A veteran of multiple facets of the music industry, Willobee Carlan has worked as a programmer, air talent and artist manager, among many other positions over the years. After spending five years as PD of legendary Modern Rock WEQX/Manchester, VT-Albany, Willobee joined Shamrock Communications’ Scranton cluster, and early last year, crossed the country to help build the company’s all-new Reno cluster. Over the past year, Shamrock has launched four brand new stations on four new frequencies in the market. Willobee explains to FMQB how Shamrock created a brand-new cluster from scratch and what makes each station a unique alternative in a crowded radio market.
Joey Odorsio
By Joey Odorsio
A veteran of multiple facets of the music industry, Willobee Carlan has worked as a programmer, air talent, artist manager and even spent time managing a venue in Austin. After running the legendary Modern Rocker WEQX for five years, Willobee joined Shamrock Communications’ Scranton cluster, and in early 2012, crossed the country for the company’s new Reno cluster. Over the past year, Shamrock has launched four brand new stations on four new frequencies in the market. Willobee explains to FMQBhow Shamrock created a brand-new cluster from scratch and what makes each station a unique alternative in a crowded radio market.
The Shamrock-Reno cluster launched just over a year ago, and these were brand-new signals, not acquisitions, correct?
These were all brand new frequencies that didn’t exist before. It all started about eight years ago, I wasn’t even with the company. These were new expanded frequencies that were being offered by the FCC at auction. If you remember about 7-8 years ago, they were auctioning off new FM frequencies for the expanded FM bands in certain markets.
They’re brand new frequencies and we built everything from scratch: the building, the brands, the formats, the logos, the staff. It was a dream come true for me as a programmer. I’ve had a couple of start-ups in my career. But to have four brand-new start-ups? And build stations from scratch all at one time? It’s scary and exciting at the same time. It was a daunting task. We started from a really good place. The company said to take a look at the research we did in the market and add your own homework to it. Come up with stations you think would be able to compete in a very heavily radioed market. [There are] a lot of signals here. How do you come in as the new guy and compete? So the mission from the beginning was to create something new, fresh and compelling that would allow us to create our own niche in the market and that’s what we did.
Tell us about each of the four stations. Most notably, you brought back heritage Modern Rocker KRZQ.
We weren’t sure we were going to do an Alternative station before I got here. But the research kept pushing that there’s no Alternative station here and KRZQ went away. Wilks Broadcasting flipped the format to Hot AC [in 2011], but they left the call letters on the table, instead of moving them to another market for safe keeping. These are 20-year heritage call letters. When we decided to do the Alternative format, it couldn’t hurt to have familiar call letters so we grabbed the KRZQ call letters and grabbed a couple of guys who were synonymous with KRZQ: Chris Payne and Smilin’ Marty. Smilin’ Marty does mornings and Chris does afternoon drive, and the normal Joe Radio Listener doesn’t know it’s a different KRZQ or a different company and they don’t care. We brought in an Alternative station, we’re calling it KRZQ and it’s a good brand. It brought a lot of value and instant recognition. We decided to do the best KRZQ we can do and surpass what they did in the past. Having the freedom to create this from scratch was a challenge. We had to pay homage to a 20 year history in the market while still being fresh, engaging and current.
Getting back into the Modern Rock game with KRZQ, what are your thoughts on the format nowadays?
I’m surprised there are not a lot more Alternative formats popping up. The last two years has shown the best crop of music that the Alternative format has seen since its inception. Every other format has been poaching the Alternative music: CHR, AAA, Hot AC…everything’s coming from Alternative right now. What does that tell you? I think there should be more stations willing to take chances and have more new music. How many Classic Rock and Hot AC stations can you have in one market? There’s gotta be something else, and in a lot of markets this is the something else, and I think now’s the right time.
How did KZTI (105.3) Martini Radio happen?
When I first got here, I launched a website called MyRenoRadio.com. We promoted it through Facebook and said “We’re Shamrock Communications, we’re new in town. Tell us what to do. What is missing? What should we do?” The research said that “we need an Alternative, we need a Smooth Jazz station, we need Standards, and we should have a better News/Talk station.” We used a lot of this input to come up with the formats. So many people wanted Smooth Jazz, which had died a horrible death here. They also wanted a Standards station, and the people who like Smooth Jazz also like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennettand Sammy Davis Jr. When that idea popped up, I did my homework on that format and the problem I saw was that those types of stations sounded so old and we didn’t want to just have an older demo [listening]. I thought if we combine Smooth Jazz and Rat Pack music and keep it relevant with current music that sounds like it fits into the genre, that would be enticing and engaging to a new audience, and it worked. 105.3 Martini Radio has been attracting a younger audience. Aside from the upper demo, we’ve got college kids listening to the station and loving it, which is blowing my mind.
You’re also trying something a bit different with News/Talk KNEZ (KNews 107.3).
Our GM had experience with the News/Talk format at Entercom, and we saw a big hole in the market. There were several News/Talk stations here but we thought they weren’t serving the community as well as they could. The main News/Talker has been around on AM forever with Limbaugh and Hannity. How could we come in and do it differently or at least with a little bit of local flavor? On our News/Talk station there’s a lot of political talk and syndicated programming, but we also wanted to make it a conversation station and invite our listeners to join the conversation and not make them feel like a-holes for disagreeing. We haveGlenn Beck in the morning, Mike Huckabee, Rusty Humphries (who is from Reno originally) and we also do a live, local call-in afternoon show with Sean Patrick. Everyone knows and loves Sean; he’s the voice of college sports here. We made it very clear from the beginning: this is your conversation station, you can call and disagree with us and we’re not going to hang up and make you feel like an idiot. We listen to both sides.
The most recent station to launch is (KWNZ) 106.3 Pop FM, which is sort of a Classic Hits station. How would you describe it?
I wouldn’t call it Classic Hits, because people think of Classic Rock or Classic AC. Our research was pointing towards CHR, but there’s a CHR station in Reno that’s been here for a long time. That could be an expensive battle to fight head-to-head, so we didn’t think throwing the money at a CHR was a smart thing to do. Instead we realized, “What happens to all the music that CHR stations have played over the years?” You don’t hear it any more. CHR chews the music up and spits it out and it’s gone. You have those 40 songs in 90 minute rotation, banging the hits, and they become hits, but where do they go? Some of them go to AC stations, but the bulk of CHR over the years, unless it’s a big standout smash hit, has gone away for the most part.
Why not bring it back? Why not bring back this music that’s disappeared from the landscape? We started going through the history books and the Billboard charts and said, “Wow you never hear this stuff anymore!” Aside from Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson and Madonna…
The best way to describe Pop FM is that we’re a Gold-based CHR. We didn’t want it to be an oldies or Classic Hits station. We wanted it to be a Gold-based CHR that also plays currents. We’re not playing 40 currents, but we’re playing hits. We’re taking the cream of the crop and adding those into the mix. Our core artist list is: Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Madonna, TLC,Prince, Michael Jackson, George Michael, Expose, En Vogue, New Edition, Whitney Houston, Boyz II Men, Wham, The Jets, Brandy, P!nk, Chic, Bobby Brown, Paula Abdul, Backstreet Boys, SWV, Destiny’s Child, Taylor Dayne and evenDonna Summer. We’re mixing in Disco from the late ‘70s all the way up to today, but the bulk of our library lives in the late 80s/early 90s Pop. Music you really don’t hear anymore or anywhere.
Everybody that’s been listening to the station has been saying, “Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re playing some of this stuff, I haven’t heard these songs in forever!” That’s the whole idea. We wanted to create one of those “Oh s**t!” stations, and we even have imaging that says, “We’re your ‘Oh s**t’ station!” It’s another form of alternative station; it’s an alternative to what’s out there. And it’s working!
You joined Shamrock from ‘EQX in 2010 as OM of their Scranton cluster. How far along were they in the Reno project when they asked you to go out there?
This project had been in the making for eight years, I came along about 3.5 years ago. I was recruited to Scranton by their GMSandy Gamblin, an old friend I had worked for in Phoenix. He had been hired by Shamrock to head up their Nevada operations. They brought him to Scranton because they weren’t ready and didn’t want to lose him. Unfortunately he had left the company before we had a chance to work here together. But the seed was planted that down the road there was always the possibility I could be a part of this Reno cluster. Our new Scranton GM John Burkavage was going to be sent to Reno and when they said he needed an OM, he told them, “I want Willobee. That’s the guy. He can build these stations.” I was really flattered and honored he picked me. I had wanted to do this all along anyway, but the fact that he confirmed my wishes was perfect.
I came out here last January. We thought we’d be putting all these stations on air in June, but we were delayed for many reasons: getting the tower built, dealing with the bureau of land management. We didn’t really have issues with the FCC at all. We finally went on in November and it was worth waiting for, because we had more time to devote to research and more time to really build better libraries and brands. Even our logos took a lot longer. We invested more time and thought into them, because we wanted them to be a representation of how different we are. So far we’ve been doing everything different, even down to how we do sales. It’s very important that when you come into a market, and you have to compete, how do you ensure that people will give you a chance when they don’t know who you are? We’re an unknown factor, so we have to be better; we have to deliver better customer service and a better product.
You worked for ‘EQX for years, which is famously very independent, and now you work for a smaller company in Shamrock. What are your thoughts on the state of radio ownership in 2013?
I worked for Clear Channel and Cox, I worked for big companies and small companies. I like Shamrock because they’re a family owned company. They’re not slaves to the bottom line. Of course we want to make money and hit budgets, but we’re not a slave to stockholders. It really changes the ballgame when you have a publishing and broadcasting family that gets it. If I were to compare Shamrock to the bigger giants, it’s night and day. I don’t want to slam anybody, but there are more interpersonal relationships in a company like this than a bigger company, where there are so many people. I know the CEOs of the company very well. I worked in the same building as them for about two years and developed a really good relationship. You don’t have those kinds of relationships at a Clear Channel. If you’re working on one of the coasts for Clear Channel, the CEOs are in Texas. I have access to the top and they’re very accessible and smart about the way they do things. If more companies would think like this company, I think radio would be in a little better position. With Clear Channel developing the iHeartRadio monster, I don’t know where that’s going and how it’s going to affect terrestrial radio. I think it’s up in the air as to where it’s going to take terrestrial radio.
The bottom line is that I think everybody believes radio still needs to be live and local, and that local element and the interpersonal relationship between a station and the listener is important. There’s going to be tons of people that listen to Pandora,Spotify and Slacker, but they still come to radio for discovering music. They come to local radio for finding out what’s going on in town and keeping up with the news, traffic and weather, concerts…I don’t think that’s going away anytime soon.
[eQB Content By Joey Odorisio]
