This is an interview taken from a Zoom conversation between ALAN MASON and ALL ACCESS’ Contemporary Christian Format Editor TODD STACH
TODD: Hey, I'm Todd Stach, Contemporary Christian music format editor at AllAccess.com and every year in each format we like to celebrate someone who has accomplished something, a work anniversary or a retirement. And this year for 2021, I thought, well, there's no better person that I can think of in the CCM space who's given a lot of years to radio, and to the Christian format than Alan Mason. So, Alan, congratulations and thank you for spending some time with me to talk about your career.
ALAN: You bet. Enjoy it. I enjoy talking to you.
TODD: So, I'm going to start at the beginning. I mean, we're going to start way back. I mean, this goes back to San Francisco. This goes back to early days in California. I'd love for you to, for those who don't know, just kind of run through your early career in radio, how you got started, how you progressed, and we'll eventually get to Orlando.
ALAN: How I got started is not the usual story about how I pulled the microphone out when I was 12 years old and started talking. After I got out of the Navy, I wasn't sure where I should go, what should I be doing now. I had a friend who worked at a radio station that said, “Well, you know, you've got a deep voice and you're kind of weird, so, you should go down to try and take the FCC license and see if you can get into radio.”
And so, the first radio station I worked, there were two of us that work there, and it was an AM day-timer. The format was in those days called underground rock. The station had no internal plumbing. So, when you had a long song, you know, we were running out to the outhouse. We had the owner's daughter who kind of ran the place a little bit and if she walked behind me, the needle would jump. So, it was a fun place to work. And in every way, it was a fun place to work. There were no rules.
TODD: Wow. Now was this before or after the gold rush?
ALAN: Right. Vancouver, Washington. Then I went to four smaller stations and worked my way up to getting an offer from King Broadcasting in Portland, which was our home. And then I stayed with King Broadcasting for 18 years, had jobs that ran from being on the air to program director, to a program director of two stations in San Francisco, to being the head of programming and research for King Broadcasting, and then VP and GM.
So that's 18 years. It was an amazing company to work with. It was owned by two women. One was the oldest, richest woman on west of the Mississippi, the Bullitt family. And when I was the group PD; it was a great job. One quick story about it.
Dorothy Bullitt was the person who owned it and ran it asked me as I traveled around the country to let her know how our people are doing. And so, I would always come back and say, everybody's great. And one time I came back and said, “You know, there's a problem, one of the TV engineers has a really sick child, and they really can't figure out what's going on.” Dorothy said, “Oh, really. What’s his name?” So, then I wandered off and started going back and doing my work. And oddly enough, an anonymous donor paid for him and the family to be flown over to Seattle and put in the best hospital in the Pacific Northwest. That's the kind of company it was.
We had a really good time. All the PDs would get together once a month and go attack a market. We'd sit there and we listened for a couple of days, and then you’d call the pour PD, but there were ground rules about how we're going to make this positive, not negative. If there's something that needs to be corrected say it needs to be corrected. Don't tell them that it's the worst thing you've ever heard. But I think that this process actually helped a lot of people. When you have your peers coming in and really paying attention, you know, you do hear things differently on other stations.
After that I went to Sacramento where we launched a radio station at the time was called NAC, New Adult Contemporary, which was mostly new age music. And most people probably aren't familiar with exactly what Yani was, what exactly what new age music is. There was just no familiarity, so we converted it to Smooth Jazz, where it had a beat, it had rhythm, and that worked out really well. That station, in less than a year, went from a sign-on to a #1 25-54, and then the following book #1 P12+ and stayed there for a while. That opened a door for me to begin to go out and help other stations, and that's sort of where I think I God was pushing me for a long time. But the idea of stepping out and not having a regular paycheck or regular health insurance was something that my wife, Becky, wasn't quite sure was in her wheelhouse.
From there I've consulted, one way or another, almost ever since. But I went to Paxson Communications, which I wish everybody could have an experience like that. There are very few things that stand in the way of a man that has $400 million in the bank. And so, we'd come up with an idea and he’d say, “Do it!” I’d say, “Well, okay, I’ll go get you a budget,” and Bud would just say, “Do it.” He gave me an American Express card because I was group PD and said, “Okay, when you're traveling around, just keep my people happy, give them good dinners. Don't take them to McDonald's or something.” So, it was fun. It was fun!
We got to explore a lot of new areas and I got to work with a lot of really good people until it was sold to a company called Clear Channel in those days. John Frost was working with me by then and he and I really didn't want to go to work for Clear Channel. It didn't seem to be a good fit with what we had done.
I took a reverse route. I went from Florida to Michigan to work with Tim Moore. Tim and I decided we would start a company, Audience Development Group, and that really worked out well. (Sarcastically) From the standpoint that I was visiting two stations a week and putting in like a hundred to 150,000 miles a year (flying), it worked out really well. That grew retire tiresome after quite a while.
Then, a guy named Dick Jenkins that I had known since my first radio station started calling me and telling me that I needed to come to this place called EMF, which I'd never heard of. We had been working with several Christian radio stations who were not a part of that. And all of a sudden, I began to hear about (EMF being) the “evil empire” and didn't really equate it to what EMF was. Yeah, Dick is a very smart guy. He's also quirky as the devil, but he’s a very smart guy. He said, “Oh, I'm not saying you should come here, just pray, pray about it.” And so, I did! Becky and I both prayed really hard and kept looking at each other going, “I don't get this, but somehow. I feel like we're meant to go there.” So, we started at EMF somewhere around 2004.
TODD: You skipped I think an important year. Backing up. I remember first meeting you and John Frost and Tommy Kramer back at the whole Gospel Music Association days, the GMA week. It was in Nashville and Christian radio gathered there back in the late nineties. I feel like somehow someway it was right after Paxson Broadcasting you found your way into Christian radio and really you, John and Tommy changed the way we did things. Everything in Christian radio, I feel like up until that point was very heavy leaning towards art, and you guys brought some science from your background with all of your experience you just talked about. And so, the late nineties, I mean, you just kind of flew right past that. So, I wanted to back up and acknowledge that. You helped grow our format and put in some really basic but needed foundational principles for the CCM format to grow.
ALAN: Yeah. It's interesting how that started because WayFM in West Palm Beach came to Bud (Paxson) and asked him for money. He said, no, but I'll give you, John and Alan for a year.
TODD: That’s what it was.
ALAN: That's where we started in Christian radio. And then, well, when you're doing something as important as your faith it pulls a lot out of you. Yeah, we did. We put, we put some pretty simple programming procedures that we had worked out for years. Some imaging strategies that we had, and it did work. It worked pretty well.
TODD: I was there in Fort Myers at WayFM, so there, the WayFM that existed at that point was Fort Myers, West Palm Beach, and Nashville. And I remember the ministry building that Bud built and WayFM is still there today in West Palm Beach. And those were some really challenging years into the fact that it wasn't bad. It was good. These light bulbs came on like, oh my gosh, this is how you do that. It does sound great, and it was like cutting edge.
ALAN: The way we measured it was the size of the Christian audience. So, every year we saw more and more people listening to Christian radio, and that's really what we wanted. We wanted to make sure that there was the opportunity for really good Christian radio pretty much anywhere in the country.
The person who actually started EMF, a guy named Bob Anthony, he was afternoon drive at KRC in San Francisco (in the 80’s). He’s making six figures and he's in San Francisco working a four-hour shift. And God spoke to him and told him, “You need to go start a Christian radio station that is good and operates under the principles like this.” So, he did. He and I talked about that many times. He took on the same job to make Christian radio as good as your country station or your AC station, whatever you want. We're really happy to be able to contribute to that because it has grown dramatically.
TODD: So, we reversed. Now, we're going back to 2004 where you were going to EMF. You and I, I think, were just about to meet again later on when I was in Columbus, because John was the consultant there. But I remember the process of you going to EMF and you kind of went into a new role, right?
ALAN: Research Director. Yeah. I kept half my clients. So, I wasn't going to go into something higher because the higher you get, the more people outside of EMF don't work with you for some reason. I had eight offices and the time I was there. There's a joke on the inside that EMF stands for “everybody moves frequently” and that is what went on.
But there's something that happens in Christian radio, where most of your motivation is self-motivation, is to want to do this because of the reasons you're doing it. So, it was easy to be there and work with everybody and climb the ladder and understand the why we're doing what we're doing...not trying to put other Christian radio stations out of business, but to grow it under a specific set of characteristics. Did you get to know Dick Jenkins?
TODD: Not really. No.
ALAN: Like me, like most radio people, Dick thought he was hilarious, but he would do things like go up at GMA meetings and say,” It's true. If your station sucks, I'm going to buy you.” So, he wasn't the most popular guy in radio and that's really where it came from because he was replaced by Mike Novak who didn't have the same spirit about it. Mike also wanted to really grow the format.
So, all of a sudden, after going up through my favorite title of Vice President of Change through Operations Director to President I came to a point where I said, “Yeah, it was time to retire.” Some people will talk about it. You will know there is a time and some people don't know, but there is a time. There's a great book called Necessary Endings, which will explain it to you. You decide it's time to move on. Being me and somewhat strategic I gave them three years and oh, I made it right to the day we had all talked about. Coming out of it I've been telling everybody I talk to that there IS life after radio. There is something you can do. I'm glad to have been there. I'm glad to have gone through all the wars and the battles that I have, but there IS life after radio. For me, that's turning out to be oddly enough in a ministry direction.
So, I'm helping a small number of people but not charging anything for it. There's a Canadian group that I really would love to see have the same opportunity we have down here where any place you live in Canada, you have a chance to hear Christian radio and learn more about Jesus. So, I do that. I do that at no cost because I don't exactly need to do that right now. And it's important now that I put my head into things that you’re willing to do for free. Okay, let's go do it.
So that takes us up to Meridian, Idaho, just outside of Boise, where we're having a fairly good day of a smoke from the fires in California and smoke from the fires in Oregon. It all blows our direction on its way to New York. Yeah.
TODD: So, family's near there. You and your wife, Becky, moved there a few years back and, and that's life, that's home. You are grandparents, you're involved with family, and you still have an office. You still have memories behind you on the bookcase.
ALAN: Yep. It's a great little room here that’s too small to be a bedroom, but it's perfect for an office. You can't see it from where you are, but there's a 55 inch monitor up on the wall. So, I can sit here and work on that until my eyes go. Then I'll have to go back to the iPad right in front of me.
That part about there's life after radio. You know, Mike Novak always said the way he was going to leave radio was in a pine box. He was going to die at the station and be carried out. He really wanted to continue on and on and on. There comes a time when you really shouldn't, there will be voices in your head and you know where those come from. They’ll be saying, “It's time to move on.” Mike, the man, who never had a job outside of California, is now in Texas and he's a chaplain for a police department and I've never heard him happier. It's just great. He says, “Now I see what you mean!” He's helping young police officers, travels with them, they talk life over and things like that. So, it's a wonderful position for him. He's had a great time with that. His wife had children and grandchildren and so he walked into a family that embraced him. It's so good after all those years of work, and some of it kind of hard, to see him come out on the other end with a family that he adores and they adore him. And he's doing something that's really important to him and still has him in touch with his faith.
TODD: Sure. So, I think that retirement whole thing and the book (Necessary Endings) can also be translated to people who maybe have been at a station for 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. They're not at retirement age, but just to take that leap of faith, just to take that next step from you've heard the voices, you probably should leave this situation, but fear, money, moving...all that gets in the way. And would you agree that there's that that happens too in our lives?
ALAN: Yeah. It feels like stepping off the edge of a cliff. And then, okay, you go, God’s gonna catch me. It's really difficult. The job in Sacramento, even though the station was very successful, I didn't much care for the people I was working with. They were secular radio people who would just do things that were not above board and didn't treat everybody really well. So, I built up to leaving. After I got off work and walking around with (my wife) Becky and asking her, “Why do you think God's doing this to me? I was put here for some reason, but what do you think it is?” And until other radio stations started calling and saying, “Hey, what are you doing there and how did you get up to number one?” it didn't make any sense to me. I just thought I've been put into this terrible position.
Like most people in radio, I have been fired. You think that that gets the end of everything. “Start all over again. What am I going to do?” But it turns out, at least for me, and I suspect for a lot of people who work in our format, that we were just too stubborn to be paying attention, and so God made sure we got kicked out. Because if that hadn't happened, all these steps that I've taken wouldn't have happened. I wouldn't be here enjoying life in a different way now and working in some great radio markets with some great people.
I think it was the late nineties was the first time we saw each other, and then we began working together at WCVO/COLUMBUS. WCVO was a great radio station. Which was that award (won)?
TODD: Station of the Year. Yea, they’ve won it a couple of times now.
ALAN: Yeah. So, you set a really good standard and it paid off.
So, what John and I like more than anything else is to see other people grow. Sort of like your kids, maybe. I don't know, something like that, but it's good to see other people grow. It's not the money and it's not the ratings. You have to pay your way and you have to be able to put food on the table. But what it's really all about is seeing a station turn around and people that you've really grown to like growing themselves and learning new things.
This is radio. So, you're bound to run into brick walls, one point or another, and you're bound to wonder what is going on, but I'm evidence that you can screw up. You can be caught in a bad place and still survive. And not only that, you wind up going that direction you we're supposed to be going in the first place. If your job is really tough and it's just not working there’s s a very good chance that God is like tapping you on the shoulder and saying, “Hey, wake up, wake up. There's something better coming ahead.”
TODD: Yeah. And, “I'm going to either allow you to leave on your own. Or I'll make a way...”
ALAN: “If I do, I'll make it really clear.”
I'm not the most subtle person in the world, so that has been a problem in my career. Fortunately, after EMF, I said, well, okay, this has worked out because I went into EMF like, “Why do I want to be here? I'm pretty successful in what I'm doing. What am I, what do I want to do?” But I understood after I got there what I was supposed to be doing there. I had some impact on the place and it worked out much better than I ever thought. I don't think I'll ever write a radio book. But if I did, there'd be a lot of chapters about EMF.
TODD: So, one final question. I think I know the answer to this, but I'll throw it out to you anyway. Any regrets? Would you go back and change something, do something differently? Is there something that sticks out or you're okay with the path, the ups, the downs, the successes, the failures?
ALAN: Well, there's a yes and no answer to that. I am fine with the way things went, but I'm still one of those people who always likes to still learn and keep himself growing. So, there are some things at EMF I would've done differently, but they were leadership things not format things or anything like that. You know, I could have done better if I would have handled it this way, that kind of thing. But no, no regrets at all. Especially since it's led me to where I am. And now I have the ability to do precisely what I want.
I had three great grandchildren over here yesterday in the middle of the day. That would've never happened anywhere else. I stopped to go play with them, came back and finished some things I had to do. There's a sense of freedom, but the biggest thing is you really do have control over your life. You just have to figure out what to do. One final thing. I have too many friends that I worked with in secular radio who died within 12 months after retiring. They had nothing to do. They began drinking and again taking drugs, had nothing to do, and they weren't satisfying what was in her heart so they went other directions. And because of that I’ve paid attention. Okay. Just make sure there's something to do. I don't want to sit around and watch TV all day.
TODD: Yeah, that's really good. That's sad too. That's really, really sad. It is.
ALAN: It is. It is.
TODD: Well, Alan, we celebrate you at AllAccess.com and I'm grateful for the years you've spent in both mainstream and Christian radio. We wanted to honor you this year. So, thank you very much for spending some time.
ALAN: It’s a great surprise. I really appreciate it.
