The Josh Innes Show - What A Long Strange Trip Part 3

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Can I still be a radio star? Let's discuss... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca. Let me tell you, there is something powerful and intoxicating when somebody wants you. It is the most amazing feeling in the world because it's easy to convince yourself that the people that you're working for don't really like you, even though it's not true, but like you're able to say like, yeah.

And you get kind of comfortable in a spot so the people don't love you as much as they used to, you know? And there's something intoxicating when someone seeks you out. Not when you seek out a job. Like when you have to ask somebody like, hey, I'm going to come in and I'm going to, you know, try to audition for this job or I'm going to fill out a whatever for this job, an application. That's not the same. But when someone reaches out to you because they think you're good and they want to bring you in for something, it's intoxicating. And it feels great. Like it's just like, wow.

Like it gives you like this new sense of like value and worth, which makes sense, right? Like, it makes sense that somebody would like, when they reach out to you, there's nothing great. Like, you get a call. Like, that's happened to me sometimes before where, like, people I've used to work for that have fired me. And I have not heard from them in months, years even. And their name will pop up in my phone. I'll go, huh, wonder what these people want? And they're like, hey, what are you up to?

Would you be interested in doing this? You know, and I've told you this. There are people that, I mean, I get people reaching out to me now because when you have a job, people want to hire you. Like, that's the trick. It's kind of like how every girl's. in, do you want you have a girlfriend? You know that life. You know, you know the life of being the guy that doesn't have a girlfriend.

Nobody wants to fuck you. Nobody wants to hang out with you. Nobody returns your text or your calls. The second you have a girlfriend, it's like, huh, when I come over to my house and bone, you know, and that's what this is like. When you don't have a job, when I was in St. Louis for that, how long was I in St. Louis without a job?

August to July, almost a year. I was almost in St. Louis for a year. when I tell you that no one responded to my shit, nobody listened to my audio. Like I can tell you this now because this doesn't really matter. But like my buddy AJ works in San Antonio. And I believe they have a morning show and an afternoon show. AJ does mornings there.

They have some nice, really cool guy, Jason, that does the afternoons there. And they have a syndicated midday thing. I forgot what's on. But I was talking to AJ. I'm like, you know what I'm going to do, dude? I'm just going to do fake segments for San Antonio and just send it to the guy. And who knows, maybe he'll hear that and go, hey, this is actually pretty fucking good. You know, I did that.

Nothing came of it. But I did that. I did that a lot, by the way. When I was out of a job for a, like, I did that to Chicago once. Chicago didn't even ask for it. But I was like, you know what? Fuck it. There's an opening.

So I'm going to record fake Chicago radio segments and send them to the PD. Never heard anything back. San Antonio, I think the guy might have responded. probably as a courtesy to AJ because AJ is his morning guy because AJ and I are pretty tight like we're not you know we don't talk every day or anything but I like AJ a lot and he got me back on the radio and I was kind of you know out

and I appreciate him for that and I have a love for the guy and we love we have a love for each other I think so but I would send audio to people there was one there was an opening in Dallas for a talk show. Did I ever tell you guys about that? There was a cumulus on this like kind of conservative talk radio station in Dallas had an opening.

And I looked to see who the program director was. And the PD was this guy that tried to hire me once in Portland. So I'm like, this guy probably remembers me. I message him. I don't think he had any fucking clue who I was, despite the fact I talked to him on the phone. And he was, I believe he was one of the PDs right before the Rona, right before the Rona happened. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters.

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As I've told you guys before, I will never do a radio show in Portland because I will last 10 minutes before I get run out of Portland. But I talked to him and he's like, yeah, we'll see what we got. And then they just put on a syndicated show instead. But there are places I've tried to get gigs. in that year, especially that year that I was out of a job, you know. But all that said, you know, when you go back and look at it, I know I'm kind of all over the place here. But when you go back and look at this and go, all right, Josh, do you regret that you left eye heart in 2021? Like, do you think it was a mistake?

And it's easy to say that now whenever you're trying to kind of rebuild everything you probably had five years ago. Actually, it was three years ago. When did I leave in 2023? So three and a half years ago, give or take. And, you know, you look back on it and you go, Josh, do you regret that? And I'm like, well, it's easy to say that now. But at the moment, it was the right move. And I've talked to people that saying, we get it.

But I mean, obviously I've set myself back. And then I go to Detroit and admittedly didn't do particularly well. It was a tough spot. But, you know, like I didn't do particularly well in the morning. You know, again, very tough spot. But what are you going to do? And then you kind of find yourself in the situation you're in. So all I know is, and again, I don't know how the hell I got into that.

This all started with talking about WIP and Wing Bowl in this documentary. And it was interesting. But it was a good documentary. It was well done, actually. Because a lot of times you'll get these documentaries about these kind of niche local things. And they're not all that good. It's actually a well-put-together documentary. Like, I liked it.

I thought it was good. There was something else. Oh, so then I also saw that my friend Matt Thomas is now doing, mornings on 790. And look, they've, I think they know they've got an uphill climb at this point. Like, here's a fascinating thing. Like, I was on, I guess last week, the producer of John Lopez's show asked me to surprise them and come on and do like five minutes on the show. And I basically treated it like stand up. Like I'd written down five or six one liners about, you know, them going to FM and shit. I thought it was actually pretty good. But, you know, I wonder what impact overall

them moving to FM is truly going to have. Because this is a unique situation. When I say it's a unique situation, by that I mean, you're talking about a radio station that in its last monthly, last monthly rating. Now, granted, this is 6 plus.

This is not the target demo, which is men 2554, even persons 2554. It's wild to think about this, but that station had a 0.7. I mean, that's a nothing. and they replaced a radio station that was having its best stretch of ratings ever. Now, ratings doesn't really matter if it doesn't generate revenue.

And from what I understand, Odyssey, which is the company that owns them, they are big on spoken word, which I like. I think that's the way radio should trend more and more. You need to find more opportunities to have spoken word because at the end of the day, people can get music in a thousand different places, but can they get your air talent everywhere? No, you want to make, like, you, like, they can get all the music in the world on, on X, but they can also get it on their phone. But like, let's use Howard as an example. But in theory, Howard Stern, the only place you can get him is on XM. So there's an incentive to get XM.

You need to incentivize listening to the radio by putting people on the radio and letting them talk and do their thing and not be concerned with whether or not they're playing nine songs, 10 songs, 15 songs. And this isn't about me or anybody in particular. This is just my overall philosophy on this. My overall radio philosophy is that you're only, the only way you're going to find success, is having compelling personalities, because compelling personalities bring people to your product. And when they're compelling and they generate an audience, then you can sell them. And that's how you get clients. And that's how you get businesses to spend money.

If I'm a business, why would I go out and spend money on some guy that's spending 10 songs an hour on a radio station? You know, why would you do that? Again, this is not me ripping anybody. This is just me looking at the overall state of the industry. And I've told this to people before. I talk with people about this all the time. If you want radio to continue to survive, and I don't believe it's a medium, I don't believe it's unfixable. I don't know that it's totally broken.

But your biggest competition is podcast, video, YouTube, all that, right? Well, what do you have on podcast? You have personalities. Nobody's playing music on a podcast. Nobody's playing music on YouTube and they're doing well. So you're trying to compete with them. How do you compete with them? Well, first of all, you got like IHart.

The app, the IHart app is fantastic. It's basically a commercial for a universe where you listen to a radio station. And when the commercials play, you're hearing music there too. So it's a nonstop thing. That's good. So that's a benefit. But you have to sell personality. You have to have big personalities and people that the audience,

wants to consume. And, you know, that's why, you know, we're talking about Pat McAfee. Well, look at Pat McAfee. You know, this guy's out here. He's a larger than life personality. You need more of those. You need to find your guys. But what happens is a lot of times in radio, you get people.

And then you try to fit them in a box and say, well, you have to do this, this and this. And then you just make, I think radio's biggest issue is a lot of times they just try to turn everybody into everybody else. And I think that's to the detriment of this. You know, the best part about being in a talk format or sports radio format is, you know, you're expected to go out and be entertaining and be you and be the personality that people are coming for. Like sports or politics is, you know, the crux of why they're interested, but you keep them there by being interesting. And so all that said, you got Matt, and Matt's moving to mornings on 790.

And, you know, like, I think that's a good move because, look, I work for I heart. so I know the limitations I heart has, and I know the spending that I heart has to. And I know the people that have to be whacked. And like, I get that. But the closest thing they have to a morning show there's Matt because Matt is the best radio guy they have on the staff. And I don't even think that's debatable. Matt's a good radio guy. And he's been a good radio guy for a long time.

So I think that's the right move to make there. You know, he's the most interesting guy they have. They've obviously got a tougher climb now because in theory, 610 moving to FM will now, open a door for them to find more listeners and their number will go up in theory. But as I said earlier, it is wild to think that this is a radio station that had a 0.7. By comparison, the number one station in town probably has a 7 or an 8 in that same demographic. They have a 0.7. They're somewhere around 20th place.

They were getting beaten by 790 in 6 plus. And they decided to take that radio station and put that radio station on an FM frequency that was their best performing ratings-wise stationed in their cluster. So it's either going to be something that's super brilliant or the person responsible for it's going to be a fucking idiot. Like, because it is, like, there's that fine line between ballsy and stupid. And let me give you a little inside baseball here.

So, and we've talked about this before, but a little inside baseball. So let's say your Odyssey, an Odyssey, owns a handful of stations in Houston. And one of them is a country station. One of them is a Mexican station. One of them is an adult contemporary type of radio station. One of them is a classic hits radio station.

One of them is a sports station, whatever. Well, when you're going to move that sports station onto one of those FMs, that sports station now is still on 610, but you're eating one of your frequencies that was making some money. I don't know how much, you know, it was generating a year. year, but you now have to make up that money. So now basically, you have to take, say, sports, let's just say sports was making $4 million a year, $5 million a year, whatever it was billing.

Let's say $5 million, nice little number there, $5 million. And let's say that that 957 the spot was making $3 million over the course of the year, $4 million, whatever. That means that the sports station will now have to make $3 million. $8 million a year to make up for that. So where are you going to magically find double the revenue for this radio station? See what I'm saying? Do you believe that just by moving to FM, this radio station will go from 4 million?

Again, the round, what do we say, five, whatever? Do you think it's going to go from making 5 million to making 8 or 9 million just because it's going to FM? That's the biggest issue they're going to face. And I don't know that it can or that it will. So I find that interesting. And I used to talk with people in Houston all the time about why stations wouldn't put sports on FM. And the argument that I'd always get is the exact argument I made to you right now. And I think it makes sense.

That argument is, how can I justify dropping a radio station and just assuming that sports is going to find the ratings and the revenue to make up for what I'm losing? I hope I'm making sense. Like in my mind, it makes sense. Because basically what you've done now is you've taken an AM signal that has no value now, like the AM part of it has no value. It's not like you can move sports over to 957, and that opens up 610 AM to put on something else that will make money. It won't.

Nothing's going to make money there. So you just leave sports there as well. So now basically you have to, you know, you don't have the opportunity to have an open frequency that can make that money. I'm intrigued by it. Because usually what happens when these moves happen is you've got a radio station that's a powerhouse on AM. And they're like, fuck it. Like, let's move this to FM and really hammer it.

610's not a powerhouse. 610 is not a ratings powerhouse at all. I mean, again, 0.7. Now, again, that's 6 plus. I don't know what they do in demo. But it's not a juggernaut by any means. So it's certainly an intriguing situation. To put it, you know, in those terms.

I mean, it's certainly fascinating. But anyway, more to come. Two in five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire. and help create a world free from the fear of cancer.

Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca.