10 Questions with ... Tim Taylor

BRIEF CAREER SYNOPSIS:

I started out as an intern and then part timer at WQQB/WEBX/WBNB/WGKC here in Champaign where I grew up. When I went to college at Illinois State in Bloomington-Normal, I transferred to WIHN until I came home for summer break. When I went back to school, I went to work part time at WBNQ. I graduated in 2005 and went to do Afternoon and Production at WKHQ in northern Michigan. In 2006, WQQB lured me back home. That ended up not working out, but I landed here at WLRW where I did nights and then eventually ended up doing Production and Afternoons on our former rock station. I left in 2010 to do Afternoons and APD at WBNQ, and then came back to WLRW in 2015 to do mornings here. I basically just bounce back and forth between Bloomington and Champaign.

1. How would you describe your first radio gig?

It was the most fun I've ever had. I was very lucky to work with a great group of people, all of us were young and sort of didn't know what we were doing. We figured it out together and produced some really good radio along the way.

2. What led you to a career in radio?

It was an accident. I was a senior in high school and was pretty clueless about what I wanted to do with my life. I thought I might go for television to try and be on SportsCenter since I grew up in the Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick era and it looked like the most fun job in the world. A friend of mine was already working part time for a local group and I asked him to get me an internship, because I thought it might look good on a resume. I think I was hooked by the end of my first week and decided this was what I wanted to do.

3. How do you and your partner Sarah (aka The Morning Mix) set the table for the rest of the station's broadcast day?

Hopefully we're setting a fun tone. Our goal is to have fun because we want to be a port in the storm of all the bad news in the world today. Ideally, we leave you with a good feeling and you stay with the station all day because we delivered that feeling.

4. Your show is a model for social media interaction excellence. What are some of your go to ideas to get listeners engaged?

We typically find that memes get really good responses, but we (like most people today) don't have time to create our own or go find all the ones going viral on any given day. So, what if we take what we're talking about and sort of make it look like one? Adding the graphics with our topic questions and our logo seems to have helped drive engagement on Facebook, and obviously you need the image for Instagram as well. Polls work well on Twitter, although we tend to use that platform more as a way to be sort of goofy and interact with people.

5. How about showprep-do you use outside sources or do you folks pull it all together in-house?

Saga has a company-wide subscription to The Complete Sheet, which we use daily. There are other websites we'll visit for ideas, but the best stuff comes from our lives. Sarah is married with kids, so there can be a lot of demo relevant stories from that. I'm not, but as we see with Millennials (I'm told I'm a super-old Millennial) we're getting married and having kids later in life, if at all. That provides a different level of relatability for us. It's really just about finding a good story from our lives that people can relate to and have one of their own to share with us.

6. "Local local local" has always been radio's mantra. How do you keep your show visible and involved in the community?

We have a massive campaign that starts in November called Christmas Wish that grants wishes for families in need. We do all the fundraising with a one day (award winning, if I may brag) event and then all the money raised stays here. That is probably the biggest way we connect to the community. On a daily basis, we talk about things that matter to people here or tie national stories back here. For example, we took a story about a Facebook event in Scotland that had 3,000 people respond. It was to play hide and seek in the IKEA in Glasgow. We don't have an IKEA here, so where could we play a giant game of hide and seek in Champaign County? Just things like that to show people we live here too.

7. What is your favorite part of doing mornings? Other than the alarm clock-least favorite?

I've always loved that the show is the first thing I do. Most of us have other responsibilities, and sometimes those can stress you out and put you in a bad mood before you go on the air. With mornings, I don't have to worry about that. Plus, I like having most of the day to get things done around my house or run errands.

My least favorite part is when you have a day where you can't get anything to work. People aren't responding, bits aren't landing, etc. At least with the more music intensive shows, you can have the songs to help cover you, but we don't play very many and must fill that time somehow. Those days are always a struggle.

8. Who would be a "dream guest" to have on your show?

Oh man, there's so many, but for me personally I would love to talk to Dwayne Johnson, whom I still call The Rock. I'm a big wrestling fan (judge me, it's fine) and have been a fan of his since those days, but I think he's a fascinating guy and genuinely funny, so I can't imagine that doing a bad interview with him is even possible.

9. What was your favorite station to listen to when you were a kid? Favorite jocks?

Locally, WPGU - then known as The Planet - was really good when I was growing up. It's the University of Illinois station, but back then they had really talented students working there and I believe they were consulted by the same people working with Q101 in the late nineties. My parents are divorced and I would spend time in the Chicagoland area, so I was also a big Rock 103.5 and Q101 fan. Unfortunately, I didn't get to hear much of those stations during the week. As a teenage boy, I liked Mancow a lot. Lou Brutus was great. What I really remember though was the imaging. The promos were fantastic and Ned Spindle deserves a ton of credit for that work he did.

10. Who were your mentors? Who would you say has influenced your career the most?

Jeremy "Smash" Anderson and John McKeighan were the first PDs I worked for and taught me a TON about this business. From there Tony Travatto and Russell Rush at WBNQ built the rest, and when I came back to Champaign to do mornings, we got to work with Randy Lane for a year, which was VERY educational. Russell probably had the biggest influence.

If someone was visiting Champaign for the first time, what would you make sure that they saw before they left?

I would probably say you should at least drive by the State Farm Center, because it looks like an alien ship straight out of an old movie, but really I would send people to places to eat. We're really lucky that there are a ton of great, local restaurants that get national attention for how good they are.