Russ Dodge with WITT 91.9 FM talks about how he got into radio, what listener supported radio is, WITT 91.9, and more.
Here is the transcript from the presentation:
Russ: So what, what is community radio WITT all about? Well, you put it on. I like to tell people from the music perspective. We play everything from rock to Bach, so you, you can hear stuff that is eclectic rock, you can hear classical, you can hear a little bit of blues, jazz, music of the world, which I, which I like a lot because there’s some pretty neat music that comes out of some other countries that, you know, you can’t really pinpoint it as to why this is more, you know, the Spanish rock or, or something like that and it’s, uh, I mean there are few things you can identify nicely like, well, one of the guys that as a former intern of ours is a Ball State student now.
Russ: He was over in Europe for a couple of months at the end of his semester, came back with great music from Hungary, France, Portugal, and the Portuguese stuff was samba music like you hear in Brazil, so we knew, you know, a little bit about what was, was coming back there, but it was nice ’cause it nicely fit in to the eclectic nature of what it is we do along the way.
Russ: We do community and specialty programs. You want to service, serve your cities of license. So we try and do specialty stuff. One of our studios is in Fountain Square, so I do stuff with the Fountain Square Merchants association to lift up different things going on there.
Russ: Our transmitter is actually out in Zionsville, and that’s technically our city of license. So, we try and at least once a week do a feature show about Zionsville. It sometimes, it’s a city County Council meeting.
Russ: It might be an interview with one of the public figures in Zionsville or something along those lines. So, you know, we’ve got another studio in Broad Ripple, so we’ve been known to do some specialty stuff there.
Russ: It’s not limited to that kind of stuff, but you specifically want to super serve some of those areas that are, you know, specifically part of what it is you do.
Russ: We also have people that have their own show. It’s, basically someone comes along and said I have an under writer that’s gonna underwrite me and pay for my, my show on the air.
Russ: So, we have a few of those on here that are, you know, very different, you know, their commentary, couple of more music or something that’s a kids show.
Russ: So just different types of things, not a lot of that because the majority of what we do is, is music and that’s what we hang out on.
Russ: We call it the WITT Mix, because it’s, it is interesting. I had the opportunity as a board of Directors member, unfortunately, our, our own station owner ended up in the hospital a little while back. So, two or three of us had to take care of properly programming the radio station for the time that he was out, and it was interesting because there was a huge music library, there are like 10s of thousands of songs and you, just no radio station in the commercial world is going to have anything like that.
Russ: You go in there and one of them we have is, is all set up with close to 30,000 songs from iTunes, and we, we tend to use that, then late evenings and overnight, every night.
Russ: And it’s, it’s random, so it’s never going to repeat itself. But then during the day there’s a program there that has the music in it and we just refresh it so you don’t hear the same stuff over and over again. There might be 500 songs there, and basically inside of the week they will get switched to something else. So, doesn’t mean something won’t get played more than once, but you’re not going to hear it again and again and again like you might on some other radio stations, so, especially in the commercial world, so.
Russ: So, that’s, that’s kind of how we’re different.
Russ: You can say, well how do you measure what you have and I think part of that is we get some pretty neat listener response. People are very loyal to this radio station and they let us know.
Russ: It’s an awful lot of fun to be able to, you know, to hear from people that are there and they’re willing to support, listen, they they let us know they were listening.
Russ: My favorite example recently was I just moved out to Brownsburg and before I moved had to replace the garage door opener at my house.
Russ: So, I called the overhead door people and the guy came out and got introduced myself and he says, from WITT?
Russ: Oh yeah, that’s me. He says, I saw your name on the work order, and I was hoping it was the Russ Dodge from WITT, I hear you on the air there, and I really liked your show on.
Russ: So, guy was a garage door repair guy, you know, I’m pretty good at what he did, and he was a fan, fan of the radio station and we’ve all had that happen to us on different occasions, where people recognize what we have and who we are, and the general estimate, ’cause we don’t buy, the like, the Nielsen ratings or any of that kind of stuff.
Russ: But once in a while we show up in somebody else’s report and we’re able to get some information.
Russ: And I think the best estimate that I was able to get is, station probably have somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000 weekly listeners, which is, which is pretty good. That’s better than some commercial stations in Indianapolis have. So that’s kind of the overview of, you know, who we are, what we do.
Russ: And I certainly tell you, if you’re a fan of noncommercial radio, please support it, whether that be us, or whether that be WICR at the University of Indianapolis or WFYI radio, or one of the countless other ones that are in the outer areas. I’m, I’m here in Brownsburg now, and there’s a little station out here, WYRZ.
Russ: It’s a low power, covers Brownsburg proper. It’s 100 watts so it goes about maybe 5 miles. Not, not a big deal.
Russ: You’re not going to hear it much into Indianapolis other than maybe around Eagle Creek or something like that, but they’re, these guys, they play solid gold, is how they define their form.
Russ: Yeah, it’s again loosely defined because that could be anything from the 60s all the way to the late 80s or 90s or, or what have you. And these guys can get by on underwriting and listener support just like WITT does and you go into the other communities nearby there.
Russ: There are more of those out there as well, you know, just everybody’s got a different way. They do things, but still, it’s different voices out there that are becoming more and more conspicuously absent from commercial radio.
Russ: You put some of the big guys on and you hear shows and they’re being voiced by somebody in another city. Not, not as much from here, you know, and that’s it’s kind of disappointing in a way because there are fewer local jobs for some very, very talented radio people and, you know, just, uh, seems to be the way the corporate world is anymore, consolidation of functions.
Russ: And it doesn’t matter whether you’re in radio or whether you’re in some other business. You know, we’ve seen it in healthcare, we’ve seen it in the Automotive World, there’s just a lotta different companies that they, you know, thrive on buying up other entities and try and make themselves bigger and bigger and bigger.
Russ: In some cases, it’s, they’re privately owned, but in most cases the public company is trying to draw, drive the stock price.
Russ: You know, we, we, we answer to our listeners. And that’s about it. So.
Russ: So anyway, that’s that. That’s the background in 91.9 WITT, and it’s 919WITT.org, and when I checked right before we came on, they were still working on fixing the broken tie line.
Russ: So, I am hopeful they’re back by now, but so, if you, if you click on it after you get off this broadcast and don’t hear it, just try it again a little later. We’ll, we’ll be back bigger and better than ever so we cover about 9 counties.
Russ: So that’s, that’s the nice thing about it, it is a station designed to cover the whole area.
Russ: I think the only, because we’re up in Zionsville, probably the only area where the signal is really weak is when you get out by Shelbyville.
Russ: So, I’ll open it up for anyone that has any comments or questions or anything else. I am certainly glad to say hi to people from all different parts of the country here today too, as well as just the Indianapolis area ’cause that’s the fun part about being online.
Russ: We do have listeners in other cities. So, Ryan, I’ll lob it back to you and I’ll also open this back up for anybody that’s on right now that wants to mention something or ask a question.
Kim: Hey, Russ, I’ve got a question. So, I work for Culligan water and we’re all franchises, so radio is kind of different. A different type of advertising for us since we only are responsible for Johnson County at my particular office, so we are actually getting ready to do a radio spot for, think it’s Korn Country? They’re located in Franklin.
Russ: If you, if you said something other than Korn Country, I was going to be surprised because, they’re, they’re the big, you know, they’re the one local Johnson County, one of two local Johnson County radio stations, the, the other one being 95.9.
Kim: I know. Sure, right. And I, I, I love 95.9, but I anyway, long story short, we, it’s a trade. We, we, we service them in water and so they’re going to give us some free spots. So that’s pretty cool. But what would you say, I mean do you think it’s important to offer some kind of a verbal coupon or ad or call to action or just?
Russ: You know, these days I try and tell people, you know, you can be multimedia in that, you know, in a lot of cases you can direct people to a Facebook page or Instagram or Twitter where there could be a special offer there that everybody can take advantage of.
Russ: But you use radio to drive that. You know, specifically, you know, make it a multimedia type of thing and that’s how you’re going to get your best response.
Kim: I like it. I like it.
Russ: Yeah and, and it works. If it works well, you know, it’s, I know with the WAMM Fest, you know, we had some nice coverage out of Korn Country this year and of course that, that event took place at Craig Park in Greenwood.
Kim: Sure, of course.
Russ: So yeah, and I would, you know, I’d also say, you know, get involved in events like that. I mean, my goodness, I, I didn’t get a final head count but, uh, you know, there were thousands and thousands of people there, er, on Saturday and you know that, that there were people involved as sponsors of the event, ranging from a few $100 up to the title sponsor who paid 15 grand and he could afford it. That was Ray Skillman.
Russ: So, I don’t know that that’s the right number I’m giving you, but give or take a few thousand, that’s probably what he paid for that sponsorship. But there, there are little guys that are out and participating for three or four or 500 bucks and you get yourself in front of a whole bunch of people, or you got the exposure to a whole bunch of different people.
Russ: And there are other events like that in and around Johnson County, and you know, you look for, look around them, where there is also a radio tie, or something else beyond just, you know, being in somebody’s point of sale at, at their at their business, you know you can you can take this and make it into a multimedia event.
Russ: That’s, that’s why I always recommend to someone to try and be full-fledged in, in in the marketing effort, you know.
Kim: OK. Appreciate that.
Russ: So, Ryan, any anything else from the, from the gallery? I don’t see anybody else’s microphone on right now, but.
Ryan: Well, Russ, so I have a question for you. What’s part of the process of assembling the, the music you’re going to play over, say, the next 24 hours, how do you, how do you pick out what’s going to be played?
Russ: Well, here’s, here’s what we do. We have a variety of categories in the computer.
Russ: So, because we play a little bit of everything, so there’s an oldies category, there’s a rock category, progressive category of blues, uh, music of the world and instrumentals category. It’s a whole bunch of them.
Russ: And so, what we do is, is in, inside the actual program that’s going to play, there will be maybe 500 songs, and interspersed between that are promos and station ID’s and weather reports and what have you. And what will happen is to we, we, we do what’s known as refreshing that program.
Russ: So, when I went in, for example. I pulled out all the oldies, or maybe 100 of them that day and I replaced them with other stuff out of the music library that, it wasn’t in there.
Russ: And I could do that for other categories. I didn’t have to do every one of the songs every day, but I would, you know, the idea is freshen up 100 songs each day. So, by the end, by the end of the week, you have refreshed all 500 songs and again, this is the program that pretty well airs from mid-morning to maybe 6 or 7 at night and then the iTunes computer kicks in when we switch it over.
Russ: And there’s close to 30,000 songs and then that’s a little bit of everything and it’s very random. You’re just going to get a little bit of everything. It’s just a unique, you know, you know, from the, the stuff we program during the day you can specifically look for things to put in, you know, a good example, I was programming it in, in advance of a couple of concerts that were coming to town, so I went looking for Santana and Earth, Wind and Fire.
Russ: You know, I, I might go in if there’s something going on with the Symphony. I would look for something that was pertinent, though. They’re going to be doing the Dvořák or Mozart or what have you.
Russ: I can go in and find that somewhere and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll drop a couple of cuts in there that would be pertinent to what’s, what’s going on and there are certain things, categories we don’t really touch. Rap is one of them and really hard-edged metal, generally not either.
Russ: It just doesn’t really fit what, what it is we’re doing. It, probably a couple other things, so they’re not, not too big on country, but country blends so nicely with rock and blues and a lot of other things there.
Russ: Elvis Presley is the best example of, my goodness, and he dominated rock charts. He dominated country charts, even earlier in his career, dominated the R&B charts and he was big in gospel too. So, you know, you had, you could play all this stuff and a good example in my Indiana Nocturne show I, I turned around and, and found a couple of songs, one of them was called Raised on Rock.
Russ: Uh, which was a, a good defining thing for Elvis. Another one was the last single that was released before he died, called Way Down Back in 1977.
Russ: He, on the other hand, my co-host John Raybould, also has a show called Crossroads of Americana, which blends country and rock. And so, he did a tribute to Elvis. And had a lot of stuff that was a, a little more country.
Russ: And certainly in all this, you could, you have so much to pick from and then we find people that are cover artists.
Russ: So ,we found, I, I don’t even know where the heck we found this one, but we found a, a version of Viva Las Vegas and a lot of people have done that over the years. It was a very popular movie with Elvis and Ann Margaret, but we found this version of it by ZZ Top.
Russ: And we played it and we wouldn’t, we didn’t say who it was till after we played it and said you’d never guess in 100 years unless you have that greatest hits, CD ’cause it wasn’t even on one of the regular CDs, but they were fans of Elvis because they were influenced by him.
Russ: So, they said we gotta do an Elvis song, so, you know, fun, fun stuff like that. And we were able to, to do and we, we look for those unique opportunities that people aren’t going to find the light of day on.
Russ: And I’m, I’m not gonna say nobody else does that. There’s zillion channels up on SiriusXM and there’s some pretty interesting ones. Not so much the ones you get in your car, but the ones you can get online. But just, have a little bit everything I love.
Russ: There’s a deep tracks cut over there and I, I, I don’t say I borrow liberally from it, but if I hear something there that I liked it, maybe I didn’t realize it. I’ll find that you know, a couple weeks later, might find its way onto Indiana Nocturne.
Russ: We also feature, try and feature music from the local, and for concerts that are coming to town, we’ve had, we did something here recently with promoting the, All IN Festival at the fairgrounds over Labor Day weekend and it’s got a, you know, a whole bunch of different great artists, Daryl Hall and John Oates being one of them.
Russ: We’re going to, we’re also going on a subsequent show before that concert, concert bands like Cage the Elephant.
Russ: So, there’s, it, it’s kind of all over the place, you know, there’s stuff. And we feature local, local artists too. So, anybody heard the song called Broad Ripple Duck?
Russ: It’s by a blues artist in Indianapolis called Rich Hines, who happens to live in, in Broad Ripple, and he had a CD of all these Indiana, the things the, the Appalachian Girl from Fountain Square, Pogue’s Run and and, and it was just the whole CD he put together of songs that he wrote about different things in and around Indianapolis and nobody else is going to touch that kind of stuff.
Russ: That’s what, that’s what we do. I mean, if you have deep tastes in music, you love what it is we do.
Russ: You know, if you you’re hooked on one genre of music, well, you know, maybe we’re not quite your cup of tea. We know we’re not for everybody, so, but it’s, it’s an awful lot of fun.
Russ: I have a blast as a career broadcaster doing this. It’s not tied to corporate entities, which is fine.
Russ: I’m not a big corporate guy, so this is a small town, small, not small town, big town, small, smaller operation that that we control.
Ryan: Does anyone else have a question for Russ?
Russ: Well, certainly, I encourage you all to tune in. Check, check out what we do. My Indiana Nocturne program airs Wednesdays at 6:00 PM. And then we’re also up on Facebook.
Russ: So, you look there and you can also see, you know, when it’s on the other stations and everybody got it online. And even one of the entities that Fort Wayne station actually has an archive where they’re able to store each show we do for two weeks, so that, there’s some people that it’s not on anytime you want to listen, you can go in and get it on demand for two weeks.
Ryan: All right. Well, everyone, let’s give Russ a hand for his presentation today.
Russ: Thank you very much. Thank you very much everybody for being here today.
