Jim Ryan: 33 Days Later (The Ross On Radio Interview)

A lot of the programming trends followed in Ross On Radio recently have to do with the modernization of the Classic Hits and Adult Contemporary formats. Veteran PD Jim Ryan successfully steered WLTW (Lite FM) New York to a more uptempo, contemporary approach that some didn’t think was possible in Mainstream AC. But at Classic Hits rival WCBS-FM, he successfully hewed to the ‘70s/’80s version of the format and a relatively wide playlist, different from what was happening elsewhere in the format.

In April, Ryan turned over the PD job at Hot AC WNEW (New 102.7) New York to another market veteran, Rob Miller, as well as the SVP/Programming post at Audacy to pursue his consultancy on a full-time basis. Here’s what the veteran programmer is doing now, and his thoughts on the state of radio. 

ROR: You have a beach scene as your Zoom background. Where are you now?

RYAN: It’s Naples, Florida, until next Friday, and then it’s north to Traverse City, Michigan. It gets a little warm here. It’s a little toasty. I mean, the “real feel” temperature tomorrow is supposed to be 97 degrees. I start melting in that heat.

ROR: What is your week like now?

RYAN: It’s certainly different. One thing that I probably enjoy the most is having weekends free. Programming is seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Even when you don’t have live talent on all the weekend dayparts, you still have that PPM conformity that the stopsets need to run at a certain time. There’s always those situations where a client cancels on a Friday afternoon, traffic doesn’t tell you, and suddenly you tune in on Saturday morning at 8:30 and you go, “Oh, my God, we’re running early. I gotta add a fill song.”  There are always those little things that you have to deal with talent—a tracker gets sick on the weekend, and you have to put sweepers in or find another tracker. So, the biggest change for me is that on Saturday and Sunday. I really don’t think about radio for the first time in 44 years.

During the week, I’m coaching a couple of morning shows. I always think it’s unfair to listen to a morning show one day and then coach it. I try to listen to the shows that I am working with as much as possible, so I can catch those magical breaks and  commend them on it.  Or [ask] what were you thinking when you did that? So I am still up at the freaking crack of dawn. I would have loved to be able to sleep in, but that’s not happening. 

ROR: Are you still scheduling radio stations?

RYAN: No, the only thing that I will schedule will be [syndicated night host] Delilah’s Christmas logs. It’s something that I’ve done for years. So if the first Christmas log will need to be November 1, I’m probably not going to be in GSelector until  October 18 or thereabouts. So, it’s going to be a nice break from that.

ROR: Is being out of day-to-day programming changing the way you view the business?

RYAN: I was going to leave at the end of [2024], but I really wanted to stay so I could [see] as much of [Nielsen’s new] three-minute data as possible. I think the three-minute rule [crediting stations with a quarter-hour for three minutes of listening] has really given the industry a reprieve. The one thing I [most] hope is that we as broadcasters—and I still consider myself one—[will] stop the erosion and try and stay at this level. Let’s not cut talent. Let’s let talent flourish. Let’s coach them. Let’s make them compelling. Let’s play the right songs and try to hold on to that audience as best we can. We’ve got no excuses. In the case of Audacy, there’s a lot less debt. A couple of other companies have been through bankruptcies and managed to cut their debt. So, I hope we can continue to invest in the products and make the products great.

ROR: Is there anything you’ve heard on the radio recently that makes you feel like that’s happening?

RYAN: I know it sounds kind of selfish because it was the last station I worked with day-to-day, but when I was doing my walk this morning, I listened to the WNEW morning show, and I heard a great personal story from one of the characters on the show about going to Wicked, the Broadway show, and leaving his tickets behind. It was a great personal story. It was a local story. It was a pop culture story. Then they surprised me, because it was Cinco de Mayo, they had a mariachi band come into the studio. 

I listened to a show for 30 minutes. I was delighted. I was surprised. I heard a great personal story … My walk finished, and I came into the house, and kept my earbuds on to listen a little more. That’s what we need to do.

ROR: Stations are leaning more heavily on personality as the thing that radio should still own, including multi-person shows outside mornings. After 30 years in AC radio, what should that sound like in a music-intensive format?

RYAN: Steve Salhany at [Hot AC] WWBX [Mix 104.1] Boston has really hit it out of the park. He’s got Karson and Kennedy now, by far the biggest female targeted Hot AC morning show in America, and he’s added personality to afternoon drive as well, with a multiple person show. Those are the two key dayparts that we really need to preserve as soon as possible. [In between], radio is still kind of a background thing to energize people through the workday. I think as long as we’re a companion, that’s the best we can be and not get in the way and not be too distracting. 

Radio has underinvested in night shows—not a lot of stations have them. I think there’s a good open market for nighttime syndication … We have to take one of two approaches at night, either we use it as a proving ground and grow talent for mornings and afternoons, or we have to move to a syndication model at night and provide companionship [like] Delilah has done at mainstream AC.

ROR: Here’s a very different topic. In the early ‘80s, on your first programming job, you launched WJXQ (Q106) Lansing, Mich., which is still there. That station had a phenomenal first book in part because you found a secret weapon in AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds Done Cheap,” which had just come out. There does not seem to be that sort of music enterprise in the streaming era. 

RYAN: We’ve let the DSPs have the people who are passionate about music. We’ve let them go to Spotify and Apple. That’s the one piece of radio that I miss so much, to be the world premiere station, when it really mattered. I think about [the recent stories about the late] Wink Martindale, how he was on [WHBQ Memphis when it] was the first to play Elvis, and the reaction they got.

I remember the early ‘80s. I used to go down to UPS first thing in the morning when they were sorting packages and claim I was the Program Director of my competitor to get his copy of the album, so I could play it first. Now you would think, why would you do that? But [by the time the competitor’s replacement LP arrived], I had a two-day exclusive on the greatest new music and built a radio station on that. The audience that we had was so passionate about the music. It was just great. I miss those days.

ROR: So should we really give up that enthusiasm for music? Is there still room for music enterprise?

RYAN: I think what discourages a program director from playing something is knowing that as PD of WNEW, I might love a song, but I cannot make it a hit in New York. I can make it a hit for my audience, but what happens when I get some new listeners from Z100 or WKTU six months from now, and they tune in have no idea what the song is?

What has to happen, and I know there’s anti-trust laws that prevent this, but it would be great if I could have sat down with [Z100 PD] Mark Adams and [then-WKTU PD] Chris Conley and said, “let’s make this song a hit in New York,” because that’s what it takes. I think Z100, WNEW, and KTU have greater power than Spotify does in the city of New York, to make a song a hit. So I don’t know if punting is the thing to do. 

“If you have a hot AC and a CHR in a market, you should look at music discovery. And [since] people listen in 11-12-minute occasions, you can’t play a song 14 times a week and then go, “oh well, it didn’t call out.” Play it five times a day, play it in every daypart, and do it for 10-12 weeks before you make judgment on a song. It’s the most frustrating thing to drop a song when you played it forever, it’s over on the charts, and you never know if that song was really a hit or not, because it never really had the chance. It makes me crazy.

ROR: Closing thoughts on the state of radio?

RYAN: One of the biggest thrills of my radio career was in 2006 when, when WLTW (Lite 106.7) New York, playing 11 minutes of commercials an hour, billed over $70 million in revenue and was the most profitable station in America by miles, and I think that’s the perfect confluence of programming and sales. We’ve obviously seen revenue erode and listenership erode. But I still believe with all my heart that radio can make a difference. When you’re in the studio, whether it’s in New York or Fort Myers, Fla., or Traverse City, Mich., and listeners call in, or text, or post on social media, you the impact that that a radio personality or hearing a song at the right moment has made on their lives. It proves that we’ve still got a lot of life left in radio. Now, let’s put as much effort as we can into it to keep it going and be as strong as possible.