Todd Manley, Creative Director, WGN Radio, Chicago, Illinois
By Jerry Vigil
There you are, a production guru at a killer music station in a major market. Ever look at the ratings and see an AM talk station perched on the top or near it and said to yourself, “What the heck is that all about?” Even in a world of hi-tech music machines and FM music stations across the dial, it’s not hard to find an old AM station kicking butt and taking names, as well as dollars. Speaking of old AMs, WGN in Chicago recently celebrated its 80th anniversary! It’s kicking a lot of butt in Chicago-land, and even more unique is its ownership. Owned by Tribune, it is the only radio station the company owns. At the creative helm is Todd Manley. We last checked in with Todd about 8 years ago when he was nestled at WCKG. He’s currently in his 7th year at WGN and visits with us this month about this amazing radio station and the creative task at hand.
JV: What’s happened since we last talked back in ’98?
Todd: Well actually, not long after we talked back then, maybe just a few months later, WGN radio called. They were talking to some people about creating — and this sounds wild to say in the late ‘90s — a concept for imaging. But in many ways, a lot of the heritage full-service AMs were moving late into that foray. Some of the smart ones, I think, jumped on early, and fortunately there were some people here at the time with Tribune that decided it was time to build up the production department. So we started talking, and I’ve been here now about seven years. It’s been a really great run. In fact, I was lucky enough to work for the same PD for about six and a half of those years. We just now have some new leadership in tow, and we’re kind of turning the page into some newer and cool challenges.
Anyway, I came here as the Production Director to oversee the commercial production department as well as create imaging. At the time, the shows themselves more or less did their own promos. So we started trying to strip the place down and look at how to build up a sound for all the talk programs. And we’re live and local 24/7; that was the one thing that pulled me away from ‘CKG. I loved that gig — great talent and it was cool doing the Stern stuff. Steve Dahl was there, and Jonathan Brandmeier was there at the time doing middays. We had that whole link up thing via KSLX in Los Angeles. But us imaging cats, on our best days, like to be the common thread that runs through the radio station. So the challenge of doing something that was live and local and not brokering weekends was something that really appealed to me, even though I would have loved to have spent another couple of years with CBS and the ‘CKG team.
So while I’m watching all my brethren in the business take on five, six, seven stations in terms of imaging or production or whatever, I come here and find things quite the opposite. What’s wild about this place is that we sit under this big Tribune umbrella where mostly what we do is publishing. In the past few years they have really been expanding their television holdings, but we’re still the only radio station they own, and there are about 26 television properties. And we doubled the size of the company when we purchased the L.A. Times. I act like they consulted me on that, but that would have been a bad idea. I just said, “Cool, man!” We also have the Orlando Sentinel and we’re in Hartford, and there’s Newsday in New York and of course the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune itself now has a paper that is geared 25-54, as much as anything specifically to the urban commuter. It’s called Red Eye. So while I found everybody else in a big group imaging several stations, my role expanded within the company to share what we do with sound across the publishing end of things and the rest of the broadcast group.
Then in 2001 they asked me to take on the role of Assistant PD in addition to doing the imaging. I had seven full-time show producers and seven part-time show producers reporting to me, and then a production staff of one full-time producer, the commercial production manager, and then a small pool of voices that come in and do spots for us ala carte. And then a little over a year ago, we looked at focusing some of my efforts in some other areas and went back to having a full-time Assistant PD, and I was given the title Creative Director. That’s my title now, but I’ve headed up a bunch of different projects. I’ve worked within the marketing team for external stuff as well as doing the imaging. And lately I’ve been part of getting this charge going on podcasting. We do about 6,000 downloads a week right now.
JV: You mentioned sharing some of what you’re doing with the rest of the broadcast group. Are you doing some audio for the TV stations?
Todd: Well oddly enough, as it turns out, it’s more web driven than television driven. We do some sound sharing. Through the ENPS system, we have a shared audio drive across all of the broadcast properties within Tribune. So it’s interesting. We can access each other’s projects. It’s not a matter of promos, but a lot of the news sound is pooled, which is pretty cool.
I’m also doing special projects on CDs. For example, I worked through our publishing group on doing sound design for a CD-ROM that commemorated the one-year anniversary of 9/11. That was an insert in a Sunday paper back in 2002. And then I do little composite pieces. This started probably about five years ago. I would do montages or different pop culture sound pieces for the various websites. I did a tribute to George Harrison that the L.A. Times posted, and the different papers ask for different things from time to time. More and more, that’s kind of what I get to delve into. Just a year ago I produced an 80th anniversary CD commemorating ‘GN Radio, and then I just finished a CD that commemorates ten years of our play-by-play team for the Cubs.
JV: It has to be different to be at a station that is the only station in the company, and in your case, the ownership isn’t even primarily a radio company. You’ve been on both sides, what’s different?
Todd: Well, you definitely learn a lot in terms of merchandising outside of radio. At one point I thought we were going to have to get a specialist in here doing commercial campaigns. But the reality of the place is that a lot of our local revenue is really live reads by talent. So I thought, okay, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to create quarterly albums that the national sales staff will take out to sell the place to the agencies, and there also would be composite pieces that our local sellers could take out. And again, it was just an extension of imaging. It was just me trying to be the biggest fan of the radio station and somehow sell that passion to everybody else.
Eventually, as we started to pass sound around the internet like everybody is crazy with now, I started doing this thing for our sellers that would be almost like a four minute promo for the radio station, say dawn to dusk or even around the clock, to give people a snapshot of how we sounded if they were out of market or if they had some misconceived notion of what the radio station was. As a heritage full service AM, there was that kind of misconception that the place wasn’t contemporary. So we got people like Spike O’Dell and Steve Cochran, formerly of Z100 New York; and we’ve got John Williams who was at ‘CCO in Minneapolis; and two visionary groundbreaking female talk personalities in Kathy and Judy, that do some really great radio everyday.
Plus we’re the Cub station and I’m a baseball freak, so every other year I work with a studio here to create some new thematics for our Cubs broadcast and things like that, and that’s just made the whole package pretty fun. But you’re right, it is weird being kind of a standalone. I really relish my relationships with music suppliers and people nationally. And one of my favorite things to do is to make that trip to Dan O’Day’s summit every year because I learn so much from people who are in the big groups. I do some seminars and things like that with people here statewide that keep me plugged in to what’s going on elsewhere, and I try to sprinkle in some of the stuff that they may not have thought of with regards to the way we do business here.
JV: WGN is in a neck-to-neck news/talk ratings race with WBBM. Do you feel like you’re in a battle with them on the imaging side?
Todd: Yeah, and it’s interesting. There have been times when I’ve taken subtle shots at them as being the utility. But really what’s nice is that they can be who they are, and we can be who we are. It’s the same with WLS and their talk product which is much more syndicated. The way it all kind of breaks down is ‘BBM is all cume, WLS is all time spent listening, and we’re the middle ground. So it’s that combination that really helps us out.
But it’s really, really competitive out there right now, and I still think that the key is to move people through the door for your advertisers. That sounds like such a bogus sort of suck up to our sales managers, but it is what it is. You get to come in everyday and roll up your sleeves and try to get better, and so I love what I do, and with the idea that we’re all supposed to make a buck for Mother Tribune, well that never gets in the way of my fun.
JV: You’ve imaged music formats as well as news/talk. What are your thoughts on the differences?
Todd: I’m coming up on ten years in spoken word and talk. I did two years at ‘CKG and seven and a half here now. I had done AC and CHR and Urban prior to that, and was a jock and also did imaging. I worked on the agency side for a couple of years writing and producing. I think, because I’m a music freak, that I like not being saddled by styles. Everybody who does a music station, every so often probably gets their chops busted for drifting away from the format to create something unique to get somebody’s attention. It’s nice to not have those meetings where you’re explaining yourself: “I know it was bluegrass and we’re an Urban, but I needed it!”
JV: You must have a ton of resources with regards to all of the audio clips from news events of the day and stuff like that. This must be a major plus for your imaging.
Todd: Oh yeah, absolutely. And another thing too, what is really good about successful talkers and storytellers and just passionate hosts is that they all have their own “isms” as I call them, and I keep that folder of “isms” on an external drive on my Pro Tools set up here. They’re my go-to, they’re my jingles, they’re my drops. Occasionally I use a drop now and then from a movie or a TV show or that sort of thing like everybody else, but what’s the one thing that nobody else can use? It’s your own people. So that’s the benefit I think in spoken word. You’ve got these little hooks or these things that are the cues for the audience that go, “Oh yeah, now I know I’m listening to ‘GN,” or “Now, I know I’m listening to my station,” or whatever it happens to be, “because that’s the stuff that my guy says all the time.” It’s that comfort zone that goes, “Oh, I’m in the right place.”
JV: What about news clips from a President Bush speech that he gave earlier in the day or Alito’s hearings and stuff like that? Do you find them to be a big part of the imaging package as well?
Todd: I think it’s a combination. I still try to think about the fact that local is our calling card, and so I’m always using Bush when he’s in town — and fortunately, he’s in town once in a while. I will use the President; I will use players in the national scene next to our people. But I usually always choose local over national just because they can get the national stuff on Sean Hannity at night on ‘LS, or they can get that other places. Again, I’m just trying to always find that local touch, either somebody national talking about local things or somebody national talking to one of our local hosts. That’s always big. I always try to keep in mind that I’ve got one potential new listener stumbling on us for the first time, so there’s something about those elements that goes, “Okay, until I get to know who this person is that I’ve just turned on, this is an angle that I can track with,” and I try to suck them in that way.
JV: With your recent experience imaging talk radio and your past experience in the music formats, are there things you’ve learned imaging talk radio that one could apply to, let’s say, a CHR station for example, a way to take advantage of news clips in a better way perhaps?
Todd: Absolutely. I think the beauty of our end of the business right now is that it’s just full of inventive people. I don’t care what market you’re in, big, small or medium; I hear some pretty cool stuff. In a lot of ways that’s the best thing in my mind that’s happened to our industry, the fact that somewhere along the way people decided that this needed to be a valued element of the radio station, creating stationality.
So I think it’s a good thing when you can connect back some of this national sound to what makes your station cook, especially because people have stuff flying at them from all angles, and we’re all in search of ear candy. You think about Dave Foxx, the great unique selling point guy, one of the great guys. And then you have John Frost and Eric Chase who do really amazing stuff as content, imaging as content. We have a great guy here at Q101, Ed Spindle.
I like to split the difference somehow of working on that unique selling point for some of our event marketing and to draw people into shows, but then also just have a piece be something that someone wants to hear again. I don’t know how else to describe it. I mean, it’s like I know people that will sit around and watch ESPN just waiting for the next promo. And they’re not imaging guys. It sounds like self indulgence and sometimes that’s what you have to guard against, but on some level there’s a benefit to it being content as well.
You asked advice in terms of people in music; I would think that if you could get the PD’s ear about trying to experiment with some of that in the music format, it would benefit the station greatly. It’s ridiculous to think that just because it’s music and music is the star that you can’t sell some stationality beyond that.
Look at Oldies formats where there is nothing new about the music. I have heard of guys who have, and rightfully so, put their imaging person right up there on the same level of importance with the morning show. Some of the best people running Oldies stations view it that way. That’s the only new product in the station. The rest of it is somewhat old hat even though it’s tried and true and tested. I think if you could figure out a way to sell the concept of attaching something to the music that’s a story apart from it, you’ll love your gig even more, and you’ll help the station a great deal, you’ll help separate it from the other stations in the market.
JV: Let’s talk about the advertising, putting customers in the advertisers’ stores. How do you do it? What’s the trick?
Todd: The trick is to offer a solution to somebody’s problem, and there are people that do that brilliantly. I think you also have to buy into that 52-week plan. It’s hard for a new seller who is now working just for commission to walk away from someone who is going to buy five spots in the next month because you know it just won’t do anything for him. But that’s the beauty of what I see in our successful AEs here. They have this collection of people that get the whole Roy Williams concept of you’ve got to be out there 52 weeks a year. That’s the only way that it’s going to work to make broad impressions.
So I’m a huge fan of this and I think this maybe applies a little bit to executing some imaging too. I love this Max Lenderman experiential marketing book that’s out there. It’s that notion that you win people one at a time and they sell it for you. That works in a way with advertisers too. We have a couple of advertisers who have sold other huge clients for us just because the radio station worked for them. And it works with listenership too.
JV: You mentioned a lot of podcasting that you’re doing. What’s the story on that?
Todd: I had this notion just like a lot of us that distribution is half of the game right now. I think that the Clear Channel people have put some amazing things together, campaigns about don’t pay for radio. That’s their basic message. “Why should you pay for it? We’re free.” I think the creative is great, but I think that’s a crazy notion for us to buy into, the fact that just because it’s free it’s better. I think we need to take the challenge to just be better than the stuff that people pay for, and eventually people will get it. We need to just see this as a challenge that we all need to get better at what we do, and podcasting is just another way to expand into that. It’s actually working for us on some level from a listenership standpoint. We’re doing about 6,000 downloads a week from various shows. We basically do two different feeds five days a week of different shows. The podcasts range anywhere from five minutes to maybe 20, 25 minutes in length.
I don’t think this is necessarily about time shifting because I still see radio as a companion medium. If you had the three hours to spend with your favorite drive-time show, you’d have done it live. If you have to go back and listen to it at a different time, you probably won’t find the time. Now, maybe people will get into the thing where they go, “Okay, I love this PM drive show but I’m going to listen to it in AM drive.” Maybe, but you still want the current news or at least traffic and weather stuff, so you miss out on that a little bit if you’re trying to use it as a commuting block. So I thought, “Well, let’s package these things up and really streamline them and use them almost like extended promos for our shows.” So it’s been really successful for us. Now we’re adding a revenue stream to it which is trickling in. We have a separate webpage that we call 720togo.com, and it’s all linked from iTunes and that sort of thing. It has a prominent place on the ‘GN Radio website as well.
That said, I think people still want up-to-the-minute stuff. In many cases, the tragedy of September 11th woke up a lot of CHRs and a lot of music stations. You started to see them go back to the classic commitment to some news and information and things like that instead of just being the jukebox, because that’s the only thing that separates them from XM and from Sirius, what they deliver locally or a local personality.
Like a lot of us have talked about over the years, I’m concerned about the talent pool coming up because syndication has snatched away a lot of cool, small market gigs where people cut their teeth and got to create their art form. But there’s an element of podcasting that will probably pluck some stars from outside of radio, and hopefully radio is paying attention and will swipe some of those people.
JV: Do you have a studio at home?
Todd: Yes. I put in a studio at home about a year and a half ago. The main reason for it was to help out a friend of mine in St. Louis, Tim Dorsey. The station down there is the News/Talker KTRS. I spent about 18 months doing imaging for them while they were growing out of becoming the second fiddle news/talk station into where they are now. At the end of the summer they did a deal with the St. Louis Cardinals where the Cardinals now own half the radio station, and the station is the rights holder for baseball in St. Louis. So things are at the point now where they really need to have all the imaging in-house. So at the end of the year, I stopped creating that stuff. That was a pretty heady job because I was writing the stuff, I was secondary voice on the stuff, mixing it, editing it, working with the station manager and PD and that sort of thing. And now they’re bringing all that stuff in-house as they launch their first season of Cardinals baseball.
JV: It’s amazing, as the years go by in this business and technology presents all this new competition for radio, you’ve got satellites, iPods, mp3 players and all these FMs and FM talk stations and FM music stations, yet scattered all over the place you still find stations like WGN on the AM band kicking major butt.
Todd: Yeah, just look at all the AMs that rule. San Francisco’s a good example with KGO. It is about the content. The medium is not the message, you know. That’s inspiring as hell to me. I understand that the biggest challenge for spoken word is that you’ve got to wait for people to grow into a need for it. But I love the notion of thinking in terms of life-stage demographics. In other words, I think our culture is such that people do everything at an unpredictable age now. People are single from 18 to 25 or until 50; or some people start families at 45 or some people are empty nesters forever. So basically it comes down to, once you start paying taxes, you start looking around for a spoken word radio station once in a while because you want a little of that information and that sort of thing.
You’re right. It is fascinating to think about the fact that while there is all this technology swirling around and there’s HD out there, that AMs can still rule. I’m trying to get all of our producers to really get back to some good stereo mixing of stuff, partially for our podcasts, but also because I’m thinking we’re going to be HD stereo again here soon. We’re not right now but it’s time to ramp up because we’ve got to be ready. And yet at the same time, you go, “Well, wait a minute; it’s just the conversation they’re after.” How cool is that?