10 Questions with ... Tim Leary

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Tim Leary will soon be bringing his "Morning Showgram" to Hubbard KNUC/Seattle, which launched as a Country station in December within hours of longtime Seattle heritage Country outlet KMPS flipping formats. Leary arrives in Seattle after five years at Alpha Country WUBB/Savannah, GA and brings his entire morning squad with him. Claire Beverly and Karen "Red" Daiss round out the team, which has been together for three years. A 20-year radio vet, Leary has previous major market morning experience having done wakeups at iHeartMedia Country WGAR/Cleveland prior to joining WUBB. His resume also includes WCTK/Providence and KUUB/Reno. As Leary, Beverly, and Daiss get ready for their Seattle closeup, All Access talked to Leary about how the move occurred, how the show works, his philosophy about morning radio, and some great stories about the best- and worst-case scenarios when planning morning show events.

1. Tim, thank you for taking the time to answer "10 Questions," and congrats again on the move to Seattle. Can you tell us how the opportunity came about?

Hubbard SVP/Programming Greg Strassell had kind of been keeping an eye on what the team's been doing for some time, following the show, and reading about it on All Access. He also kept in touch with my agent. So, when the Entercom/CBS merger happened, they took their Seattle Rock station and flipped it to Country; I think an hour or so after they switched KMPS to Soft AC. Greg called my agent and said, "Hey, we just turned on a Country property in Seattle. I think Tim would be really, really good. Does he wanna talk about it?" And, I was like, "Well, let me... Yes!" So, they asked how I would wanna go about talking about this - did I want to go out there and build a new show? Did I want to bring one co-host, two co-hosts? And, I said, "Look, if I had my utopia, I would pick the whole show up and move it. We've had a bond and a chemistry that you just can't find that often in your career." My agent told him, and he asked about [co-host] Claire [Beverly], and I said, "Give me an hour." She only lives a quarter mile from me, so I got in my truck, and I went over there. We sat down, had a drink, and I told her about the entire thing. She looked at me and said, "I'm in." So, I called my agent to tell him Claire's onboard, and he asked, "How'd you do that?!" And, I said, "Well, [at] this point in Claire's career, the only city in America that she would pick up and move to is Seattle." I knew that, so I knew we had a pretty good shot at getting the whole squad. We flew out there, and we just hit it off with Greg; [Lisa] Adams, the PD; and [GM] Marc Kaye. We had talked to [Reynolds Group's] Steve Reynolds a bunch of times, and everything just gelled immediately.

2. In this move, you were able to bring your entire show to KNUC. That speaks to how much the station wanted all of you and seems to enable you to reach a comfort zone in that market faster than recruiting and building a show around you. Is that accurate?

Hardly ever in this day and age in radio do you see whole shows moving markets, let alone across the country together. When it was being talked about, everybody sat down, and we started listening to what was going on. The one thing that Greg and Marc and Lisa kept coming back to was that the chemistry and relationship that [the show] has together both on-air and off-air is incredible. I mean, I've been in this career for however many years now, and I've never really found a cast like this. Not only do we gel and have a great dynamic on the air, we actually are friends off the air. I've literally driven to Claire's house and fixed her dresser, because the drawer wouldn't open and shut properly. We watch out for each other, and we protect each other, and you can hear that coming across the air - hopefully!

3. You've had a successful run at WUBB - you pretty much owned Savannah - and, many radio personalities have told me in recent years that it's not all about the market size, but all about company, company, company. What made it the right time to change jobs and leap to a top 20 market?

Well, to take the words right out of your question: company, company, company. Hubbard is such an amazing company, and even just walking around CRS this past year, you'd hear talents and programmers go, "The company you really have to work for is Hubbard, because they're unbelievable." We've been approached by other stations before, and I didn't feel that the situation was right, or it wasn't the right time. What I've said up until this point is, at this stage in my career, there are literally a handful of people that I would uproot my immediate family and my cast and move and go work for, and I promise you, two of them are at this station - Greg Strassell and Steve Reynolds! What are the chances of two of these guys working on the same project? Then, you throw in a Market Manager like Marc Kaye, and then Lisa Adams, who are both unbelievable people to meet and talk with. As I came home and discussed it with my wife, I said, "It is time." We have loved Savannah and the community here. Honestly, when we were first approached with the situation, my wife and I actually looked at the market; it wasn't about size, it was about, "How will our kids adjust?" My kids are now 11 and soon-to-be 12, so it was about what's in that area for them - the schools, Scouts, choir, and everything like that. Seattle offers just as much, if not more, than Savannah does. That all played into it. Last Summer, Greg actually flew down here to have lunch with me, then flew back up to Boston. We're at the Pink House, and I had my good flannel shirt on, and Greg's talking about Hubbard and said, "I'm sure you have a lot of questions, so I'm gonna shut up, and you ask me any question you want to, and I'll answer it. Go ahead!" I said, "Alright, why are you here?" He goes, "Excuse me?" I said, "I have meticulously watched every radio station in every market that you have; you have talents that haven't left the station in ten years; Programmers that have been there for 15-20 years; Market Managers that have been there since Marconi invented radio; your stations perform unbelievably in major markets, which I'm sure translates into major profits. So, you obviously do not need my help anywhere, so why are you here?!" He goes, "That's a fair question. It's my job to find out where the best talent in the nation is, and you have my attention." And, I said, "Check please!"

4. Let's talk about the show, "Tim Leary And The Morning Showgram."' How does it work, what are the roles on the show, and what do listeners take away from it on a daily basis?

What they take away is that it doesn't matter what your reason or justification is from being in the room. The one role of the show that I've always had is that your job once you pass through the studio doors is to make everybody else look like a star, not yourself. And, if you have a cast that truly believes that, you'll come out on top. Whether you're the main DJ button guy - which is what I do - Claire does news and traffic, and Red does entertainment... It's up to everybody to make sure everybody else succeeds and looks amazing on the air every morning. Claire's been with me for about five and half years; she was here when I got here. She had such a comedic wit about her and such good timing that I wanted her as part of the show immediately, because I knew she was a brilliant comedienne. She's in the tertiary seat, but I told her years ago, "You are like comedic oregano - just a touch of you goes for forever! People laugh and take away just that one line you said during the show." And, Red came on to the show - we were actually looking for a third co-host for like six months - she was actually a Marketing Director for a nonprofit here in town, and she was talking about her charity 5k that she was gonna have that Claire and I were running in. So, she hung out for a little on the show, and she hung out a little longer, and we started talking about stuff other than the event, and I kind of mentally ran through a bunch of subjects, and she was charming, likeable, and very funny. We wrapped up, we all had a good time, and she left the studio. I looked at Claire and said, "That's not a bad idea," and she said, "No, it's actually not!" Then, I went to management to tell them I found my co-host, and they said, "Who?" and I said, "She just left, talking about the 5k," and they asked if she had radio experience, and I said, "About 45 minutes of it! She doesn't have one ounce of entertainment experience." It became this back-and-forth, three-month discussion as to why she would be the best candidate. Meanwhile, I'm trying to convince her that she'd be very good at this job, but she didn't need a job - she had one! At the end of three months, everybody agreed, and she started on-air doing the morning show. Within two years, she's become one of the most beloved personalities in the market. The one who signed off on it was Scott Mahalick; I told him that I see a presence and a character in her that I can develop and draw out into a radio personality, and Scott said, "Alright, man, let's go for it." It was really funny, because there were three final candidates, and they actually ended up playing the first break of Red's audition tape, and they stopped it, and they go, "Was that her first break? And, she has no radio experience? Well, if that's her first break with no prior radio experience, I think we have a candidate!"

5. How will you prep for being in Seattle? What's your process for getting to know the market so that when you debut, you're speaking the market's language and connecting?

First of all, Claire lived there for a long time; she was there in the 90s and was involved in the Seattle theater scene. As much as we can, we will go out, drive around, experience this event, go to that restaurant, take as much in as possible. Inevitably, I've always found that when I move to a new market, and I try to drive somewhere, I always get lost. Yet, that leads me into new parts of town. It's getting out there. This is a brand-new city for [me], my wife, and my kids, so we're going to be experiencing a lot of it together. It's great, because the kids will be able to finish off the school year here and start a school year there. You have skiing 35 minutes away, fishing all over the place - there's so much to offer. My plan is that we'll be doing things together as a show, then we'll also be doing things individually. When something like that happens, you bring it into the show, and little by little, you start piecing it together.

6. When I think of Tim Leary and your show, I think of a personality who's willing to really put himself out there and make noise - the loud hair colors, the full body tattoos, any kind of stunting. You're very uninhibited; some would say borderline nuts. Have you always been that bold as a radio personality?

I never stood out with the mission to say that I'm gonna be bold, starting now; it was just one of those things where this event happened, and then we did this event, and this happened. We don't do charities for the sake of saying we're doing a charity; we really care about the causes and the events that we get involved with, and we want them to be the most successful for the people holding that event or holding the charity. So, years ago, when the Boy Scouts Of America asked me to go repel down the side of a building, and I said "sure," it wasn't until about the seventh floor where I went, "What the hell are you doing on the outside of a building?!" And, it was the moment where a lady had taken a piece of paper off the printer, and I'm staring on the other side of the glass outside of the building. So, we think of things that we do, and we take up challenges, but it really helps out the people that really need it, and the event that needs the exposure. I've told the cast before: when we do something, we go all in. We're not trying to go out of our way to be bold, crazy, or nuts. We sit down and go, what would make this event cool that people will want to be a part of this? This year, when we did our "Tats For Tatas," we had been hammering for months that people donate to the Red Cross, because of the hurricanes, and fires, and the shooting in Vegas. We had agreed that we couldn't go back to the same well, even though our annual breast cancer run was coming. So, we were like, "We're gonna let off the gas if we get $10,000 bucks," and that happened faster than any other year we've ever donated, which was incredible, on top of everybody giving to the Red Cross. But, Claire said something like, "If there was only a way to unify people so that it's more like a team." And, me, my wife, and kids were at my in-laws on the day after Thanksgiving, and I thought of, "What if everybody wore a pink armband?" The reason I remember is because it was Black Friday, and here I am in Williamsburg, VA with a screaming pink mohawk going into Michael's to buy 70 yards of pink felt with coupons! I sat down in the basement with all the pink felt and sliced them up into bands, and the morning of the race, we passed out a pink armband to everybody telling them to wear it on their head or their stroller. We just gave it away, we didn't charge them, and when they started the run, there was a sea of pink over the bridge. Everybody had that pink band on! I only sliced 700 of them, but you saw all 700 at once. It was just one little sentence that Claire said that triggered that whole idea. That's where that stuff comes from.

7. You've been in radio for a while and have seen it change. As far as mornings go, what do you think is the biggest adjustment radio vets have needed to make in order to expand their show's reach and make the most noise?

It has changed, and now radio is obviously multi-media; you've got video and social media, and you're trying to drive your website numbers and all that sort of stuff. And, you obviously want to work to make your show and your station the best in the market that it can be. But, seriously, no matter what you do or what grandiose ideas you come up with, it still comes down to content and community. Is what you're saying on the microphone - do your listeners actually give a crap? And, how invested are you in the community? Are you there just because you've got a gig in the city and hoping it works out or you'll go to another city? Do you actually care about the events and the things going on? That's the one good thing I found about Hubbard; everybody in that building in Seattle really care about the communities that are around Seattle. It's the listeners' radio station - you're just there to facilitate a show. You're in their community, and if they're invested in their community, and they turn on a station to hear somebody who's not, why would they stay?

8. In terms of content, since we see the news cycle moving so quickly with topics coming in and out, do you feel like the life span of a topic is shorter than it used to be?

Yeah, but it also depends on how you're approaching it when you make content. You're never gonna travel faster than the internet - you're just not. But, with news stories, are shelf lives a little shorter? Probably. You want to make sure you're addressing the current topics of the day so that your listeners are up to date and informed, but if you're approaching a piece of content that's a couple of days old, what's your angle on it? If you're just reading it on the air, then it's probably stale, but if you approach a subject or news story that's a few days old, and you're like, "Hey, I wonder what's gonna happen based on this?" and you're able to approach a new angle on it, then it's as relevant as it was when it first came out. If you're reading it, then it's stale. If you actually think about it and have something new to say, then do it!

9. Also, we know there's a crisis in terms of finding new, talented radio stars. How do we convince young content creators that radio is a legit outlet for their creative skills?

Well, I guess to that extent, I'm a little biased, where I don't think we should be selling them on the sexiness of radio; they have to discover that on their own. If we're going out of our way to say, "This is great!" and we have to convince them of it, then they're not going to be convinced of it anyways. If they want to be a YouTube star, that's fine. There's lots of YouTube stars coming over into radio and saying, "Hey, you can deliver content very successfully this way and that way." It depends on if you want a successful radio show or if you want to have a successful YouTube channel. When you're a content creator on the radio - I hate to tell you - you're still reaching many more people than a lot of your internet outlets. You just are. You're doing this every single day. I'm not taking away from internet video stars, but doing a successful, content-driven show every day - you're just producing a video once every two weeks. Where are we gonna get the next batch of talent? They'll be there. A lot of places, especially in medium and small markets, an air talent is doing two or three jobs. What they're doing is running and voice-tracking their shift, and then going back to doing what they're doing - Promotions Assistant, Music Director, whatever. But, the thing is, all the other side jobs that you're doing, all the way back to what you put on the radio, what was your content? I understand it's tough to do two or three jobs at a station, but you're there because you wanna be on the radio, so make your content reflect that. I've always maintained the fact that, what's the difference between your voice track and a sweeper? If there's not a lot of difference, put the sweeper back in. You'll do more disservice to yourself as a talent. I think the next generation of radio talents [is] there - they'll find their way to the radio. When that new talent discovers that they can deliver this content in such a way on the radio, now you're talking about a talent that really wants to be radio talent, and not somebody that you and I had to convince that radio is sexy. That'll be a talent with longevity.

10. We talked about your fearless approach on-air. Can you share an idea that you acted on that simply flopped, for whatever reason?

Do you have enough time for me to narrow it done to just one? Don't forget, for every successful campaign you have, you have about two of them that we called "duck farts" that we're just like, "What the heck were we thinking there?" The best one of all-time was the first year that I got here; Kenny Jay was actually the PD that brought me here, and he and I have remained such tight friends over the years. This was actually the first breast cancer event that we did here. I convinced Kenny that it would be a good idea to have a kickball tournament to raise money for breast cancer, and it would cost like $100 a team. We'd have a round robin tournament - great. Kenny was probably drunk when I pitched him this, because he said that it'd be a great idea. So, we put this whole thing together, and he asked me about referees, and I said, "Oh, we can handle it. We'll take that ourselves!" That was such a bad idea. These teams showed up, and there were teams of dudes cross-dressing in pink tutus; there was a church youth group; the United States Army Rangers showed up; one guy refused to put his bottle of Jameson down the entire game, and he ended up passing out around third base somewhere; and the regular Army was there, also. So, the Army and the Rangers started going back and forth and talking crap to each other, and it looked like they were about to break out into a fight. I looked at Kenny and said, "What are we gonna do if it breaks out into a fight?" and he goes, "What are WE going to do? We're gonna let it happen! It's not like you and I are going to stop it!" And, it came down to the Rangers vs. the church youth group - I'm not making any of this up. And, the Rangers were getting on each other, like if they dropped the ball, they'd be like, "Damn it, Johnny, what are you doing?!" They're taking on 12-year-olds - kids! So, at one point, there's a church youth group kid on third taunting the pitcher. This kid weighs 60 pounds wet, and he's taunting the pitcher - an Army Ranger! All of the sudden, the pitcher backs down off of the mound, and goes, "That kid is taunting me! I just wanna throw the ball at him!" So, the whole thing wrapped up, they finally scooped up the guy who passed out on third and took him home. Afterwards, Kenny and I were sitting there, and I said, "So, we might want to go over what we'll do if we try this again next year," and Kenny says, "Nope. We are never doing this ever again." Everybody showed up, but it was the most mismatched thing; it was like a bad comedy, and we were in charge of it.

Okay, so turning that around, what is your greatest moment ever on the air? A time when the idea, the execution, and the payoff all worked to total satisfaction?

Thankfully, [there have] been multiple moments of that. I don't know if it's a thing with planning. Yes, we've had several successful campaigns, but the listeners make it successful. We present it, and the listeners - over my career - have been wonderfully supportive of the stuff we bring. I think the most successful moments aren't campaigns; they're moments that you never expected to happen on your show to begin with. For instance, a guy called us on the way to meet his wife at the hospital, because she was being taken down there to deliver their baby boy. He called the show to request a song for her. It's a moment like that that stops you in your tracks. Or, where you have a solider that uses his time on the phone while he's stationed overseas to call and send a message to his wife and kids saying, "I love you, I miss you, and I'm coming home soon." He used his designated phone time to call us to put that over the radio station for him. Or, somebody calls up, and their son or daughter got the acceptance letter to the college that they wanted to, and they called us. Those are moments. It wasn't something that we planned; it was listeners that feel so related to us, and have been listening to us for so long, and consider us just old friends that they call us to share success stories, or the sadness - they're sharing their life moments with you. Those are the moments that you never expect that tell me I'm where I should be. [At CRS], people asked me why the mohawk was red. I'm a Scout leader, and one of my Scouts passed away; he was ten years old and involved in a car accident. At the funeral, I asked his mom what his favorite color was, and she said, "Red." There was a story that came out in the newspaper saying that there was no way [his mom] was going to pay for the funeral. Well, they had a fundraiser that raised $9,000 for the kid - I didn't have anything to do with that. One morning, I got on the air, and I stopped my show at peak audience, and I told them the story, and I said, "If you have a second, here's their GoFundMe page," and I just watched the GoFundMe page for a few minutes, and you could see the listeners start to chip in $10, $20, $50; we didn't raise millions of dollars, and it wasn't about raising that money - it was about seeing the listeners throw in a couple of bucks for the kid's mom. The fundraiser that they had had well-secured the finances for the funeral. It goes all the way back to the fact that both of our kids were born at the same time. I was still in Reno, and I was on the air the next day. Both of the kids were emergency C-sections; Jonah was 4 lbs. 2 oz. when he came out, and Shawnessy just stopped moving altogether. I told these stories, and some lady called in and said that she was in line at Starbucks, and the lady in front of her was crying after hearing my story on the air, and they both started crying, because they had both listened to it. It's those moments that everybody brings together that make the show.