10 Questions with ... Jim McGuinn

BRIEF CAREER SYNOPSIS:

High school, college and community radio and then Classic Rock WWRX/Providence (from weekend overnights to mornings and MD in two years) from 1988-199. In the Alternative world, I was PD at WEQX/Manchester, VT from 1990-1994; PD at KPNT/St. Louis from 1994-1995; PD at WDRE/Philadelphia-Long Island from 1995-1997; PD at WPLY (Y100)/Philadelphia 1997-2005 and then afternoons/Y-Rock PD at WXPN/Philadelphia from 2006-2009. I became PD at KCMP last year.

1. How did you become interested in radio?

When I was about four years old, I caught "Beatles Week" on the 3:30 Movie, and combining those with seeing the Monkees in syndication, pretty early on I decided that being in a band was cool. I think I identified with the idea of a band as a gang or team where you could live with your friends in a cool house, make music and have twinkly eyes like Davy Jones. I started collecting records early on and was always in charge of the turntable at the junior high dances. At some point I realized that my NBA hopes weren't going to happen, and ironically, I got my first break doing color for my high school radio station's broadcasts of the varsity (I was on the sophomore team). Not long afterward I figured out that being an MD meant I got to listen to lots of records, and a dream was born.

2. How did you get the gig at The Current?

Steve Nelson foolishly abdicated the job to shift over to work for our mothership -- Minnesota Public Radio News. I was loving life at WXPN, but always admired what The Current was doing, and, ultimately, the opportunity to be part of a team where the station was both big enough, but also new enough that the concrete hadn't set yet, was really exciting to me. And I like cold weather. And clean streets.

3. What do you like best about your job?

The staff and listeners are joined at the hip and everybody loves this station. There is so much positive energy in the market and on the streets; we constantly pinch ourselves that we have impact while playing such incredible and adventurous music.

4. How would you describe the music on the station?

Everything that's good -- from a rock fan's perspective. This means that we play Muddy Waters, Sigur Ros, Willie Nelson, Funkadelic, Grizzly Bear, A Tribe Called Quest and Nirvana ... and, as you can imagine, a lot of music in between. And more local music than any station I've ever heard. Mixing discovery with celebration, The Current is like your friend coming over with a crate of vinyl; that person who knows a ton about music but isn't snobby ... who's genuinely enthusiastic to share and celebrate the best music of today and the past 50 years.

5. As The Current celebrates five years, how has it evolved from when it first signed on? Since you came to the station?

What we're doing is something that hasn't really been done before with younger demos by public radio. The idea is to make unique programming that enriches our community culturally -- and at the same time, we want to reach as many people as possible and bring in a much of the younger demo into the Public Radio tent. Our median age is around 34, which might make us the youngest public radio audience in the country.

As the station has evolved, a lot of music has been thrown up against this wall and not all of it has stuck. But that's not only okay; it's expected of a station like this. We're going to take risks and some might work brilliantly, and others not at all. Since I've arrived, we've increased the amount of local music we air, the use of our library of nearly 2,000 studio sessions, created some new specialty shows and started features like our Theft of the Dial guest-DJ episodes. It's been a blast to work with a very creative staff and mold our clay daily.

6. What has been the station's biggest accomplishment?

Every day we hear from listeners and members who have made this station such a huge part of their lives. It might be because of our hosts, the music or our support of the local community - any number of reasons -- but when you hear someone say, "The Current is one of the best reasons to live in Minnesota," that means a lot to us. Ratings and revenue might rise and fall, but if you continue to focus on the listener experience and you contribute to enhancing their lives through your programming or by connecting the audience to the artists and music, then it's easy to come to work every day.

7. What station do you share the most listeners with?

With our news service MPR News. We give a little news and information in the morning, but also direct folks to go back and forth between our services depending on their needs, and they do. MPR is pretty unique in that there is a real sense in the community of corporate brand attributes that extend between the services.

8. What are the music meetings like at your station?

Probably not that different than most places - there are four of us who are actively in there every week - Melanie Walker (MD), David Safar (Asst MD), Lindsay Kimball (Asst Producer) and me, plus any of the hosts who feel like joining in. We talk about the existing songs in rotation (our list is usually about 80 artists and 100+ songs at any given week), then we listen to new music. Probably the weirdest thing about us is that we don't quite seem to fit in anywhere, as we pull music from Triple A, Modern Rock, indie Hip-Hop and the blog-o-verse. So we end up listening to a lot of music we haven't even been serviced, and the biggest scramble sometimes is to get a high-enough quality version of something we fall in love with on a MySpace page so we can put it in rotation.

9. What would surprise people most about the station?

Maybe that a station with some of the highest ratings in the noncomm Triple A world allows the hosts enough freedom to program more than 50% of their shifts themselves. We set up the rules and build out the categories for them to choose from, but the hosts are really working daily to build sets and inject their own personalities into the team, and the fact that we can have that kind of "college radio" freedom while attracting more than 200,000 listeners in our market makes us feel like we've got the best of both worlds -- total radio creativity and an audience that supports it.

10. What do you view as the most important issue facing radio today?

In a world of increasing media customization and user-created content, what happens to the concept of "broadcasting" and "mass medium"? From a societal perspective, what replaces the cultural touchstones like "Beatles on the 'Ed Sullivan Show'" or "Woodstock"? As we all wander around with ear buds in our own media worlds, what happens to our ability to relate to each other? If our only forms of shared mass culture are created via platforms like "American Idol," where drama and back-story usually overshadow art, how does the art reach critical mass? These are things I often think about.

If you wanted to completely change careers today, what would you do?

There are things I'm interested in like baseball and record collecting, but when I look around there are so many people who know more and are as obsessed about those things the way I'm obsessed about audience, culture and rock and roll ... so I don't know. Maybe sell chapeaus in a haberdashery.

Last Non-Industry Job:

Washing dishes at George's of Galilee, RI seafood eatery in 1988.

First Record Ever Purchased:

Meet The Beatles - still got it.

First Concert:

The Clash, Aragon Ballroom in 1982.

Favorite Band Of All-Time:

The Beatles