10 Questions with ... Ricky Villa

E-MAIL: rvillajr@hbi.com
WEBSITE: http://www.movin925.com/
SOCIAL: Facebook.com/MOViN925, & @MOViN925 on Instagram, Twitter

1) What led you to a career in radio?

During my senior year in high school, I visited one of my best friends in Spokane, who was interning for a Top 40 station (Wild 103.9) at the time. I hung out with him while he was interning and got to know the staff and immediately fell in love with how fun it seemed. I remember thinking to myself, "People actually get paid to do this?" From that day forward, I grew through the business and eventually found most of my passion to be in the programming side of things.

2) What makes your station unique? How would you compare it to other stations you’ve worked at?

The unique thing about my station is my morning show. These guys are the hardest working people I know. From the on-air talent Brooke, Jubal, & Jose to the producers Jeff & Steve, all the way down to the part-time/interns who help make the show function. It’s focused, and they live to entertain and make people laugh and it’s been a joy watching them grow to the level they have. They are now syndicated in over 30 markets in the U.S. This is the largest market station I’ve worked for, and I can’t really compare it to other smaller market stations I’ve worked for, because this job and station pushes me harder than any other in the past.

3) What are you doing social media-wise?

One of the first things I did after becoming PD was promote our night jock at the time, Justin, to middays and gave him the title of Social Media Director. Since then, the structure of our social media on the station has been on point and consistent. We have over 150,000 followers on Facebook and have prioritized strategies to build our followers through Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter over the last three to four years as those have grown. We’re always brainstorming on new ideas for video content on Facebook and Instagram and I feel like we do a great job of being culture relevant, interactive and local through all of our social media. Even through the weekends when most are taking days off we don’t let up on social media.

4) Who handles your imaging, and what voices are you using?

Adam West is our Imaging Director and he is one of the best in the business. He works in-house here for Hubbard Radio; he and I work very well together at envisioning what we want with all of our imaging and making sure it comes out that way through the speakers. He’s a total pro with a ton of experience and he teaches me plenty of tricks with imaging. We have two station voice talents. A female and a male. The female is Tasia Valenza out of California and the male is Brad Davidorf out of Georgia. Both are phenomenal at what they do.

5) What’s the coolest promotion you’ve been involved with recently?

Sometimes the coolest promotions are the simplest ones. I like ones that get reaction so that you know it was so top-of-mind that people wanted to get involved. We decided to start doing "Snow Day Text2Win Weekends" where the winner gets a five-pack of tickets to our local mountains here in the area. We started in November and had seen so much success that we followed up with two more and even saw over 4,500 texts to enter in to win on a Saturday-Sunday, one of the weekends where the snow was hitting the mountains here like crazy. The word "Snow Day" really relates to so many young kids in school. Who doesn’t want to take a "Snow Day" and skip school to hit the mountain? It really sunk in with our audience.

6) What’s the coolest promotion you’ve ever been involved with?

My favorite promotion I’ve ever been involved with has become an annual staple for the station. "Jubal’s Birthday Party In Vegas." The premise is that the listener wins a trip to Las Vegas to party with Jubal and everybody who’s on our Brooke & Jubal In The Morning Show. The P1 listeners of this show are so passionate. They loved this from the get-go and it’s grown larger every year with us tying on music artist elements to it and even more and more entertaining things to do with us on-site. The hungover Monday morning live broadcast after his listener birthday party from Las Vegas has such unique content you can’t get just being in the home town studio, and even though it’s not the smoothest show, it comes off so real that it always does well for us.

7) Who is your favorite air personality not on your staff and why do you like them?

I used to find myself searching many morning shows for the most entertaining ones, but I can honestly say that our "Brooke & Jubal In The Morning" show is literally my favorite and I’ve stopped listening to many other morning shows since then. What I do still do though is binge-listen to a lot of interviews of artists from Rhythmic-leaning formats. I listen to The Breakfast Club and Ebro In The Morning in New York a lot and really appreciate the difference in how both of those shows handle their interviews. You’ll compare one interview of the same artist with each show, and you’ll get something different from both. The Breakfast Club brings out the lifestyle/gossip opinions of the artist while Ebro In The Morning gets deep into the music side of things and what goes on from that perspective. They do a great job at what they do and I respect it.

8) Who were your mentors? Who would you say has influenced your career the most?

Maynard (Brandon) has definitely been the most influential person in my career. He was the PD of MOViN 92.5 before me and deserves all the credit in the world in developing and building the "Brooke & Jubal In The Morning" show and building the success MOViN 92.5 has become. I worked with him in Spokane and two rounds of working with him for MOViN 92.5 in Seattle and had the privilege and opportunity to sponge his knowledge for just over two years as his assistant and MD. He’s now a VP/Programming with iHeart and I couldn’t name anybody else that I respect more in the radio industry.

9) Do you have a favorite hobby outside of radio?

Yes. Anybody who knows me knows that I LOVE baseball. Being half-Mexican it’s a very large passion on that side of my family and I’ve played my whole life. I stay involved in playing softball every year and have season tickets to my favorite baseball team, the Seattle Mariners. You will see me there every home stand weekend.

10) What advice would you give people new to the business?

Stay with it. Don’t let up. Bug the people above you to share their knowledge with you and don’t get offended when they don’t have the time to respond to you the first 20 times you try to contact them. This is a tough industry to break into but you need to stick with it as best as you can, as it has the capability to reward you so much that once you’re in it, you won’t even feel like you’re going to work.

For someone vacationing in your market, what one thing would you say they "must see"?

Safeco Field, Seattle Mariners baseball game on a sunny day in the summer.