The Josh Innes Show - More WIP Drama Part 3

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Let's wrap up this Howard interview and talk about the current state of radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Medcan. Live well for life. Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. I can't think of everything I said, but I made the point that it's just, it's not the same, the business is not the same. radio business is kind of going like this. And that's a fact. Like back in the day, let's give you a little inside baseball here.

Radio stations when they were bought and sold, even up into the 1980s, were sold for millions of dollars. I'm trying to think of a good example. So a guy named Scott Shannon. Again, this is very inside baseball, but now you're in my wheelhouse. So dig it, sucker.

So back in the 80s, late 80s, Westwood won, I believe, was the kind. company purchased a radio station in LA that became pirate radio. Westwood One buys K-I-Q-Q-K-I-K-I-K-K-S, or K-I-QS, buys Pirate Radio Los Angeles. I want to say that when they bought it, they bought it for like $50 million. Westwood One, I believe, is who purchased that frequency, and they put pirate radio on it, K-K-L-Z. So they bought it for 40 million. dollars okay uh actually take that back take that back so it was pirate radio they purchased the station and ended up selling it in 1993 um okay so they bought it for 56 million dollars

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Just look at Pirate Radio, Los Angeles on YouTube. I do that a lot because I'm a loser. But they paid $56 million for this. They sold it in 1993 for $40 million. So just over the course of four years, the value of that frequency went down $16 million. Now when you look at radio stations being sold, a lot of them are being purchased. Like big time sticks. Think of a legendary station, the loop, legendary rock station in Chicago, okay? The loop was sold to, I believe, I think they were sold to religious broadcasters. Let's see, how much did the loop in Chicago sell for?

Let's see. Let's see. I don't want to bill. Let's see the radio station, the loop. Let's see here. The legendary Chicago rock station. was sold to Educational Media Foundation for 21.5 million. I guarantee you, if they would have sold that frequency,

20, 30 years ago, it would have been double to triple that. So the value is down on a lot of these. That's not false. But it is a fascinating business when you think about it, just about the value of certain things. Television news is kind of going like this too. And when you break it down, there's not as many people, the audience numbers aren't the same.

I don't care what a share is. A share is baloney. Like if I take 40% of 50 cents, that's a big share. But if I take 40% of 100 cents, that's not as big a share. So what's happening... It's not wrong there either. In the business, and sports talk radio is obviously a part of it, is the audiences aren't as big.

But here's where I would combat that. Yeah, I agree with him that the radio audiences, the itself, not as, I don't think there's as many people consuming WIP, like actual ears, consuming WIP as it was 15, 20 years ago. But 15, 20 years ago, we didn't have podcasts, right? And the other fact, not only are people listening to other podcasts, think about the number of people who are consuming the content of WIP via podcast. And that's the big factor that you have to weigh in that a lot of old school guys. guys don't do while they're also telling you the podcasts of the future because they're podcasting. So podcasts are the media form of the future.

Sure. Cool. But WIP is in the podcast business too. That's why they have all these separate podcasts. When I was on the 790 in Houston, when I was on 790, our ratings were never great. Other than the one time that media beef happened at the Super Bowl. So media beef happens at the Super Bowl Our ratings go up

Like we're going from like one shares to like four shares It's pretty remarkable We didn't harness it because the radio station Didn't want to do anything with it But it was pretty big deal Like we had spiked we had gone up And our ratings were never great there Like shares because you're never going to have big shares

On a 5,000 watt AM station in Houston It's just not going to happen right The share wise you're not going to happen And then one day we decided Like I never thought to look at what our podcast downloads were Just never crossed my mind, never really cared about that all that much. Because this is 2016, 2017. Astros go to the World Series in 2017.

I never actually looked at the podcast data. And then one day we did for some reason. I forgot why. And we were getting, over the course of a 12-month span on that show, we had somewhere in the neighborhood, I want to say, of over 2 million downloads over the course of a year. Now, of course, you're posting multiple hours. I mean, like, it's not, like, you can fluff those numbers. You can fudge those numbers, and there's a lot of shit you can do with ratings data that's, you know, or particularly podcast data, which you can really make full of shit, right?

Like, you can say, look, we had two million downloads. Well, yeah, you're also, you know, posting three segments a day. So let's really, how many people are truly listening to it, right? So if you post, you know, four segments a day, five days a week, I mean, like, that's what I do here. That's how you fudge these numbers and get the numbers. numbers up for the ad sales. It's just what you do. It's a very kind of, it's a little, it's a little seedy the way it works. So it's not truly true. But our download numbers were over 2 million or somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 million. May have been like 1.5. I forgot

exactly where it was. It was 10 years ago. But they were really good. I was kind of blown away by that. Like, holy shit. You'd get caught up and looking at the numbers and go, well, these are very good numbers. But then you'd look at the pod and you go, holy shit. Because Michael Barry was getting like five million downloads here and that's Michael Barry and we're over here at like two on this little dinky AM station you know but you know how it is I mean it was something you know so the share is an irrelevant high smaller yeah yeah the pie smaller so you know they can give you all that it's a shame it's a shame so the revenues can't be as good uh that's why that's what angelo said And Angela went like this because some of the hosts fired back at you two and said this, that the station has never sounded better.

And they have the best talent that they've ever had there. And, hey, John Marks said, you guys. Well, that was his son saying that, by the way. And this is where Howard should step in and say the three greatest talents to ever walk through the door at WIP. Me, Angelo, and Josh Innes, who is a god. Those are just angry old dudes. I don't want to get mad at John Marks. because I like John.

He just tried to get into the fray. But I like John. Okay. And when he was at the station, I talked to him about some things trying to help him stay there. You know, and I was hoping he'd stay there. I was still a part of that station. I was hoping he'd stay there. And he just for multiple reasons, he decided he wanted to leave.

But here's what Angelo said about you guys. Those guys can say and crow all they want. How's their revenue doing? why do you think they're getting rid of so many people i mean how's the revenue doing they've got to find a way to kind of there's still hundreds of millions of dollar in debt uh even though i think they're at a chapter 11 bankruptcy but that's because they were bought well that's because 51% of the company was bought and that's when david field got fired uh so even the owner of the stage that's what's amazing yeah uh-huh i know he was the CEO

David Field, the owner of the company, lost his job. Yeah, right. And I actually liked the guy. Hi, I'm Andy. Hello, Andy. Well, I think we get the basic gist of all this. I don't, like, he's not wrong, but I think two things can be true. And I'm not going to sit here and shill and stump for radio.

It's, you know, I'm hoping that I take off doing this, you know, the show here. And, you know, I can start kind of refocusing on a podcast and, you know, doing video shit and more and kind of go back to what I was doing with the podcast before. Right now, it's not really my focus. I do this because I try to keep you guys engaged because I love you guys and I appreciate you. But two things can be true. One thing that can be true is that radio revenue and ratings and everything is not as big as it used to be. That is a fact. 20 years ago.

Just go up 20 years. When I really started getting into this, like where I was like in it was 20 years ago, right? My first job that I was getting paid. paid to do in radio outside of doing like the minor league baseball shit and all that. I was doing, you know, board hopping 20 years ago. I was 19. This was, so this was right after Katrina, which happened. So it was actually 21 years ago.

Shit. It was 21 years ago. So I was 18, 19 years old, however old I was. And Katrina happened. My dad says, go up to the station and see if they need any help. But I'm like, all right, I'll go. Now, mind you, Katrina didn't impact us a ton in Baton Rouge. You know, it might have been some power outages or something.

but it was really a non-factor for us in Baton Rouge. Just a big picture. We had much bigger ones the next year. There was a hurricane Gustav, I think, was the hurricane, which much greater impact us in Baton Rouge. I know there's what in the next year was like four years later because this was an 05 that happened, I think, in 08 or 09, 08. But anyway, so, you know, he said, go up to the radio station and see if they need your help. I said, all right, fine, I'll do that. Now, mind you, I had gone to the radio station plenty of times and I'd been on with my dad.

I think at the time I was doing a like a talk show type of deal where I was like you know on some other guys talk show like I'd been on the radio before but I didn't have a job on the air so I go up to the radio station and my boss Matt Kennedy who wasn't my boss he was the program director of the radio station though it's Gustav

they need some help I'm like whatever you need from me I'm in and he said sure go start calling around trying to find out about school closures and shit like that I'm like all right I can do that so I just go through the roll Rolla Decks, start calling people, hey, are your school's closed tomorrow? Hey, West Baton Rouge Parish. Are you guys, what's the school situation, all that?

And then eventually, they just started going to me in the newsroom. We had a little newsroom. And I said, let's go live to Josh Ennis, who has the latest with school closures. Like, rock on. And I was on the air. And then I got a part-time job. And I made so little doing that. My hourly rate was like $6.50 or something like that.

Like, it was bullshit money. Like, it did not have any impact on my life at all. And I only worked a handful of hours a week technically, right? So I was only working, you know, like a couple of weekends. I'd work every weekend running the board for high school football shows and that kind of shit. Hey, it's the Swack Jaguar Journal show and that kind of shit. And I would work like eight hours a week and it was like six bucks. And after taxes, I'm like, I'm not even going to put this in because this is stupid.

No, like I made no money doing it. But that's where it kind of started for me. And that was 21 years ago. And 21 years ago, when I got into it, there were no podcasts. There was barely any streaming. Like, I remember the first time I went up to the station. I had the Internet up there, and I'd start looking for radio stations. And that's kind of early in the days when you could listen to games on the Internet or radio stations.

Like, you had very little of this. I'm sure they were streaming radio stations in 2005. But, like, it wasn't anything like it is now. You know, it's 20 years ago, 20 years ago when I got into this. And then look how things changed in a matter of five years. Because then I got to Houston. Every show is podcast. Every show streams.

You know, so like in a matter of 20 years, shit really changed. And so it's not fair to say, well, these radio stations, these guys don't make the revenue and everything we used to. It's accurate. You're not wrong. But the game changed. Like, reality is that anybody, whether you were at WFAN, whether you were at WIP, whether you're in Houston, Dallas, it doesn't matter. In your era, if your era did not include podcasting or thousands of cable channels and Twitter and everything else, podcast, blogs, all that, you were fortunate because you came up in an era where you were the only game in town.

It's kind of like ESPN, like people talk about how great all the old school sports center anchors were. Were the old school sports center anchors really all that good? Or were people just, you know, like, this is all there is? Because I'll be honest, when I watch SportsCenter now, and I know people have their differing opinions on it now because it's, you know, oh, it's SportsCenter and it's woke and ESPN sucks now, and that's fine. You're probably right. But watch the actual Sports Center and tell me what those guys on Sports Center, when they're just doing highlights, what they are doing that is any different than what Stuart Scott was doing on television. I don't know what they're doing behind the scenes. It's probably a lot easier to get information now. It's not probably it is.

A lot easier to get the information and everything now. but what like Stuart Scott Stuart Scott's the most talented fucking guy I've ever seen What is he really doing that's any different than Matt Barry Or any of these guys that are on there now They get on TV they say some kind of hacky shit That is a catchphrase The only difference is there are thousands of people now

Saying hacky catchphrases So the ones from ESPN don't stick Because nobody really needs ESPN anymore Back in 1995 When Stuart Scott is saying Oh it's as cool as the other side of the pillow Let's say that you were in Paducah Kentucky You know who you were hearing saying

cool as the other side of the pillow, no one other than Stuart Scott. Now, fast forward to now, when some guys doing SportsCenter and he's, you know, doing some hacky line, well, there's a thousand guys in your city, even if it's Paduca, Kentucky, that are doing hacky shit. So when people say that the media guys of that era, they caught a break because, you know, they, yeah, it's all about timing, and timing's an important factor. Chris Berman. Is Chris Berman the most talented broadcaster ever? I don't know.

but Chris Berman was there in 1979 when ESPN launched, and he's ridden that wave for 40 fucking years, 50 years. So timing does matter. Timing's a huge factor in everything. So the younger people in these radio wars are not wrong when they say that these guys caught a break or they were kind of lucky. And that's not wrong. But in the same vein, if you're like on there saying, look at the shares that we have. You have a share of a much smaller audience because the audience is divided up.

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