Ian March: Indie 88

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The sound off podcast,

the show about podcast and broadcast

Matt Cundill  0:10  
starts now. Ian March is the program director of Indy 88 in Toronto. But how did he get there? Turns out, a lot of back and forth between Ottawa and Kingston, Ontario. Ian just acknowledged 25 years in radio, which is something that is becoming more and more of an accomplishment for radio people every day. He learned how to program, largely by being involved, willing to learn and knowing how things worked Indy. 88 was recently sold by Doug Bingley and central Ontario broadcasting to local radio lab. And Christopher Grossman, yes, we will discuss that too. And now Ian March joins me from Toronto, Ontario.

Why did you ever want to get into this?

Ian March  0:55  
What else like, really, since I was a kid who was like, I'm going to do this one way or the other, and basically, like, I can't do anything else. I'm clumsy, I can't draw very good at math, so this

Matt Cundill  1:12  
so what was the radio show? Or was it something else that told you you wanted to do this?

Ian March  1:19  
It was 1980s era energy, 1200 in Ottawa, and Robert W Knight was the DJ. What year was that? Early 80s, late 80s, early 90s. Yeah. Late 80s, for the most part, would have been the peak of that situation.

Matt Cundill  1:37  
Cool. Yeah. So I had some growing up with that radio station too. And I can remember Robert W Knight, but I can also remember Mitch Craig was the imaging voice. And I thought, Oh, wow, does he ever make this thing sound larger than life?

Ian March  1:52  
Yeah, I didn't realize it at the time, but, like, I just loved the way Robert just made the whole show happen. And I kind of realized, like, once I went to broadcast school, that's cool, that that's not a career, mostly like, I just wanted to make it all happen. And I guess somehow that translates to program director, doesn't it? Yeah, I think it does.

Just pushing the buttons from a different room.

Matt Cundill  2:19  
 Where'd you go to? High School? 

Ian March  2:21  
Gloucester High School in Ottawa. 

Matt Cundill  2:23  
Know it well. Know the Gloucester Rangers, few other hockey teams in the area? 

Ian March  2:28  
Yep, Ottawa's got a lot of cash in celebrity in it that a lot of people don't talk about. A lot of us more set Matthew Perry, these sort of celebrity figures, you know, sort of a bit of an afterthought. We don't really sort of associate them with Ottawa.

Yeah, Norm, MacDonald, Tom Green, Bryan Adams, to some degree. Yeah, there's a bunch. Ottawa just flies under the radar, like I I heard this last week as well, in your chat with Marian Iverson about the natural beauty of the city is something not everyone realizes, but

Speaker 1  2:59  
it doesn't want to associate itself with celebrity, I find it's it's just a government place, and maybe the government people are the celebrities, and maybe they're not loved by everyone, and it's all that way.

Ian March  3:10  
And the government people like you will just see them like you will see Jack meet get off the LRT or on his bike. You see Tom Mulcair everywhere, if you recognize politicians, you see them all the time.

Where'd you do your radio? School, Algonquin, college, Ottawa. And then, what was the first job after you graduated? The first job was before graduating. So in that time, they let you job out of a program if you got a certain number of hours in the last term of the second year. So I was a part time op at Sports Radio 1200 the team in Ottawa. And eventually my hours there was this wonderful split shift of upping the Jim Rohn show from noon till three, and then I came back and opt my recording of it from midnight till three.

And if you heard 1200 twice, was energy 1200 they abandoned the top 40, I think it was owned by chum, and it turned into the team, which was sports radio, and it was national. And I seem to recall team 1200 did quite well as a sports station. Yeah, there was some fun in between in that as well rolco, which owned energy 1200 briefly converted it to the buzz, which was a mix of dance music and alternative rock, which I really enjoyed. And then rollco launched it as OSR. 1200 Ottawa Sports Radio actually stole the SENS rights away from chum for a year, and then chum fixed that by buying the station and turning it into the team.

And then after that, where'd you go? Did you go to Kingston next? I did, yeah, my first full time job is what came after that. I was in Kingston for the launch of K rock, 1057, as an independent radio station owned by John Wright. I was hired for web, which was strange, because I didn't really.

Have any of those skills and like production and I ended up as evening host within a few months. So Web, that's an interesting job in 2001 at a radio station.

It sure is. I built a placeholder website, basically with a little email box, like, we'll let you know when it's up. And I set up a stream through live 365 from my bedroom at a Walkman that you could listen to the station maximum 16 people. I think

I just laughed to think about that today. Like doing that at a Rogers station would be bizarre, which it is now web was way different then, yeah, then I was in charge of finding and hiring the company that eventually designed the website for us. And then, of course, in turn, you wound up on the air. That happens, yep,

Speaker 2  5:50  
they say, Hey, go into the VT booth and just like practice and see if you get something good. And little did I know they were listening to that in another room, of course. And yeah, they liked me enough to put me on a little bit. And then in any market that size, a little bit, if you're competent at it, turns into a lot. So were you doing those breaks for voice tracking that was going to wind up on the air? Or was it sort of an audition to be a personality and be live? Yeah, it was an audition. Like, it was voice tracking a day that already happened. And they're just like, yeah, we'll see. We'll see if we'll get you doing some other things. And yeah, started doing some weekends live, and that became seven days a week live weekends, and then some evenings. You didn't spend too long in Kingston, but while you're there, we were just talking about celebrity, and I think it's, I think it's fun for people to hear. I mean, you and I know this, but the audience is a worldwide audience. So if I say Kingston, I'll say Tragically Hip, I'll say Doug Gilmore, I'll say Kirk Muller. I'll say the headstones, which may not mean much to anybody, but if you watch Yellowstone, you'll know Chu Dylan, right. Did I miss anyone?

Ian March  6:58  
Modern day? I guess Gloria's sons, you know, they've had a great few years, is getting a bit bigger. Brian Adams would call him Kingston and Ottawa from his early days. Yeah, you got it pretty good. Do you forget the feeling they should have put the Hockey Hall of Fame there?

Yeah. I mean, not only because of the compelling reasons for it to be there, but also, like proximity to Toronto, to Montreal, you know, kind of the reason it was the first capital, just well positioned for that see all this great history about Kingston and a great radio market too.

It is. It's, uh, well, like Annie, it's having some tumultuous times, but it was really K rock that really shifted that market and woke it up, where John Wright was willing to spend on promotions and talents and the big voice and all that stuff. We had David Kay in the market like nothing had been like that ever there. And it just forced everyone, everyone's game up, and then you found your way back to Ottawa and back into that same building, right? It was the chum building where chum, yeah, for a full time evening production job making spots and back up on imaging. It was an evening shift that building was so busy. We had three production studios and six shifts, 7am to 10pm just pounding out spots.

Speaker 2  8:20  
Yeah. So I know people are listening. Well, why would you need somebody to come in and do evening production? But when you've got team 1200 that's talk, that's sports, that's a lot of promo that needs to be done. And then 580 CFRA, I believe, is there. And I mean, you want to talk about a blowtorch radio station for news and voices and personalities, actually, why don't you speak to it actually just, did you get to meet Lowell green? I sure did. Yeah, CFRA. I mean, that's the first radio station I ever knew to be a radio station. That's what my parents had on. I heard KEN The General Grant in the morning, and it was really neat to be in that building. And at the time, people like Lowell were still there, and Steve mapley and Michael O'Brien, all these giant voices. And you know, you see behind the curtain, like, oh, like, Lowell is a really nice guy. He's just like, lighten some flames to get calls. You kind of see the magic of it all. I remember being young enough to listen to that station and say, I don't know what this guy's talking about, but it sounds really, super important. And he's an important guy, yes,

Ian March  9:26  
and he makes it sound important. One of the more interesting things there was in production. KEN The General Grant did come in to voice spots for the Ottawa Athletic Club. So to record him was a treat. And then Steve Madeley, when you hear this big booming voice on the radio, like, oh, there's no processing making it like that, he just sits in front of a microphone and it the room vibrates, you start to get into a little bit of programming, though, because you're doing the production. And from production, by the way, we're going to need you to upload this and put it onto the server, and then once you start touching things, whether it's.

Matt Cundill  10:00  
Like a software package, like wide orbit, and then it has to be scheduled, maybe through a music thing. You find yourself programming music next, right?

Ian March  10:08  
Yeah, for sure. And I mean, you know, once they let me do some imaging to fill in, and then I hear it on the radio, and I'm like, That's not put on right, like it didn't set the things to the right thing, or put it in the right position, and it's not how it's supposed to sound. And I'd be in the PD, easier about that as well.

Matt Cundill  10:26  
And interesting. You bring that up because, you know, we talked earlier about Mitch Craig at 1200 and now you've got your ear on the on the imaging, and what you're referring to is that the end of time, markers and,

Ian March  10:40  
yeah, things like that for sure. Even positioning of something like that's supposed to go into the fast song at the top, or whatever, and it wasn't going that way. And all my work is wasted.

Matt Cundill  10:52  
Hey, smarty pants, you know so much. Why don't you sit down here at music master or RCS selector, and why don't you start programming this? Yeah, basically they put me on the air a little bit on Bob FM on some weekends, which was fun. And then Jay Lawrence, the longtime music director of Bob and formerly Cool FM, had left to go to new cap. And no actually went to Brockville to be PD, for chum and I was offered the opportunity to become the music director at Bob FM, which is another blast from the past thing that kind of blows me away. Being an off air, mostly music director at a one radio station that doesn't exist. Who does that? Well, we do here, but yes, basically that's not something that happens anymore, no, but you needed it back then, you know, I mean, we used to spend a lot of a lot of the things that you and I are talking about were things that we did spend more time doing. And I want to talk a little bit about, firstly, the imaging side. Did you have any favorite voices that you love producing from that era?

Ian March  11:56  
Oh, boy, yes. Chris Corley, when I got the chance to produce with him. On Cool, cool FM was really, really awesome. And then on Bob. For a while we used al chalk, who is one of the big movie was one of the big movie voices, especially for like, horror movies and stuff like that. And I've never worked with a voice that sounded quite like that. He was a great guy as well. He was in Ottawa for something else, and came by the station, brought us out for beers. It was fun. And people recognized the voice as Al chalk, I think so. I mean, I don't know they'd name him specifically, but as the movie trailer guy, which we played up like we had promos written, like movie trailers and stuff like that. And that was, you know, the previous voice had been more goofy Bob, so it made a difference. Yeah, when you have a special imaging voice, you need to evolve it. And I remember, with one radio station was a jazz station, actually, I said, let's go get Isaac Hayes, nice.

Matt Cundill  12:57  
That's a good one. But the next part I wanted to talk to you about was writing. Can you speak a little bit? Because I know you do this today, and I know you got a long history doing this, and that's writing promos, writing this sort of stuff. So when you wrote back then, compared to how you're writing today, what differences are you sort of coming across?

Ian March  13:17  
Yeah, I actually don't write much now. I write more sort of the outline that I then give to the creative director and our creative writer, and they they bring it more lives. So I think there was more of that. I'm just a lot more strategic now, like I'm really thinking of instead of just trying to be funny or something, I'm thinking of the audience, and why we're writing it this way, what we're trying to achieve just being a little more grown up about it. What came next for you in that building, like, where, like, you had a trajectory inside that building, things began to happen. There might have been some cutbacks, there were definitely some format changes, but for you personally and your career, how did that work out inside that chum building?

Yeah, really, really well. So from being MD of Bob, I moved into the APD position for both FMS so magic 100 and Bob and we were going through a modernization on magic at the time, we brought Chris Corley on board for that station, who'd been off cool for a couple of years, since it was Bob, and just like everyone was doing, just heating up the format a little, maybe a little too much at the time, but that's when Katy, Perry, Rihanna, early, Taylor Swift, like all this stuff, was just really mass appeal at the same time. So that's what we leaned on for that. I have a small piece of Chris Corley with me here in the studio, actually, and that's the script. So my scripts, this is 14 point double space, all caps.

Matt Cundill  14:49  
Yeah. Who else do you know? Who wants it? 14 point double spaced? All caps.

Ian March  14:56  
I don't know. Chris Corley, that was this thing. Unbelievable.

Matt Cundill  15:00  
Relievable. And, you know, he passed away a few years ago, but I just, I remember once he recorded a session for me, and there was a clock ticking in the background. And I said, Hey, Chris, your voice system, there's a clock ticking in the background. Can we get a revoice? And he said, No,

Ian March  15:15  
it is now part of the promo. Yeah, again, you found your way back to Kingston. Now that happened, yeah, this was a brief stop opening for program director at fly FM, and 98 nine of the drive opened up. I did not apply because at the bottom of the ad it said, must have valid Class G driver's license. And I didn't have that at the time. And they actually got approached by the PD in Ottawa at my PD at the time, saying, Why did you apply for that? And then they expedited me into that role, and I got to spend a wonderful 10 months in Kingston at fly FM, in the drive

Speaker 1  15:50  
what's a Class G full driver's license? So you didn't have one in Ottawa? No, I'd always lived downtown. Never really needed one that wasn't part of the you're 16, you got to get it now. It wasn't till later when I started needing it as an adult. Yeah, you know, not crazy. I just always imagined that for anybody who was in radio that they would probably need one because they wound up working in a place where they needed one. And I guess you didn't. And you know, to that we had Mary Ann Ibis on. We talked a lot about Ottawa being a place where you don't need cars. And hey, my teacher at Ashford college used to bike to work every day in the snow. And I get it. I understand that that Ottawa side of things I you know, and during a snowstorm, I would cross country, ski to school.

Ian March  16:40  
I had a colleague at shelman Ottawa who skated to school on the canal. Awesome. It was steps from his home and then steps right to the station off the canal. So you've got like, this well worn sort of path between Ottawa and Kingston. Am I right? Just go back and forth.

Yeah. That was well worn. Yeah, and there's another path now that is back and forth as well. I live on the on the 401, the Kingston job was only nine months. Turned out like the Ottawa building had missed me in the APD role, and so unfortunately, the program director had been let go there, and I got brought in as a program coordinator or something like that, for a little while, then up to PD,

yeah, and you got three stations. So that's not easy, because you were just doing one station for many years, and but to go back into auto and to give you three, yeah, and it was three, sort of non simultaneous, because there was a format change in there. However, I also kept doing Kingston for a while as well, until they got that filled. So there was a lot at once. And so it was magic, 100 and Bob f m and Ottawa as PD there. And then a little while later, a few years later, got to execute my first format change, which was 94

country, Ottawa's new country 94 and I'd always thought if I stayed in a big enough market long enough, I would never, quote, unquote, have to work in country. And lo and behold, we get some research back, and it looks like we're what we're doing. And I went on a speed learning process, and it didn't hurt that my wife was a fan, so I was at least familiar, and had some help,

some couple questions, who's some of the morning talent that you're working with in this time period at say, magic or Bob magic? 100 was stunt man. Stu Angie poor a Trisha Owens, Bob FM, Cub, Carson, Melanie Adams, Sandy Sharkey, great talent across both of those stations, yeah, stunned, man, Stu and Angie, you know, so many years in the market on that station and magic 100 rock solid, just a rock solid station with frequency you mentioned about, you know that they did have to evolve it at some point, but it's always been rock solid,

yeah? And we, like most we did when I was there, is we refreshed the logo, like we done the the music and imaging refresh a few years before, needed a more modern logo. Did some more modern type promotions, but like, if it ain't broke and that thing was solid, so now you've got country, and I seem to recall there was a little bit of fan dangling with the frequency. Perhaps was that at Smith fall station that came up, or some sort of shell game that involved that frequency at 94 the Smith falls stations at 1011,

which is the Smith falls station. And so they were the the country station in the market at the time that used to be on a full power Ottawa signal, but it got shuffled out so they could launch kiss 1053,

and so we had a huge we had a huge advantage over them with signal. One thing they had an advantage of though, as being an official Smith falls radio station, they didn't have Ottawa's crazy non hit rule. That's right, that was.

Matt Cundill  20:00  
That that was the fuckery I was thinking about, yes,

Speaker 2  20:05  
meaning we couldn't play anything more than 50% hit music in a given week, and six to six, Monday to Friday, which was particularly tricky in country, because country is the only format whose own chart was singled out as having to be followed, meaning, basically everything's a hit, and we got around that by just being really new music, focused, very current focused, because you got a one year exception for can con. I mean, I can't possibly bore the audience more with this sort of discussion about why you have to play more than 50% unsuccessful music on the radio. But having worked at showman mix 96 at the time in Montreal, I can tell you, there's a real science behind trying to make hits. And that's play a lot of the good songs early, establish them early, and you might get off a little bit too soon in some cases, but and then he comes back, maybe, yeah, yeah, no, there was a real science to that. Yeah, Ottawa and Montreal is a place you don't hear any number 35 songs. You hear number one and number 41 and not much else. Yeah. And that rule is now gone. Thankfully. I'm jealous now when I hear move 100 if I'm in Ottawa, especially in the evening, I'm like, oh, that sounds so good. I mean, did it not cross anyone's mind to, like, walk over the bridge to hull and talk to somebody at the CRTC and say we should probably maybe do away with this?

Ian March  21:33  
Yeah, I hope that was happening. I really hope it was happening. It was a real political hot potato, because they were afraid that the pushback on that would then be French stations not having to play as much French music, and that would be a massive problem. In the end, that didn't happen.

Speaker 2  21:51  
Yeah, and just in case anybody was wondering what Francophone stations are up to, they don't even bother to play any music. They just fill it with talk and personalities and people and successful personalities. That's how they get around. By not having to play the French music. That's a double, double edged success thing right there, like they're doing it because they have to, if you play less music in the morning, like two or three songs, they can be all English and hits, and then you can stack it all up in the other times. But it also has just created that star system of hosts that you know, maybe they did it out of necessity of not wanting to play a whole bunch of music. But Darn it worked in other ways. Transcription of the sound off podcast is powered by the you may also like podcast, the show about people, places and things, follow the show on your favorite podcast app or at You may also like.net

Ian March  22:44  
this podcast supports podcasting 2.0 so feel free to send us a boost if you are listening on a new podcast app, find your new app now at podcasting two point, org slash apps. That's podcasting two point, org slash apps. If you need to go back to Kingston. And I think you do, is it the 416, south to the 401, how do you get there? That's Ottawa to Kingston. Generally, I'm a I'm a train guy, though I like to not pay attention to anything. I like to listen to a podcast, read a book, have a meal, have a drink, sit back. Is The Train Station still down on Alta Vista? It is. There's a second one in bar Haven now as well. Okay, so there's an Ottawa to Kingston train, yep, part of the Via Rail Quebec City Windsor corridor.

Matt Cundill  23:32  
Yeah, you see, these are memories for me, because I love to take the train back then I used to be able to go downtown Montreal to downtown Toronto. I wouldn't even have to put a coat on, and I could, yeah, just show up to work with no code. It was fantastic.

Ian March  23:47  
My wife and I did so many Montreal trips from Ottawa. It was cheap and took no time. You could do a day trip if you didn't want to stay over. Unfortunately, the train has gotten a lot more expensive, like everything has, but even more so, like Thanksgiving from Toronto going home to my parents in Ottawa, it was less expensive to fly than it would have been to take the train, and that's unfortunate.

Speaker 1  24:09  
Yeah. Well, the future is changing, and hopefully a high speed train is coming. There's word that one is coming, and it's something that is definitely needed between those cities, Quebec City down to Windsor. And for somebody who spends a few months of the year in Spain on a train that's going 300 kilometers an hour, and take me across the country in six hours, I'm for this. Thumbs up to this.

Ian March  24:34  
Yeah. And you want to talk about induced demand, like the number of people who'd use such a thing and what it would open up the possibilities of commuting from places like a Kingston or Peter grove. It happened to go that way is huge.

Matt Cundill  24:48  
You found your way back to Kingston, though you but you went to work for Rogers. Is that right?

Ian March  24:53  
Yeah. So I was fired once in my life, and that was from Bell Media in Ottawa in 2015

Congratulations. Yeah, it was fine. Ended up being a bit of a blessing in the end. And so that was in the spring of 2015,

got a nice little summer off, and then got a job at Rogers Kingston at the end of August that year as program director for K rock, 1057 country 93 five and sort of Kiss, 1027, which is their, technically border station that's based in New York state.

So do you have to play any can con on that station? You don't have to, by law. Rogers wanted us to, because they didn't want it to look like if the rule went away, we would all go to zero. So we played a fair amount. I didn't really track it because it didn't have to. But the one time I did track it, because we built in however many percentage 20, I think. But then the weekend and Drake and Bieber had like these 100 spinners at the same time. I'm like, I wonder what that's doing. Man. We're like, Oh, we're 45% can come this week without even really trying. Yeah, and of course, those artists were also beginning to release songs that weren't can con, even though they were Canadian, another frustration point, yes,

but 90% of that job, like as it was directed to me, was for K rock and country and kiss was just keep the lights on kind of thing. Didn't really have any announcers or anything like that. Just 55 minutes of hits, four minutes of spots, nothing else.

Matt Cundill  26:28  
And here you are, Program Director of the Kingston radio station with a rock format in the time when The Tragically Hip becomes the focus of national attention. Take me back to 2015 2016

Ian March  26:42  
that was something. The details aren't all quite there, but I do remember, I think we we knew that we'd lose gourd sort of imminently, and when it did happen, our my morning show host, Sideshow just immediately made the call to go all Tragically Hip, which was obviously the right one. And we kept it going. And then we kept it going and kept it going and kept it going. And it was a week of nothing but the tragically hit on the radio station,

Matt Cundill  27:08  
yeah, the national attention, which culminates, by the way, in a in a concert, I believe, right in writing Kingston and Cbc is focused on, I think it was live.

Ian March  27:19  
Yeah, it was live on, on CBC, TV and radio. I was lucky to be there because the arena at the time was the Rogers K Rock Center, so we had reserve seats, and we did again like up leading up to that concert, we went all hip for another week. The station was rebranded as Gord FM, as were all of the Rogers rock stations for a period, some longer than others, and it was huge, like the station was on everywhere all the time, that whole time, like we ended that book number one. It was the right thing to do regardless, but it also ended up being a successful thing to do. Have you seen no dress rehearsal? I have. It took a while.

Speaker 1  28:07  
I've heard it is. It's winning people over who have never really been fans. When you just see sort of, you know, what has gone into the songs and into the touring and the personalities in there? Yeah, I can see my cynicism with the band sort of progress with each one of the records. But now you see what was going on in the background, and now you see why and how. You know, I got there and I kind of forgot, oh, did I love world container? I can't remember. I think

Ian March  28:38  
that's where they kind of lost me a little bit too.

Yeah, and then, but going, they were always solid live. But then I would go back, and now I've started to go back and listen to this stuff over again, and listen to it a different way, yeah, and, you know, listen more to the lyrics in the later stuff, and listen a little more carefully, get a little more into it, I think, like when you were transitioning from these riffs and easy to understand things into something a little more complicated at the time, yeah, you would have lost a few people as fans, or at least just have a little less interest. But retroactively, yeah, they make a lot of sense. And finally, your cycle of abuse ends, and you don't go back to Ottawa, and you make your way down the 401 from Kingston to Toronto. It's about a two and a half three hour jaunt, depending on traffic, and you wind up at Indy, 88 How did that come about? Yeah, who knows? Like that came about? They were going through some changes. They had a lot of cooks in the kitchen at the time they were they were still struggling to fully get it off the ground, and they decided, instead of having all these cooks, they were going to interview the crap out of one person and decide if they liked what that person said, hire them and just let them do it, which is wonderful if you're that person. That's that's a great experience.

Have I got into that chair because one of the cooks in the kitchen at the time was Brian De Peau, who'd been my program director in Ottawa, and he was the sales manager for our Barry Ontario stations at the time, and sort of consulting a little bit with Indy as well. So he's the one who brought my name up. And then Sharon Taylor was also a consultant working with the company at the time, and she gave me a call and said, I have this job at Central Ontario broadcasting. I can't tell you what it is, but it's in programming. I'm like, Well, I know what that is, because Dave Carr is not going anywhere, but yeah, that's that many, many, many, long interviews later.

Matt Cundill  30:38  
So one of the first things that you mentioned that you did 2001 was, I'm going to be the web guy at this Kingston radio station. And I think one of the things that was attractive about going to indie 88 during this period is, I think they've got a digital company right in house, so digitally You were always going to be taken care of. Am I right?

Ian March  30:59  
Yeah, totally, unfortunately, like when I started, that had been the one and only time there had been some cutbacks at the station, and some of that was in the digital department. I think they had to be realistic about, you know, what was actually translating to revenue, but it was still in really good shape. And we had this website that was industry leading, like, it's its own entity. It has its own content. It's not just a business card for the station, not just a place to click Listen Live. That's amazing,

Speaker 1  31:28  
because this is the point where radio really needs to be more than FM. And here you are. You're programming in the 88 the target is younger listeners. And so what are the things that make the station more than just FM and A transmitter?

Ian March  31:47  
Yeah, I mean that that has evolved. I mean, we're no longer after younger listeners.

At the time, it was the full brand, you know, it was putting so much into certain concerts, like festivals, specifically that people thought it was our festival, things like that. And someone who's playing that festival coming in and recording a black box session, which then gets like crazy hits on YouTube and all of that, and just every element of it, living and breathing beyond what came out of the radio was really what made the brand.

So I just heard you say a second ago, it's like, well, it's not just younger listeners that we're after. We also want older listeners to be listening, and I think that's probably a reasonable thing for any radio brand to do these days, because, I mean, music is music is timeless. More than ever, people are listening to a Depeche Mode song for the very first time. They might think it's new. They might think it's old. It could be it could be anywhere, I think especially in 2024 where that stuff is sounding not unlike some of the current music now, like it's just fitting in really well. And, you know, targeting older. I mean, we're doing it look without younger listeners. We're just targeting older because you just have to be realistic about radio and the rating system. You know, if I pull up the mail 18 to 34 ratings here, it could be chfi At number one right now in this book, it's am 640 that's tearing up that demo. It's just not a reliable place to go. As PD once told me, fish where the fish are.

Speaker 1  33:20  
Help me out with a couple of things that I've seen just in the last few weeks, because I'm, I'm 50 plus. If you talk to me about rock, I always say it's, it's Metallica Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Van Halen, that sort of thing. Recently, we've seen a few radio stations, especially in the market that I'm in now, in Winnipeg, sort of skew away from that form of rock and bring on a more classic alternative, something that is more killers, less tool, more Depeche Mode. Squeeze that sort of classic alternative that I'm beginning here, and some stations are mixing in some of the new stuff as well. Tell me, is this a reaction to just millennials coming of age?

Ian March  34:01  
I think it is, I think more directly, it's a reaction to some American stations having some success with it. I think the difference there is those are heritage stations that brought a lot of their heritage back in terms of personalities and branding and music and stuff like that, to start a classic alternative from scratch. I don't know. I don't know if that's wide enough and mass appeal enough to really poke through on ratings. I kind of hope it does, because I like it not here. Of course, anywhere else is fine. And yeah, it is. It's also that generation kind of in charge of some things now too, like they're the ones who can push that decision because they know their peers will like it, and they see the research and all of that.

Matt Cundill  34:46  
You have good ratings books and you have bad ones, and then you have good ratings books again. What makes a good ratings book for you when you go through the numbers,

Ian March  34:56  
everything aligning like to get there, or what makes it look good?

Matt Cundill  35:00  
Yeah, tear Yeah. What makes you want to, like, reach into the fridge and have a beer and say this was a good ratings book. Who the things you look for right away,

Ian March  35:09  
consistency, like, consistency week to week, consistency across demos, consistency across day. Parts like, you know, there's a station in this market that's going to have this, really, that's not us that's gonna have an unusually big book, but it's not. It doesn't really check out like this, a huge spike in one shift with a small cell and all of that. A good one to me, is where it just looks real like you. You know why this part went up? You know why this one didn't? And you see that it's sustainable because it's across demos and day parts.

Matt Cundill  35:43  
What do you find amazing about Sharon Taylor?

Ian March  35:46  
I find her amazing that I think she's just never really stopped like to take a breath, like she's just all in on all the projects and the personality and the whole thing. Like I didn't get to spend that much time with her because we stopped working with her during COVID, and she was more a radio consultant to our GM, but her presence was really fun.

Speaker 1  36:13  
Yeah, I worked with her. Actually didn't work with her. I worked against her in the same market, here in Winnipeg, and I've, I've adored her for years. She told the greatest story on the on this show about five years ago, maybe, and she's back in Winnipeg. Actually, I owe her lunch, so I'll have to get back together and ask her about that.

Ian March  36:31  
She was my introduction to indie 88 like she's the one who picked me up at the hotel to bring me to the station and talking about it and stuff like that. So I'm like, this place is wild.

Speaker 2  36:42  
So you've undergone a few things because you've been fired, you've been up and down. You've changed radio stations, you've changed jobs. You've evolved through jobs. But here's one that you're just going through right now. And forgive me, this might be too early for you to answer, but talk a little bit about the change of ownership in a radio station, because the bingleys sold in the 88 and it was picked up by local radio lab, and so you're just kind of in the throes of going through an ownership change. It's not really fair to sort of make a judgment on anything before you do that sort of first lap around the track. But how's it been so far intense in every possible way? I mean, the the last year before the local radio lab takeover had been really, really slow for us, because the the CRTC took a lot of time to decide this very, very easy to decide thing for one family operator to sell to another. And you know, that just meant not a lot of promotion, not replacing people, you know, just kind of in a holding pattern. And then Christopher Grossman came in, CEO of local radio lab, just like, just roar, just coming in hot and doing a lot of stuff right away, and we haven't had a chance to catch our breath just yet. That's two weeks away.

Ian March  37:54  
So you are the second radio person I've spoken to today who has mentioned how long it is taking for sales to be approved, just throwing it out there. You're not to comment on that. You're not to do anything. But I would, let's like to point that out. Yeah, I mean, it's, there's just so much involved with that. Like, you know, I think we lost our top sales rep to one of the big companies because she just couldn't wait anymore to know what things were going to be like. And then the slow period was slow for her. And like, there's real there's real impact on these things. Like, I'm so thankful that our like, our ratings and revenue held out decently in that period, because if it hadn't, we would have been in a bad spot. Shout out to Jordana Katz, everyone, yes,

Matt Cundill  38:40  
when you look back 25 years, give me your favorite radio moment in the last 25 years.

Ian March  38:46  
I loved flipping the switch on the country station, really, just not that I'd like love I got into country for a few years. It's not my favorite, but when you get into it, you can really get into it. But it was just making that change hearing your work from the last months on the air, not it being a secret anymore, and they spent on promotion and marketing so much with us at that time, which made it fun. Like there was nothing that was off the table in terms of doing right up to like, if we were at a bar before a show, we just pick up everyone's tabs, and all the coasters have our logo. We're giving 10 grand away, and all of that stuff. And like it was, showed signs of immediate success. And that was amazing. It was really amazing to do that. How do you get to work? In the morning, I take a subway and a GO train.

When you're on the subway in the GO train, what are you most excited about before you get to work? Now, that's a whole different set of things, right? Lately, I'm really excited about opening the dailies, the daily ratings, because we're in a really good spot, and it's that's been exciting, but it's just to get.

Started to start talking to the morning show, to do all that routine stuff, because everyone's all in at the moment, and having fun, like it's really fun right now, and knowing that every day is gonna have challenges, but every day we'll have fun as well. 

Matt Cundill  40:15  
Ian, thanks so much for doing this. I appreciate it. 

Ian March  40:17  
The best 

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  40:18  
sound off podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill, 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.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai