The Josh Innes Show - One Decision Changes Multiple Lives

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Today I should receive my last check from KSHE 95. That door is now closed. Fun fact: My old job is currently posted. Perhaps I should apply...at least for the goof. Anywho, I'm fascinated by how a decision made by one person can completely alter the lives of multiple people. I am going to share the story of how I actually got to St. Louis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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All right, friends. What's going on? Welcome in. Hello. It is about 9.50 on this here Wednesday, a snow-covered Wednesday in St. Louis, Missouri. And fortunately, it's not too terrible. I should be able to get out somewhere, but it's cold as shit. It's like 5 degrees.

Feels like it's negative something. It sucks. And then to top it off last night, I somehow burnt a rack of ribs on a smoker, which you would think would be impossible, but I tried to do a hot and fast method on my ribs last night, which I normally don't do. I usually put them in there at like 250, so you can almost guarantee yourself to not burn these things. I jacked it up to 325 and just wasn't paying attention, and these things were charred. So that was a disappointment last night. Maybe I'll go buy a new rack of ribs and do it again tonight because I don't have much going on in my life.

Today at about 5 o'clock will be the final time I get a check from KC95. My severance will be over. And to top things off, which is fascinating, I mentioned that they fired the guy that replaced me. Now, it's a different situation because this guy had been there for 30-something years and had moved around from day part to day part, and they moved him into middays whenever they hired me to do afternoons. Well, he was doing middays. they hired me to do afternoons. Well, he was doing middays.

They had a chick doing afternoons. And then the gal, basically, the way I came into this job, like my life completely took a horrible turn, all because some guy allegedly who was on this big morning show here, some guy who was on, let me tell you about how things really, this is, like, it's funny how one little thing alters your life, right? It really is amazing. I'm just going to get these commercials out of the way so I can tell you the story.

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and it's hosted by a guy named Scott Rizzuto, who's a nice guy. He never did anything to me. I thought he was a very nice guy. He's got a nice show there that's a huge ratings success in St. Louis. It's the biggest morning show in St. Louis. It's a solid show. Before that, he was on a show called Woody and Rizzuto. And Woody, if anybody knows,

Woody is the guy that now does iHeartRadio's alt morning shows. So I think he was on in Philly for a while, on the alt station in Philly. I don't know if he still is. I think he's on in Dallas on the Eagle. His big station is in LA, 98.7 in LA, where he's the morning guy. And he's their big I heart alt morning show guy well he was in St. Louis left St. Louis show ends up being just risotto and now for the last decade something it's been this gigantic morning show and there was a guy on this show that was like his best buddy it was like the number two on the show the story goes and who knows what's true and what's not. The story goes that the guy was like asking chick listeners to send naked pictures through the station's Instagram

or something. And that he was doing creepy shit. Again, I don't know all the details about it. I don't really care to know all the details about it, but long story short, he's asking for nudes allegedly again, to send pictures, to win tickets. nudes allegedly again to send pictures to win tickets that was kind of or something to win some sort of prize something like that that was the story and I've never met the guy so I don't know if he's a good guy bad guy whatever I have nothing bad to say about him I don't know so that guy ends up getting fired over that and what ends up happening is it starts a chain reaction. What is the chain reaction? The chain reaction is they need to find someone to replace his spot on that show.

It's in the same building. So they got the big morning show. That radio station is called The Point. That is a sister station of KC-95. KC-95 debates whether or not, or the company Hubbard is debating whether or not they're going to take the girl that does afternoons. Learn is her name. She was doing afternoons on Casey. She had been there like 10 years, whatever younger gal compared to everybody else on classic rock and learn was kind of their choice to move over there to fill that spot. They needed someone. They thought the show now needed a girl in there

to a woman's voice in there to kind of go along with the boys and make it less kind of locker room bro thing, whatever. And they thought this would work, right? So they decide that they're probably going to move her over there. That is when I get a Facebook message from one of these headhunter guys on a Friday. Now, I want you to understand the situation. This is a Friday. iHeart has been asking me to sign my new contract, which I fully

intended to sign. It was a new two-year deal to stay in Nashville. But the way contracts work in the radio world is essentially they have an exclusive right to negotiate with you until there's like two weeks left on your deal or something like that. So I couldn't talk to anybody even if I wanted to. Well, that Friday, as it worked out, was like the Friday of the weekend I could finally talk to people. But I hadn't heard anything from anybody, so I'm assuming I'm going to sign it. Now, I hem-hawed around a little bit for a couple of weeks, months, whatever. My agent was kind of finding little details to look at and try to get changed because I was hoping that somebody, preferably in a talk radio format or sports radio, would reach out to me because I wanted to be back in sports radio. I like long form talk. That's

what I do. But I had a hunch that that wasn't going to happen so as it stood it was like all right Josh we're probably going to sign this deal today get it back to him and we're done I'm on the air it's like eight o'clock in the morning on a Friday get a message from one of these guys and it says hey I heard about a job that's open and the people are interested in you if you're happy with doing what you're doing you can stay whatever but what you're doing, you can stay, whatever. But if you're curious, reach out. So I reach out. Agent gets involved and I find out that they're going to be looking for

a person more than likely to work at KC95 in St. Louis because they're going to move their afternoon person over to this morning show. And the second I heard that, I thought, I've got to have this job. I must have this job. So I start talking with them. And they're like, listen, we think you're a great morning guy. And we could see you doing mornings.

But we just don't have that right now. We already have a thing. But the good news is, in two years you never know like I mean in you know two years who knows and I was like no I don't want to do that like I want to go there like I don't want to run the risk of this being a situation where you miss out on this huge opportunity so I told them that I would fly there and meet them and I would do afternoons and to their credit I'll give them credit for this they were like fuck it we want to get this guy here let's give afternoons a shot and within like a day they got that deal done then I had to call my boss in Nashville and they those fucking my

PD didn't hate me but the people above my PD hated me and some of them still do because they thought that I was like trying to scheme or something which I truly was not it fell into my lap I viewed it as an opportunity and and I thought this is a great company, heritage brand, go do the job. You have to. Your dad always wanted to work there, go take the job. You love St. Louis, you love the Cardinals. So it was just a perfect situation. And for a while, it was a solid situation. But as things happen, I think what really happened is they had a huge year financially and had money. And they're like, well, let's go spend it.

And then things really dried up financially in the market. And they just started having to fire people and start letting people go. And some big money afternoon dude doing a morning show in the afternoon that wasn't getting numbers. Now, to be fair, the whole radio station isn't getting numbers. It's not getting numbers right now. It's doing very poorly, in fact. When they hired me, they said, run off these old people and get the young people, but they didn't really do anything to better that.

So point being in all of this, the station isn't doing particularly well. They just fired the guy that replaced me, and now they have posted that same job, which I'm going to guess they're just going to hire some slappy to go in and talk up records, and that's fine, but they've got bigger issues than me now maybe they've scapegoated me and maybe they thought getting rid of me would get them goodwill and all their old people would be thrilled that I got whacked and it would help their numbers it hasn't their numbers aren't good I know this because I talk to people who have access to the numbers and I know that the radio station is not doing well at all in the numbers they need.

So look, I'm not trying to shit on anybody, but it's a story about how one person's decision, one dumb thing someone does completely alter somebody else's life. My life, well, multiple people's lives got altered. So the gal that was doing Afternoon, who I think is a really good job, I think she's got a pleasant sound. I think she's doing great on this morning show, in fact. I think she fits in very well there. I think she's done great. Who knows what her future would have been had this guy not gotten fired? Because let's say that all the same things happen. They're very happy about the way the world is going, but then there's a big drop off in revenue. They may have had to fire somebody like her, but now she moves over to the morning show there. When the morning show is untouchable, they will not fire anybody on that show. It is a cash cow. It makes a ton of money. She's safe now. I'm not saying she would have gotten whacked anywhere that she would have deserved to have been whacked. What I'm saying is if that guy doesn't allegedly ask listeners for titty pics

or whatever the fuck he was doing on the station Instagram or whatever, if he doesn't do that, he still has that job. They never bring the gal over from afternoons to do mornings on that show. That's never opening up the afternoon slot for me to be hired to do it and then subsequently get fired. So again, multiple people's lives are impacted. This chick's going to have a job for life when in reality she probably wouldn't have, you know, because there's a very short shelf life and there's very little need for actual disc jockeys to kind of show you what I mean by that. They had a midday disc jockey. It was the guy that they just fired. They moved him to afternoons when they fired me. You know what

they did to replace middays? They took that same gal that was doing afternoons before that's now on the morning show and they have her record the midday show on KC95. So again, there's a very minimal window or a short life, no matter how good you are. By the way, she's a very good jock and she's very good on that morning show. But she's now recording a midday thing because they don't want to pay a midday person to do it. So if I'm someone out there looking for a job, I don't know that I'm like, hey, you know what I want to do? I want to maybe move to St. Louis and take a job being a disc jockey on a place that's just fired the last two afternoon people. I don't know that that's what I want to do.

And they'll probably pay that person very little, if I had to guess, relatively speaking. So the decisions of one person alter someone's life. Now, that guy doesn't have a job in radio, and they're never going to hire him again. The gal is set for life, which, again, I have no ill will towards her, so more power to you. But she's set for life, which again, I have no ill will towards her. So more power to you, but she set for life. I leave my job in Nashville, which again may have led to 10 radio stations. I could have been doing, who knows?

They might've set me up to be like the classic rock Woody show. Like that very well could happen. But I said, nope, I'm going to leave. And I'm going leave and I'm gonna take this mind you I was doing Nash I was doing Nashville Memphis and um and Detroit and I was also scoring some extra cash you want to know the easiest cash in the world is they would use me to like voice track weekend shit on stations like basically just being a disc jockey it would take me three minutes I'd go in there and they'd go all right we need someone to do you know two o'clock to six o'clock on Saturday afternoon on a station in Dallas on

on Lone Star 92.5 in Dallas so I'd go into my bedroom I had the system pulled up and you just pull up each talk place you could do it on Wednesday for a Saturday shift if you want to you walk in you go hey it's Lone Star 92.5. What's going on? Hey, Cowboys, how about that win yesterday, huh? Boy, it's good to see Dak finally throwing the ball around a little bit, huh? All right, here's Tom Petty. You do about 10 of those. Boom, you make like 50 bucks, which, again, if that's your only job, that's not great, but if you're already making a salary and everything else,

you find yourself making a couple extra hundred bucks a weekend. I was doing fill-ins. They also were using me for fill-ins during the week in some places. So again, I'm not bragging about this, but like they would need somebody in Seattle. And like, so I filled in in Seattle a bunch. I'd be doing middays in Seattle, you know, as a jock during the week, you know? So it was just solid extra cash. I tell you that to tell you that I was making decent coin

just being in Nashville, but I had this desire to end up, like I heard that and I thought this would be solid. I asked people that I knew about it. I was like, do you think that's the right move? Like, I mean, it's a legendary station. I'd probably be set for life. This would be the radio station I'd always have to, I'd always have.

They're like, God, yeah, you got to take that job. And then as it turns out, it was a disaster and it sucked. And it sucked the way it turned out. And now, again, how one person's decision impacts multiple people's lives. The gal that was doing afternoons that now does mornings is set for life. And she sounds great doing that. She's found something maybe she didn't even know she could do. And now she's probably making tons of endorsement cash and everything's going well. And me who was doing very well in Nashville is now out of a job. And it's just interesting. Like I'm fascinated by, you know, it's like the butterfly effect. Like if you step on a butterfly, you know, in, in prehistoric times, how does that impact the world that you're in currently today? You know, back to

the future type shit. Now you're seeing Marty McFly looking at the picture and he's disappearing and his brother's disappearing and his sister's disappearing, you know, like how it works out that way. But that's exactly how it is. Like usually for someone to get a job, someone had to lose a job. That's usually how these things go. You know, people have to make those decisions. Let me get a look. Another example of how people's decisions change things. Again, there was a show. There was a guy that was doing afternoons with Rich when I got to Houston. Now, maybe they had an idea that he was going to leave anyway, but his name was Matt Jackson.

And Matt Jackson was doing afternoons with Rich. And about a month or so after I got there, Matt Jackson says he's leaving with Adam Wexler to go do mornings at 790, thus opening up an afternoon spot that was occupied by Robert Hensley for close to a year, and then eventually me. But if Matt Jackson never leaves, perhaps they never hire me to do that,

and maybe I'm just the third guy on the morning show until further notice. Now, maybe that would have led, because Mark was going to leave eventually anyway, maybe I would have taken over the mornings there. Who knows? Maybe I would have left. Maybe I would have gone somewhere else and somebody else would have thought I was great. But I am just fascinated. You know how I feel about what ifs and everything. When you think about what ifs, like what if this guy doesn't send or ask these chicks for pictures online or on Instagram or wherever it was. Where am I today? And right

now I'd be at the end of that two-year deal, like almost to the day, I'd be at the end of that two-year deal that they offered me in Nashville. And by now they might've already restructured some new deal. A bunch of these old morning shows have retired. They've gotten old. Like I could probably be in 10 markets right now. So just kind of the way it works. That's the way you look at those. You don't want to look back. You want to look forward, but you do have to look at these things and go, what if,

what would have happened? What if I would have stayed? So who knows? But anyway, I didn't. And here I am in my underwear talking to you guys more to come.