the seat warm for somebody else. I knew what I was getting myself into, but at least they paid me like an adult there. So I didn't mind necessarily. All right, well, okay, if I don't have a say in that, that's all right, I can afford to, you know, save money right now, whereas most of the other jobs I've ever had, I can't. It was tough, man. It was really tough, literally. So I had been talking to Ian March, who I know you've had on. I've been talking to Ian for quite some time, and I was talking to Ian and actually to Troy at boom, while I was still at chorus in the fall before they let me go, I was talking to both of them about doing weekends Troy and I were talking and he brought Tarzan dan in instead. And I was like, well, if bingo, Bob isn't going to get a job because of Tarzan Dan, I can't complain there, right? That's okay. Ian's the program director at Indy 88 still, if they were going through the ownership changes. So he's like, I want you, I could hear you do it. And to be to Troy. I'll give Troy a shout out here. Troy was like, Man, I would really like to because, like, you got a family, and this is like, you know, per shift twice a week. It's not like, no, like, you lose your benefits, you lose that. I'm like, Troy, I know they're going to get rid of me. I need a job, and working weekends at boom, is pretty damn good gig. And I know the rest of that, that team's not going anywhere, but when they do, I want to be there, you know, I. Oh,

Matt Cundill  25:00  
and you forgot to mention the appeal of the creativity in that building.

Bob Willette  25:03  
Yeah. I mean, I think they have fun, right? It sounds like they're having fun. Oh, gosh, yeah, yeah. So anyhow, so I was literally the day that I Ian had posted for a swing announcer. I was literally tallying up all the jobs that I had applied for that I got no responses to because I didn't want to go back to programming. Everybody's like, you want general managers or just sales? I'm like, No, I don't want, I want to go on air. I know what I can do, and I know what I can bring to the table. As an announcer, I've been doing this a long time. I need to get back in front of the mic. Sounds cocky, maybe I don't know, but I just knew what I knew what I was meant to do. And then I started to apply for jobs, TTC, job 911, operator, all kinds of things. And then that job posted up, and I emailed Ian, and I said, Hey, do I need to send you stuff? You've got all my stuff. We've we've gone for beers and talked, and he's like, let me call you at five o'clock. And he offered me the job at five, five o'clock that day. Yeah. And for those who are sitting there

Matt Cundill  25:59  
and thinking, Well, why would anybody not want to be program director? I saw this happening back in 2013 where they were really asking for a top tiered chef, or aspiring chef who wants a Michelin star, and really being told, No, you're going to be the prep cook and cut the carrots and celery and other things at Earls.

Bob Willette  26:23  
Well, yeah, here's the Boston Pizza menu. Here's all the frozen stuff and boiling bag stuff, and, you know, like, why? And again, I'm not saying I'm a Michelin star I love the comparison. I'm not saying I'm a Michelin star chef, but what I'm saying is, like, you brought me in for a reason. I've been involved in and helped create, not just me, and help create some pretty great radio along the way. And I love it, and I'm still passionate about this industry, and I think it has a place. I was it's funny. My on my improv class, my troop there, we have a 25 year old woman, and she said, Do you think radio still matters? And I said, I better, because I'm in it again. I think, you know, the funny thing was, and then she's from Ottawa, and then she started naming all the people in Ottawa, and she was like, Well, I don't really listen to radio, but I know blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Sandra vogakis and all these. I was like, oh, then, you know, like, it's, in fact, it's year 25 and you know them. I said, Look, we Yes, we matter. Yes, we have to change, not just change our content, not just change we've been using the same clocks since the 50s. You know, like we've been using clocks programming the same way. I think the key for us is really how we make money. I think 30s are going to go the way the dodo. They have to, like, nobody listens to 30s. You're going to have a five and a half minute stop set where everybody just leaves. No. So we need to find ways to make money the way podcasts are making money with integrated sponsorships, which is how it started back in the 50s. Well, that's the irony. Is that in the TV did, right? Like, in the middle of like a show be like, Oh, here's a Virginia slim, you know? And off they go, you know? I think that's what we need to do, that there's so many barriers in the way, not the least of which is that the buyers for the National products still don't get it either yet. So that education has to happen too. So whoever's working for target, or whoever CBS or whoever's doing the buying, you need to be able to convince them like, no, no, you don't need a 13 week every other day, blah, blah, blah bullshit. Say no. What you need is you need to get to know my morning show host, and you need to give him the product, and then you give us a bunch of money, and he's going to talk about it. Do you know what? I mean? Like, that's what? And he's going to talk about it as this happened this many times, and but they just, you know? I mean, it's, is it a challenge? Oh, absolutely, it's a huge challenge.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  28:36  
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Matt Cundill  29:09  
So here you are inside an independent company. Yes, there are multiple radio stations, but you know, once you get outside the bell of the chorus and the Rogers ecosystem, there's a different vision. So in my other life, in my unlived life, I'm supposed to own a radio station at this point. But I'm sort of thinking here that if you're at a place like Indy, and you know, maybe you do locally, sell those creative host reds, and take the national stuff, and you can just sort of bury it. Listen to how good this sounds, and you're getting killed by this one. This other spot over here, you want to run 30s. We'll sell you all the 30s in the world. You're

Bob Willette  29:48  
always going to have to have the 30s. I get it. I don't think it's efficient, no,

Matt Cundill  29:53  
especially with the younger generation, they're conditioned for a whole bunch of other things.

Bob Willette  29:57  
You mentioned YouTube earlier. What? The first thing you do, skip ads, skip ads, skip ads, right? So that, like thinking that people will listen. And then the other thing too is, oh, well, we've gotten rid of the best creative people. They've gone elsewhere, you know, like our writers, our creative writers, our producers, they've all left. They've all, you know, I mean, there's still some good people around, but man, oh man, these telecoms, I gotta say, they've really just, they came in, you know, Bell came in and bought everything, and they just threw a grenade, and now they're leaving, you know, a grenade. They threw several grenades, and now they're just leaving. It's like, oh, wow, thanks so much appreciate it. Bye, you know, so now working for Chris Christopher Grossman, he's a real straight shooter, really smart guy. What I found interesting about he listens, so I came in as a weekend announcer, and they had offered me something else. And I was like, I don't know if that's the best use of my time and my my talent. And we talked, and I said, Here's what I think I should be doing. You tell me. And I said, but look, we can do that other thing. And he's like, no, no, you don't want to do it. We're not doing it. And I was like, wow, he listened. He actually listened to me. So it was, it was really, it was really good to have that happen, because it had been a while since somebody listened in a work environment. So what are you doing? So I'm a full time announcer with Indy 88 I do weekends and evenings. So I'm doing, you know, I mean, when PPM came in, we saw how important weekends are. Weekends are like through the roof, important, especially in a city like Toronto where you got to drive your kid to soccer and hockey and this and that, you know, you're in your car all the time all weekend. Look, I live on the Danforth in Toronto, and sometimes the Danforth is busier on Saturdays than it is during the week. Like, during the week, it's busy in the morning and drive, but on Saturday it's busy all day, like there's just people going somewhere all the time.

Matt Cundill  31:40  
Yeah, you've what you've done in these cities. You know, Edmonton, Calgary. I see it in Winnipeg too. I listened to my producer, Evan. I listened to his Saturday he had to drive. I said, you have 150 kilometers in your car with two hockey games, and that's just in Winnipeg. I've got a friend in Calgary, Patricia. She's in her car like all the time, Monday to Friday. But Saturday, this is when our cities, the way they're built, unleashes everybody in suburbia to cross the city. We call

Bob Willette  32:09  
905 verse here all the 905 ers come in and they got, they got to go to this arena, or they got to go to the mall. They got to go to Yorkdale. They got to do this. Oh no. You say 150 kilometers for us, it's like it's only 12 kilometers, but it takes just as long.

Matt Cundill  32:21  
Yeah, and that thing with the mall, I've seen that for years, where everybody gets in a car Saturday between, like three and five. They're rushing to get something done. So I have scheduled a nap for the last 30 years between Saturday between three and five, just so I don't have to deal with that.

Bob Willette  32:40  
I love the Saturday nap myself, but yeah, so I'm doing Saturdays. I do one to one to 6pm I do five hours, five hour live, all live, so there's not a lot of live radio anymore, so I'm doing one to six live on Saturdays. I'm doing 11am to 4pm on Sundays, and then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday evenings. We're doing live, real radio 6pm to 10pm in Toronto, here at immediate nobody was doing it. Nobody else is doing real live radio. I'm doing it.

Matt Cundill  33:08  
When you get outside the ecosystem of the corporate companies where radio is not first, and you go into a company where radio is first, how does that change your view of radio and the future of radio.

Bob Willette  33:22  
I'll hearken back to a conversation I had with John Paul. Of course, in my FM, I talked to him years ago. I totally forgot, I think, when he was launching the Napanee station, I can't Well, him and I had talked. I was at, I was at, proud, actually, and I was, I don't, you know, saw a job, you know, his general manager job, and him and I had a really good conversation back then. I think he's a real, you know, he's a classic radio guy, like he's, like, he we could nerd out on radio all day, him and I, much like yourself and I and him and I, you know, we talked about, you know, what we think, you know, I kind of gave my spiel earlier, what I think, you know needs to happen. And his Spiel is, we've been under serving ourselves. We've been under charging for ourselves. Like he's his whole thing is, like, we've been giving away the farm for free, and we should have been charging way more than we were, but because the Home Hardware on Main Street's been a client, here's your $7 for a 30, you know, or even less, sometimes dollar a hauler kind of things. So I think it's really, it's amazing to sit you know, I mean, when I talked to Chris when I first so I think I'm just one of his first hires, because part of the he had to keep the team right, that that is the one thing, one of the things that I don't know where, but the agreement was with the outgoing, you know, the central Ontario broadcast. He was like, No, you can't just like, go in and blow the place up so that he's, he's got some sort of, he has to keep the people were there. And I think I'm the one of the first hires, me and maybe Jackie, who's the third on the morning show now, and him and I have had some really great conversations. You know, he's got a perspective on radio. I mean, he owned all the moose. He owned Halliburton, right? It's great to talk to somebody who is as vested and invested, if you will, in what it is the nuance of what we. Do, because it is, you know, it's the small things that make up the big picture. And, you know, you I mentioned the music marketing mornings and my production people and promotions like, yeah, you know what? If that, here's an idea. You know, if we, if we played a promo for the Sunday morning diner during the Sunday morning diner, is it the end of the world? No, but we shouldn't do it, and he knows that, and he gets that, and he knows you can't. You got to hire the right people to make sure that doesn't happen on the reg. You know what I mean. So I'm encouraged. I worry about that other side that I mentioned. I worry about other people outside the industry understanding, and I worried about the narrative that shitty old jocks who shit on the on the industry that bought their house, who continue to shit on our industry. You know, it's like you made huge dough when there was huge dough to be made. I still got 1520, years left in me. I'll be 50 next year. I just turned 49 you know, I still got 15 years left in me before I can retire. So why are you kicking me while we're down a little bit? I don't understand why these bitter radio guys who got walked out are being so negative.

Matt Cundill  36:09  
Well, because they don't know where to lay the blame. I know where to lay the blame, and that's I'll point it first at the regulator. I mean, the regulator has messed this up the 12 people who were in charge of the purchases, who let phone companies buy this up and start to shred them, who did not call them to the carpet to ask them about the promises of performance, who did not want to do that. And by the way, if you think, Well, why would they do that? They're not sitting around and doing nothing, necessarily, but they did need the phone companies to do some favors for them. And hey, why don't you look past this radio stuff? And here's some we'll build you some phone lines to some communities. We're gonna bolster here. We'll bolster there. We'll you know, it was sketchy. Well, they shouldn't have, they shouldn't have owned this stuff in the first place. It was really not the thing to for years. It was like, let's make sure the newspaper doesn't buy up the radio stations and markets. And you just you did something worse. Now you let the phone companies have it, and they did exactly what a lot of people said and what you just said, and they're going to strip these things to the ground and run them into the ground, and now here we are, and this is not the fault right now. It's not the fault of, listen, Bell's just being Bell. They're corporations. Expect

Bob Willette  37:21  
nothing less. Why would like, why would we expect anything more? Yeah.

Matt Cundill  37:25  
And so here we are. We're asking. And so I thought this was really interesting. And as we record this, this is the day one of the tariffs for that Donald Trump has dropped on everybody. And you know, there's John Paul who feels like a bit of a lone voice. We know there's a couple others who are like, maybe now's the time not to be buying Facebook and Google and try buying ads on your local radio station. Today might be the day to go and re engage.

Bob Willette  37:48  
Yeah, I, you know, I think you're right. You know, I've had the opportunity to actually write and present to the CRTC a couple times when I was at Evanoff radio. I helped them with a couple applications and whatnot, actually, for the application for when C KLM got shut down, and for 88 one, we had proposed putting crowd FM from 1039, FM onto 88 one. We didn't get it. Obviously, central Ontario broadcasting got it. But, I mean, the fact is, so you're talking on the bigger picture when it comes to ownership and what they did, I'm talking now programming, programming wise, they have handcuffed us. It's absolutely there's it's not an equal playing field. Even now in the 88 it's 40% can con and I think kiss in Toronto still is 40% but everybody else is 35 How is that? And we have a commitment with emerging but guess what? Where's the list for emerging artists? No. How's that even defined? There's no charts like radio and records, magazine, billboards, American they are. What do they know? It has to be an emerging Canadian artist. So they're absolutely doing us no favors at all, at all. Like, I don't know. Do you know how much money the CRTC costs every year, too? I did. Like, if you just Google that, it's ridiculous.

Matt Cundill  38:59  
Well, I applied to be Commissioner a number of years ago, and I know what that salary is. I did not get the job. They didn't even interview me for it.

Bob Willette  39:06  
I thought I'd be pretty good at it. You know what the problem is now with the CRTC now, I actually think, much like the corporate ownership radio is a, really a small part of the deal now, right? So, like, even money wise, like, so they just don't have the time. They've got, like, 1000 workers at the CRTC. They have the time. They just don't know what to do. They don't know how to get there.

Matt Cundill  39:25  
Yeah, I'm trying to figure out what they do all day. Yeah, I have no idea. I mean, you're talking about, you know, Bell selling those radio stations, it has taken longer than a year to approve it. There are people who have jobs that they don't know what they're doing next with their career. You're leaving them in limbo. It's disgusting.

Bob Willette  39:47  
No, it's horrible. I just yeah, the Peterborough and Lindsay stations were just approved for Durham radio, who I used to work for, for Doug Kirk there. I mean, how long ago was that? Was that over a year? It's got to be over a year. It's been it's like, why did that take a year? Why does any of it take a year? It shouldn't. Should be like, Oh, okay. Stamp, good. I know they were. It's funny. They were worried about the ownership changes and how many FMS you can have in a market and whatnot. That's the least of our worries. I think if we got a John Paul who wants to own all the radio stations in a market good, like, just to make it's not about how many you own, it's who owns it, and what are they gonna do with it? Yeah, and I

Matt Cundill  40:23  
feel bad for radio stations. And Steve Jones points this out quite often on LinkedIn, and I'm glad he's doing it, just to point out that the sheer stupidity of Rod Stewart is can con, and Celine Dion is not can con. Aerosmith deuces are wild. That's one of my favorite ones.

Bob Willette  40:39  
Hit me with your best shot by pet METAR is can con, that's that one? Is it that one? Yeah, one of I think it's hit me with, yeah, yeah, no, I know I have that. Oh no. And Steve's been doing that a lot lately. I've really seen, I've seen him doing that. Of course, he's sting right now, right? So that's an interesting company. I've never worked for them, but they still, they seem to care about, you know, at least I know the people who are there care. I know that. I don't know about the company. Well, they've got classic hits, right? And so a lot of stations, and a lot of popular classic his stations, a lot of people listen to radio are our age and over 50. So this is the music they like. But they're stuck playing these antiquated songs, some of which, here's Trooper again, yeah. And I, you know, I feel bad. Listen, there's always, like, a some sort of really bad can con song that I might like, and I'll just listen to, just because why not? But I would hate to have 35% of my playlist tied to that, and in the car, sometimes I'll hear it, and I'll just go, I think I'll listen to a podcast now, yeah, well, I understand why the emerging component came in. Because the spirit of the maple CRTC can con rule was to help Canadian artists along and help foster and grow our music industry. However, what it turned into is just basically lining the pockets of older songwriters. Who are, you know, part of so can and get, I'm getting nobody's very few people are rich writing Canadian hit radio. I get it. I understand that. But the point is, we, instead of, you know, at a station, when I was at the edge, say, you know, instead of playing some new band that was playing Queen West that was up and coming, oh, here's 5440, again. Or, you know, like, it's like, and so I understand getting the emerging as a station like Indy, 88 who plays so much great new music. You know, they're 10 years in now, and they're just starting to see the results. Numbers wise, they're really like, they're getting there. They've refocused the sound of the station, and the idea of what it is is Toronto's modern music. But guess what? Modern music? We're still going to play Bowie, we're going to play Stevie Nicks. We're going to play classic songs that people love. Because if you want us to play the new track by the band Valley, you got to surround that with shit people know, because Valley is great. But if I are nothing but Valley, Valley's contemporaries, nobody's going to stay. A very small amount of people who are tastemakers and all that will stay so the thing is, we should I understand why being you're being rewarded, you know, like a new like, as opposed to having a secondary emerging requirement? How about give me two selections for every emerging artist I play. Give me two can con for that? You know, two to one for playing new stuff. And I know that doesn't help Sting Ray, but I'm just like, there's got to be some way. Or, how about give me an album hit? Remember AOR, like you give me, give me an album cut from Trooper, instead of raise a little hell, and then we'll give you an extra. We'll give you an extra 10% I don't know, actually, we'll give you a triple, if it's in Drive, yeah, there you go, exactly. Go turn the radio on at 11pm at night and see what you get.

Matt Cundill  43:39  
Okay, so we've talked a little bit about the emerging talents in music, and then this is the part that I really began to sort of see, especially when podcasts came up, and when new media and, you know, eventually Tiktok and stuff, and that's for talent like you yourself are can con and it was Chris Burns who mentioned this one. I think he did it in front of the Sierra C's like, why isn't this something like Josie dye, who will do a break on radio that doesn't count for anything. That break counts for nothing. Oh, but she goes on TV and does it on the social that's Canadian content.

Bob Willette  44:15  
That's a great point. Is what that is? Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, so category one, you know, category one, Category Two, category three. The category one is is news and spoken word. Category Two is popular music, and category three is non popular music. And these are things that you have to as a broadcaster, you're keeping track of this and making sure you're hitting all the, you know, the expectations of license versus the, you know, conditions of license are two different things as well, right? So the whole thing's antiquated. It is so out of date, it needs to all be blown up. I don't think radio would stop playing Canadian music if you told them that they didn't have to play anything. I don't think that's the way to go, but I think maybe 10% would be a nice number. Give me 10% and if you're a classic station, give me 10% if you're. A news station, give me 20% and give me and 10% of that should be emerging, and we're off. We're off to the races, and 24 hours a day, forget this six to 12 thing that would give us a fighting chance. How are we going to fight again like again? I always do this thing right here. My phone has every song ever written in it, every song. Why do I don't need to listen to the radio for the music. I need to listen to the radio for the guy who's going to tell me about the music and maybe win tickets to go see a show with them. But I don't need this. I don't need the radio because of this thing. It's ridiculous.

Matt Cundill  45:33  
You have a podcast. The podcast is about change. It is called Bob's basement. Yeah, where I am right now. Listen this podcast about changing. We've had so many people come through the doors just to, just to talk to them about their lives and the ever changing world that they go through. Tell me about your plans for that, for the future.

Bob Willette  45:51  
Yeah, you know what? It's a little bit talk about limbo. A lot of it really just, it's about my hustle, right? It's about how much hustle I have, and I got to admit, right now. So I said this to Blair Bartram the other day. Blair reached out and said some nice things about my show, because I've been posting stuff, and he's been listening, and he was the first program director who actually had ever put me on the air as an announcer. I'd been on the air on talk radio, on Mojo radio, but I'd never been a jock, so it was nice to have Blair check in. So here's what I said to him, and this is another reason why I don't necessarily want to become a program director again, I have a five hour show. I have five breaks per hour. That's 25 times for me to be great. I have 25 times per day to be great, whatever great is entertaining, informing, you know, inquisitive, freaky, WTF, like whatever it is. But I can't. There's no throwaway breaks for me that you can't do that. I expected that from my talent, and I expect that from me as the talent. So it's exhausting. It's a lot of work. I'm lucky that it comes to me naturally. My energy is such that, and it's one of the things I actually have to work on, is bringing it down a little bit, because I'm like, I get up here, I get a little excited about stuff. Start talking way too fast, and people are like, whoa, Bob, what do you want? I'm like, no, just life. So all of that being said, I'm doing those five days a week, plus I'm actually doing drive on the other three stations, on voice tracking drive on the other three stations that they have. So I'm on the air a lot right now. So my capacity to hustle and book guests, honestly, the booking is the hardest part, because doing the show, I could do a show, no problem. Like, I mean, you get, you know, let's see. I don't know rain made is available. Yeah, I could. I could talk to rain just based on what I know about rain. You know what? I mean, I don't need to do a lot of research because, you know, I could do the show. It's the booking of the people, and getting them on is, is the hard time. So the long answer to your to your question, or the short answer your question is, I don't know, right now, there's some great episodes there. And it started during the pandemic, and that's why it was about change. I had Paul Bellini and Scott Thompson from kids in the hall. Now, Scott Thompson had a horrible mic. He didn't even have a mic, so it was a little bit hard to listen to, and I worked with Paul Bellini at proud FM. You Scott Thompson's writing partner as a sketch guy. I loved talking to those guys, so I still love doing it. I just got to find the capacity.

Matt Cundill  48:12  
Yeah. So here my advice would be, if it's the booking that's the hard part, invest in accountability, and these are the recording times, and just send out a bunch of emails to like, 10 people you want on the show, and then they'll book in, and if they book in, then that'll be the time that you just do it. Because I think, you know, I mean, you have 125 breaks to do a week, plus your voice tracking. Just look at this as your 120/6 break. It just takes an hour. It

Bob Willette  48:35  
just takes an hour. Yeah, yeah. I try to wrap it up before now, 45 to 45 to 60 for me. And

Matt Cundill  48:41  
that's a nice thing, by the way, about a podcast is you can put it down, and this idea of, oh, you're going to lose all your listeners and stuff that's already been debunked by Mark Asquith, who did a podcast he, you know, he's a Captivate, and he stopped his podcast and then came back to it, and all the downloads are there. Yeah, you can re engage the audience, and if you, especially if you're active on social media. I mean, if you never told me, I'd never know that you've just sort of stopped your podcast, because you can always bring it back in another form.

Bob Willette  49:11  
A little bit later, I brought an energy to the social media side of things at Indie that wasn't, I don't think was there before. And the P the On Air, people are really embraced it. We've, like, I've been going nuts on social. I expected that from my announcers when I was, you know, program director. I really think it's an extension of the brand. And, you know, sometimes you get a little bit of you get a little bit of resistance, like, whoa. I gotta be, I gotta put more effort into my on air brakes. So this is taking away from my time to prepare. I'm like, No, it's not do both. Give me your on air break, put it on air. Do something, you know, show me anything like, I'm literally the other day, I was like, walking around the station trying to find a toaster, and I turned it into a social media break. Like, I think it's really important to do that. And if you know we were talking earlier, harken back to what you said of, you know, with podcasts, and how do we get that marketing out there?

Matt Cundill  49:58  
And. Glad you also mentioned, like, the difficulty in podcasting, and you're kind of like the example of why more radio people don't do a podcast on top of their weekly show, because it's, it's a lot, and the radio is a lot, and then by taking on a podcast, you're essentially doubling the work.

Bob Willette  50:16  
I've got my trusty rodecaster, but I mean, I'm still, it's all goes into audition, and I still have to edit it and make sure it sounds good and, and I was basically did the show live to tape, right? Like, I very rarely ever took anything out, but it's still, it's a lot of effort just getting it, doing it is a lot of effort, you know. And right now, I don't have a permanent setup here in my basement, like I did during the pandemic, but I don't right now, so, like, I'm sitting on a kitchen chair with my, you know, with my setup on another kitchen chair and a side table. You know,

Matt Cundill  50:46  
Bob, it is so good to talk to you and catch up again. I can't believe it's been, like, nearly four years since we felt like I just did it yesterday.

Bob Willette  50:53  
I know, I know. Well, we ran into each other at CMW a couple years ago. I think I was with for us at that time. Yeah,

Matt Cundill  51:00  
yeah, it was, it was, I was gonna say was Radio Days North America, but no, it was the old CMW, oh, it's actually CMW,

Bob Willette  51:07  
wasn't Radio Days North America. No. Well, I you know what, thank you for doing what you do and still being an advocate for radio. It's very much appreciated. Yeah. Well, I love radio. I know you do. So there's a lot to love about it, a lot to friggin be frustrated by it, but it's still fun. I'm loving it. I I get texts every day from listeners. I didn't this is the first time I've worked at a station was active texting. So it's amazing, really, yeah, because, I mean, I was when I was at 94 nine, the rock they didn't have it. I was doing mid days there, we didn't have text in the studio. And I did three months. Did at 97 seven hits, FM as afternoon drive before I was the PD there. And yes, that was amazing, because as soon as you come on, it's like, but today, just every day, people are like, oh man. Like, just yesterday, I was quickly, it feels so good to know that you're changing people's lives, but you're part of something. Woman texted me. She's like, Oh, she goes, like, my husband, and I turned the radio on, and my husband turned to me said, I hope it's Bob that's on that she's like, we love your show. And she did this unsolicited, like, just out of nowhere. I was like, Oh my gosh, that's why I, you know, feed my ego more. Thank you. Thanks, Bob, Matt. Thanks so much,

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  52:13  
buddy. The sound off podcast is written and hosted by Matt Kendall, produced by Evan serminsky, edited by Taylor MacLean, social media by Aiden glassy, another great creation from the sound off media company. There's always more at sound off podcast.com you.