Category: Commentaries

7/14/1995.

The Good Lord called Charlie Minor into his office last week.

“Charlie,” God said with a frown, “you’re doing a great job getting all of our records on Clear Channel, but the people of Heaven aren’t buying any at our superstores.”

“Hey, buddy,” Charlie answered, motioning his entourage of angels toward the juice bar, “I can only do so much.  That Clear Channel 1 might reach everyone forever, but it’s boring.  We need to add some pop…some sizzle…something to get the listeners excited about the music.  Now, it just sounds like Muzak.  We need somebody to sell the music.”

God stroked his beard.  “Who do you suggest?”

Charlie waved his hands in the air.  “there’s only one person.  Wolfman Jack.”

God frowned again and the heavens crackled with lightning and thunder.  “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Charlie’s smile lit up the room as he headed for the door, three angles on each arm.  “Hey, buddy, that’s what you’ve got me for.

I don’t remember how old I was when I first heard Wolfman Jack on the radio.  Having been born and raised in a tiny town in Mississippi, it was hard to get any station after the sun went down, much less any station that played the kind of music I wanted to hear. I was into R&B long before I knew what it was.  I only knew that my father didn’t want that kind of music played in the house.  And that make it important.

All day long, I would listen to Hank Williams, Roy Acuff and the like, but at night, I desperately needed a fix of Rhythm & Blues.  I would get a bottle and a date (in that order), drive to the highest point in the county and start twisting the dial.  The girls weren’t nearly as excited as I was (still aren’t), but went along because they thought I was fun and kind of dangerous (still do).

I had already discovered Big John R on WLAC out of Tennessee, but he was only on for two hours and it wasn’t enough.  So I kept searching the dial, keeping the needle down on the low numbers where the big stations were broadcasting, trying to get a fix.

Suddenly, a howling wolf cry cut through the static.  You cannot imagine the chill that went up my spine when I heard the top-of-the-hour ID.

“Are you wit’ me?  I’m askin’ are you wit’ me?  Aw, come on, babies, put your hand on the radio and feel the luuvv vibrations.  This is Wolfman Jack on XERB Del Rio, Texas!”

A jingle followed sung by Johnny Rivers and a host of other singers.  “Here comes the Wolfman…he understands.”

Then “Ya Ya” by Lee Dorsey.

My life changed at that instant.  I had never heard anything like it in my life.  Sissy Sue was playing with my hair and whispering her best Southern come-on in my ear.  I didn’t care.  This Wolfman Jack from some mysterious place in Texas had transported me into a special world…a world I would never leave.  Sissy Sue, a few years short of becoming Columbia High’s homecoming queen (and already displaying a couple of attributes that would later make her a lock on the crown), may as well have been a figment of my imagination.  I didn’t care.  I was waiting for the Wolfman’s next break.

“That was `Ya Ya,”’ Wolfman yelled, “by Lee Dorsey.  How you like the Wolfman so far baby?”  His voice dropped into a now familiar purr.  “Have mercy, baby!  Who’s this on the Wolfman’s telephone?”  Then he yelled again.  “Are you nekkid?”

Sissy Sue never got it, but I did.  She married well, has four or five kids she’s hoping to get into Ole Miss on scholarships.  I’ve been hooked on the drug I got from Wolfman Jack the first time I heard him selling music and “…Holy Water blessed by the saints of Jerusalem.”  When Sissy Sue heard about Wolfman’s passing, she called.  She finally got it.  Her husband didn’t understand.  He vaguely remembered a husky, bearded dude that hosted The Midnight Special.  Me?  I lost a friend.  And something much more.

A part of radio left with Wolfman Jack, but the loss will be felt outside of radio.  We lost an important part of Americana.  We lost a bit of our youth.  We lost a lot of our audio excitement.  For millions of teenagers in California who heard him nightly on XERF and millions in the Southwest tuning in XERB, Woflman Jack was radio.  And man, could he move records.  If the Wolfman played it, you wanted to go right out and buy it.

Radio passed Wolfman Jack a long time ago.  It’s not something we should be proud of.  We are too often accused of sounding boring…identical…automated.  Wolfman Jack was none of these.  Cookie-cutting programmers are too quick to copy rather than strive to be unique.  Instead of finding a place for Wolfman Jack, we cut him out.  In doing so, we’ve created a huge void.  Not so much for Wolfman.  He always did all right.  But for the next Wolfman.

I was lucky.  I got to meet Robert Weston Smith, a.k.a.  Wolfman Jack, long before his debut in American Graffitti.  I was afraid that meeting him would destroy forever the image I had painted in my mind of that magical person who helped change my life.  I shouldn’t have worried.  Wolfman Jack in the flesh was everything and more that he was coming through those three-inch speakers in the ‘60s.

I hired Wolfman to do nights on KHJ in Los Angeles.  We had the deal all worked out.  I even managed to stretch the restrictive RKO format to allow him the latitude to be himself, but restrictions still applied.  The day before the promos were due to hit the air, Wolfman came to see me.  In his famous gravelly voice, he told me he couldn’t take the job.  He had done his act so long, he was afraid he just couldn’t come close enough to the format to make us both happy.

“Baby,” he said, “I would rather turn down this job than jeopardize our friendship.”

In the end, it all turned out for the best.  Wolfman syndicated a weekend show and we ran it on KHJ.  He eventually made 10 times what I would have paid him…and we remained friends

So Wolfman Jack got the gig on the big station in the sky where he can dictate the format.  It was just a matter of time.  The Wolfman was only on the air once a week.

Heaven needed to hear him a lot more often that that.  Let’s all give one last clap for the Wolfman.

7/12/1995

Many of you have asked the “secret” of the success of KFRC while I was the program director. There was no one “thing” that made KFRC as success. It was a combination of talent, signal, promotions and music. But the biggest element that made KFRC successful was the consistency of the sound. Now matter what time you tuned in, you knew it was KFRC. A big part of the consistency of KFRC was derived from everyone playing by the same book…the KFRC Playbook…a part of which I share with you this week. It is a combination of everything I learned about radio programming. These are my thoughts, combined with the special people I worked with along the way: Paul Drew and Buzz Bennett to name the most important. It’s part of the recipe for the “Gumbo” that made KFRC what it was. Enjoy:

The following information is provided to help you understand the basics of the KFRC format.  The easiest thing to do is read the material once and never pick it up again.  It is to your benefit, however, to read this book once each week…every week…so the basics will become a part of your on-air procedure.

This information covers all the essentials of the KFRC format.  You won’t find a formal ending.  The evolution of and changes to the format will necessitate additions to the playbook.

The playbook is broken into two parts: philosophy and mechanics.  The mechanics and philosophy are interwoven.  One without the other is worthless.  Understanding the philosophy behind the mechanics will make the format succeed because it is the sum of all of the parts that will spell success for you and KFRC.  It is important for you to understand the philosophy.  It is imperative that you take care of each formatical rule.  Knowing where your final destination is won’t get you there unless you take the right road and make all the correct turns.  Knowing that San Francisco is in Northern California is useless unless you know how to get there.  We must know where we’re going and what we have to do to get to our final destination.  We must understand the philosophy and apply the mechanics to make the philosophical idea a practical reality.

The format makes the sound smooth and consistent.  The audience doesn’t know our rules and restrictions.  However, the audience can feel our total impact.  The philosophy behind KFRC should translate into a feeling…a feeling we must have and share with our listeners.  We call this feeling “the X factor.”

The key to attaining the X factor lies in how we apply the mechanics of the format in relation to the philosophy.  We can’t just follow the rules.  That would be automation.  We must reach and maintain the X factor by combining our own personalities within the framework of the format.  Humanism is the key.  Humanism must created within the basics of the format.  If your individual feelings transcend the format, we fail.  If your individual feelings mesh with the format, the, and only then, will you be able to rise above the mechanics of the format to attain success.  Being creative and individualistic within the format is the mark of a true professional.  Only you can do it!

The basic philosophy of KFRC is to interface humanism with the format to achieve the feeling that motivates our listeners to be proud that KFRC is their favorite station.

On the subject of humanism, we get into the problem of defining what it is and what it isn’t.  We must evaluate and re-define that word as it directly relates to the job we are trying to do.  In order to understand it properly, we must break it down into different verbalizations.

The term “humanism” isn’t quite enough.  We must go further and emit the feeling of positive humanism as opposed to negative humanism.  When you are on the air, you must create a little bit more than just humanism…it must be positive humanism.  If a jock was terminally ill and went on the air and slowly died, it would be realistic, but it would also be a total negative and would not produce a positive feeling (that in turn would produce positive ratings).  Are you getting the picture?

One of the primary points of humanism is authenticity.  Authenticity must be combined with honesty, warmth and openness without losing the spark and momentum necessary to create the quarter-hour maintenance based on the feeling that something is coming.

There is a strong significance of listening.  In turn, there is s strong significance of feeling and thinking, rather than just speaking.  Feeling and thinking is necessary in our day when hypotheses about what might be are more interesting than what is or what has been.  In a world of continuous change, the past becomes less relevant to current problems.  Cultural shifts are obvious, so we as leaders must constantly change.  Social order must be conceived of in terms of process, rather than structure.  This requires functional individuals to be general in their quest rather than specific subject-matter specialists.  Since we have continuous change, our organization will be set be up in the same way.

We must have goals, but we must have communicating members whose help is needed and utilized to reach those goals.  We, as leaders (that means all of us), must constantly be open to feedback, especially from our subordinates or our peers. We must negotiate and arrive at mutually acceptable goals, understood by all, creating an informal organization led by human realtors thinking over their specific areas.  This we must do to create, because creativity is the bringing together of unlike elements joining into a new event.

Real people are listening to you.  You must communicate with them.  The “boss Jock” syndrome seems to have influenced the great majority of modern radio personalities to talk down to people, talk at people, to enunciate and just not be themselves.  The one-on-one relationship is essential to furnish the feeling our potential listeners are seeking.  They are seeking to relate, to know that there is someone else like them.  The fact is: We’re always talking to somebody.  We are not reading, not shouting memorized lines.  We’re talking to important people. Whatever is said must be meant.  The time, a liner, your name…everything…and particularly the most important message of all: KFRC.

Now that you have the general philosophy, it is important that you carry out each segment of the format.  To succeed, we must color each square, fill every hole and touch all the bases so we can get to the top quicker and stay there.  Anyone can do the big things.  It takes a dedicated professional to cover all the little incidentals every day to achieve a degree of consistency that cannot be matched.  Remember where you are and what got you here.  Until you became a part of KFRC, you were working to get here.

You did extra things at smaller stations so you could move on to a bigger and better situation.  Now that you’ve made it here, the motivation you had for doing the extra things may diminish.  You need to constantly analyze your position and establish a new motivation for your continued consistent actions.

There are six main objectives that we must accomplish to establish a cohesive merging of the philosophy and format mechanics.  These are he keys to the kingdom: Desire, Discipline, Excitement, Energy, Realism and Consistency.  They are all basic and equally important.  One without the other may produce a quick inflation, but a quicker deflation.  To achieve these basics, we must break each one down, identify it and determine what we must do to achieve it.

DESIRE

All of us have the desire to be the best or we wouldn’t be here.  However, wanting something badly doesn’t mean you’ll get it.  We must maintain our desire and combine it with the other factors to turn our desire into reality.

Each team in the National Football League begins training camp with a playbook that outlines the team objectives.  No team sets out to be a loser.  Each is dedicated to winning and going to the Super Bowl.  The playbooks define the goal and put forth a plan of action.  Yet after the season, the majority of the teams fall short of their goals.  They didn’t begin the season with the objective of losing.  In the beginning, they all had the desire to be winners but somewhere along the line, they failed in their quest.

Did they lose their desire? I don’t think so.  They failed to combine their desire with a daily intensity necessary to make their desire a reality.

We must never lose our desire and we must maintain a daily intensity on the little things that will get us to Super Bowl.

DISCIPLINE

It’s easy to do a great show when everything is going right and you’re feeling good.  It’s tough when you feel terrible and everything is going wrong.  You must discipline yourself to achieve the goal of a great show, no matter the circumstances.  It takes discipline to push the positives and overcome any negative feelings that might make your show less than it should be.  You’re part of one of the best staffs in the country.  Consequently, you must discipline yourself to achieve a maximum effort every time you’re on the air

We depend on each other for our total success.  Our audience judges all of us.  If we have one weak link, we all suffer.

You must make yourself do all of the little things that by themselves might mean very little, but when added together, make you and KFRC the best.  Discipline yourself to come in early, take the extra time to make a spot sound better, make yourself read over each piece of live copy before going on the air so you’ll get it perfect, re-write the liners and PSAs, prepare your show to make sure you have the proper music balance.

In short, discipline consists of making yourself do all of the little things that we sometimes think we’re too good to do.  Don’t forget that doing the little things to make yourself better is what got you here in the first place.

Discipline yourself to achieve your best, because on KFRC, the worst you should ever sound is great!

EXCITEMENT AND ENERY

The two are closely related.  Excitement causes a burst of energy.  Energy creates excitement.  Think of it this way: Excitement is scoring a touchdown; energy is lining up, waiting for the snap, knowing you’re going to score.

We must generate a feeling of excitement by being excited ourselves.  Our listeners don’t hear excitement; they feel it.  You cannot be excited all of the time, but you can maintain a high energy level that will enable the audience to get a positive charge from you.

Each of us must maintain the energy level in our own way.  We all react differently.  It’s up to you to involve yourself in KFRC in such a way that the feeling of energy is passed on to the audience.

It is important that you maintain a positive energy level on the air.  It is equally important that you maintain a positive energy level off the air.  If you push positive feelings, those around you will be positively charged.  Negative feelings will be similarly passed along.  So work toward charging the on-air sound, the people around you, the rooms and halls of KFRC!

REALISM

We must all strive to be individuals on the air, within the boundaries of the format.  The era of the “boss Jock” has been over for quite some time.  People are listening to you to hear what you have to offer.  If the format was the only key to success, KFRC would be automated.  It takes real people talking to real people to achieve that realism that will allow you and KFRC to rise above the mathematics of the format and attain total success.  We know what realism is, but again, it’s important to redefine the term as it relates directly to our jobs.

On KFRC, realism is being yourself with an “air” of carny.

When you’re talking with one person, you tend to lay back, talk softly and emphasize very few words because you don’t need to be animated.  The person you’re talking with is listening to you and will miss very little of what you say.  You are the center of attention.  Do this on KFRC and you die.  But if you over-emphasize some things, enunciate more distinctly and talk louder, you’re not being real, right:   Wrong!  When you’re talking with a group of people in your living room, you talk louder, over-emphasize some things and, in general, try and express yourself in a more dominating way because you’re trying to hold the attention of several people.  You’re still being real; you’re a little more animated.

That’s the feeling we must strive for on the air: realism, with a bit of animation.  It’s a fine line, but we must find it.  When you make a statement, your listeners won’t believe it unless you do.  Convince yourself!  When you’ve convinced yourself, your listeners will believe it… because it is the truth!

When you walk through a carnival, you hear the barkers shouting, “Hurry, hurry, hurry!  You can’t lose.  Step right up and win a prize!”  You might step right up, but you know you’re going to be ripped off because the barker has already told you so.  Not by his words, but by the way he said them.  We must find the line of realism with excitement and every…not the carnival rip off.

CONSISTENCY

Consistency is the combination of all of the above on a daily basis.  It’s covering all of the basics, all of the time.  Doing this makes the basics become automatic, giving us the freedom to develop ourselves in greater ways.  By covering the basics every day, they become good habits.  Once they become habits, you don’t have to consciously make yourself cover the basics, because you habitually do them.

Remember, at KFRC, it is not enough to just be consistent.  You must be consistently great.

Now that you have the total picture, go over this playbook every week.  Understand the importance of each particular fact.  Dedicate yourself to perfecting every part of the format and philosophy so we can have a dynamic station made up of dynamic individuals.

Understand that I expect each of you to be aware of every one of the following formatic rules.  And understand one other thing:  I have the desire, the discipline, the consistency, the realism, the excitement and the energy to make sure you carry them out!