MT: Passion, people and patience. Great brands take time to build, people with passion to make it work and carry out the vision, and a little luck. We work very hard in creating a relationship with our audience. We do that with quite a bit of relationship marketing, mostly viral marketing has been the success story for Wave. A lot of planning is done on the tactical end to touch the audience at work, at home, and anywhere there are potential fans of the format. Because we are still just a few years old, community events are key to winning hearts and minds. Our staff takes pride in the amount of good will we do in the community in the course of the year. We are actively involved with Aids Foundation Houston with our annual Red Ribbon Toy Drive, launched the Houston Y-Me Walk To Empower benefiting Y-Me Breast Cancer that happens on Mother’s Day each year and our annual charity cd helps local charities too, just to name a few of the events we do each year to raise awareness.
Working in radio is still a privilege. Our team comes in everyday looking for ways to raise the bar just a little more. I’ve learned to hire and surround myself with smart people. Our Market Manager Laura Morris went out on a limb to change a 43 year old country station KIKK-FM to smooth jazz KHJZ in 2004. She was armed with the data and research to make that decision, but it still took guts, and she encourages our team to take risks with our products. If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. The Wave team imagines success and work hard to achieve it.
Smitty: Yes, and you have certainly accomplished that and then some. You were just talking about surrounding yourself with smart people, and I think you are spot-on in that regard. Your listeners hear and see for the most part your on-air personalities. If you would, just talk a little bit about those incredible people; just introduce them to the listeners.
MT: Well, we made a change not very long ago in our morning personality, Donna Franklin is the host. Donna has done a great job and is one of the most passionate people on the Wave staff about the music and the station. We will also be making a major announcement soon on a very big morning show personality joining our team. Our midday host Donna McKenize is the best in the business and Houston veteran. Greg Morgan is my Assistant Program Director who also has a velvet voice, does afternoons and is a smart programmer. Wave After Hours is hosted by Quinn Dalton who launched the evening show at Detroit’s smooth jazz WVMV. Chuck Tiller, Kelli McClain and Keith Myles round out the rest of our seasoned on-air team that we are fortunate to have.
Our Wave personalities know that it takes a commitment to create awareness of the station in the community. Weekly, our staff is out in the community whether it is via office visits to van hits to community events. All of these guys have tasted success in their career and know how much effort it takes to achieve that success and maintain it.
Smitty: Yes indeed, and it’s great to have all of them in Houston, you have great taste, my friend. You were mentioning the community, how important that connection is, and it’s great to see them out there feeling the community and getting their input on what they want, and you guys have done that and delivered, so it’s a beautiful thing. Talk a little bit about some of the other activities, because you have some great activities such as the Trip-A-Day program. I know that a lot of stations are doing that, but you have really made that work in Houston. Along with the Loyal Listener program, you have some great things that you’re doing to keep the listeners involved and helping them to see that they are a very integral part of Smooth Jazz in Houston.
MT: The Trip-A-Day Giveaway is not a new contest. It’s been around a number of years and on various smooth jazz stations across the country. A contest that reflects the lifestyle of our audience. Bourne from an idea (VP of Smooth Jazz Programming for CBS Radio) Paul Goldstein had when he was at WNUA in Chicago years ago. Our audience works hard and loves to travel to exotic destinations to relax. We’ve given away over 800 free trips in a very short time and the contest still seems to be very appealing to our audience. We have a terrific partnership with Continental Airlines here in Houston.
We’re extremely aggressive marketing the Wave in Houston. Each week, we’ve done as many as four restaurant or club appearances. Houston is the fourth largest city in the nation, so we’ve got a lot of territory to cover and we try to touch as many listeners as possible. We know what it’s going to take to keep top of mind and we have to stay very aggressive about that, so we’re on the streets quite a bit. Fortunately the jazz music scene has also grown in this city. You can catch a lot of talented jazz musicians locally, regionally. We also are blessed with some national recording artists that still live in the city like Bobby Lyle, Joe Sample, and Dean James.
Smitty: Yes indeed, great artists, and because of that I think what you’re doing with all the great activities and the community involvement and the programming, I think the station really transcends age, language, race, all of that, and that it encompasses and embraces the entire city.
MT: Out of all the formats, smooth jazz is the only one that is perfectly gender balanced and embraces everyone. If you come to a Wave event, you will see the universal tapestry of the audience that truly represents a metropolitan city like Houston.
Smitty: Yes, that is so true and one of the reasons why I always look forward to your Wave events! You also have a wonderful Web site. It’s so warm, friendly, informative, and its user friendly, and it has so much great information for all of your listeners and for those that really enjoy this music.
MT: Thank you. We are working hard keeping the content fresh. It is an extension of the radio station, so it takes a lot of time to keep everything up-to-date, but we’ve learned that Web sites are sort of like the front page of a newspaper. You need to make sure that it stays fresh every single day.
Smitty: Yes, like the front page of a newspaper. I like that Maxine, great analogy!
MT: We’ve gotten great feedback from the audience about KHJZ.com and are learning everyday how to get the most out of the web from an interactive perspective with those heavy Wave web users.
Smitty: Absolutely. Now, just briefly, what would you like to say to all of your great fans and listeners out there about the coming year 2007? This has been a great year for WAVE Houston. You just celebrated your fourth year with a great show at an incredible location; Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, by the way, a lot of fun.
