The Josh Innes Show - Detroit Radio Show Update

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

As previously discussed, this is going to be a massive undertaking. This is a situation I've legitimately never been in before. But, it's fun. Can we dig out of this hole? I've started listening to motivational books on tape to get my mind right. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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So let me give you an update on what's going on here in Detroit. How many days have I been here now? I guess we got here in July, early July. I started July 20-somethingth, July 24th, maybe when I started. So I've been here not quite two months on the air. That's six weeks, seven weeks. Let me give you an update on everything that's going on here. I'll do that after these messages.

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Stop wondering. Start winning. Winners, find Fabulous for less. Every time we talk about the radio situation here in Detroit, I do let you know that this is a massive undertaking, and this is far more difficult than I had anticipated. First off, you start here. The radio world is so different than it was 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Like when I got to Houston, the radio world was different than it is now. considerably different. And, you know, you got a lot of radio stations that are just, you know, airing voice track people. Like I got myself back into the voice track world. Like on Sunday night from seven to midnight, I'll be on a rock station in Utah, for instance, making a couple

bucks doing that. So, you know, it is what it is. But this is, without a doubt, the most difficult undertaking, outside of working at like 97-5 in Houston for that one year. And even that had a built-in audience and people would call and people would interact and you had people on social media and they knew who I was from the other stations like even that even with their shitty ratings people knew who they were and people listened to the station and knew like if you're flipping around for sports in Houston hey there's 790 there's 610 but there's also 97 5 I don't know that a lot of people in Detroit even know this radio station exists like this is a massive undertaking and I don't say that to insult anybody involved

I'm glad I took the job. If we make this thing successful, who knows? If this thing becomes a success, I feel pretty confident that this could become the most important thing I've ever done and it could open a lot of doors. It would have been one thing to have numbers at KChi 95, which, by the way, they have huge numbers again now. They were just having a downstretch. And when I got there, they were having a downstretch.

The downstretch lasted a while. And now I'm gone. I don't believe their numbers shot through the roof because I'm gone. It's just one of those things that worked out for them. And they just play a lot more music and whatever. But that wasn't a huge undertaking. Like that was a station that had been around 50-something years and had a huge audience. The second I opened up a mic, the phone started ringing.

Like, it just was that kind of place. Nashville was a sleeping giant, right? The only classic rock station in town, and there are only two rock stations in Nashville. One is a little dinky alt rock station and one is the rock, 1059, The Rock, and Nashville. Okay. And they're having huge success right now. So much so, in fact, well, I'm a little bit pissed off because they, speaking of voice tracking, which is, hey, I could sit here. I could sit in this studio I'm in right now and I could do a full five-hour on-air shift in Nashville and it'd take me five minutes. And it'd be fine and it would sound like I'm there. I asked my old boss if they'd let me do anything like that. Hey, can I do something overnight? Can I do something five in the afternoon on a Sunday? Whatever. They're like, nope, we can't let you do it. And I'm guessing that somebody above him just told him to not put me on the air because they're still off about the way things ended in Nashville when I just left, but I had an opportunity for what I thought was a dream job and I took it. If you're going to keep punishing me for that fine. But like that station was a sleeping giant, right? That station was like, hey, if you put

the right people in place, it can be successful. And oh, by the way, I went in there and we were number one, I think three of the four ratings periods that I was there. Number one. It wasn't number one when I got there, but it was number one. And I got some pretty sizable bonus checks because of that. So that was a sleeping giant. This station is not a sleep. sleeping giant this station is like in the tank that's just reality right like there you want to talk about an absurd universe like say you're in philadelphia let's start in houston how many rock stations are competing for for air in houston you've got the eagle who does classic rock and it's really a true blue classic rock that's a terrible fucking radio station it is boring the content is boring the jocks all

look old and boring the website looks old and boring it is a shitty station designed for 70-year-old people. It's fucking Steve Miller band, take the money and run type of shit. It is a tried and true, true blue, classic rock snooze fest. And then you've got the buzz. Those are the two rock stations in Houston. If you are in Philadelphia, you have WMMR and you've got WMGK, that one is a classic rock, one is a current, you know, I guess you would call it active rock, mainstream rock, whatever. You have that. And then you also have the Alt station, which is there, but it is what it is. It's not like they have a big morning show or anything on there. So it's not like a real competitor. It's there. It takes a little bit from each

day. Whatever. You've got three stations technically, but two that have big morning shows. And by the way, they're owned by the same company. So who gives a shit? It's not a real competition. You know what you have in Detroit? Get out of Penn. You have WRIF, which is one of the most legendary rock stations on the planet with the number one morning show in town, certainly one of the top two or three morning shows in town. It is not a very good morning show, but it is there. And that radio station is more than 50 years old, and they play mainstream rock, right? If you want to call it active rock, you can, but it's more so mainstream rock. They'll play some currents, but also a lot of ACDC shit like that, pearl jams and all those. Okay, you've got WRIF. You've got WCSX.

WCSX is a classic rock radio station that has been around for like 40-something years. It is a stodgy old tired classic rock station with a shitty old morning show and it is a very boring station it is not doing particularly well but it is there you have an alt station at 98.7 so i think it's just called alt i don't even know the name of it they don't do huge things but it is the only just straight up alt station here in detroit so you've got that then they have just taken a station in windsor Canada that used to be a huge alt station back in the 90s and early 2000s. Then they flipped it to country and now it's back playing alt and you can hear that station in Detroit so that is there. Then there is us, Detroit's Wheels, WLLZ, and we play a more aggressive form of classic rock if

you want to call it that. But like we're going deeper. We're moving like the line of where the line starts for classic rock. We ain't playing a ton of 70s. We play a good number of 80s, but our wheelhouse is 1990s rock and we are testing music every day to see like how far down the line we can go with and how close to the 2000s we can get can we get into the 2000s what can we are we are at a very active and aggressive if you want to call it classic rock we don't call ourselves a classic rock we are a fucking rock station we don't play any current rock but we are a rock station that is five five competitive rock stations in one city Houston, you've got two.

If you want to hear rock music, you want to hear Steve Miller, you turn on the fucking Eagle. You want to hear a vinged seven-fold or whatever, a green day. You turn on the buzz. That's it. If you want to hear Breakfast with the Beatles in Philly, you turn on MGK. You want to hear God smack, you turn on MMR. That's it. Here, it is a nightmare with all these stations eating each other.

Most markets are not going to have more than two, maybe three rock stations. Like Chicago's got an alt station. They've got a station like ours, and they've got a classic rock. That's Chicago. The third largest city in the country has three rock stations. And they're not really competing with each other because Alt is such a different universe than classic rock. And the classic rock in Chicago is like an old school, older sounding classic rock.

So they're not even really competing. we've got like five stations all kind of doing the same shit eating each other it is a fucking it is a tough putt man it is a tough universe right now and we're just trying to find anywhere that we can get in so this is a like i don't know what the ratings were for my first full month on the year i can't imagine they were all that good and i don't blame myself for that i don't blame anybody for that i don't think people know we exist so we have to get people to know we exist. We have to let listeners know that not only are we here, but we're playing music that's different than our competitors, although a lot of it's the same, and that we have

a different sounding morning show. It is a tough task, especially in an era where they don't give you money to promote anything. I mean, it's tough. I'm not ripping anybody. I'm very glad to have the job, and I really love the people I work for. I'm just shooting you straight. This is just straight up, God's honest truth. This is the situation we have that we are dealing with in Detroit. It is preposterous that any city would have five rock stations competing. Like look at St. Louis. You have Kashi 95 and you have

the point. The point is like, you know, a station that's going to play Green Day and play stained and play Sether and that type of shit. And then you've got the Kishi that's going to play basically everything else. They're both owned by the same company and nobody else is in the rock game in St. Louis. That is two

rock stations in St. Louis. A city that's considerably smaller market size-wise than Detroit. I think Detroit, Detroit It's 13. St. Louis is like 20, 21. But if you look at the, if you look at the attendance, what's the word I'm looking for, the population. I mean, there's a well over a million more people in Detroit than there are in St. Louis. St. Louis has two rock stations. Detroit has five technically. It is an undertaking. It is a tough, tough putt right now. So I just like to give you these updates. It is a tough situation right now. And I don't even think they expect to go in and be number one. They just want to get into the game. Like right now, we're not even really in the game.

And we're just trying to get ourselves into the world. We want to be part of the game. We don't necessarily think or believe that we're going to end up number one. That would be truly remarkable. If I somehow got to number one, if I got into the top five with this show in Morning Drive, they should put me on in 20 different cities because I'm a miracle worker. I work for good people. I work for smart people.

I'm glad to have the job. This is not me being critical of one. person associated with what I'm doing. This is me just telling you the situation. It is a toughie. I've been listening to motivational books in the car on the way to work. That's what I've taken to. I'm looking for anything to give me a belief that this thing's going to become something

super successful. I'm pulling out all the stops. I stopped listening to my podcasts about 1960s Hollywood to flip out. Here's what I've done. So I got Audible and I just started searching for motivational books, but by people I find interesting. So the first one I've got is Dion Sanders book And you can shit on Dion all you want

But Dion when you listen to him speak Like I don't want to read Dion's book I wanted to hear Dion read Dion's book And Dion fucking kills it Like I'm listening to this and I'm like I'm ready to run through a fucking wall Let's go win this shit Coach Prime Like I'm into it

Like you could say the guy's full of shit And whatever I'm sure there's some elements of that But everybody's full of shit to some degree Who do you know that's 100% authentic? Nobody. We're all full of shit in some way. It's 2025. You say the wrong thing. One, you fart wrong and you're canceled, right? Everybody's got to be full of shit to some degree. But I'm listening to Coach Prime get me motivated every morning and every way. It's like a nine hour listen. I'm like two hours, about an hour into it.

And I'm like, this is great shit. I'm enjoying this. Thank you for uplifting me, Coach Prime. Then I've got some other books in the queue ready to go. Like, I'm pulling out all the fucking stops because I want to win this. But when you, like, this is the first time I've ever been in a place where you can't just open up phone lines and people will call just for the fucking sake of calling. Now, if you give them, you know, a prize, they'll call. But, like, topic-wise, you are in a tough way when you're trying to get people to call this radio station on topics. Because they're not used to it. So, I am really taking time. That's why, like, I used to kill myself over these bad ratings.

But in this situation, like, I know how dire the inherited situation actually is. Like, I know how bleak the outlook has been. So I'm not even beating myself up over it right now. I know I've got time. I've got a three-year deal here. I would fully anticipate being here for the full three years. Hopefully for three more after that and three more after that, because I fucking love this Detroit.

I think it's a good town. I like the people. I like the vibe. But as it stands right now, this is a, I'm not even mad at myself. How can I be mad at myself? Like, I was talking to my boss and he's like, yeah, you know, we're like a number 15 or whatever. I'm like, what do you want me to do about it? I mean, it wasn't like it was that much better when I got here.

It wasn't. So what am I going to do? Like, it's on me to build it, yes. And I'm looking forward to that challenge. It's fun. It's a great fucking time. But I'm not mad at myself that we're not number five right now. It's not like I inherited this amazing situation.

They know that. We all know that. But I just wanted to give you guys an update on that. Go follow the WLLZ socials. Listen to the podcast. It's available. And I appreciate you guys. Be good.