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10 Questions with ... Eric Aiese
August 13, 2007
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NAME:Eric AieseTITLE:OMSTATION:The New WELV 107.9MARKET:Ellenville, NYCOMPANY:Ellenville Central School DistrictBORN:Ellenville, NYRAISED:Ellenville, NY
Please outline your radio career so far:
WELV-A, WTHN/Ellenville, NY - 1996-1998 - Production/promo work/odd jobs
Radio Ellenville (Cable Radio) - Ellenville, NY - 1997-1998 Founder
WSUL - Monticello, NY - 1997-1998 - Mobile DJ/Board Op
WHRB (Harvard University) - Cambridge/Boston, MA - 1998-2002 - GM/Pres.
Comrex - 2002-2004 - Marketing/Sales
WODS - Boston, MA - 2004 - Account Exec
The New WELV - Ellenville, NY - 2005 To Present - OM1) What was your first job in radio? Early influences?
I got my foot in the door at the original WELV/WTHN at 16, where I did light production and went on a lot of appearances, lugging "Thunder Country's" eight-foot fiberglass horse through shopping malls and fast food parking lots. That year, I also started a cable radio station, "Radio Ellenville," from my high school, which I would late take FM as the New WELV.
My interest in radio started when I was a little kid. The longtime morning guy at WELV, Bob Mangels, was my first radio hero. He managed to squeeze a lot into a full-service show by himself - from political interviews to a whole string of characters, like his traffic helicopter reporter, Stanley In The Bird, supposedly flying high over Ellenville.
2) What makes your station or market unique? How does this compare to other markets or stations you have worked at?
We're running a real-world station out of a school, so most of our jocks are high school students. But unlike most school stations, we're running a Mainstream format and programming to a real audience that listens all day. WELV is playing in most of the stores in town, and many people listen in the office all day. Our student staffers are responsible to maintain this real-world product. As part of broadcasting classes, students get practical experience on the air, running the format - both playing the hits and writing weather, news, and promos - and using real-world studio gear like AudioVault. And as the product goes, our student staff adds a great charm to the presentation.
Second, our niche is to be all things Ellenville, filling the shoes of the original WELV, which was a fixture for decades. (We scored their heritage call letters.) After consolidation, Ellenville's local combo moved to studios 35 miles away, leaving a huge hole in the market for local news/info, which is the perfect role for an LPFM. When we went on the air in 2005, our on-air goal was to super-serve the community in ways that don't make sense for bigger stations. I've been impressed at the effect we've had - in less than two years, the community has come together in great ways. Our morning show is a big hit, and we run an appealing format the rest of the day, sprinkled with community information. So far, after nearly two years, it works. We get positive feedback from listeners of all ages.
3) How do you position the station musically and why did you choose this direction?
As a full-service station, we try to reach the entire community across demographic lines. To make this palatable for such a wide audience, we've created a Hot AC-Oldies hybrid. We're largely using the Hot AC playbook, but to appeal to the older listeners, we add a sprinkling of 60s/70s gold, which works surprisingly well. Then, the community news and flavor glues the presentation together.
The format started as a stunt when we went on the air in 2005 ("Six Decades of Your Favorite Music") but we got surprisingly positive reception. Older listeners said that they loved hearing the '60s tunes all day; younger people were happy to hear Coldplay and Kelly Clarkson. With the local presentation keeping it all together, there are a lot of Motown or Beatles cuts that sound great alongside The Fray or KT Tunstall. Our feedback says that people love the variety. Our Gold goes deep, so there's little repetition. My biggest programming challenge is balancing out the accessibility with the hipness -- not driving away the older end with loud records, yet not boring people with the light stuff.
4) How do you stay in touch with the latest music trends?
My students are usually a couple steps ahead of me. They find a lot of new artists on MySpace and elsewhere online.
5) What do you view as the most important issue facing radio today?
Relevance. I work with teenagers everyday, and even among my radio staff, few of them care for radio outside of here. They all have an iPod or MP3 player, so this generation doesn't listen to much radio.
As satellite/Internet radio and iPods take more and more market share, the local human element will be what saves terrestrial radio. I'm concerned that commercial broadcasters aren't doing it. As competitive advantages go, localism and immediacy are the most compelling things going for AM and FM. So generic radio is going to have a hard time in the years ahead. Fortunately, in our case, the rise of alternatives like satellite radio and podcasts has strengthened our position as an ultra-local voice.
6) Besides your own, what is your favorite radio format?
We experimented with Backwards Jazz last April Fool's Day, but it didn't take off. Go figure.
When I'm not here, I listen to two extremes: Top 40 and Public Radio. "This American Life" has to be the best hour in radio today; I'm surprised that commercial radio hasn't found a way to capitalize on compelling content like that.
7) Please describe the best or worst promotion you've ever been part of?
One spring at WHRB, we were in a parade but didn't have any schwag or candy. We'd just done a big spring cleaning in the engineering office, so we had a pile of old equipment waiting to be excessed. Instead of trashing it, we plastered bumper stickers on these old CD players and tape decks, and handed them out to people along the parade route. The people were stunned, but seemed happy to take our old stuff.
8) How much difference is there between your programming at night, versus programming in the day?
During the day, our student jocks follow the format, geared toward at-work listening. At night and on the weekend, the station gets a lot looser with specialty shows produced by students or faculty, ranging from Indie and Classic Rock, to Hip-Hop and Doo-Wop. The rest of the time, we follow the regular format, with some dayparted songs that are a little too hard for the daytime crowd.
9) What effect has industry consolidation had on the way you program your station?
Consolidation has helped us immensely, because it left us a huge hole with a local niche for us to serve. Since we're trying to reach the entire cross-section of the community, rather than a single demo in a bigger market, we try to think about everyone listening in the office, the drug store, or the donut shop, and find the interesting way to program to the whole crowd. Without the industry consolidation, our local commercial broadcasters would leave us with a different playing field.
10) What are music meetings like at your station?
We open music meetings to the entire school, to try to get as many ears as possible - students and whatever adults we can find...teachers, parents, coaches, etc. One of our students leads the meeting as a focus group, playing the songs and gathering feedback.
Bonus Questions
1) How often do you do remotes and which work best for the station?
Remotes are huge for our local mission. We go out whenever we can. Student jocks go out to broadcast live from the parades and street fairs. Our morning man, Dennis Warner, broadcasts from downtown whenever we find an excuse. We'll turn it into a weekly feature this summer sending him into town every Friday morning.
2) What was the first song or full-length release you purchased?
Even in nursery school, my parents took me to garage sales, so I had hundreds of used records as a toddler. But the first one I bought new was Prince's "Raspberry Beret" 45. I was 5, and that paisley artwork blew my little mind.
3) What type of features do you run on the station?
We have some great specialty shows, including "Ellenville's Top 30," our "Weekly Countdown;" "Ellenville Rewind," which talks about local history and plays the big hits from year X; and the "Mixtape," a New-Music/Indie showcase.
To serve our educational mission, as the school's outreach, we run some educational vignettes throughout the day, as long as we keep them short and inoffensive. The "WELV Word of the Day," for example, is building Ellenville's vocabulary one SAT word at a time. We also have students produce topical educational pieces, such as "This Day In History." We're always in and out within 60 seconds, so listeners can learn something if they pay attention, and if they don't, we're right back to the music.
4) How often do you listen to your station when you are away from the station?
Too much! I tend to listen when I'm hanging around the house, and I obsessively check my clock radio first thing in the morning and right before I sleep. I still buy tons of records and CDs but I hardly ever listen to them because I'm listening to WELV.
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