The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Joe Thomas Interview On The I Love CVille Show; Why Did Monticello Media Fire You, Joe?

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

The I Love CVille Show headlines: Joe Thomas Interview On The I Love CVille Show Why Did Monticello Media Fire You, Joe? Tell Us The Play-by-Play From Your Perspective Tell Us About The Radio Station You Are Buying What Can We Expect With New Radio Station? How Much Local Content Will Be On Station? State Of The Union: How Is CVille City Doing? State Of The Union: How Is Albemarle Doing? Read Viewer & Listener Comments Live On-Air Broadcaster Joe Thomas joined Jerry Miller live on The I Love CVille Show! The I Love CVille Show airs live Monday – Friday from 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The I Love CVille Show on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Fountain, Amazon Music, Audible and iLoveCVille.com.

Good Friday afternoon, guys. My name is Jerry Miller, and thank you kindly for joining us on the I Love Seville Show. Today's program should be quite dynamic, as Joe Thomas is in the house. We have an award-winning broadcaster of name recognition proportions. And not only is Joe Thomas one of the best in the business, he, my former boss at one time at Monticello Media. We have a lot to cover with Mr. Thomas. We'll talk about his career. We'll put it in the spotlight, in the perspective. We'll discuss what his plans are as now the owner of a radio station. We'll talk about the split from Monticello Media, a place he called home for about 17 years.

A place I know quite well. And we'll take you, the viewer and listener, your questions on today's show. You can shape the discussion on the I Love Seville show as you always can, Monday through Friday, 1230 to 130. As you know, we're in the shadows of Thomas Jefferson's University, less than two miles from the Rotunda, the John Paul Jones Arena and Scott Stadium, a hop, skip and a jump from the Charlottesville Police Department and the courthouses of Albemarle and the City of Charlottesville on Market Street in our building, the Macklin building. Judah Wickauer, if you can go to the studio camera and then a two-shot and welcome a man that I think is a household name. Where? Joe Thomas looking sharp in a shirt that is quite artistic, my friend. Well, I want to thank the folks at Fighting Colors and Gary Velasco. I thought, I see you invited me on here, and I said, well, I'm going to bring the shirt that Gary made himself. An amazing artist, does all kinds of work

in really a lost art, nose art. Remember the old bombers of World War II and that kind of thing? He can recreate that. He can make logos for you, restaurants, businesses. You should have one here, Jerry. I mean, you just go, I can see, I love Seville on the nose of a B-52. I'm sorry, I got wistful thinking about the nose of a B-52 with I love Seville on it. But, you know, Gary is a great guy and is suffering through one of the toughest things. I mean, he's going into ALS. And when you're an artist and you lose some of your motor function, he's fighting it hard and Don, his partner. But go to Fighting Colors.

Find him on Facebook. You'll see the incredible stuff. He's got art. And he's still doing it. I mean, that's the amazing thing. He's still out there. He's creating and doing stuff. He's got art and he's still doing it. I mean, that's the amazing thing. He's still out there. He's creating and doing stuff. So I just thought I'd fly his colors since you had me on today. Well, I'll tell you what, Joe, I'm very excited that you were able to join us. You and

I have a very long history and I'm going to just offer open-ended questions and perspective. 17 years, Jerry, I've known you. 17 years. I remember I was a pup at Monticello Media when you came, I think, from, was it Pennsylvania? I had been running a station in Pennsylvania. Okay. And that station was sold off into a ministry, which is certainly noble, but they didn't need staff anymore. They just needed the transmitter. So I went into an eight-month bout of, quote, unemployment, where I worked three different jobs, four or five hours a day each in Wilmington, Delaware and Philadelphia, doing news and traffic and answering phones for people and spinning top 40 records. And then finally, Monticello Media hired me to come on down here and they said hey

you're in charge of what they call in the business now the spoken word formats and they said you're going to run our news talk station and our sports talk station and I like both and they said you have one employee his name is Jerry and I said okay what does Jerry do? And they said, he just comes on and rages in the afternoon. And all I could think of is Mad Dog Russo with perhaps better diction. And you didn't disappoint. You didn't disappoint. So you were quite a part of the sports radio 1400 family at the time. So that was a long time ago.

He has a very good memory. Well, the show is about you, my friend. So talk to us what the community wants to know. What happened? What happened with Monticello Media? What happened with home? Well, I mean, you know, and if you follow me on Facebook or if you go to my Facebook page, you'll see, you know, a lot written about what went down.

And it's a shame. And I said, you know, at the end of the day, it seems like it's a different perspective on kind of the same thing if you read and you go through. And it really was just where I saw an opportunity and they didn't. And, you know, and as I said on one of my posts, we'll both just have to agree to have it our way. Since for some reason, fast food restaurants became. I know Burger King, McDonald's, enter the mix. I think somebody there was remembering that I spend a lot of time drawing from my past where I ran a Burger King for some time.

So when they made a reference to the Burger King manager, I think they were making sure that anyone who was a regular listener knew they meant me anyway. But we were trying to build kind of a superstation, and I hope to just make it work over in the Valley and in Western Albemarle and Nelson and maybe, who knows, find a place where somebody will carry the show in Charlottesville. What do you guys do in the morning here, Jerry?

We have, I'll tell you what, we're open-minded to anything. I mentioned this on yesterday's program. And Judah, can you check Facebook messages there to make sure all the pages are connected there? I mentioned on yesterday's program that the true value opportunity or proposition or the true upside of what you were doing was a joint venture. And what I saw as tremendously valuable for multiple sides of the mountain was you owning this station that was located from what I can tell and the coverage maps I've seen outside of the Monticello Media coverage area. You take control of a station where you

can localize the content like you always do with your show front and center. Your show stays on WCHV at the same very time, a station that everyone had calls home when it comes to talk radio on the dial. And then you could do a joint venture with Monticello Media where you could go to advertisers, car dealers, and say, I want your advertising message on this massive coverage area and we'll figure out a way to chop up the revenue. It seemed like a no-brainer to me. Well, you know, and I thought the same thing. And that's the horse race is not everyone sees the same thing.

I mean, there's plenty of people who didn't buy Apple when Steve Jobs was still working at a garage. And I'm not comparing those two things, but I was asked by some of our backers in this venture at the onset, would it work without Monticello Media? And I said, yeah, because I've talked to the businesses in Stanton and Waynesboro and Western Albemarle, and they're hot for it. Somebody's going to do our news, not just Harrisonburg news, not just national news. And I said, yeah, we're going to go to

the opening of every envelope, is what they say, and promote businesses, but also cover the board of supervisors when they want to hide a bag tax or, you know, I was talking to a mutual friend who's hooking me up with the Mayer for my first show. And, you know, they're concerned about the bluing of the valley and, you know, people, the Weldon Cooper Center has a demographic research that they do every year. And in it, it says 4,000 people per day drive from Waynesboro, Stanton, Fishersville area into Charlottesville, work at a hospital, work at NGIC, work at the university, and then drive home.

And that's, you know, that was that synergy I saw in it. But they said, would it work without it? I said, heck yeah, because Stanton and Waynesboro have all the same issues that Albemarle and Fluvanna have. And they need to have their voice. And that's what we're putting on is the station that we're calling Your Voice. And it's going to have some local programs. I've had a lot of folks who have done shows in that area in the past reach out to me, folks who do marketing there.

So we're off and running already, and we're still in stasis, waiting for the Federal Communications Commission to say, okay. And then I feel like we're already, the drag racers revving their engines before they pop the clutch. So we're pretty jazzed for getting started, chomping at the bit, I guess. I'm excited. I think you're going to have, like I said, all fair when you walked into the studio, tremendous success. You are a known commodity. Your network is fantastic. You get better guests than anyone. People know Joe Thomas at the General Assembly. They know him in DC. They know him at the Board of Supervisors. They know him on the dais. They know him for nonprofits with the

fantastic support you give nonprofits in this community. I'm blushing, Jerry. They know you from Fry Springs till Palmyra to Northern Alamaro County across Central Virginia and now the Valley. I got a couple more before we talk about what's the plan for your venture here. Do you think there's an opportunity to perhaps, you know, either Mac McDonald called it the band's not breaking up when he was talking about him and you. He's going to be on Monday's show. So we're sort of stealing your paradigm here a little, Jerry, because we don't have a broadcast signal. So we're going to web stream, as a matter of fact, my first piece of personal tech that I got arrived right before I left for the station.

You get the laptop? Yeah, the laptop. Fantastic. The laptop Mark II has arrived and is booting this time. So what we're going to do is we're going to do a web stream morning show. You'll probably be

forced to see me. Sorry. But you get used to it here because it's going to be a little of this. But Max already agreed to do sports for us. I'll get some guests as well. But there's been so much going on in this past week that I just feel like we can probably spend a lot of time doing that. I'm going to set up a Skype number so people can call in and we can just kind of do what we've always done, which is break it down, make it not about them and you. Well, I see an opportunity to potentially hash it back together.

I think Monticello Media made a tremendous mistake here. This is me talking about it here. This is my words. I think they made a tremendous mistake. I think there is an opportunity once their cooler heads prevail. They say, okay, finding local content in a market this size with a broadcaster of Joe's talent is going to be difficult to do. Here's the proverbial olive branch. And knowing you, I know you fairly well, you would say, okay, you know what? I'm open-minded to anything as long as it makes sense. The devil's in the details, a phrase you like to use. Could there be a chance to amend?

Get it back together. There's never a never. I'll tell a story because that's what I do. So one time I had an employee, and he was leaving to go to another place. And that employee called the local TV news station to come to my station to cover his last day. That employee then left. I was not happy with the local TV station or the host, but a couple of years later, he came back with an idea that I thought had merit. And I said, okay, you know, I think that was me. Yes, it was. This was me. It was very much you.

This was me. I remember this quite well. And every time I see Marty, I remind him. I say, you remember that day? Yeah. I wanted to throw you out. So there is never a never. Because, boy, I was angry at that point.

But you had something you needed to do. And I'm like, all right, well, do what you need to do. And then when you came back and said you wanted to do something, remember like all right well do what you need to do and and and then when you came back and said you wanted to do something remember um McGrady's I do used to do a live show from McGrady's every Saturday like 16 years ago you have a good memory don't ask my wife that because it's like a anniversary so um when you came to me with that idea, I was like, well, this sounds like a good idea. And McGrady's was all in, and it was a great location. You did a great job for that whole time you were doing it.

And I was actually sorry to see that go. But you left to launch all this. But, yeah, that's why I'm not the kind of person who says there's never a never. Anyone I've ever worked with will tell you that I have a simple rule. There are no bad ideas. There's bad executions of ideas because I've seen lawyer shows that get a million phone calls and lawyer shows that are about as interesting as listening to paint dry. And it just depends on how you do them. So I don't know. As far as I'm concerned, I'm just going forward with what we've got. Let's going forward with what we've got.

Let's go forward with what you've got. Yeah. And I've talked to some folks about a Charlottesville station. But I've also talked to folks who, believe it or not, are saying, well, what about here? And what about there? And what about Lexington? What about, you know, Dilwyn? What about every place under the sun? So there's other opportunities there. You want to make sure, though, that you're serving people. I mean, that's at the end of the day what it is.

You've got two customer bases in radio, and that's your advertisers and your listeners. And the synergy you really want to do is you have enough listeners so that they go in and visit your sponsors, like Pyramid Paving. See how I did that? That was very nice. Not enough O's in smooth for me. So you have enough listeners to say, hey, not everyone's going to need their driveway paved, but somebody is. And they're going to say, oh, Joe said Pyramid Paving. Let me call them.

And that's the whole point of it. And so you're trying to serve two entirely different groups of people at the same time. But if you do the first one correctly, the second one takes care of itself. So, you know, that's the business model going forward. And I better be good at it because my wife is actually majority owner. I was going to highlight Elaine, your wife, Suzanne Coffey, she says, Go Joe! On the feed, viewers and listeners,

if you want to give Joe Thomas some props or ask him a question, put it in the social media channel or platform or app that you're watching upon and we'll relay it live on air. Suzanne Coffey, thank you for watching the program. And by the way, I would be remiss, so it's going to be, uh, 1240 AM in

Stanton, WTON, uh, 101.1 FM from the top of Afton mountain. That's Waynesboro and Crozet and the 151 corridor. And I've had people listening in Scottsville right now it's music. Um, and then, uh, 98.9 in Harrisonburg. And so that's where you'll be able to find us somewhere in the next 40 days. And that's the thing. It's the public comment period where the FCC says, tell us what your thoughts are on it. So please send a letter to the FCC and say, go Joe. I remember, I'll throw this to you. I remember 16 years ago when I left a career in print, radio, and television to launch a business that was rooted in my experience in writing, reporting the news, and connecting

with listeners and viewers through the spoken word. I launched a business that was an advertising agency. And Joe, I was, 16 years ago, terrified. I had a mortgage. I had a lot of risk. A lot of risk. I'm curious of the perspective and the mindset for you as you get into not just being probably the best radio broadcaster I personally know. I sincerely, sincerely mean that. You need to get out more, son. I said I sincerely mean that.

And he is, guys, award-winning. He's fantastic, as you know. But this is as much about utilizing God-given talents, which you certainly have, to now business acumen. Talk to us about that and that shift. And is there any fear at all? Oh, you wouldn't be human if there wasn't fear. And it wouldn't work if you weren't afraid of failing because that's what drives you to keep running fast.

But I've got a lot of folks who are joining in. It's like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. As you go down the road, more and more people kind of join into the band. You know, folks who have worked in the market. I mentioned that several folks have reached out to me who have done radio shows, but there's also folks who know everyone and had been in the world of advertising marketing and partnering, and hopefully they'll like coming back to the station.

I mean, this station is neat, Jerry. I was in the diligence of it. You know WCHV just celebrated its 90th anniversary, and I only would have known that if it wasn't for Tim Hulbert and the 100th anniversary of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce. But going through some of the diligence on this radio station, I found its very original first application for a license from the, whatever it was called at the time, the Federal Broadcasting Association or whatever, what is now the FCC. And it's 1942. And the address for the radio station is exactly the same as it is now.

It's in the same building, the same corner of Beverly Street and Stanton. I mean, that's kind of neat to think. I mean, there were artifacts in there of a speaker that used to hang outside the storefront so people could go by and listen to. I can only imagine, you know, maybe it was the rock and roll, you know, it was Jerry Lee Lewis and all the stuff that was going to ruin, you know, society and protests about whatever it may have been. But it's just neat to see this, but there are so many people coming back saying, yeah, we're into it.

And it reminds me a lot of what we faced here. When we took over where I was, Monticello Media had purchased the stations from iHeart Media. Not iHeart Seville, but iHeart Media. I can offer some perspective on that, because I worked at Monticello Media prior to your arrival. It was initially owned by Clear Channel Communications. Which is now iHeartMedia. Yeah. And Clear Channel Communications was in shambles. Absolute shambles.

George Reed and Monticello Media jump in the game, and they promised a local boots-on-the-ground type of operation, which they've done. Oh, yeah. I got to compliment. Monticello Media does a lot of things well. They have created a media conglomerate that is radio based, but is very localized. And that's a testament to them because it's an industry that is becoming quickly nationalized

with major players scooping up as many frequencies as possible see I'm going to push back on that because I think our story is the avant-garde because more and more people, more and more of these stations you see these chains are all in receivership.

iHeartMedia, Cumulus, Odyssey. George Soros just bought 51% of Odyssey, which is, for example, WRVA in Richmond, because they're having big problems. because I got a little look at this as we were developing this because somebody looked at my business model and said, oh, I can make more profit than that in T-bills. And a light went off in my head, and I said, that's what's doing in local radio is we had a plan that very quickly can make profit, but the financial world doesn't want 2%, four percent they want 10 15 20 percent so when you're dealing with publicly traded companies it's going to be very hard to do local radio because it's always going to be about a budget cut it's always going to be about got to get

something to pump up the bottom line so that when 4.30 comes, we're looking good. And more people than not, and I'm going to be on a panel in June at Talkers Magazine as the industry standard for spoken word. And their publisher, when I told him I was thinking of doing this, a wonderful fellow named Michael Harrison said to me, why? I figured that was the question. But there's lots of folks now over the last three or four years who are individual private owners of radio stations in Texas and Georgia and places where they're getting them because these big conglomerates are just they're in asset you disposal mode they have to either the court has ordered them to or they just can't control them anymore and they need to let them loose so i think you know and this is aspirational but i think we're going into a period where companies like monticello media and thomas media ll LLC are going to be more and more of the rule than the exception.

You're talking smaller players. Individual, not publicly financed. Even the chains are going to be privately held. The folks across the street, Saga Communications. Well, they're publicly traded. They are. But most of their shares were in the Ed Christian family. Right, and that's where I'm going to go with it.

May he rest in peace. A lot of people don't realize the Charlottesville Radio Group is owned by Saga Communications. Yeah. Okay, a lot of people don't know that this is not truly a locally owned radio group. But a lot has changed as their ownership, and I have always said, a guy like Ed Christian, who was the founder of Saga Communications, he started in newsrooms like you were working in and I was working in, Jerry. So you've got to love a guy who has come up with the ink under his nail and the paper cuts from the Associated Press newswire up to that point. And I think that there's nothing is a zero-sum game. So there are resources you can get from a chain that you can't get as an individual.

But you've got to kind of walk that fine line in between so that you have enough local autonomy to have local talent. Sure. Where you can still, if you need to, get the resources of a car dealership to give away a Volvo, per se. Not that I'm saying Volvo should be a sponsor of mine, but just saying.

So you're talking, guys, you guys are listening to two media geeks right here. Joe and I make our careers in media, and we know the business inside and out. What we're talking about is this dichotomy between national owners, regional owners, and small individual players. And the national owners have economies of scale and the advantage of vertical integration where one salesperson can go to an advertiser and sell an entire network that might be multiple stations or multiple newspapers, multiple TV stations, whatever the platform is, and say, I can get you all these eyeballs, and it's one rep doing the selling for the entire network and utilizing economies of scale.

The advantage that Mr. Thomas has and his fantastic wife, Elaine, who is always at these events, like me and my better half, there is always a better half right alongside you or in front of you or right behind

you, basically the Elmer's glue of the operation, if you may. And I mean that with my wife. I know it with his wife. I'll throw this to you here. I think the advantage you have is it's that David and Goliath ability to pivot quickly, to be nimble, to adapt to playing field. Sun Tzu, yeah. There you go.

The art of war, okay? What we have done successfully here, which started with media, then went to advertising, then went to real estate ownership, then real estate investing, business brokerage, and venture funding, is we were able to parlay or platform or trampoline from one success to another very quickly where our competitors had some so much red tape and bureaucracy they could not keep up pace i think you can do that with what you were doing well you also have to yeah and we were talking about the multiple consumers of what we do yeah because you have sponsored i'm gonna have sponsors. Like Pyramid Paving. But radio, and I was talking to my son about this. Taylor?

Taylor. Okay. He knows media well. Yeah. Works across the street. He's a creative director at NBC 29. I've been on many advertising shoots with him. He was one of my first board ops when I worked for you.

And that was about the only time he ever worked for me. Everyone thinks that my son's in media because of me. And he was like, no, in no way, shape and form did I have anything. But he said something interesting about your world and the podcast kind of streaming world that is a lot like radio. And the thing that's important about radio is the one thing you can almost 100% guarantee about a radio listener is that they're sitting by themselves. And that's not because they don't have friends or anything, but you're driving in your car, you're sitting at your desk, you're in the kitchen, you know, maybe there's kids running around, but they're not listening with you. It's an individual pursuit, you and the person on the

air. And I think the podcast world is very similar to that because I've got a phone and I'm going to watch I Heart Seville or I'm going to download Tucker Carlson or whatever. It's a one-on-one thing, whereas TV has become sort of this mass, cold, dispassionate medium, um, that, that the podcast world draws a lot of the same energy that radio does because it's an individual pursuit. And the successful ones are the ones who get that, who aren't just thinking it's the stage at the Metropolitan Opera House and there's 100,000 people there. I remember there's a famous sports guy, you were a sports guy, Mike Francesa. Oh, yeah.

Most successful sports talk host in America. Announced to the world he was retiring to join Norm Padditz. Norm Padditz is a name nobody knows, but he was the founder of what you now know as Westwood One, the biggest TV, radio, national brand out there. And they were partnering on something called Podcast One, was the name of the enterprise. And Mike Francesa said, if I can't find a way to make podcasting successful, no one can. And he was out of retirement in a year but that doesn't mean people like you or joe rogan or tucker carlson can't make pocket because i don't think mike francesa did it right you remember to go back to the old you know good idea good execution or not

i think he thought he was just on network radio and he should just kind of do generic stuff rather than picking on individual stuff. Finding a niche. A niche. Well, but engaging on an individual level. Yeah. I mean, when I first started in radio, the guy who was showing me around, he said, imagine that this is a person and talk to it. I mean, I took it to the degree I was at a station that broadcasted to older people than I was. So I taped a picture of my mother to the microphone

so that I was always thinking that that's who I'm talking to. And if I was talking about something that didn't make any sense to my mother, then it probably wasn't going to make any sense to my listener either. And that's the one-on-one connection that you have to make, that you need to make. And that's where the big corporations lose that. They don't have the ability to go and do a telethon for the Salvation Army or wash cars or go to a fireman's fair and raise money for the volunteer firefighters

because it's all about some guy's voice. Their problem is the scale. The scale works against them. You know what we call it in this business here? It's three words. Judah Wickhauer is our director and producer. He's off camera. I've said these three words in his 13

years of working here so many times he probably calls them profanities, four letter word, localize, humanize, and personalize. In our game, if we can localize the content, humanize the content, and personalize the content, we will have connections of the human variety. And if you can get connections of the human variety, you can then position advertisers' call-to-action messages in front of them, and our human connections will encourage the support of our advertising partners. See, there's a college education for you, son. But you're right. You've codified exactly what we're talking about.

It's the humanity of it. And that's what I think is coming back. I think it is coming back. I think people crave this. And you know why I think people particularly crave this and why I think you're going to be extremely successful? And we'll highlight some of the viewers and listeners watching the program. And, folks, you can give Joe some props by putting it on social media.

Our software aggregates it. I'll relay it on social media. Our software aggregates it. I'll relay it live on air. And if you're in Stanton or Waynesboro or Crozet, just tune in in about 40 days. Alan Powell says, Joe, you got this. Hey, Alan, call Pyramid Paving. Roy, I love this. Roy Bujanski.

I'm sorry, Roy, if I'm messing up that last name. Roy Buj is what we used to call him. Roy Booge. He says, fear is a great motivator. Like Dr. Clark closes with sometimes, keep doing what you do. Logan Wells-Klela, welcome to the broadcast. Folks in Crozet, folks in Stanton, folks in the Shenandoah Valley, Waynesboro, Harrisonburg, Nelson County, Charlottesville, Albemarle County, Fluvanna, Lake Monticello, Orange.

We're going to start a web stream for the station. I'm hoping to create a smartphone app like we did here in Charlottesville so that people can kind of tune in wherever. Carly Wagner, Catherine Lachner, welcome to the broadcast. I'm going to ask you some more of what the content goals are. And I'm going to spend, we have, the beautiful thing about what we're doing is we got no commercial breaks. We can go long form.

And I love this subject matter. I seriously geek out for this subject matter. I cannot wait to see the content lineup. Knowing you, you're going to prioritize localized content as much as possible. Obviously, the flagship is going to be Joe Thomas in the morning. And I don't want to assume,

so I'm going to ask you that. Is that, are we going to lead with Joe Thomas in the morning? Yes, sir. Okay. What does the rest of the morning, the afternoon look like? What are you brainstorming? Well, I mean, I've talked to some of my folks in the network shows. And I tend to, we just had Brian Kilmeade come through Charlottesville the other day.

Lars Larson has come through. I like if you're going to be a national host, put some effort into your affiliates to come by and meet the listeners one-on-one. And it was great of Brian to do it for us and help the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank. There's one for you, Les. Les Sinclair, radio guy. Came in 4,300 meals raised in a couple of hours at first free coffee bar. That one's for you, Steve. That's a freebie.

Steve Harvey. Yummy one. Um, so, so, but the point being, so we're, I've been contacted by a couple of folks who used to do talk shows in the Valley who know the people and that kind of thing. Cause you gotta have that kind of synergy. You've got to have people who already know, because I'm going to come in and everyone's going to say, Oh, that's Charlottesville guy. Okay. Uh, and, and I'm not going to know all the players. Like I said, the Waynesboro mayor was going to come on our first show and, and that kind of thing. And's that's straightforward and and having

been here yeah you get to know the Augustus Sheriff and that kind of thing but these are folks who have reached out and said hey can I be part of what's what you're doing so we're going to sit down and talk with them and come up with a way that they can and because that's going to be the most powerful and uh and you know and then there's local things that are going on, whether it's the theater or the Valley Baseball League or high school football. That was a big controversy. So when the people I'm purchasing the station from,

my wife is purchasing the station from, originally purchased it back last autumn, they pulled the plug on local high school football right before, I think it was Redlands, was playing for the state championship. And I think both the News Leader and the Augusta Free Press put enormous columns out about the death of local radio and how these guys had been doing sports broadcasting and high school football and, you know, together. We're going to go back to doing that. That's great. You know, we have, you know, folks who did it.

We did it here. I used to do that. Yeah. Yeah. And it's important to kids who might be the star quarterback at their high school and are probably going to get a scholarship somewhere, but you're never going to see them on Sunday. Or if you do, so these can be the big points of their life when they score a big touchdown to beat their rival on the radio. And that's important. So those things are all going to be part of it. You know, local shows on Saturday and Sunday, church services, all those things.

It's not a magic formula, gang. It's pretty straightforward. I'm going to throw this to you here. Do you think the opportunity for a show with regional content could work well in the Valley? Yes, and I'll tell you why. And it's not violating what I just said. Sure. So we did a regionally syndicated show for a while called The Afternoon Constitution. I remember that show. And we were on in richmond and roanoke and we worked very hard to make sure that if we were talking about something that was

going on in roanoke that we made it relevant to the person driving around charlottesville or in richmond and it lasted a couple of years but one of the things i learned was that there's a lot of synergy that i didn't expect i thought at the time time that Charlottesville and Richmond would connect, because it's just I-64. But more and more businesses I ran into said, are you on in Harrisonburg? Are you on in Waynesboro? Because there were more businesses that would be the supporters

on over in the valley connected to Charlottesville than there were Charlottesville connections to Richmond. And that surprised me. And I said, oh, we better go try to get a Harrisonburg affiliate. We failed doing that. But it was an interesting thing. And then as time has gone on, more and more people, like I said, the Weldon Cooper Center research, 4,000 people a day that live and work and I guess like i said the the weldon cooper center research 4 000 people a day that live and work and i guess are the subject of the meals taxes that charlottesville city loves to enact on people drive in from waynesboro or fishersville to work at uva and pay the meals tax when they go out to lunch um and and and so you so there is a regional

community. The interstate plays a part in that. But the university does and the ground intelligence center and the military folks. But then you look at what's going on. I just had a long conversation without being verbal. I've been very non-verbal this week, Dre. That's why I'm being very...

But you're still getting up early. I'm getting up early. You're still posting great content on social media. So we posted a story about Hershey's. I saw that. Because there's a lot talking about Northrop Grumman coming to the Valley and some of the old factory space. But Hershey's is an amazing company

that is opening up and hiring in the Valley to make chocolate. And you say, oh say oh well it's a chocolate factory but this this guy really is the American Willy Wonka he he and his wife once they finally started to have some success wanted to have kids and they found out they couldn't I mean this is 110 years ago Jerry so I mean the the idea of in vitro fertilization wasn't a controversial news story out of, you know, the Alabama coast. This was just not even science yet. So they started a school,

they endowed a school with the profits from the chocolate company called the Milton Hershey School. And eventually, after he passed, the school is actually the owner of the chocolate factory. And the profits from the chocolate factory go to make sure inner city kids can get scholarships to go to, I guess it's elementary school through high school. of Pennsylvania away from Philadelphia, away from Pittsburgh, away from their bad neighborhoods where crime is running rampant and prosecutors aren't putting people in jail, catch and release. And they get away from it. One of those Commonwealth's attorneys listens to this show regularly, Mr. Jim Hingely. We have a lot of respect for Jim Hingely. I know you may be referencing Joe Plantini on that one right there, who gave you some

props. No, I wasn't picking anyone. I mean, because, you know, there are people who will say that Danny Rutherford in Nelson has done this to people or, you know, whatever. Mr. Rutherford's brother, Jesse, a supervisor at Nelson County, listens to our show routinely. It was interesting because I kind of knew that Joe Plantania listened to the radio show, but in the maelstrom of stuff that went on in social media. That was my favorite comment. He opens his post, if you haven't seen it, he says, I know this is going to get me in trouble, but.

And he talked about how he had listened. So, I mean, I'm talking about people from George Allen to Joe Plotania, from Donna Price to several different GOP chairs, all expressing that they had listened to the radio show at some point or another. And it's interesting. So what I'm doing right now, while we're waiting for this to happen, except for right this moment, because I'm here with you, is I've been writing. I actually started writing- An autobiography.

My unauthorized autobiography. I saw that. You released some chapter titles. I follow been writing. I actually started writing my unauthorized autobiography. I saw that. You released some chapter titles. I follow your content. Yeah, and actually several new ones got thrown out by listeners who said, well, why didn't you put this in there? Because Jason Wright, the great author of The Christmas Jars, did that. His last book, Even the Dog Knows, was sort of workshopped in social media.

But the thing I was getting at about Milton Hershey or any of these other businesses, like they used to when the DuPont folks were over there? I want to throw, first of all, highlight some of the viewers and listeners watching. I got a lot of questions I want to fire his way. Dave Butler has a question about the daily lineup and what it will be. I don't want to answer for Joe, but he's highlighted that it's kind of a work in progress right now.

I've asked a lot of folks. And see, unfortunately, I run home to mama too easily. I'm not really as creative as I pretend I am. So I've asked some folks who are already involved with me. And as smart business people are, they're like, well, we don't know if the Monticello Media or WCHV would be a conflict. So, I mean, there might be a Lars Larson or a Brian Kilmeade. There might not because we might not be able to clear them given the footprint of the station.

So if not, there are great folks, national folks like Joe Pags, folks like that who I know would do the same kind of stuff there, Charlie Kirk those kind of folks who bring a younger energy to the thing but like I said I'm curious to hear from people who did and have ideas in the valley to come along because there's big gaps I'm up against a station that has Sean Hannity on it so I'm not going to have Sean Hannity on the lineup.

That kind of stuff, I can already guarantee that. So who's doing it locally? That's going to be – I'll throw this to you. This is me personally. Then we'll highlight what Mr. John Blair – No, no, we can't do – you can't be on here. No, not looking to be on Mr. John Blair. I'll get to your comment here in a matter of moments.

He's the city attorney of Stanton. He's watching you right now. Oh, hey, John. Neil Williamson watching you right now on the program. But first, this is what I think as someone who makes his professional living monetizing media across many different forms, legacy and new. The key to the success, I think, of what you're going to do is the localization of the content. Sure. Because the national content is so accessible through so many different avenues, not just radio, podcasting, to name a few. If you can get content that is specific to Stanton and the Valley, you're going to have huge success because we are quickly becoming not just the Valley, but Charlottesville as well, a media desert. We have a community in Charlottesville,

which is the heart of Central Virginia. Is that like a food desert? It's just like a food desert. Michelle's going to come and say we have to mandate some media. Not enough grocery stores, not enough media outlets. Charlottesville's in the heart of a 300,000 person market, as you know, we call Central Virginia. It's sophisticated, it's affluent, it's nuanced, it's educated,

yet every day that goes by, we're lacking media opportunities and stuff to read, stuff to listen to, stuff to hear about. I don't think people realize how much Joe and I have to read on a daily basis

to do the stuff that we do. We have insatiable appetites for reading. I mean, put in perspective how you're on the phone, you're reading, you're talking to people to fill your airwaves with content. Well, there was an old TV show before my time, even though I look like I was there when TV was invented. It was called Your Show of Shows, and it starred a guy named Sid Caesar. Sid Caesar is a very funny

man, hysterical comic in his own right. But his writing staff included, and I'm sure I'm going to miss some, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, the creator of MASH, Woody Allen, and there's a couple of others that I'm missing in there. These were his writers, and they'd sit in a room like this and write jokes for him. How do you not have a funny show, Imogene Coca, other folks, but how do you not have a funny show, Imogene Coca, other folks, so, but how do you not have a funny show with all those people writing for it, and I look at the same, and I chide my callers that they're the best writers in media since then, so they'll call in, and they'll have something, and I used to tease them that I would charge them a germaneness surcharge, like if they called in on something other than what I was talking about,

I'd be like, hey, you know, but, you know, hey, they might see something or they may have been chewing on something and they have great intellects as well. So you let them write the show to a degree as well. That's what we do here. Yeah. What we call it,

we have an I Love Seville power rankings. Oh, I thought Judah said he wrote the show. I wish Judah wrote the show. That would make my job way easier. We feature a ranking every week of 60 of our most participatory viewers and listeners. And as they shape the

show with questions or comments or ideas, they move up and down this power ranking that we have online. I say often on the program, all we want to be is the water cooler of discussion. We don't mind if the discussion is crowdsourced. We just want to be the water cooler. So like the NCAA rankings, will there be a sweet 16 at the end and then we'll have brackets? That's a great idea. Now, how would we determine, you're saying how we

determine who makes it on is through participation that week that's actually a damn good idea i don't know how does the ncaa do it i believe i i envisioned a dartboard carol thorpe who we've dubbed the queen of jack jewish she's the top 10 in the power poll speaking of that power poll she said howard morris wrote for sid uh as well okay howard morris did tom powell who's in that power poll of the toy lift, the founder, says the best is yet to come for Joe Thomas. Flint Engelman says, how about

the American Maverick show on WTON? You're still doing it, Flint. He was another one of those folks who did local content for us on CHV back in the day. Get on your feet, Flint, and come on over. Mr. John Blair from Stanton says, I don't have, or works for Stanton,

I don't have any expertise to offer Mr. Thomas, but I will say this. Did you just say he was the county attorney? He's the city attorney. City attorney. No experience, no expertise at all. He's the city attorney. And I believe, John, correct me if I'm wrong at one time was the acting

city manager for Stanton and was the interim city manager here in Charlottesville oh that's where I recognize the name from the city attorney here in the city of Charlottesville right that's where I remembered the name and when it was musical chairs here John Blair was a steady

vote of guidance or steady guidance, a North Star for Charlottesville. And I say this all the time on this program. I'm a huge John Blair fan if anybody listens to this show. If we're ever fortunate enough to get John Blair to be the city manager in Charlottesville, whoever's on council at the time should drop everything and say, John, you have the job. And that's no shade to Mr. Sam Sanders. I sincerely mean that. He says this to Mr. Thomas. High school football is ten times more important to the Valley than Charlottesville. He is making a very good move if he restores high school football coverage to his station.

Is he going to do the games for us? Could he do play-by-play? John has the talent to do play-by-play. He's also a father of a young man that's going to be a high school football star potentially. I see him on Twitter making catches as a special wide receiver, John's son. Comments are coming in left and right. I will get to them here in a matter of moments. I'm very excited to highlight the business model.

Walk us through sales. Walk us through promotions. Walk us through accounting, payables, receivables, all these key things that are tough for big picture guys like you and me. Well, you know, with apologies to the folks at the McIntyre School, this isn't rocket science or rocket surgery, that we're going to go out to the businesses. I mean, it's similar to what I did in Chester County. So before I came here, I was running a radio station in the suburbs of Philadelphia, which the problem was KYW, which is the big news station in Philadelphia,

covered the area we were broadcasting to. So people who would move out to Downingtown and Westchester and places like that had no reason to change their radio listening. If they listened to KYW in Philadelphia, they were certainly going to listen to it in Downingtown. So we had to go out everywhere and just hang banners in front of everyone saying that, you know, there was a local station and we managed to get a deal with the local newspaper to put a little something in there and the local TV station to say we were there. Because that's going to be the first thing, is letting people know we're there.

Once we start doing that, and I'm hoping that the sponsors as they come on, like Pyramid Paving, will help in that way. Because I've got some creative ideas I don't want to give away because nobody's bought into them yet. But ways to create, I hate to sound, this is such a double point score, like business world. I should have a whiteboard behind me. But I want to create a synergy where the advertisers also can help be the promotional announcements to the station so that as they come on board they also help us reach out to their customers so that their customers say there's a radio station here the key is first

build a news product because the number one reason somebody's going to tune in to a news station... It's the content. Well, no, it's the news. Okay. In 1980, I guess it was 1980, Ms. Rosenberg at Bayside High School had a smartass in her TV studies class who was just geeked at the fact that I could study television and get a grade for it. And first day in class, I remember it vividly,

she stands in front of the classroom and says, Class, what's the most important part of a newscast? and get a grade for it. And first day in class, I remember it vividly. She stands in front of the classroom and says, class, what's the most important part of a newscast? I went, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. And she, yes, Mr. Thomas. And I was sitting right in the front. I was such a nerd. And I said, the weather forecast.

And she got this face. Like she had eaten a rotten lemon like it was sour and rotten okay and she acquiesced to the fact that yes that was an important and probably the most important part of a newscast but she wanted to hear about the journalism

and the investigative reporting but what does the viewer need to know first? Is it going to rain tomorrow? Well, you know, interesting that you bring this up. When I worked at the newspaper at the Daily Progress, I worked under Jerry Ratcliffe. I said in the promo post to Hootie, he does a show on this network, Tuesdays at 10, 15 a.m. I mentioned in the promo post that you were coming on, that you were my boss as well.

Hootie was my boss. When I worked at the newspaper, Jerry Ratcliffe, we used to joke in the sports department, we were the red-headed stepchild of the newsroom of the Daily Progress, the sports writers. The commentary, the columnists, or the news editors, the crime guys, the education guys, they always looked down on us. Oh, they're just writing sports. But when the surveys came in, which sections do you read the most? Overwhelmingly, the reason people read the Daily Progress or subscribe to the Daily Progress was the sports

section. 70% of readers read sports. Number two, you know what number two was? Opinion. Obituaries. Got people check if i'm in there my bad dear friend joyce mallory always you open up just want to see if i have to go home early um but obituaries was two and and for those who are political nerds and the governmental nerds byron whizzer white one of the few heisman Trophy winners who also sat on the Supreme Court, said that he read the sports sections. And this is changing a little bit, to be fair, Jerry. It's very much changing, yeah.

This was 2005, 2006. But Whizzer White at the time said he read the sports sections because it chronicled people's achievements rather than all the other parts of the newspaper. And maybe that's changing a little bit. But the point I was making is, when I was hired at Monticello Media, Dennis Mockler, the great GM that helped save these stations that had been left by the side of the road by Clear Channel. Now running a painting business, I believe. In Charlotte. And a dear friend. He said, well, what would you need to make WCHV successful? And I said, a newsroom.

A news team. And he said, well, what do you mean by that? And I said, well, if you think hiring me is going to be all you need to do, you're fooling yourself. Because people will be tuning in to hear the news especially given that there was another news station in the market i remember the first day i stayed at the english inn and uh i remember this i got up i got up to go to my interview and i got up early uh and i said well let me see what the other radio station sounds like this is 10 this is 10 70 10 70 okay and i put it put the radio on

and I don't know if he's tuned in or not, but the first voice I heard after the commercials was John Peterson. And John Peterson came on and he was doing the local news and I got the honor. I was talking to him just yesterday because he came over and worked for us at

Monticello Media, but I heard him give the local news. And I said to myself out loud, crap, they sound good. I mean, I was hoping against hope that they were like, yeah. I was hoping it was good. And he came on and he sounded like a network newscast. I'm like, oh, no, this is going to be way harder than I thought it was. But I said, so they hired Melissa Neely and Marcello Rolando and all these folks who came in. And then we partnered with CBS 19 and guys like Frankie Jupiter and Carter Johnson and all these folks came in and did turns in our afternoons and helped us, without a lot of budget to begin with, create a newsroom.

And that's going to be our thing first. It may be me and some local guys and then some network guys. Don't judge harshly if we have some network shows. 24 hours is a long time. Not that listening to you and me, gee, I think Joe could talk for 24 hours. I think we both could. But let's vive la difference. But the key is going to be getting a newsroom up and running.

I've already talked to the folks at Blue Ridge Life Magazine, Tommy Stafford and his business there, and hopefully get a news association with some of the local folks. This is why you're going to be successful. But, I mean, we've got to be able to say, you know, Gary Grant, my friend from Gary. He watches the show. This show.

But he was such an integral part of the newsrooms of central Virginia. He's going to advise. And so that's going to be the key. Whatever else we do in between the newscasts, the key is going to be local news from Stanton, from Waynesboro, from Mr. Blair's office. Sorry, John. We may actually cover some stuff that happens in Stanton City Council meetings. Because that's what people are going to want to hear about.

Because you were talking at the onset. At some point, I imagine, I'm just treading water here, folks. He keeps mentioning that he's going to talk about the bag tax and the local taxes. Oh, we'll talk about that. I'm like, when? When? I'm getting tired of myself. No, I'm geek.

And I see the viewers and listeners responding. They want to hear this. I mean, you are, I mean, this is Joe Thomas. And my posts on Facebook have been, here's a couple of the stories I'm thinking about. This is you vulnerable. Because guys like you and I, we love to cover storylines. Guys like you and I, in a lot of ways, we love to talk. We love the byline.

We love to see the lower third with our names on there. I know you well enough to know that you know. You told me one time, Joe Thomas loves some Joe Thomas. I remember when you told me that. There is one guarantee about radio and media people. We are as shallow as the puddle out there on Market Street. One of

the things that we're able to do though is we are able to in some ways not hide behind the story but utilize the story to insulate us in some ways. But what's happening right now with this interview is this is very much about Joe Thomas, the person, Elaine Thomas and Joe, the business people,

and what is the next chapter of their life. And that is vulnerable. And I can tell by your body language. This is vulnerable. I don't know what you mean mr congressman i have no recollection well no i mean i don't there was a point um when i wound up in westchester um i had worked for clear channel in lancaster pennsylvania and you can vet me because I pronounced it correctly. So I was in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, spinning top 40, FM 97.

We were number one in the marketplace from the youngest age measured all the way to the oldest. And they fired me. And they called me and said, Joe, you're fired. I said, why? Because you figure that's the metric by which we're judged,

are the most people listening. We feel like your show leans too much on the older demographics, and we want to get a younger audience. They were, I guess, apparently afraid of another station coming on that was going to super go after the 12-year-olds. And so they said, you talk to the moms too much, Joe. Which is crucially important because they control the household budgets. And the radio in the car, usually.

Right, exactly. So I was left there, and my wife and I sat there, and there were some very bad decisions made then, like I'm going to say this phrase, and I'm not going to get into details, just for men, bad idea. But aside from the, but just for men fiasco, I said, well, let's look around. And there was a talk station in Chester County, which is only about an hour away, kind of like Charlottesville and St sin but they were looking for a program director morning host and i said i don't know dear let's let's see if i can be popular without

eight or nine records every hour and that's what we did is we went and i was like i don't know what we're gonna do because because you're taught in music radio that when the bit or whatever it is you're doing reaches its culmination hit the jingle and get out don't don't belabor the point i couldn't do that now i had to get 15 minutes or 10 minutes i can't before the break yeah i i just had five minutes i don't have anymore and so so you you have to learn you have to kind of get pushed out there and a lot of awkward silences there in chester county um and they were they were actually sad to see the station go when i left um there but you you learn that the story can be told by a lot of different people and and i know you're not theological show but when you let go and let God

it happens you say hey anyone else have a problem with this and let the phones light up because you know if you're smart and you're and you're tapped in and you're empathetic there are people and that's what you have to go with um so I'm not really – I was more nervous about what was going to happen when you quit at Sports Radio 1400 than I am now. Oh, I like your confidence here. Well, because we already have an amazing bunch of folks, starting with Pyramid paving. But there's already folks on this journey who are like, my nervousness is letting them down. My nervousness is not, can I do this? It's that if I do everything I know I can do, will I still let people down? So that's what I'm afraid of more than anything else. But I'm always afraid of that. I was afraid of letting George Reed down and Bonichella Media and Mike Shemento and PJ Stiles.

My heart still goes out because I know what's going on is a lot of folks are working a lot harder than they had to a week ago. And I hate that for them because that's not what I wanted. And, of course, grownups in the room will say, come on, Joe, you can't always get what you want. But I mean, I should highlight this. I mean, and the reason I know this is because you posted this. You have significant, you and Elaine have significant skin in the game here. We're talking a quarter million dollars of skin in the game here. And I'm going to be straightforward here. A quarter million dollars of skin in the game here. And I'm going to be straightforward here.

A quarter million dollars in... Some of that isn't all our money. So that's, again, more of the don't let people down. I totally understand. I won't say what my financial backer says the slogan of our little enterprise is, but it is don't something it up. Yeah. You can say it on here.

Oh, that's right. We're on the air. I mean, I make it on here. That's right. We're on the air. I mean, I make the rules here. There's no FCC here. You know, we make, literally.

It's D-F-I-U. That is our. No, I mean, for the moms that are listening or listening to the show with their kids in the car, I say,

don't duck it up. Quack, quack, quack. Yeah, sure. But that's what we do. Don't screw it up.

You've got a quarter million dollars here. You have significant skin in the game here. I'll throw this to you. Plus, I'm 60. I was going to go there. When I started this business 16 years ago, I was 25. One slight correction, I was a single man at the time with a mortgage, didn't have any kids. The risk profile was um and i'll also throw this to you as well um point in question skin of the game in an industry that has some headwinds i think that's fair anywhere you want to go on that yeah i'll debate the headwinds part because we're radio we yeah is really the only media that hasn't seen significant erosion in its popularity in its usage um and i was asked

and like i mentioned i'm going to michael harrison's talkers conference and last year i was part of a panel that was discussing digital. And all the other folks, including Sean Hannity's producer and Jeff Katz from WRVA, they were talking about using digital to go out. And so I flipped the script and I said, well, let me talk to you a little bit about using digital to come in. To the signal, to radio. To create content. To use things

Wendell Drumheller at the automated office systems. They have a phone system that you could set up. So let's say Jerry Miller is doing a weekly show. Or we'll make it real. Let's say Butch Duke is doing a weekly show. But he records it in advance.

But we want to do call-ins. And Dave Ramsey does this great. So you call in and it says, hey, thanks for calling the Dave Ramsey show. If you have a question for Dave, Rick Edelman used to do that amazingly well. He would actually tell you, just record an MP3 of your question and send it to me and maybe we'll answer it on the show. So there's ways to get callers even if people aren't live. You can hear, hey, I've got a question about this, especially in an expertise show like Home Improvement or Finance.

So there's so much technology that you can use to create radio and create that connection between the listener and the host that wasn't there 17 years ago when I came here. And I think that's why radio, and also to Jeff Katz and all the folks who were talking about the outward side of it, I mean, radio is one of the few mediums that grasps streaming, social media. I remember 1994, Julian Booker of Delmarva Broadcasting came in and said, Guys, we have a website for this rock station. I was on 97.1 The Fox, as Don Geronimo used to call it.

And we're like, Why do we need a website, Pete? And he said, No, this is going to be the thing. And each is going to have an email account. And listeners can email stuff to you too. I'm like, oh my gosh. But radio is that. Is that ability to say, okay, we can use that. For a long time I was simulcasting my morning show on CBS 19. And they, they had a smartphone app in an iPhone that I took to

Cleveland and Philadelphia with me to cover the political conventions. How many radios, but you have to be open to it. You can't, you can't sit there and say, no, I come in here and I rip all my newswire off the associated press. And I, and this is what I do. And I, and I read Rush's book and I was like Rush Rush Limbaugh the the grand poobah of what we do and the spoken word. Was so open to everything. He had he would talk about you know getting iPhone he had media coming in from everywhere yeah so you have to have it coming in and going out and that's why if you look at the percentage I mean we we don't have the same amount we did 15 years ago or 10 years ago, but we've lost a lot less.

Than broadcast television. Oh, without question. Than newspapers. Yes. Yeah. And there are, though, I mean, there are starting to be who's probably sitting by themselves watching this podcast, watching this stream. It's that individual connection that becomes so hard to break. The smartphone app, and again, people say, well, you're going to say, Monticello Media was brilliant to say, hey, do you want a smartphone app. And again, people say, well, you're going to say,

Monticello Media was brilliant to say, hey, do you want a smartphone app? When I asked, I said, hey, do you think we can pay a little extra to Premier Radio Network so we can stream Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh? And they said, well, why would you do that? I said, because I would like the stream to sound exactly like the on-air.

And they said, okay. And it wasn't a lot of money, but it was additional money. Sure. And the web stream numbers went crazy because you could stream Rush Limbaugh. I had people listening in Chicago because they're like, I can't stream Rush anywhere else. But it's that idea that you can be wherever they are. Now that we have smartphone apps and Bluetooth and things like that, it's just a transistor radio. It's just what we've been doing since the 50s.

You just have to make sure the content is there. And that's back to what you were saying about the syndicated talk shows, the syndicated music shows. I have Spotify. I was listening to Spotify. Sometimes I just feel like listening to Spotify. But I want to hear the DJ in between the records. And there's piles of research that says the most successful music radio shows are the ones where there are personalities in between the records saying hey we're going to be here doing this or hey don't forget this is going on because we're still sitting by ourselves even if we're listening to music and you want human connection yes that's what it is when when i was a burger king when i was transitioning you know there's

a double point score when i was transitioning from the now infamous Burger King period of my life to radio, I was working weekends at a radio station, and I didn't want to have to manage a Burger King because that's a lot of thinking and a lot of planning and everything else. So a friend of mine said, well, I'll tell you what, Joe, we will hire you as our night porter. So I would come in at closing time, take apart all the broilers and drain the French fry vats and mop all the floors and clean

all the bathrooms. It was easy because it didn't require me to think and plan. I just did. I just did. But I brought my little boom box in and this is 1987. So I had my boom box and i had cassettes i had all my cassettes and i put the first one in and about 20 minutes into cleaning the dining room area it's like i just i just want to listen to something else so i put the local rock station on because you know in case you can't tell that's what i listen to um and and i. And I realized then that the most important thing was knowing that there was another human being alive while I was sitting in this shopping center with no one else around. And I used to say this to Marcello. Did you ever meet Marcello? I don't think so.

He does theater. He's a director. He's still in town. He's still around. But he was working for us because he had worked with Melissa, our news director. I met Melissa. Yeah. And Marcello would do the overnight news for me.

And he's like, but Joe. He's very theatrical. He used to work in soap operas. Why am I? I said, because there's somebody there who's. Counting on you. Because he's on third shift or he's doing security or whatever, and he's more alone than the guy who's sitting in traffic on Rio Road.

He needs to know that there's another human being on the planet alive. And that's so powerful. And as you go back to the lineup lineup that's why the local news is important because you need to know somebody else is out there seeing the same stuff you are a little bit and I'm sorry that was fantastic

what's the line from I used to keep this in the studio I wonder if I can still get it back is that line from the Incredibles where Mr. Incredible and Frozone are in the car and he's like, he's like, doctor, whatever his name is, has me dead to rights. He's about to kill me. And then he starts monologuing. It is the funniest part of the Incredibles because every superhero fan knows that at some point, Mr. Freeze is going to monologue while Batman's getting out

of the ties. I love your monologues, Joe. And here I am on my monologues. I love your monologues. My monologues. I love it. I mean, and look at this. We're 75 minutes in without taking a break. Or a breath. 1.45 p.m.

And I still want to go a little bit longer here because I want to talk topic matter that's localized to Charlottesville and Central Virginia here. But who else is, I mean, I'm shallow. Remember, you said I was shallow. Who else is clicking in? You want me to let you know who's giving you some props right I'm shallow. Remember, you said I was shallow. Who else is clicking in? You want me to let you know who's giving you some props right now? I'll relay it live on air. Vanessa Parkhill says she's loving what she's hearing right now.

Carolyn Edwards Lee giving you some props right now. You're getting this comment from Denise V. Stewart. I need to call Pyramid Paving, and I can't wait for the return and the app to launch Joe Thomas. Thomas Taylor.

Joe Thomas is the man. Bellamy Brown sharing the show. Rose LeMaster. Marlene Jones. John Saltz says, please post a link. If you could post a link in the promo

post, Judah, for this show when the show is done, that would be greatly appreciated. You had Jesse Rutherford watching the program. In fact, Supervisor Rutherford is still watching the show. Kevin Yancey, Ray Cadell, Travis Hathworth in southwestern

Virginia, the Queen of Keswick, Olivia Branch on the program. I love you, Olivia. Olivia, how can you not love Olivia? Totally agree with that. Woody Fincham, thank you for watching the program. Neil, still alive. We love Neil Williamson.

Seats available, Neil. Seats are available. Seats available. And they are. Neil's fantastic at what he does. So anyway, all right. That right there feeds the ego a little bit. Yeah, that sounds charged up. The man wakes up at three in the morning. Is it three?

I've slept until 4.30 the last couple of days. Yeah, but generally when you're on air, is it three on Monday? 2.30. 2.30, yeah. We were doing that. 2.30. All right, I want to talk some storylines here. So you and I are similar in ideologies, I believe, are right in the same neighborhood. Let me ask you this. I get this question asked of me a lot. They say, Jerry, you're a conservative. You're a Republican.

And you know how I respond. I said, no, I'm of the party of common sense. Which one is that? The party of common sense. I don't think it's either of them. I am center of the aisle on so much stuff. I have the common sense to realize that if city council in Charlottesville chooses to raise the meals tax, the lodging tax, the real estate tax rate, personal property tax. The business real estate property tax rate, storefronts.

Trust me, I know. Except for the one that they bought for the Charlottesville Housing and Redevelopment Authority. Exactly. All at the same time that our real estate assessments have spiked through the roof. At the same time, our credit card interest rates are through the roof because the Fed's keeping rates high. At the same time, groceries are out of control. At the same time, gas is out of control. And let's not forget, and I hear this a lot in the commentary that they say, groceries are 40% more expensive. I said, no, we're buying 40% less groceries because most of us haven't seen a raise. so we're living on 40% less.

At the same time, wages aren't keeping up with cost of living. The concept of raising taxes in this city we call Charlottesville that's less than 50,000 people, and having the narrative from those on the dais almost shove down our throat that this is not a regressive tactic, this incremental tax revenue, a budget that has now ballooned to over $250 million a year, the mindset of these councilors to say, we're doing this to help the people in need in the city is so ass backwards.

Well, at some point, and actually one of the chapters in my unauthorized autobiography is, of course I'll trust you in the great society. I know. Because it's one of those things that they tell you, they tell you at 10 o'clock over that second martini. But the 60 years since Lyndon Johnson said

we were going to be a society of abundance and liberty instead of freedom and prosperity. I added the last bit. What have we achieved for it? Where have we gotten? We actually have as a percentage of population four times as many people living below the poverty level. I think it's time to stop and rethink this plan because what you've created, and I'm going to take the other angle on this, what you've created is a wealth generating class that works harder and harder at ways to keep it from being part of the community. Dist when henry ford started making cars a lot of people benefited from that because they were working for this job that paid them enough to actually buy one of these cars we we've created a society where we'll offshore the

manufacturing of something because it saves us some money, and then the government says, well, we have to tax the people who are left trying to buy this stuff anyway so that we can send you more money. Dave Norris, who I know... Comes on the show all the time. Last time I was actually in a social setting was Jerry Miller and Dave Norris and Elliot Harding.

Okay. It was the four of us. Oh, this was at Freenauts, right? Right. Yeah. Jerry Miller, Joe Thomas. You have a fantastic memory, Joe. Dave Norris, Jerry Miller, and Joe Thomas walk into a bar.

Is it better than walking to a bar instead of walking into a church? Yeah, well, whatever. Depends on the perspective. What is this, the cat skills? They all know the punchline better than I do. But Dave used to come on the show, and ironically, I was thinking about this, because when Monday came, it was April 1st,

and there was no Joe Thomas in the morning show. And a lot of people said, what is this, an April Fool's Day gag? And the very last time I actually engaged in an April Fool's Day gag on the air, I threatened, I said I was quitting to join Dave Norris in a political campaign. Dave and I were going to run for city council under the banner, We'll Work for Jobs. ourselves this is 2010 jerry this is not you know yesterday even then dave could see the trajectory of the city creating more and more people that needed more and more subsidy to pay the electric bill to play and you're getting fewer and fewer people paying into the kitty that you were using to pay those subsidies and we continue to trundle along. And it's not because nobody cares. It's that silly binary argument that if you point out that some climate change policy isn't

going to actually clean up the climate, you're like, oh, well, you're just for polluters. No, it's not that. I've said this in the past. The one thing conservatives need to pay attention to is poverty more. Because if we truly believe in free market capitalism, look at what they've done in El Salvador and Argentina with free markets opening up and people going to work. My wife was watching James May's Our Man in India, and he's in Mumbai. I mean, it's just right out of the set of Slumdog Millionaire. But these people who are making leather jackets and making tons of money making these things in these shacks,

because there's always an entrepreneurial spirit. Unleash that in Charlottesville. Encourage that in Charlottesville. Let it happen. Years ago, Tom Perriello was our congressman, and he came on the show. He goes, we do a weekly spot with our congressman. And Tom, to his credit, was the beginning of that. Tom Perriello came on, and he was telling me about,

or telling the listeners about, this subsidy program he was coming in to create batteries for this new era of vehicles. See if any of this is sounding predictive. But half the grant was going to go to the University of Virginia to research new battery technology, and the other half was going to go to Lynchburg to make the new battery technology and I said to him I said Jerry can't can't we make the batteries here in Charlottesville if we're going to innovate he goes well there really wasn't any enthusiasm for that part I know I mean you know that's the thing the thing especially in a world where manufacturing isn't smokestacks anymore it's 3D printing

it's high tech, it's computers you get up late I know you sleep in but habitual users of the show have heard me say that the three biggest factories that are laying fallow well one isn't fallow anymore and and one is partially used but the three biggest job killing factory jobs in

this area that left conagra foods in crozet x and the other textile manufacturing in charlottesville, and Hosung Tires in Scottsville. And I said, okay, so if somebody was making horseshoes, I could say, all right, well, the industry changed. But we still wear sweatshirts, feed our animals, and use tires. Why are we not still making these things here? What have we done to drive all of these jobs away? I mean, people keep talking to me about what's going to happen in downtown Scottsville. Well, it's not going to happen until people are working there again.

And that's what you were talking about, local. I'll piggyback on that. Right. It's the Hershey factory. It's the North Grumman coming back to Waynesboro. Because they went through that when the DuPont flooring left. $250 million new facility from Northrop Grumman in Waynesboro. I'll piggyback on what you just said. He highlights Conagra and Corozet, Ix Textiles, right, I mean, half a mile from where we're sitting right now, and the Tire Plant in Scottsville. The fourth industry that is about to be jettisoned from this market, if we're not careful, is food and beverage and the tens of thousands they employ. If we continue

to make the meals tax rate so entirely expensive, we're now about to be over 12% of our bill when we go out to dining. We are going to eradicate, I mean, absolutely destroy, vaporize all the people and the jobs that work in this industry. And the folks that work in this industry are folks that are often on the financial margin. And if council and local government says we're raising the taxes to help those in need, that's not the case. They're raising the taxes and hurting those that are in need because they're taking jobs away from the community. What if you own a restaurant or a food and beverage business are you going to do

if you don't have enough customers coming in? First thing you're going to do is figure out a way to trim fat off the payroll. And how you're going to trim fat off the payroll is automation, window service, a pickup window, eliminating front of the house staff, or doing more with less. You have to. And my friend Caleb Taylor from the Virginia Institute for Public Policy just posted a meme, I guess, or a graphic that pointed this out. He said that all these philosophers about economics are wrong.

It's not about the cost of the labor that drives the cost of the product. The cost, the price of a product is driven by what somebody is willing to pay for it. And so you can say aspirationally, would it be great that every, here it comes again, Burger King employee made made 25 an hour but are you willing to pay 10 for a whopper and that's where the more than that now well but i'm saying but that's what's happening is then people are like well i'm not doing that and then you go to a sit-down restaurant and it's 25 for a hamburger if you're lucky. And not to play heartstrings, but this was probably the most drastically hammered industry during COVID. Regardless of your position on lockdowns, the food and beverage industry, hotels and everything else, they were devastated and still are.

And then you're saying, well, we're going to hit you harder. Not only food and beverage, Main Street. And anyone who watches this program, Ray Caddell says, two guys I listen to a lot. Good to hear you guys together. You guys sound absolutely fantastic. We need a trumpet player, Ray. I mean, there's too many awkward pauses. We need Doc Severinsen. The the government forced lockdown a travesty that ravaged main street and small businesses owned

by us our neighbors the folks that we call friends and family and then to come back with taxes on top of it there it is yeah there it is to come back on taxes on top is the quintessential proverbial death by a thousand cuts and if we don't look if we're not careful in charles for albemarle county we're going to become and perhaps we're already there a community of halves that has very few amenities and the amenities i'm highlighting here are the coffee shops the restaurants the small businesses that have made the region so fantastic to live on, that have put us on these rankings of the best quality of life, the best places to live in the area. It's because of the restaurants, the music venues,

the things to do outside. And if we don't have the service personnel to keep these businesses alive, what are we left with? Just a bunch of rich folk living here. Well, but there's more than that. See, previous life, I lived in State College, Pennsylvania, which if you've never been there, is very much like Charlottesville. It's in the middle of a state, very big state, not a lot around it, and a big university. Vanessa Parkhill would like to hear the story. She's a Penn State graduate. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Well, then Vanessa knows about Technology Row, which is, and I don't know who's there now, but when we left State College, it was Murata, Raytheon, a whole bunch of high-tech companies had set up offices in Center County, Pennsylvania, just off of Penn State's campus. But what they did was they hired these young, enthusiastic,

bright-eyed college engineering students to come work for them. They were getting them relatively inexpensively because they were right out of school. But the county benefited because now they needed to buy a house or rent a house and buy a car and engage in community so they were living there they were staying there the point was that they invested as a community in the idea of keeping these smart people when they graduated from leaving. And it seems like 17 years now, tell me if I haven't seen this pattern, we pat them on the behind after final exercises and tell them, we'll see you when you're 60. No, we'll see you when you're 62 and you're ready to retire. Exactly. And why aren't we, it goes back to that Tom Perriello story. Sure, let's come up with the technology to make batteries better and make them here.

25 years for me in this community, went to UVA. So many of my fraternity brothers and classmates at UVA literally looked at me and said, what the hell are you doing staying in Charlottesville? What the hell are you doing staying in Charlottesville? And now those same people that said, what the hell are you doing in Charlottesville, are figuring out ways to staying in Charlottesville? And now those same people that said, what the hell are you doing in Charlottesville are figuring out ways to move to Charlottesville because the places they went to, they don't have the quality of life of Seville.

And it boggles my mind here, but it's why we live here because the quality of life is amazing and the people are amazing. But there needs to be blue collar jobs and that's what you're seeing happening. Again, not to flog the WTON coming soon to 1240 a.m., 101.1 FM and 98.9 FM in Harrisonburg. But you see that area, which has colleges.

Mary Washington, I mean, it's got colleges, but it said we need to have work. Across all socioeconomic price status points. Exactly. Wage points. Give the socioeconomic price status points. Exactly. Wage points. Give the man a QP doll. Yeah. My boy here, Joe Thomas, is spreading the gospel right here. I want, I want, we'll close on this.

We're 92 minutes straight without a commercial break. And the viewers and listeners are loving what they're hearing right now. If you love Joe Thomas, guys, support him. Beth Marcus watching the program right now. Larry Beatho, welcome to the show. Thank you kindly for watching. TV Station watching us right now on the show. If you want to give Joe some props, put it in the feed. I'll relay it live on air.

Mr. Rutherford still on the feed right now. Thank you kindly for watching. We love Jesse. Jesse, I've got to get you on the program. Jesse, our mutual friend Haywood hasn't called me in a while because I'm not on the air anymore. I'll throw this to you here, and I highlight this a lot on the show. Amazon is going to invest $11 billion in Louisa.

$11 billion. One of my friends that's a supervisor over in Louisa said, you can expect somewhere between 800 to 1,200 director or indirect jobs tied to this. The data science school, funded by a friend of the program, Jeffrey Woodruff, $180 million data science school, is going to create a few thousand direct or indirect jobs. The University of Virginia has already said on the record that Paul Manning's $100 million donation to the biotech school on Fontaine your old stopping grounds is going to create four five six thousand direct and indirect jobs northrop grumman's investing a couple hundred million dollars into waynesboro the average salary of the folks working over there is 94 000 they're probably going to be living in western almo somewhere and commuting there with that kind of average salary for one person of 94 or fishersville or fishersville read neil will neil williamson has a great column neil i'm going to forget the name so i'm not going

to try but it was only just a couple of weeks ago neil has all this broken down he's watching how albemarle county has to get its head out of its arse when it comes to housing and and the allowances and the and the the $100,000, he was telling me, $100,000 before a shovel even goes into a ground to build a house. Is Leslie Nelson the answer to Albemarle's false dilemma in housing storage? I think is the column, the name to that column. Oh, yeah, maybe. On the free enterprise forum.

My point is this, viewers and listeners. In Charlottesville and Albemarle and in central Virginia, you're looking at somewhere back of the napkin between 6,000 and 10,000 new jobs, high-paying jobs, coming to Charlottesville and Albemarle, maybe some of the other counties. And let me interject because a lot of people are like, we can't afford more people in here. That doesn't necessarily mean 10,000 are moving to charlottesville why can't 10 000 people who are struggling to get along through ridge schuyler's network to work program get into those jobs from hardy drive to get away from the shootings to get away from the crime you know those those are the people who should be right now tapping into the network to work program so that they're ready for those jobs when they come about. Peacocks, if you may, were here to support the little guy, should government be insisting that these incremental job

sources figure out ways to hire within the community? Right now, government is saying this, we want to help the little guy, we're going to tax the people. What's happening instead is these additional taxes just creating gentrification, causing the character in the community of Charlottesville and Alamo

to change altogether. Why don't we incentivize a way to hire within the community from government? That's how you help. Neil and I have talked about this a while. It really is you have to have the workforce ready. We used to talk about

pad-ready jobs, but also there has to be workforce-ready jobs. If you know Northrop Grumman's getting ready to hire, sit down with John Northrop or Karen Grumman. I'm kidding. I don't know if there are any. But sit down with their director and say, okay, what do you need and how can we help? And sit down with KTAC and the Network to Work program at Piedmont Virginia Community College and sit down and say, let's create the training program so that the high school kids that are in Albemarle or Monticello or Louisa

are ready to go for these jobs. Because they're there. I remember when Amazon was thinking about a headquarters and my old hometown of Queens, New York, their congressional representative said, we don't want those kind of jobs here. And I'm thinking. You're scratching your head saying, why is this person talking right now? That's what you're saying, right? Yeah.

Who voted for her? Who voted for this? So Logan Wells Claylow, great show, gentlemen. She's absolutely enjoying it right now. People are giving props to pyramid painting on the show. It shows you how good Joe Thomas is at his job right here. Wait till I have a broadcast signal under me. My point is this.

The 6,000 to 10,000 jobs, incremental jobs that are going to be created, Dave Norris watching the program, the 6,000 to 10,000 jobs, we love Dave Norris, are going to be six-figure high-dollar jobs with folks moving to the area as opposed to folks being hired from within the area, which is going to further gentrify the area, which is further going to raise the cost of living in the area. I don't say that has to be. I mean, yeah. Has that been the experience? Sure. That has been the experience with a lot of these. The data science and the biotech in particular are going to be outside hires. They've pretty much gone on the record in saying that. Northrop Grumman, these $94,000 on average jobs with his headquarter in Waynesboro,

you're going to need some security clearance for that. I mean, it's not like these folks are going to be able to go to like the PVCC. But that's the defeatism that eats us sometimes, is we look around and say, well, this person's not going to be able to qualify. And that's the weird thing. That's how I get Dave Norris and Joe Plotania listening to my radio show and Robert Tracy.

Politically, you would think they're different. But the point is, our innate humanity, we all have the gifts. And a of folks you know joe varoxa i know he's been on the program the chaplain oh yeah his jail and prison ministry he gets in rolls up his sleeves and sits down with guys who haven't just failed in high school but now are in jail and are facing long terms in jail. And how are you going to pull your plane out of that nosedive? And so to just say they're going to have to hire people from outside, I don't believe that. I don't believe that for a second.

I think Ridge Schuyler could get people into the training. He's got the Moving Lives Forward, Liza Borges, the folks at Carter Myers Automotive who have been helping partner with him, United Way, the Envision program at United Way. These are all people who should be right now saying, okay, guys, we got all these people moving here with jobs. Let's get going. And getting into Charlottesville High School and getting into k-tech and pvcc and saying come on you know this is this is life-changing stuff let's get online now for it

rather than sitting there saying gee i'm wondering and i'm not saying united ways doing this but instead of the waiting for the elected officials to say well maybe five more cents on the bag tax will help um you know and and i like, Brian Pinkston's been on the show with me, I guess, you know, this week at the city council, he came as close as we've had since David Slutsky to belittling the tax increase. You know, the way Dave Slutsky

did with the, well, it's just a pizza and a beer. When it's 10 cents to somebody who only has $10, it's a killer. It's $10, it's a killer. It's a killer. It's a killer. I don't understand how this is not common sense here.

When we have, and I hold the counselors accountable here, the former Mayor Lloyd Snook, his office is 15 feet from where this studio is located. I see Lloyd Snook every day. I call him a friend. Vice Mayor Pinkston comes on the show. Mayor Wade's come on our show here. Natalie Oshren, I have yet to have a conversation with. Michael Payne comes on the program. Natalie Oshren, I find incredibly befuddling. The counselor in Charlottesville. Here's why I find her befuddling, and I'll throw it to you. Okay. Okay. She is against what we call, what she calls car culture.

She calls it car culture. Okay. She has this phrase, let's call it, she calls it road diet. The road diet, it's let's narrow the roads to create safety on the roads. If they're more narrow,

people will be more cautious because they don't feel like they have the shoulder room to drive fast. She says this the other day on the roads. If they're more narrow, people will be more cautious because they don't feel like they have the shoulder room to drive fast. She says this the other day on the dais. I want to not tax. I don't want to prioritize the meals tax so much because it's going to hurt folks that are on the financial margin. However, I still want to raise the budget. Let's put the tax on the personal property. And let's take the personal property from $4.20 per hundred to $6, a $1.80 raise. And then I'm sitting here thinking this. This is Natalie Oshren, who works at Pippin Hill in North Garden in Alamaro County. You drive the furthest of anyone on council. You live in the city.

You drive the furthest of anyone on council. You live in the city. You drive the furthest of anyone on council. 20 minutes to your job. 20 minutes back home. Maybe 25. You are selling $250,000 weddings for people that are driving to the venue where you're commissioned on. And the entire concept of Pippin Hill

is selling glasses and bottles of wine to people that drive to Pippin Hill and hear your poo-pooing car culture. It is hypocrisy at its finest. It pisses me off. Can you tell I'm a little... It pisses me off. Jerry, you really need to come out of your shell.

It pisses me off. I had a phrase, and I will again, on the radio show, which was multifaceted. I would call people multifaceted because after a while I realized two-faced isn't sufficient. It's more than that. Multifaceted is kinder. It sounds kinder until I'm saying, well, no, you have more than just two faces.

Until you follow it up with that. Follow it up. But there is a long culture, and we talked about the Great Society 60 years ago. Also, 60 years ago, a fellow gave a speech in which he said that if you took all the money that the federal government had set aside for poverty programs and divided it up by the number of people living in poverty and just sent them that money, that, along with their salaries that they were earning, would lift them out of poverty. And I did, as he suggested, the arithmetic just last year.

And the math still works out. So what you're actually doing with all these taxes is a bureaucrat employment program. And whether you call it the swamp or the permanent government or the industrial complex or whatever you want whatever the name is for it there are a lot of people whose job it is to tell you whether or not you qualify for something or not and we were just about the whole thing with the with the who's going to get these jobs that's where all this money is going and i'm not saying they're bad

people there are earnest people who want to help people and they go to work in some poverty program but what they don't realize is their their program is actually creating the poverty and and when you realize that maybe then we can have that awakening of uh you know you may be good-hearted and you're working at the charlottesville housing and redevelopment authority because you want people to have good housing and you go home frustrated at night because you just don't seem to be getting there but it's because the process has never worked. Like when the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority chooses to buy a $2.8 million building on the downtown mall. And then spend a million dollars renovating it. And then spend a

million dollars renovating it, spending $3.8 million in totality, as opposed to taking that $3.8 million and actually building housing for people or when the university of virginia chooses to spend 25 million dollars a year in diversity equity and inclusion salaries for administrators as opposed to taking 25 million dollars and endowing scholarships and creating scholarships at the tune of 25 million divided by 50 000 500 yearly scholarships for people that are of different skin color than Joe and I. Yep. Explain it to me, Joe. Make it make sense.

It's style over substance. It's the dog and pony show. Right. Well, it's signing that big, to go back to your sports world, it's signing the big free agent who is five years past his prime but just to sell some more tickets on opening day. Judah likes to call it virtue signaling. Oh, it's absolutely virtue signaling.

A quintessential example of virtue signaling is when a vote happens on the dais for a ceasefire in Gaza. Well, that really changed things. I understand Benjamin Netanyahu said, oh, crap. Charlottesville's against us now. I'm having a lot of fun with Joe Thomas here. I sincerely mean this. I love talking

with this guy. 3-2 the vote in round one goes against a ceasefire resolution in Gaza. Snook, Payne, and Wade show common sense saying, we make $18,000 a year in Charlottesville. We're in Charlottesville.

What does a resolution from Charlottesville have to do with the Middle East? And then 200 people in the auditorium in front of the dais vocalize, strategize, and organize. They schoolyard bully five people in a dais, basically like the big seventh grader in the playground by the slides and the monkey bars, saying, give me your Welch's fruit snacks or I'll beat you up. That's what these 200 people in the dais said in the auditorium. And then guess what happens? Snoke, who's a friend of the program, abstains.

Pinkston changes his vote. And now we have Charlottesville, Virginia saying what we're doing here is going to keep warfare from happening in Gaza. Jerry, just understand that at least they didn't make Rafa a sister city. I'm sorry, was that? I thought that they said the show was over. Hold it. It makes sense, Joe. But it is. Judah's right. It's virtue signaling. It is relevant to nothing, and it does nothing to help the kid that's maybe going to get caught in the crossfire while Chief Katchus is trying to chase down some drug gang who's settling their beefs on the streets of Charlottesville with illegal firearms. And so, yeah, it's a thing, and people are upset. It breaks my heart to watch the Jewish community come out and say, yeah, we need to help. Believe me, take two hours and watch Chaplin if you want to just have a feeling of what's going on here,

because you will see that it happened in World War II or just before World War II as well. Our Jewish community doesn't feel safe walking around grounds. Razorblade Bert Ellis in a Board of Visitors meeting tries to speak on the record to Rector Robert Hardy with Jim Ryan sitting right next to him in an early March meeting of the board of visitors and says, I want to talk about the safety of Jewish students on grounds. Robert Hardy says that's a close meeting session. We're not going to have it when the cameras are on or the microphones on. So obvious. Razorblade Ellis says, literally a businessman from Atlanta, we nickname him Razorblade Ellis because he drove across state lines with a razor

blade to chop off a sign from the lawn, the front door, that he did not like. Mr. Ellis says, has the cojones to say, no, Rector Hardy, I want to talk about the safety of Jewish students right now. Hardy says, I'm going to reprimand you, wags the finger at him, and Mr. Hardy wins. But there's also lawsuits about the university and its behavior towards the Jewish community undergoing, which probably is why Mr. Hardy wanted to go into closed session so that there wasn't, you know, there's court cases. Exposure. Exposure for it.

Yeah, make it make sense, Joe. It's because we want to be seen. It's a little bit this. It's a little bit of this. It's what was the old expression about Washington, D.C.? It's Hollywood for ugly people. I think we saw that on display during January 6th when it was like daytime television for not so great looking people. It's I'm doing something when I have nothing to do.

And that's really what we were talking about with the development of this bureaucracy and these bureaucracies full of six-figure employees. Never mind the six-figure employee that's going to work at Grumman or Amazon. It's the six-figure employee that works as the sub-director of the vice directorate in the environmental protection agency who just makes sure that the form that some farmer filled out to swear that his farm doesn't impede any navigable waterways rubber stamps the form and sends it on or sits there and says gee i, I wonder if this guy could have a license to broadcast his radio station. It's this, and on the radio, I'm going to get you in all kinds

of trouble with this, but it all started after the Civil War. It all started with the premise that the centralized federal government had to rein in the out-of-control states and and was there one instance after the civil war that started no but the the tumors started growing then and and each year goes by somebody says well i want this program because you let the other guy's program go and congressional representatives and executive branch officers will say, he's got us, we let the other program go, so now we've got to let your program go. And every year it's another one, and every year it's another one. And they do nothing. They create nothing.

They impede. This is why I was mentioning 60 years of the Great Society. Lyndon Johnson didn't invent this. This was just programs that he saw that, I mean, apocryphally, he said, you know, if we pass this, the peeps are going to vote for us for the next 200 years. They only made it 60 because I've seen the polling data and the black community isn't voting for them anymore because they realized they were lying to them. Because I'm not the white supremacist. It's these people in government who say, here, stay in the black community.

They empowered the redlining. They've come up with new creative ways through zoning. Another great Neil Williamson piece about this passive redlining that we allow. You talk about gentrification to go on. That's what's happened to this country. The joy that I get every morning when I get up is that all the parts of it that were good are still there. We've just piled all this other stuff on top of it. And I believe wholeheartedly we can get a lot of that off if we can get past the virtue signaling of Judah or the fear mongering

of you're going to throw grandma off of her Medicare if you, you know, because we have grown so used to these government programs. But you were going to, and I'm kind of annoyed at you, more than I'm annoyed at you for leaving 1400 back 17 years ago. For those that are just tuning in, he was my boss at one time. You, sir, I waggle my finger at you, were going to run for Scottsville Supervisory. I was. And Philip Hamilton, I think Philip's been on the show.

One of the supervisors, Philip Hamilton has. Philip Hamilton, in his race against Creed Eads, look it up, carried the Scottsville Magisterial District of Albemarle County. Whole thing, all the way from Glenmore on down to Scottsville, Valley Street to Richmond Road. I live in Glenmore. You could have won that. I could have won that. Because there were plenty of Republicans coming out. If Philip Hamilton won that district. There's three voting blocks, Mill Creek, Scottsville and Glenmore. The political

science would suggest if I carry my neighborhood, which I thought I could, and Scottsville, which leans to my ideology and don't get hammered at Mill Creek, I'd be on the dais right now for supervisors. But if Philip Hamilton, who is still learning the trade, could have carried Scottsville, and I love Philip dearly. A bit polarizing, Mr. Hamilton. Right. But somebody. Watching the program. And I'm picking on Jerry unfairly.

But somebody running as a conservative voice on the Albemarle Board of Supervisors. I would characterize my voice the voice of common sense. Fine. Yeah, a centered voice. Donna Price has been commenting on a lot of my posts. It's not like Donna isn't out there. She watches the show. You could have been, or somebody of your ilk could have been that supervisory voice saying, hang on a second here.

Are we really helping anyone? Think about this often, Joe. I've told this story before on the show. If it was not for our youngest boy who is 16 months old, the first eight months of his life, did not sleep a single night. You have four kids? Three. Three kids. Eight months of his life, did not sleep a single night. And you know this. You have four kids? Three. Three kids.

Eight months of no sleep. My wife has four kids. Eight months of no sleep prevented that. And I'm not saying it would never happen again. But at that time, it was not good for the family union. Family union. Unit. What's the old expression?

Decisions are made by the people who show up. That's true. And in this book I'm writing I just finished the chapter where I'm laying down the 50% of the 30% that this is the tyranny of the minority that we're living under. The

most publicized local election in 10 years, easy to say, Meg Bryce. The school board election, Alison Spillman against Dr. Meg Bryce. Right. National news coverage, Sean Hannity talking about it.

I would say the most talked about school board race, maybe in American history. Do we want to go that far? 50% voter turnout. The answer is not saying, well, Joe Allison beat Meg by 20 points. Hammered her. But what about the other 50% of the voters?

See, everyone says, you know, Album of All is, is i'm sorry that's okay that doesn't have to be it's just a mag branding uh screw that branding do i have one that says pyramid painting paving everyone says charlottesville is blue albemarle is blue virgin Virginia is blue. I won't believe that. And I don't care. I get treated worse by the Republican Party than I do the Democratic Party. Mark Warner is nicer to me than a lot of the Senate candidates that want to run against Tim Kaine. I got kicked out of hotels by the RPV during the 2016 convention. The Democrats love me. I don't know, whatever that means gravitas wise. But I'm not saying this about a political party. I am saying

that if we allow 15% of our population to determine who's passing higher taxes who's regulating more business then we can't be surprised when they virtue signal because the math works out it's it's you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you can. But when you get that number down to 12%, it becomes a lot easier to fool 12% of the people into thinking, yeah, I'm going to vote for this person because they're for higher wages. I'm for higher wages too. What are you making that earns you higher wages? Those are the things that I think are a lot less about politics and the chapter I just finished I was talking about the property rights election back in 2012 so 2012 comes and we have a constitutional amendment on the ballot to codify protections that the Supreme Court said you better

fix this in their Kelo decision Clarence Thomas's dissent said you better fix this in their Kelo decision. Clarence Thomas's dissent said you better fix this. So we finally, and we don't just fix it with a law, we fix it with a constitutional amendment. Mark Obenshain of the Valley and Rob Bell put together this constitutional amendment. It gets all the way, now it's at the ballot box. November of 2012. Remember what else was going on in November of 2012? There was a little presidential election going on. I was volunteering for the people who were supporting the Property Rights Constitutional Amendment. There was another table manned by a political party that President Obama was a member of

that was actively campaigning against the property rights constitutional amendment yet in the city of charlottesville blue charlottesville 65 percent of the residents voted for the constitutional amendment despite um and i i didn't break out the numbers president obama carried virginia 5147 and the constitutional amendment carried Virginia 7525. Core principles of liberty, freedom, property ownership, individuality, privacy, free speech, these are all things, and this is part of the reason RFK Jr. has got, what, anywhere between 11 to 20 percent in some polls because people are starting to feel like these two political parties are like, you know, the NWO versus Hulkamania in wrestling. It's like they're yelling at each other, but they're really just dancing around the ring with

each other and then going out for dinner afterwards. us do our thing stop pretending you're the answer lloyd you know anyone who holds elected office stop peeing on our legs and telling us it's raining it's not working 60 years the last poll that came out earlier this week joe biden is only getting support from 60% of the black community. That was 95% three years ago. 30% of the black community has said, hold it. What's going on here? 51% of the Latin American, the Latino community, supports other people besides Joe Biden. I won't say the name unless I might burst into flames. Trump.

People are realizing that, as Reagan said all those years ago, I'm from the government and I'm here to help is the problem. It's not that Sam Sanders isn't a good guy or Jesse Rutherford or Chris Fairchild. He posted a question on Facebook about the Fluvanna leadership program. Chris Fairchild, supervisor of Fluvanna counties. Come on the program. Huge Chris Fairchild fan right here, me. He said, should we be giving $1,000 to the Fluvanna Leadership Fund? I imagine it's some sort of

group that tries to teach young Fluvanians leadership. And I said, no. That's what the Chamber of Commerce is for. That's what the business leaders of the area, if they want to empower their workforce, the Charlottesville regional chamber of commerce has their leadership charlottesville program um you know the virginia association of broadcasters has a leadership program you don't need the government to do these things because he said otherwise how do we tell the little league we don't we can't give them a thousand dollars or the kiwanis club or the Ruritans. That's the rabbit hole. And instead of saying,

no, we shouldn't give it to the Fluvanna Leadership Fund, they say, all right, why don't we raise taxes and give it to the Little League and the Rotarians? And that's always the answer, is we'll just go find the money somewhere else. Now I am. I'm monologuing again. I'm sorry. This is what this is what happens a week without a radio show. And you say, come talk. You're not you're not modeling. You're not. We're listening and we're agreeing. This is this is a perfect way to close the program. Two hours and 22 minutes to you by two hours and two minutes without stopping here on the program. Two hours and 22 minutes. Brought to you by Pyramid Paving. Two hours and two minutes without stopping here

on the program with the award-winning broadcaster Joe Thomas. WTON in Waynesboro, Stanton. We'll be tuning in. We're basically being told by government in a group of five people in Charlottesville, a group of six people in Alabama. No, no, no. It's worse than that. So this came out. Senator Mike Lee said that there's a group in Washington called The Firm, with apologies to Mr. Grisham. They are messers Jeffries, Johnson, Schumer, and McConnell. They write all the legislation. Add President Biden. That means not just here in Charlottesville. The nation is being governed by five people. Think about that.

And think about this. When folks that are in positions of power tell us, we're going to raise your taxes. They shouldn't be in power first. Basically, they're saying to us, we know how to spend your money better than you know how to spend your money. And when they say to us, we're going to raise the taxes to help you in the end, you need to hold them accountable. And I guess that's where you're going to get it is in the end. I guess how we hold them accountable is in the voting booth. Unfortunately, that's not happening around here. But it's also about running. It's not letting them choose who the candidates are and just say, here's the red candidate, here's the blue. It's the Kellen Squire. Yeah. The problem is, and perhaps it's a much worse problem than we want to truly realize. And it's not just an unwillingness to run

or it's not just a forgetfulness of voting on election day. It's, I think what's happened, it's apathy. It's apathy of losing so much that it's not even disinterest, but it's like a state of mind where like we have no chance. And that's way worse than forgetfulness even disinterest, but it's like a state of mind where like we have no chance.

And that's way worse than forgetfulness or disinterest. It's literally telling yourself, I have no reason to do this because I have no chance. It's the ultimate form of societal gaslighting. Because like in an abusive relationship, one of the spouses comes home and tells the other, you're never going to make anything without me. You need me. And I'm keeping this gender neutral because it does happen both sides. But that's the ultimate gaslit relationship we're in with the government.

We married them, and now they're telling us we can't amount to anything if we didn't have them. And I'm not saying I want anarchy, but they don't need to be telling us we can't survive without them. They can go back to, oh, I don't know, making sure that nobody's downloading my emails by hacking into my computer. How about that? How about you go back to making sure that, I won't even say make the trains run on time, because I don't necessarily think that that's their job either. Make sure the roads are paved. Make sure the police officers have body armor and are on the street. I just want government to be boring and in the background and consistent and predictable.

Thank you. That's all I want. Yeah. That's why you should have been the Scottsville Super Bowl. That's literally all I want. Joe Thomas, we'll close on this. Take a couple of minutes for the many folks watching. Another couple of minutes? Oh, my God.

For the many that are watching here, Christina Nichols-Sandridge says, shout out to the Virginia Association Broadcasters Leadership Program, which Joe is a graduate of. First ever graduating class, 2011. You've got a lot of folks watching. Georgia Gilmer says she absolutely loves this show. I've enjoyed it very much as well. Highlight how we can hear you, listen to you, connect with you, the timeline of when that could happen.

So we're seven days into what could be at minimum a 45 day window waiting for FCC approval I was hoping maybe we could do a business jargon local marketing agreement where we could run the place before we own the place that may not happen so we're going to start web streaming on Monday morning just for a couple hours looks like what Jerry's doing. Yeah, you'll have to see me because I have cameras. But we'll do YouTube, Rumble. I've got to go home. I've got new technology waiting for me. It arrived from FedEx literally as I was walking out the door to come here.

I'm going to get that all set up so that we can be together again so I don't have to come here and eat up two and a half hours of Jerry's show. Boy, no, go ahead. We've enjoyed it. We've enjoyed it. And then, you know, Mac's going to be on there. We'll invite some guests to come on and talk about, you know, the week that was because there's been a lot of stuff happening.

So go to my Facebook page. It's Seville Joe Thomas. And there will be announcements as to where the links are for the YouTube and Rumble. And then somewhere 39 to, you know, gosh, 60 days from now,

39 to 53 days from now, we'll get the approval to transfer the license and we'll start broadcasting. And it'll be 101.1 FM in Albemarle County, in Nelson, and down through Scottsville, Western, just Western. Who knows? I'm still knocking on doors.

I haven't started a letter-writing campaign yet about a Charlottesville signal, but I understand that they're very effective. And then it's 1240 in stanton and that's a great signal too because actually i was listening to 101.1 one day and i popped over to the am in midpoint crozet ivy and was still getting 12 40 so it's a pretty good signal um gets all the way to the West Virginia line, and then 98.9 in Harrisonburg. So we appreciate it. I hate giving out my email. I chose it, and I laugh. I tell everyone, MojoRadio1075 at gmail.com if you want to reach out, or just go to that Facebook page. You can, you know, send me a link or whatever you like to do there. It's such a great feeling to know that you're all ready to kind of continue on this Chaucerian journey with us.

And again, Fighting Colors in Ruckersville, the shirt, but also logo design and nose art, and not like piercings, but like the old B-52s. Can I mention pyramid paving? Have I mentioned pyramid paving? You absolutely can. Pyramid paving. You've got the viewers and listeners mentioning pyramid paving as well.

Joe Thomas, this has been a pleasure. Two hours and ten minutes. Is that a record? Have we set a record? We actually did an eight-hour telethon straight where for eight hours, I was sitting in your chair. I did not get out of that chair.

We raised $97,000 for a non-profit. It was the land trust. And I did not get out of that chair for eight hours straight. Is that what I smelled? Yeah. I have essential oils if you need. Thank you, Joe.

We cannot wait to hear and see Joe Thomas, guys, back on air. In a media desert that we call Central Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley, Joe Thomas is a beam of purity and truth and honesty and accountability and at times fearlessness. And that is a mindset that is lacking in our region. We need voices from both sides of the aisle to hold everyone accountable and to offer perspective that we all can learn from. You don't have to agree with us, but having the voice out there is how we all grow as people with our mindsets. So for Joe Thomas and Judah Wickauer, my name is Jerry Miller. Oh, I got to say it, Jerry. Yes. So long and thanks for all the fish.

Absolutely. I knew you were going to get that in there. I knew that you was going to get that in there. Thank you kindly for joining us on a program that you can find anywhere on social media and wherever you get your podcasting content. So long, everybody. Joe, that was awesome. That was absolutely awesome. He's going to tell us when to stop.