Jay Stone: Hear in the NOW Frontier

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

Matt Cundill  0:13  
Jay stone is the station manager and program director of 1023 now radio and up 99 three in Edmonton last year. Now, radio won a bunch of Canadian radio awards, including major market station of the Year and Best on air promotion, major market for its swift yoke contest, and Jay himself captured Program Director of the year. Major market. The station was also the catalyst behind best community service initiative winner for the Alberta Day of Caring for Jasper, which saw the province's radio stations come together to raise more than $1.5 million to support those impacted by last summer's wildfires. We're going to hear the stories behind all of that and why. Now. Radio succeeds where other radio stations flounder. Jay stone joins me from Edmonton. Jay,

Jay Stone  1:06  
how did you get started in radio? You know, it's a bit of an interesting story. I didn't get into radio the traditional way that most people did, by going to a broadcasting program and then hunting for that first job afterwards. The job almost found me. You gotta go back about 20 years. It was 2005 I was in the Air Force serving as an avionics technician. So I was in the military, and a new radio station launched in court, ecombox, and they put up these lawn signs in the ditch along the roadway into the base. And it's just said 98.9 jet FM on the sides. They named it after the base as a nod to the Air Force, and it caught my eye, so I turned it on when I got to work and started listening. And they were talking about this contest that they were launching with inviting listeners to come down to the radio station that Friday morning, super early beginning of the morning show, come with your bags, as somebody was going to be going on a trip that day to go see the Rolling Stones in Calgary. So I went, and they handed everybody an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper. And they said, make the best paper airplane that you can. And being an airplane tech, part of the curriculum is early curriculum with theory of flight, is how to build a great paper airplane. So it was kind of made for me. It was my dream contest. I had a gut feeling that I'd win, and I did. I built the best paper airplane I could, and we all lined up and threw those paper airplanes, and mine went the furthest. So I won the trip. It was amazing. So took my buddy from the military, went and saw the Rolling Stones in concert in Calgary. When we came back, that's when it really kind of happened. In addition to my job on the base, I was also the entertainment coordinator for our junior ranks mess, and we were planning a comedy night, and we reached out to the now late Mike MacDonald, to his team anyway, to see if he'd be interested in doing a show for us on the base. And our budget was pretty modest, let's just say, nowhere near what his fee is. But he explained to us that his dad was in the Air Force, and he grew up on military bases across Canada, now living in LA, he said, as long as you cover my travel and I get a little something, I'll come for whatever your budget is. And it made waves on the base and throughout the community. And as a thanks for winning that Rolling Stones trip, I called up the morning show. It was Pete Montana and roof Alps, and I asked if they wanted to come to the show. And they came. I told a couple of jokes on stage and see the show. Introduced Mike, and he went up on stage and killed it. It was an amazing night, amazing show. And it was after the show that Pete approached me, and he asked if I'd ever thought about radio. He said I did a great job on stage. And he said he saw something in me that he thought I should try exploring radio. So really, I owe almost my entire career to Pete seeing that and giving me a shot. He brought me into the radio station. I jumped at the opportunity, and he started teaching me how to do really the basics. It started with doing some live on location stuff, live on location broadcasts. He taught me how to do some voice tracking, kind of basic stuff about executing a radio show. And shortly thereafter, he offered me the afternoon drive show on Jet SM. So that's where it all began, back in Yoda min 2006 I took on that show and kind of never looked back for a couple of years. I was on the air, racing to the radio station after doing my day job and then executing a show. But when we first started, I first went in, the first thing he said to me was, Jay, we gotta come up with the radio name for you. You got your military persona, and that's where stone came from. He said, Why don't we name you after your contest that you won? J stone became my my radio name, and that's where it all, it all took off, so to speak.

Matt Cundill  4:49  
That's awesome. And actually, you mentioned the name Mike MacDonald, who's no stranger to radio stations, always willing to make an appearance. I want to think that he was in the merit. Times at one point, but I do know that he spent a lot of time in Ottawa, which was where I think, well, he died eventually there and based himself out of there. But you know, what a great choice to hire for that event?

Jay Stone  5:10  
Yeah, it was, it was amazing. He did an incredible show, and being the guy that was communicating between him his team, and when he came in, I was kind of the guy taking him around, and we ended up planning a familiarization flight for him on the base. So there was the buffalo search and rescue aircraft. They're the fixed wing yellow, bright airplanes. And I lined up a familiarization flight for him and I to go on. And just as a thank you for coming for such a low fee, and we walked out on the tarmac as we're doing the tour. And I said, surprise, we're gonna go on this plane and go for a flight, not knowing he is just terrified of flying. We're about to go on the flight of a lifetime. We took him right up along the glacier by Comox, and then the plane just dove straight down, and we did a dive and dropped about 4000 feet, like the look on his face, I'll never forget,

Matt Cundill  5:59  
you're aware he has heart issues right at the time. Maybe they came afterwards.

Jay Stone  6:05  
I wasn't at the time, but, you know, I had a conversation with Pete after the show. It was that night, and the next morning, Mike said, Hey, I got no plans. I gotta have some breakfast. I gotta eat Why don't you join me for breakfast? So I took him to a little diner in Comox. We sat down, and I had the conversation with him about the conversation I had with Pete the night before, and it was actually Mike who pushed me to do it. He said, Jay, just go. I heard you on there too. Just follow your dreams. Just go do it. And you never know what can happen. And here we are. We're almost 20 years later, and I'm fortunate enough to lead well what the Canadian radio awards is called the best radio station in Canada and up 99 three, which is a damn good radio station too.

Matt Cundill  6:45  
So what attracted you to the military position? Was it the airplanes, or was it the fact that it was nearby, or everybody did

Jay Stone  6:53  
it? What was it? I spent some time throughout my childhood in air Cades, so I I learned a lot. I traveled a lot with Air Cadets. I did a summer camp in Ontario, so I spent some time in Borden, and actually did a camp on avionics. So doing that before I graduated kind of ticked my brain a little bit. And even back when I was really, really young, we'll go back to like, five years old, six years old, my dad used to take me to the Calgary airport, and we'd go pick up some burgers. There was a little road you can park right near the end of the runway, and we'd sit there and we need cheeseburgers and just watch these planes taking off. He had a little radio we could listen to the control tower. And it's, honestly some of my fodder memories of growing up was was just sitting there watching planes with dad. So I think that's really what pushed me to do it just, you know, get me out of the house after graduating high school and do something before I figure out what exactly I want to do

Matt Cundill  7:47  
with my life. Do you think there's some sort of connection between broadcasting and radio and airplanes? I find there's a disproportionately higher number of people who are in broadcast who have some sort of affinity with flying.

Jay Stone  8:03  
Interesting. You know, I've never really thought about the connection between the two. I mean, technically, there's a lot that is connecting between the two. Avionics, in itself, is the fixing of electronics on the airplane. So I was trained to fix FM transmitters, or communication equipment between aircraft and the control tower, in addition to radar equipment, which has RF technology with radars, with transmitters and receivers, and you name it, enter the radio world. And technically, there is a law that connects airplanes to radio. But as far as the mindset between just liking airplanes or travel or the aviation industry, and also liking Radio, I'm not sure. I'm not sure why there's a connection there.

Matt Cundill  8:46  
Walk me through the part where you're gonna leave jet FM, you're gonna go to rolco in Regina. You'll stay there a little bit, but then you're gonna go to Kelowna.

Jay Stone  8:56  
Yeah, you bet. So I leave Comox. That was, that was a surprise. So I knew at this point in my phase, early in my career, I'd spent these couple of years working part time with jet, and I made the decision that this is what I wanted to do for a career. I'm going to go all in with the first opportunity that really is a tangible opportunity, to jump two feet in on the career. And the job opened up for evenings on site at nighttime, and Mark Hunter put the application out, and he was programming at the time, so I applied, I put my best tape together and sent it to him. We had a few conversations, and in the end, he offered me the job. Now, problem number one is that I'm still in the Air Force, and I just signed a new extension on my contract, which takes me to 20 years, and I'm in year one of that 20 year contract. So typically, I'm not sure how many people know this, but to get out of the military, when you've signed a contract, it's usually about a six month process. You put your request for a release in, it has to go to Ottawa. You got to go through the whole chain of command, and then. It comes back to the base, to the local, the local level, and get your approval or denial based on whatever, whatever reasoning. So I put this release request in December 7, 2007 and I put a release request in for 30 days, not six months. We all know that the federal government tends to shut down for a few weeks in that time, right? We got to the Christmas holidays, people usually aren't coming back. So my release request date was actually January the eighth of 2008 and it only took two weeks. I was very lucky. They rushed it. They sent it to the command center, and it came back through the base, and it was approved right away. I think part of the reason being that I was on the radio for a couple years. At that point, working simultaneously, they just recommended that it was the right thing. So, so yeah, I took the job. I was able to take the job, left the military, and I went two feet in on radio, moved to Regina, and started doing this full time. And yeah, it wasn't a very long time that I spent at rolco. The first time I was a young dad, a dance a young girl at this point, my wife and I had split up. I was trying to make as much money as like good to support her and support this new lifestyle. And we all know you get into radio in the beginning and do what you can to grow. And I received a phone call from the team at this Jason man reached out, and I had worked with him, and he said, Hey, we're launching a new station in Kelowna, we'd think you'd love it. You want to be a part of it once come out and work with us, come do afternoons, do music and launch this new station. And at this point, he couldn't tell me what form it was. He didn't tell me any real specific details, but I thought it was a great opportunity get off of evenings already and get into another afternoon position in a greek market. And I had family in Kelowna, so my mom was living there, so I thought it was a good opportunity to move back west, and I did. So moved to Kelowna. That was the launch of the juice, the very beginning of the station, which have a great history in Kelowna, but it was a lot of fun when we were there for that short period of time, running that station with Natalie Taylor and the whole team, Jason Mann and the team there in Kelowna, I

Matt Cundill  12:02  
seem to recall the juice did quite well. Ratings wise,

Jay Stone  12:06  
it started with a bit of a blip off the start, but I wasn't there long enough to really stay close enough to it and see how it ended up. I know it did fall and it didn't have a very good story with and ended up selling cast, and it picked it up, and then they sold it. Now we're actually running that frequency again with with Patterson media, with CK OB, which I love. I think that station is a great example of trying something different that is against the fold and against the grain, and see how it goes. But you're targeting an audience that had a

Matt Cundill  12:38  
bit out of the norm, and you found stability in Regina. I did, yeah. So

Jay Stone  12:43  
I was in Kelowna for about 10 months or so, and Tom Newton reached out and said, Listen, we want to bring you back. We thought you're a great guy. Loved working with you, and we have a real opportunity to get you into the programming fold here with rolco. And I gotta say that was the best move in media, moving back to Regina and spending some really quality time with some really smart programmers. I got to go back on air on Zed, but also get into programming stream. I became an assistant program director right away, and then eventually took over as the PD of Z 99 with Mark Hunter leaving to come launch now radio in Edmonton. So, yeah, I kind of followed in his footsteps for the first time in 2009 and then, ironically, the opportunity came to follow his footsteps again. It was very rewarding for me working with the Roco team and getting to work with the likes of, you know, Tom Newton, Arnie Selsey, Pat Leland, even Jamie wall, who now I get to work with again, here in Edmonton, a lot of really, really smart programmers, and I started building my own programming philosophy around a lot of the learnings of Dave Tom over the years. So it was about three years programming Z 99 and then one day a meeting with Tom and Pam, and they call me into Tom's office. We sit down and think, Well, we got a new opportunity for you. How about news talk? I said, What are you crazy? How am I supposed to program news talk? I haven't done news one minute in my entire career, and you want me to program a news talk station? And they actually saw that as an advantage someone with an outside perspective to try and change some of the mindset with the show was on, on the station, and have a bit of a different perspective. There's there's such a strong news director in Regina there, and he's still there programming station as well, Murray Wood, who had a brilliant news perspective. And I think the idea was to bring me in as a different kind of programmer, to bring a different perspective. And with that, we launched all kinds of programming, including the Green Zone, Jamie knives, sports guy, which is continuing to do really well in that market, and with a lead on the green and white. And all kinds of sports with the real vision of just guys hanging out and just talking about real life stuff that guys talk about. Yeah. So, yeah, I really, I really look back on my time in Regina with with a lot of fond memories, honestly, really thankful for just being able to be around some really incredible programming, leadership, people who I was able to learn a lot from. I can

Matt Cundill  15:15  
totally see you'd be a good fit. So it's 2012 and just speaking as somebody who is in the cgob ecosystem in Winnipeg, in that time, maybe a little bit before programming it was pretty difficult, because so much had changed so fast. So 2007 starts the age of acceleration. Social media comes in. We don't need a Facebook page. We certainly don't need this thing called Twitter. We're not doing that. It's not important. And you know, I think a couple years goes by and, you know, there are some legendary stations like cgme that look around and say, We need to change this, and we need to move faster to keep up with what listeners want. We have the Rough Riders that's good. Can we build around that? I totally see why you'd be a good fit, even if you didn't see you'd be a good fit at that time.

Jay Stone  16:02  
Yeah, it was a weird one for me. I didn't see my career going down that road, but I'll tell you, that was the greatest thing that set me up, I think, for future positions down the line in my career, was learning how to not just understand spoken word content, but to really coach people to perform spoken word content, because that applies directly to my job. Now, all the foundational fundamentals of talk radio apply to a station where you've got a lot of spoken word programming. Look at like a now it's a mini talk radio station. There is a ton of spoken word content on a station where where you've built around conversation.

Matt Cundill  16:40  
So I know around 2017 you're looking at Edmonton, and you're looking at a guy like Mark Hunter. Lucky guy gets to be in Edmonton, but I think Edmonton was home base for you, or was something where you wanted to get to family wise and professionally,

Jay Stone  16:55  
absolutely, I was in Regina. I had recently gone through a marital breakdown. Her family was all in the Regina area. She's from there, and she had a ton of but I had no family in Saskatchewan. I honestly hadn't really been to Saskatchewan until I moved there. I grew up in Airdrie, so just outside of Calgary and Edmonton, my parents split when I was three ish, and I spent my entire childhood growing between the Calgary area. My dad permanently here in Edmonton. So my goal was to move home, be closer to family, and then I ended up meeting the love of my life at a funeral, of all places. We met at a funeral, fell in love, and we had a long distance relationship for quite some time. So there was a lot of familial connection that was really pulling me back home to Edmonton. I at one point had a pretty honest conversation with senior management team at Rocco and I just said, Listen, I need to start looking for options to move home. And got added to them. They were fully supportive every aspect of that. They said, Well, give me the time you need. You know, we'll recommend you for anywhere you want to go. We'll help you get there. And they supported me through that, the whole process. So I talked to, I think, every company in Edmonton over that period of time, and with a lot of programmers and and GMs and operations managers, and I almost actually ended up at a different radio station. It came down to 24 hours. It was very close. I had an offer months previous that ended up being pulled because their senior senior programmer left and went somewhere else, and they basically did a hiring freeze. So that got put on hold the day after Jamie offered me the job to program up 99 three, I got an email from that company again, saying, hey, we want to, want to offer you the job. And I have to say, No, I just accepted one with up 99 three. I'm going to move to Edmonton, and I'm very thankful for where things landed and where we ended up. It feel. It felt like home right away. A lot of the people here in this building were with rolco When rolco owned these stations. So it was like coming home. I worked with crash and Mars together when we were both hired basically within the same week. Coming on to Z 99 they were hired to do afternoon, good evening. So we saw each other every day for three years before they moved here. It felt good. It felt right, coming back here and getting to lead this, this incredible station, and a lot of really great things have been accomplished with up 99 three over the last seven, eight years, just an amazing team that is devoted to its listeners. And my goal was to create a vision coming in built around one simple statement. We play edmonton's greatest hits, and we have a hell of a lot of fun doing it, and everything we do has to fit into that model, so promotions, that we come up with, any music features, that we do everything we need to challenge it and just have the guts to try some new stuff, and do some things and and see where it takes us. And our goal is to be, and continues to be, a top five station in Edmonton. That's that's where we want up to be, knowing it's an older, targeted radio station. It's tough. Or to land in that top 525, 54 but I'm really proud of how our team on up is executed. Over the last seven years, we've been top five way more than we haven't, and that's what model 2024 is such an incredible year for our up team, is that we were top five every book in 2024 our 123, and four, we were at least top five and capped it off with a number three and a number two in r3 and r4 adults, 2554

Matt Cundill  20:26  
so when I think of Edmonton, and I think of this very, very cluttered radio dial with a lot of radio stations that really over surfing the population with music, but up is really about music. I don't know if the station is still there, but I think new cap or at the time, and you know, maybe now, Sting Ray had a greatest hits format at 96.3 if I'm not mistaken, they

Jay Stone  20:48  
did it. It was named capital, right? Capital FM, 63 they were there when I came on board in 2017 and I believe it was that Christmas they left. But we actually switched to edmonton's Greatest Hits on up 99 three when they went Christmas. So they launched Christmas it was November 7. It was the one year that they decided to go Christmas ahead of Remembrance Day. We're all surprised by that. We're expecting it on November 12, but when they went on the seventh, we decided we're going to go with edmonton's greatest hits. Let's just tweak our position there and tweak our music a little bit and be in line with where we should be. And we haven't looked back since then. It's been, it's been seven years of running that positioning statement and that vision, and this works really well. We've got a an incredible team focused around Live Interactive hosts, and I'm fortunate enough to have, you know, live mornings, mid days, afternoons, local evening show and live and local weekends as well.

Matt Cundill  21:42  
So it's pretty incredible, because I think timing again here works in your favor and as well, I think a little bit of looking to the future. So when you're talking about having, you know, being live and local, and having personalities on the air, and the years, 2017 2018 and there, it really sort of did formulate the edge, because this is around the period for radio when p1 radio listeners are saying, We want to hear personalities on the station. We really don't care so much about the music, because I can get the music anywhere, and here you are serving it, while some of the other companies that rhyme with robbers, Boris, sell, etc, they're looking just to stuff the frequency with 10 in a row, 20 in a row, etc, etc. Yeah, I think

Jay Stone  22:25  
there's only so much music you can play and be and be competitive. I think we're at a vital time right now. Radio is at a bit of a crossroads. In my opinion. I see a bright future for our formats, for our industry, but I think it comes down to us working together and finding out what the solution is. The Alberta Day of Caring for Jasper was the most remarkable day of my career period. There is no day in the 20 years I've been exposed to radio, or part of radio that blew me away more than that day for a multitude of reasons. One, obviously the success of the day, raising all of that money for those people in need, when we saw the devastation throughout Jasper and just how incredible it was to see it be as successful as it was, but to see radio come together and join forces, put down the swords, put down the competition, you know, Stop beating each other and go. Let's do something collectively as one united front, built by radio. Let's execute it by radio, and look at how successful it was. You can't say radio isn't impactful in 2024 and now 2025 when you see days like this, and we accomplished something with that day across the entire province that I couldn't ever imagine happening. It ended up over a million dollars in Albertans donating that day. With the matching donations, over $3 million was raised for Jasper in one day by radio. And I think that really turned something in my brain, seeing that on that day, that, you know, we got to do more of this, and not necessarily from the perspective of we need to work together for charitable reasons or come up with something for people to engage our audiences or our local communities. But I'm talking about just working together and putting radio first, if we can somehow get us together and get on the same page on a full bunch of issues that are hurting radio right now, solve them collectively as a group, have one strategic plan that we're all going to go after to put the industry number one. I think we can come out successful. I really think we can get out of this together, but it's gonna take us working together and coming up that solution in the end,

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  24:46  
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Matt Cundill  25:20  
You're very lucky to be in Edmonton, because that city has a history of charity and community and the radio. I mean, that goes all the way back to Santa's anonymous at Chad and before even having other radio stations, you know, promote that charity, nobody blinks twice about it, and everybody does help everybody else out in that market. And it's too bad. I wish a number of other markets would take a page from Edmonton and find out how to get together to do great things.

Jay Stone  25:47  
It blows me away. I'll share this with you. We have the listener reach out just yesterday. We do this every year on now radio called Pay it forward. We devote $12,000 of promo budget to give 12, $1,000 checks to people in need, and not to charities, but to people. And we allow our listeners, the now family, to nominate people who are going through a tough time. Maybe they had some health issues this year, maybe some familial issues, something that's causing some kind of financial need, and a help to help them out during the holiday season. So in December, we had 12 people that were nominated that we awarded with $1,000 shared their stories on the air. It really is beautiful to see those stories come to life. But just yesterday, I had a listener reach out to me, went into the station email, and I'm looking for Jay Stone's email, so I just replied back. I said, What can I do for you? And this anonymous person wants to donate $5,000 for us to do five additional pay it forwards in January, to give to five more people, just to help their year start off right. And if that doesn't tell you how incredible this community is, I don't know what does that doesn't happen, but to see that actually happen, I was moved to tears yesterday just to see the kindness of people. It it blows you away. So, yeah, I agree. We are very lucky to be in this community. Edmonton is a strong city with a really vibrant story, and it's built around community, and I think that is a part of why now radio has done so well in this market, it is really something else.

Matt Cundill  27:23  
You weren't there when the station started, but you were working at the company that launched it. Am I correct? So you know, you know the stories and how it goes. If you read Sean Ross and his column, Ross on radio, he will often cite now as a radio station that does join the conversation, you know, very well as one of the first stations in North America to do it, and did so with great ratings. I think the promo budget was, you know, one or $2 million and managed to paper the city with with just about everything. But at the time, Edmonton radio was really, really lazy. Had gotten very, very flat. The stations like the bear, for instance, in K 97 that were supposed to be, you know, the leaders and had Sonic in their face, everybody, sort of, there were some cutbacks. There was a recession at the time, people coming out of that. So there was this gaping hole in the market for a station like this, that state number 125, 54, you know, just for half the decade, if not longer, but you're in charge of this radio station now that has massive heritage that is fine with the conversation, and we get past that point of 2018 where people are now coming to the radio for conversation, for words, for the vocal thing that you've already been trained in because you were Program Director in Regina. So now, the very basic question for people who have not heard the station, what's a typical break sound like on now,

Jay Stone  28:47  
that's a loaded question. You never know what you're going to get on now radio, that's the beauty of it. It's that it's so special, man. And it depends on the show you listen to, too. I think reflecting before I get into what you might expect, reflecting on on when this station launched, I think you're right, that was the radio landscape of where things were at in 2010 Yeah, we just went through a recession. There was some some cutbacks happening. But think about the time as well. You know, 2010 was a different time. Facebook just launched. What mid 2007 I think, oh, six. It launched in the college campus area, but it really didn't become mainstream until mid 2007 when people started making their Facebook accounts. So social media is an infant at this point, and texting was a thing, but nowhere near where it is today, but people are just starting to get more into texting. We got the blackberries with the full keyboard that just came out. So yeah, people are getting excited about texting their family and their friends, but nobody was doing any of that stuff on the radio. Nobody was texting radio stations at that level. Nobody was engaging with their audience through text message and. And I really think it was a little bit of lightning in a bottle where it was the right time. It was the birth of social media. And yeah, you match that with one of the biggest marketing campaigns that I've ever seen in terms of a launch of a radio station, and you tie that with some of the most incredible talent that have ever been coached and launched with a radio station, and you've got a recipe for success. For a long time, I've heard stories of, oh, the ratings were bought. You know, we've all heard those stories. They just bought the ratings.

Matt Cundill  30:34  
You mean by by marketing, and you not marketing,

Jay Stone  30:39  
yeah? You know what? Yeah, okay, the marketing was very effective on the launch of this radio station, but I know the hours that went into the build of this, how long it was rehearsed before they went on the air, and the continued coaching that went on, I worked with Artie zelsey on news talk, and he was a big part with Doug Rollinson and the whole crew that built this team. It takes a lot of work to build talent to get them to that level. And now, I mean, I'm so fortunate. Here we are in 2025 and I get to work with this amazing team every day. And we're coming up on almost five years this later this summer, it's going to be five years since I took over now, but crash Mars and ginger Haley on the morning show. They're the best damn morning show in the country. In my opinion. I know every PD is going to say that, and believe that when it comes to their morning show, but let's be real, they're on a music format radio station, and they play one song an hour, they talk for 45 minutes an hour, and they do it so well, they have this insatiable drive to come up with such interesting content every time they crack the microphone, and all the players on that show are such incredible reactors to that content that they make it funny, they make it entertaining, and it really is an amazing experience. And they do it every time, every time they crack the microphone, you're gonna get that from that show. It is so consistent, it's crazy. And then you've got Adam McHale, who helped launch the station. He pushed the button for the very first time. That guy works like a horse. I mean, you should see his stack of prep that he brings in every day. He's got a clipboard, and it's two inches thick, and sometimes Rachel makes fun of him for his prep and puts on the nerd voice and at this point with it. But you know what? That's the level of prep it takes to do a show at this level. If you're going to do conversation radio, and you're going to do it well, you need to be incredibly prepared. And that man works his butt off and puts an incredible show every day. And Rachel day, she's the heart. She is the heart of this station, and she has such an incredible relationship with the now family. She loves them. She truly loves them, and she really cares about everything that the now family shares with her. She's vulnerable with them. They're vulnerable with her, and she's been doing that for so many years. It's really all about the relationship that these incredible hosts have built with our audience. They truly care about the audience, and the audience truly cares about them. And if you think about it, we are creatures of connectivity. We're human beings. And since the very dawn of time, it's been about entertaining through storytelling. You think of the cavemen days, where you go out and you kill a saber tooth tiger, and you draw the pictures on the wall of how I killed this tiger, and bring you food. Here you go. We've been telling stories since the very beginning, and I picked up a lot of this coaching philosophy from Valerie Geller. Love her. She is incredible. I'll give her a plug if you haven't read her book, programmers reader book.

Matt Cundill  33:41  
Actually, she's got, she's got a new book coming out. It's updated, and she's going to be a guest on this show in the next few weeks.

Jay Stone  33:49  
Oh, that's great to hear awesome. Like, I can't wait to tune in and hear that show. But yeah, she's, she's the queen when it comes to building talk, spoken word, radio and generators and reactors and how to be an interesting storyteller, because at the foundation of it all, we're human beings, and we need to entertain through communication and through stories. And if you can train your hosts to do that, you'll have something really special. And I'm blessed on both stations, honestly, with incredible talent that can really tell an amazing story.

Matt Cundill  34:21  
So I'm glad you mentioned that about about the stories, because there could be many different types of stories. So I've seen this format copied quite poorly by other companies across North America. How have the breaks evolved? Because I listen to one station locally here that says, Do raisins belong in cookies? The phone lines are open and join the conversation. And I'm not joking, by the way, that

Jay Stone  34:44  
happened. Wow. Well, that wouldn't fly here. We have a incredible evening and weekend team as well on now radio with Raj, with Savannah cat, and they haven't been on the air for, you know, 15 years. Uh, Raj has been the on, on the air the longest, but, I mean, Savannah has only been on a couple of years, and she's doing incredible cat for a couple years, and also, also doing incredible but it comes down to coaching the philosophy and how to share something interesting. Like number one, you need to be interesting. If you're not interesting, you're done. And what you said there is just not interesting. So you need to be able to share a story and take it to a conversation where people can feel open and safe to share their stories with you. And if you've got a good relationship with your audience and a place where they can feel safe to share, then they're going to do it. And you know, one turns into two turns into 10, and it starts slow, but you can really build something with that. And yeah, I've heard breaks done on other radio stations similar to how you have, you know, what's your favorite Halloween candy? For example, that's not a conversation that's going to go very far, because who cares? I don't care what your favorite Halloween candy is. Do you care what my favorite Halloween candy is? It doesn't matter. But if you can somehow turn that into an interesting conversation that has a story to it, that can really elicit some kind of emotional attachment to it, or an emotional connection, then you're going to have something that's a lot more engaging and entertaining.

Matt Cundill  36:11  
Yeah, so I'm glad you mentioned that. So the one thing I do here on your station is that when somebody gets into telling the story, or starts the break or sets it up. They know what the end of the story is going to be. They have a very good idea of what's going to be in the middle, and they know how to start it. And so that hasn't changed from the dawn of great radio, which is know how to get in, know how to get out. And have a very good idea of what's going to appear in the middle with your words and what you say, the packaging for how you do it and what you do it, and then the interactivity from it is really a lot of the gold and the gravy and the glitter

Jay Stone  36:46  
that happens in these breaks, yeah, 100% if they're going to go into it, know how you're going to shape that story? You know, when I start coaching with younger talent who just come into the radio station, you got to walk before you can run. I like to say, so if you script the whole thing, you'll be able to get from point A to point B to point C to you're out, and then be able to take that to a conversation, reset, sequels, ratings. So next break, reset that conversation, bring it back again, and then get into your calls and your texts and engagement. But yeah, it's it is about having the right foundation and the right ability to to tell a good story. So

Matt Cundill  37:21  
when the station started, you know, now radio stations are more than FM. We are on smart speakers. We are on apps. We are on, you know, Chrome and your computer displays and whatnot. What are some of the things that now does to be more than FM through the evolution of the last 15 years?

Jay Stone  37:40  
Well, I mean, there's a lot of things that now does. It's so different from traditional radio. I mean, number one, we do broadcast on TV as well, and I'm not meeting audio TV, but we do have a visual component to the radio station, and that's been there for many, many, many years. We just happened to upgrade it, like two years ago, with fresh HD cameras, HD signal and some auto switching software. So when you watch the crash and Mars show, you can see it happen in real time. Cameras switch from one camera to the next between all four of the players when they're not talking, it goes to a corner cam. And it's actually really entertaining to watch the four of them execute in the morning. It's it's great. We get pictures from from listeners who are listening to the show in their kitchen, but they've got one of those fancy refrigerators that have a big screen on it, and they'll actually stream the crash and Mars show in their kitchen and have them the video right there on the screen on on the fridge, which I found incredible. But I mean, that's one example of trying something different, having a visual component to a radio station, the other big one, and this isn't new. It's been since the very early days of now we've just challenged it and expanded it a little bit. Is having in person events with the radio station and giving our listeners an opportunity to be one on one with our hosts. And all of our hosts really understand the importance of that. They are fundamental to brands, and they're fundamental to building that relationship with our audience. So anytime we can come up with a unique idea of getting together with our listeners, we do it. And you know, one example we do every year, it's called the cardboard Cup, where we take over a local ski hill, and we recently, a couple years ago, moved it to the Edmonton Ski Club inside close to downtown, and we invite our listeners to build the most elaborate creations they can out of cardboard, tape and painting it all up. And you would be blown away, Matt, at the level of talent that shows up. And these creations that are built, it's just incredible. We give a cash prize to the best design, and then we race them all down the ski hill, and the fastest in each age category gets a cash prize as well. But that's an opportunity, not just to do that, but to also then talk to our listeners and have our hosts engaging with them on that ski hill.

Matt Cundill  39:51  
I was at the bear for 10 years, where you had the Howler. I know what people are capable of when it comes to costumes and design.

Jay Stone  39:58  
Yeah. Well. Speaking of costumes and design, Swift eoki, we should talk about that a little bit.

Matt Cundill  40:05  
Yeah. So this is, this is one of the things at the very beginning of the show. I've already told everybody you won an award for one of your many awards.

Jay Stone  40:11  
So, Swift eoki, this was, again, one of the most incredible promotions I'd ever seen come together. I gotta give a nod to our promo team. Sarah Olivieri, she's our promo director. Shelby galliot, she is our promo coordinator, slash social media director. Alexis works up at the front, but she also helps out with promotions. Our promo team just killed it. This was one of the most amazing promotions I've ever seen. So it started with a vision. I really wanted to do something special for our audience. Instead of giving away tickets to a Taylor Swift show on the radio, a lot of what I was seeing in just, you know, minimal research looking around different radio stations, most contests were being executed in a listen for this keyword at this hour, this hour, this hour, this Hour, Text in the keyword for your chance to win this trip. And yeah, it drives tuning. Kudos to those stations, and is going to drive tuning.

Matt Cundill  41:05  
But I will say you're not going to attract the right people, because it's only the people who are willing to jump through all those hoops in order to do it. So so you're going to get the contest listeners.

Jay Stone  41:15  
Yeah, if you get a meter, it's great, and you can get some results from it. But I saw a real opportunity to create an event that not only would be fun for everyone participating, but it would be such a memorable event and so much fun that the event itself is almost as big as the prize. So I took our karaoke model. I'll elaborate on that a little bit. So karaoke is an event that we do every year on now radio where we take over a bar and there's a stage there, we invite listeners to come down, and we hold a karaoke contest. So all of our hosts are there. Listeners show up. They sign up for karaoke if they draw your name, or if we draw their name. The scary part of karaoke is a you don't know what song you're singing, you're going to hit a randomizer button. It's going to give you a random song. You go up on stage and you got a live band back in you, you're singing in front of everybody. It's like, how many opportunities do people get to sing in front of a live band, and you're singing a random song. So that's scary. I really wanted to take the karaoke model and apply to this. So my original vision was doing karaoke, Taylor's version, where we would make every song Taylor Swift and do the same thing, where we invite people to come down and play along. We very quickly realized that we do that and it's going to blow up. So we couldn't do it in a bar. Taylor Swift's team also didn't love the name karaoke, so we had to make some amendments with Swift eoke, we doubled the amount of songs hired our friends, five on the side. They were a local band here in Edmonton. They're incredible, just amazing people. And we had a heck of a time at the river Cree resort and casino at the venue. We had 2000 people show up for this, and we gave everybody a swift eoki. Actually got one right here, a swift teotiki friendship bracelet, and then just drew names, Drew names of people who entered, who wanted to sing, and I'll tell you, being on stage and pulling names at random for people to come up and sing while each person was singing their song, seeing the whole crowd just so into it. They all rushed the front of the stage. They're singing, they're dancing, they're all dressed up in their Taylor Swift outfits. It felt like we were at a Taylor Swift show. It was that cool. And then the promo team said all the different eras for Taylor Swift, they set up all these selfie stations, one for each of Taylor Swift's era, where you can go in front of your favorite albums and take selfies or pictures with your friends and share them on social media. All in all, it was, it was just an incredible event, and we gave away two trips to see Taylor Swift at Vancouver at that night. One went to the singer who was voted the best singer by the crowd. The crowd picks who they thought was the best by voting in on text. And then the second one was just drawn at random. They picked one random person who was at the event, and they won a trip as well. So all in all, I think a it's a win because you create an experience for people, a memory for people. Two people got to go see Taylor Swift's from that event. But there's over 1900 people, they got to experience a Taylor Swift like concert experience, and I think that carries way more weight than texting in to your phone number to try and enter to win a contest.

Matt Cundill  44:27  
So this question is about managing and team building. So we've established so far that a lot of the success of the radio station has a lot to do with emotional connection. It's the same thing in podcasting too, right? You want to make a great audio promo, you got to make sure the promo connects in an emotional way that's going to make people connect same thing with with the stuff that you're doing. So you can't do all this alone. You can drive it, but you can't do it all alone. So what? What is going on in the job interviews that you're conducting that makes you pick the right people who can emotionally connect, as opposed to people who can just show. With a lot of followers, how do you source those people out?

Jay Stone  45:04  
Great question. I'll be honest, I don't have a lot of job interviews. I'm very fortunate, because my team turnover isn't very big. I haven't had one in over two years.

Matt Cundill  45:13  
But that's part of it too, right? Because there's a buying component. Yeah,

Jay Stone  45:17  
100% the last on air hire would have been Savannah, and she had just started working in Nanaimo for another Patterson media station out there. I think she was there two months, two or three months, and that was her first radio job. She had been on the air all of two months, and she sent her tape in. And what I look for when I'm hiring talent. I'm not necessarily looking for the stuff you can coach, that stuff's easy. It's the stuff you can't coach that I'm looking for. I'm looking for empathy. I'm looking for the ability to be relatable. I'm looking for some form of storytelling ability. You've got some sense of human connection that people will find relatable. I don't care if you don't reset your breaks. I don't care if you don't tell that story quite perfectly, but if I can hear the fundamentals in it that I can coach and help you get to a point where you can execute at a high level. And I think honestly, empathy and vulnerability are two big things that are hard to coach, because that's just personality trait, right? You're either a vulnerable person or you're not. You're either empathetic and can understand human emotion or or you can't, and you're a little bit more reserved. And in my experience, those are harder things to get out of me. So yeah, I think those are the things that I look for the most, and then and then grow from there. I also look for uniqueness. I should say I look for for unique personality traits, so that not everybody's the same on a station like now, where you've got so many different personalities, it's great when you can have unique characteristics to each of them. And when I hired Kat, I hired her on quirkiness alone, like she she killed the interview, and she was just so interesting to listen to and hear the stories, and she's always got this wild, wacky hair color, just such a unique, quirky personality that I knew we could nurture that and create a unique personality that doesn't exist on the station. So, yeah, I think, I think it comes down to individuality and being able to be vulnerable and being empathetic. So

Matt Cundill  47:23  
I'm glad you mentioned the word empathy and empathetic, because I think that's one of the big drivers of any form of audio. And I believe, when I had Valerie Geller on a few years ago, I asked her, Can you teach empathy? It may even be in the new version of the book too. I have a crash in Mars story though. Oh, there was a station they worked at many, many years ago. And I know I was just messing around in that radio stations office, and I said, Do you remember those people you fired all those years ago? They were like, yeah, they're number one in Edmonton. Now. I just had to just sort of put that out there as a you know, the way guys will rip other guys and

Jay Stone  48:00  
that sort of thing. Yeah, they're they're incredible. I have all the respect in the world for those two, and I don't think they get enough respect in the industry, to be honest. I think that they're really special. And I hear stories of radio schools telling their students to listen to now radio and listen to crash and Mars. I hear stories of talent who have approached me and said, My, PD, my coach is telling me to list the crash of Mars and do what they do like they're they're so unique in how they approach content and how the whole show with, I mean, ging is one of the best reactors I've ever heard in the industry, how he reacts to their content. And now the new edition of Hey. I mean, not really new, but recently, in the last few years, being given a microphone to add into the show, they've really got something special. And 2024 was a really big year for them. They conquered a big hurdle. They're back in number one in a big way, and I don't see any signs of that slowing down.

Matt Cundill  48:59  
Well, Jay, congratulations on all the Canadian radio awards that I'm sure you'll create space for behind you there. What's that shirt behind you? Is that green? What is that green shirt

Jay Stone  49:09  
that is a writer's jersey. There's a story, yeah. Like,

Matt Cundill  49:13  
how does that fly in Edmonton?

Jay Stone  49:14  
Well, honestly, I'm not a huge rider fan anymore, but a bit tainted honestly on on the organization personally, but my personal feelings aside, that was a really fun experience. So behind me, it's a, it's a Roger all day, Jersey rider, great writer, legend. His number is retired, is well known within the rider community. So the 2013 gray cup was being held in Regina, and I was so graciously offered a pair of tickets to that event from the writers Alumni Association. They said, we've got an extra pair of tickets. We'd like to give them to you. Would you like to go? Would be in order for you to be there? I said, Of course. Are you kidding me? I'd love to go. Great seats like center light and amazing. Seats. So it was the week of Graco, and I think it was the Tuesday or Wednesday. It was after the event started happening. And I got a call from the riders Alumni Association. They said, listen, Jay, got some bad news. We need to take one of those tickets. Sip what they said, We need one back. Here's the story, Roger. He's Roger aldag is such a nice guy. He had eight tickets to the gray cup, but he gave them all to his kids and his grandkids so they could go experience the gray cup. And he doesn't have tickets, so he's going to all these events leading up to the gray cup, and all of his buddies from the 88 great conference going, Hey, where's your seats? Roger? Where are you sitting? And he goes, Oh, I don't have any tickets. I'm not going. I'm not going. And they're bugging them. They're like, man, your your name is literally on the stadium. This is the biggest game in rider history. You have to be there. So the Alumni Association goes, Listen, Jay, we need you to give us a ticket back, but you need to take Roger all day to the game. Can you do that? I said, okay, so yeah, I actually got to experience the game with Roger. And as a token of his gratitude for giving a ticket back, he actually gave me that jersey and autographed it. I

Matt Cundill  51:09  
can remember the 1988 gray cup Saskatchewan beat Hamilton 43 to 40. There you go. I don't even follow the CFL, and I know that that's amazing. Jay, thanks so much for coming on the podcast to tell the story of you know, all those Canadian radio awards and now radio the success you've had it up and continued success in the Edmonton market and everywhere else.

Jay Stone  51:32  
Hey. Thank you so much, Matt. Really appreciate what you do for the industry too. And thanks for the invite. The sound

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  51:37  
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.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai