Katie Speirs arrived in Taos with a love of radio and music to take the Production Director job at independently owned Triple A KTAO. A decade later she is the controlling owner of a group that includes not only KTAO, but also AC LUNA and the KTAOS Solar Center performance venue, bar and restaurant. In the following interview, Speirs explains each entity’s place in the community and how they tie together, as well as why she thinks “mission statements” are not just for non-commercial stations anymore.
Katie Speirs
By Jack Barton
With a love of radio and Triple A music, Katie Speirs landed in Taos, NM in the early part of the new millennium, being hired as production director by Brad Hockmeyer, the founder and then-owner of Triple A KTAO. Hockmeyer’s company was going through an expansion, with related business entities forming under the KTAO umbrella, including a concert venue and new radio station. But in a few short years, Hockmeyer was getting ready to take a step or two back from the day-to-day operation of the business and sold the company to a group of employees, including Speirs. That partnership continued for a few years until early 2014, when Speirs bought out her partners to become the owner of the company. In her first full industry interview since taking ownership, Speirs tells FMQB about KTAO, LUNA and the Solar Center, each entity’s place in the community and how they tie together, and why she thinks “mission statements” are not just for non-commercial stations anymore.
You’ve gone from being a KBCO intern in the late ’90s to station ownership in less than two decades. What was the driving force behind you building a career in radio?
I started at KBCO as an intern, but my family was living in Minneapolis at the time, where I went to high school. So I returned back there after I graduated and switched to television working for TV producers.
I didn’t love that, and after 9/11 they were laying people off right and left and I moved out to Hawaii, where I worked on an animation project. After that was complete, I came back and I was picking up my car in Long Beach and my dad called and said, “They’re hiring a producer at KTAO, send them your resume,” and I did. I came into town on Saturday, had an interview on Monday and got the job that day and started on the 15th of September. Six months after I started, we moved from the old trailer we were in into the KTAOS Solar Center, which has significantly developed over the last nine or ten years that we’ve been in this building.
Talk about your development at KTAO, leading up to purchasing the station.
After about four or five years of me being here, Brad originally asked me to purchase the station, and at the time, my family and I had decided that we weren’t quite ready to take on the feat financially, so we partnered up with my previous business partners. I worked with them for about three years, and then they decided they wanted to move on to do different things. They didn’t come from the media and radio industry – which I did – so they didn’t really have their hearts into it in such a way as I did. I have such a love for not only radio, but Triple A radio, because that’s where I started and because that’s the only kind of music I listen to. So I bought them out in February. Industry veteran Dave Darus had moved to Taos a year ago and we were beginning to speak to him as a consultant when I was still working with my business partners. So when the purchase was complete, I brought him on as GM, and it’s been working out pretty well.
Can you elaborate on all the businesses under the KTAO roof?
LUNA (KLNN) is our AC station, and that’s the station that John Bradley and Dave Rahn started in 2005 or 2006. That’s our “listen at work station,” and it’s predominantly listened to by women and business owners. We also have a full restaurant, full liquor-licensed bar and we have the KTAOS Solar Center, which is an indoor/outdoor venue. The indoor venue can accommodate up to four or five hundred people, and the yard outside in the summer can accommodate seven or eight hundred people. It backs onto Pueblo land which is never going to be developed, and it’s really beautiful out there. It’s a perfect view of sacred Taos Mountain. You can see everything and it’s just gorgeous, so it’s a very special place.
We’re an all ages venue, so it’s a nice thing for parents because they can come here and have dinner and cocktails with their friends, and we did a deal with a toy store so the kids can run around and play with toys while the parents have an adult time and they are able to watch their kids in our yard. We have three acres of property that is fenced in, so the kids can be zipping around and they don’t have to worry about them and can see them at all times. So it’s a family friendly place, unless the show is burlesque or we make a decision to make it 21 and over for some other reason. We also show movies, which we call Solar Cinema. We’ve been gravitating towards showing a lot of kids’ movies because we found that the family oriented films produce more revenue; we get more bodies in here. We’ve shown Frozen and Shrek, Up and even The Wizard of Oz. We put it indoors in the winter, and we put it outside on the big screen in the summer. We’re also doing a new series on Sunday called Jazz and Wine, where we have Jazz musicians come in, and we do free wine tastings.
There are a lot of references to “solar” in marketing and talking about the stations and venue. What’s that about?
When Brad still owned the station, I believe in 1994, we went solar, in which our signal was solar and we still have that today. And in New Mexico, there are structures called “earth ships,” which are environmentally sound buildings that are essentially made out of recycled materials like old tires and cans, and then they’re built into the earth, and that’s where our solar array is. It lives on top of a peak, inside of one of these earth ships. Our signal is 100,000 watts on both stations. And recently we made our building down here solar as well. So that was one of the major changes, so when the electric company goes down, we’re never off the air. People who sit in their car to listen to the radio outside of their houses during outages can at least have some form of communication. If something major is going on they can always hear KTAO and LUNA.
How does all this tie together?
We try to stick with Triple A-oriented bands, but because we are a community radio station we try to bring in different genres of music for the Solar Center. Part of that is because we have specialty shows in the evenings on KTAO, so our music is very diverse. On Monday nights we have Moccasin Wire, which is a Native American radio show, and we have a cover show, a World music show, a Reggae show and even a teenager Talk show, so we’re as diverse in our booking as we are on the radio.
Another thing we’re doing that’s really cool is Brad Hockmeyer has come back live! He was voice tracking, but is live in the afternoon again. We’re selling our Happy Hour at the bar by bringing in baby bands, because it’s my goal to expose listeners to those bands live on Brad’s show. It exposes them early enough that if we want to bring them back for a concert, the audience already knows who they are and the paid show is not a ghost town.
I don’t know if you know the story behind Saints of Valory, but it was just a random thing where, being the Music Director, I clicked a link one day and just thought this band is amazing. So we contacted the band before they were signed and invited them in. People were coming into the bar and were blown away and we made the community perceive them as a huge band, even though they had not made it yet.
So that’s what we’re doing here at KTAO; trying to educate people about Triple A music, and we’re doing our job. It makes us feel really good when we look through that glass in the studio and we see the bar full of people there specifically to see a band they just heard on the radio.
You keep referring to KTAO as a “community station,” which means one thing in the non-comm world, but you’re a commercial station. What does it mean when you say KTAO is a community radio station?
What that means is that “community” is our brand. And what that means is that Taos is a small town and, while there is another radio group here, their signal isn’t as strong. We lead in the market in terms of Arbitron ratings, and so we’re just kind of the station to listen to. There have been forest fires and gas outages, and (PD and Morning Host) Paddy Mac is like a god, I mean the man is practically sleeping in the studio, 24/7 giving updates to our audience.
People also turn to us with community issues. We get a lot of interviews about environmental things. We have a segment called What’s Going On? where we’ll bring people in and they can talk about everything from politics to the environment. We have a radiothon for the Community Against Violence, which is a shelter for battered women and children, and we raise money for them every October. We’re on the air from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and we do run our commercials but we don’t play music. People call in all day, and then we do another one, which we just completed, for the Stray Hearts Animal Shelter, in which their goal was $45,000, and we raised over $60,000. That happens because people just want to support them, but there are a lot of non-profits in this community and when they get on the air with us it really drives donations. So we have this non-comm feel even though we are a commercial radio station.
You still function as the group’s production director and MD and recently brought in industry veteran Dave Darus to serve as GM. Talk about the dynamics of being the owner but having someone else on payroll to run the company.
We wanted to bring on Dave because he “gets it,” and knows what Triple A is all about. He also has a love and a passion for radio, as does everyone in this building. But Dave and I work hand-in-hand. He and I make all the decisions for this company together, and a lot of times I help him because he is new. I can give him the local background on things because I’ve been here for so long. And then we’ll make decisions to keep the brands tied together. Dave is also coordinating the brands of community all across the board. So it’s not as if he’s running the company alone, the two of us are doing it together and he doesn’t make decisions without discussing it with me.
Why, as radio is contracting and smaller stations have been struggling, did you make the decision to jump into ownership now?
It was a very rational financial decision because KTAO is a predominant business in this community. Our sales are up, month after month, and they have been since I originally took ownership in 2010 with my business partners. But it’s also about growing this heritage radio station and making it more financially feasible so that we can help our employees make more money.
One of the things we’re passionate about is taking care of our people.
The employees are near and dear to my heart. And so growing the company financially, which just means positivity for everybody financially in this building, and also within the community. I want to create a positive environment for the employees, where there isn’t any garbage talk, nasty emails, gossip or just inappropriateness towards one another in this building; I have absolutely no tolerance for it whatsoever. We just sit down and have conversations with people when that stuff occurs, because there’s obviously something bothering them and we want good karma in here. I want people to feel confident walking in the door every day. That’s part of the financial changes we made too, because if people want to be here they’re going to be working harder.
[eQB Content By Jack Barton ]
