The Josh Innes Show - Why So Many Commercials?

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

I intended to discuss the new SEC Football scheduling. However, I end up discussing a message I got from a listener who asked why I play so many commercials. Well, the easy answer is, that's how I make money. But, lets dive a little deeper into this. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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But it's amazing, like the difference a decade makes. You know, like if you go back a decade, you know, really go back a little bit further than that. If you go back like 15 years, like there was no Texas, obviously, no Oklahoma, no Missouri in the SEC. And so those teams weren't in. It was two six-team divisions. You had the East and the West. Just a different world, BCS era. Like, just an amazing, it's just amazing how things have changed and evolved in college football.

But, here, let's play a couple commercials, and let's get into that. Also, I had somebody talking about the number of commercials that played during the pod. Like, hey, I love the podcast. Why do you play so many commercials? Well, I'll tell you. Before I get into the SEC thing, just to kind of lay this out for you. This episode is brought to you by Square.

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Ask your doctor for Wagovi by name. Visit Wagovi.ca for savings. Exclusions may apply. So I put multiple episodes in because I need the downloads. I'm just going to shoot you straight, right? I've told you guys this many times. If you want to keep downloading the podcast, do it. If you don't, don't.

But the way I can make any money doing this as currently set up is I need as many downloads as possible. So I'm doing what a lot of people do, which is kind of game the podcast system, which is you put up multiple episodes, and you basically get five downloads for, you know, every person is going to download five different things, and that helps bring up your numbers,

and that helps you make a couple of bucks. I don't feel bad about that. And the other positive about that is people can listen to specific episodes they like. If it's a topic they don't like, they can just bypass it. But as I've told you, I appreciate you guys downloading the podcast. Save for that other person who is an asshole. I love you guys. I think you're good.

You're wonderful folks, and I appreciate you downloading the podcast. podcast and the numbers you do, but I have to dump those spots. Now, I don't know how many commercials air versus don't air. All I can do is put in a marker that says, hey, put in five commercials here. But that's how I make my money. And during the football season, the numbers go up. Usually it's football season. You know, about this time through about March of next year, there'll be a little downtime during the summer. But this will be a time frame where I make my most money doing this. And this, I haven't done this for an extended period of time. Obviously, when I started doing this again in September, there were very few commercials, and I felt bad about that.

And I would talk to my guy who I do this with, and he's like, listen, if you want to make any actual money, you've got to start putting more ads in these things. And I'm like, I don't really want to do that. But on the other hand, I'm giving you the shit for free, and I appreciate you guys for listening. The way I view it is this. You can always fast forward through the commercials. You start hearing a commercial play, just to give you kind of an idea. I don't think there will ever be more than four minutes in that first commercial thing. And I try to get it out of the way as early in the podcast as possible, right?

So I try to get that out of the way. So, like today I've been dropping them in very early, like, you know, within the first minute. And I do that. So once you run through that, you don't have to listen any more of them. And you can get 10, 12, 13 minutes of solid content without commercials. Like, I get where you're coming from. But I listen to a lot of podcasts that have commercials. and I hit that skip forward 30 seconds button three, four times.

Boom, boom, boom, boom. It takes no time at all. And then you're back to the content. But that is the way I have to do it to make money. And I'm not getting rich off of this by any means, but when done right in a given month, I can actually pay the rent with this shit. Like there was a month, a couple months ago that was the biggest month I've ever seen since doing it this way. Now, back when we had Twitch and back when people were getting hammered with us

and just throwing money at me left and right on Twitch and shit, there'd be some months I made a shitload of money doing it. right and you know maybe at some point i can get back to doing that but i feel like that was kind of a time and place thing i feel like that twitch moment in time and and the rona and then we moved to nashville and i don't know i feel the twitch thing with the drunkenness and the shots and the singing the yacht rock and all that shit maybe ran its course and i just i feel like we've all changed a little bit since that era maybe i'm wrong maybe you'll reach out to me in the dms and go please bring that shit back it was the highlight of my day and you're up till thursday you're up till

three in the morning shirtless singing Robbie Dupree songs and I'm sending you cash and you're passing out like literally falling asleep on Twitch like maybe that's something people pine for but that was something born during the Rona and it just kind of I think ran its course so I don't know I don't just it's something that I don't aspire to do it doesn't mean that I wouldn't start doing YouTube shit again and stuff but I think the days of you know people throwing large sums of money at me to drink something out of a shoe I think that those days are probably over. But, you know, this is the way I make extra cash. This isn't my livelihood. This isn't the salary that I get paid at the radio station, which, by the way, is nowhere near what

it was in St. Louis or nowhere near what it was the second time I was in Houston. I mean, from being honest with you, it is the lowest salary I've had since I was 20 years old. But to get back in the game, I said, fuck it. I'm going to do this because I think this job has a lot of potential, and I think it's not always going to be that way. I mean, it's a decent sum of money. Look, here's the way I viewed it, and I know I was supposed to get into the SEC thing here, but while we're talking about this, and I think I've told you guys this before, you know, I didn't think I was going to get another radio job. Like, I thought I was, like, we were planning to relocate because I was going to have to move out of St. Louis at some point. And we were planning to go back to Houston. And I had reached out to Mattress Mac, actually.

I sent him a text, and I go, hey, man, do you mind if I give you a call? I'm thinking about moving back to Houston. I was just wondering if you have anything. Can I give you a call? It's like, yeah, give me a call. All right. Okay, cool. So the day that that happened, I think, is the day that the job in Houston opened up on the radio.

So I was thinking, well, hell, there's this job. And then there's maybe Mattress Mac. And, like, we'll probably end up moving back to Houston because I'm not getting the ball rolling anywhere else. I'm not getting calls back from people in Philadelphia. You know, I'm just not getting any sort of, I'm not making headway. I'm not making up any ground. You know, I'm talking to people who are on the inside at this radio station. in Houston. They're like, man, you'd be great here, but, you know, we got to talk to the boss.

And people on my behalf reached out to this guy, and he never called me back, never sent me an email, never told me to go fuck myself, nothing, which I think is about as low as you can get. You're lower than a snake's belly. Like, that's just, to me, that's not acceptable to do that to somebody. You know, I don't think it's acceptable when someone reaches out to you. Like, it's one thing if I applied for a job and never reached out to you, and then I never hear from you, fine. But if I send you an email, and I say, hey, man, just what's the deal there? And is this something that maybe you'd be interested in having me for? If you just tell me to fuck off, I'd still get pissed off, but I'd at least respect the fact that you told me to

fuck off. Well, this guy never did that. But I was thinking, you know, hey, maybe Houston's where we're going to go because we have ties there. Maybe the podcast could thrive there. And I could find some sponsors for it there. And I can find a job there. And, you know, I started looking at real jobs, too. Like, you go to Indeed and all that kind of stuff, just kind of see what's out there, you know. And that was the plan. The plan was that. And I knew that whatever job it would be, like, I don't have a ton of qualifications for a ton of jobs. I'm a jagoff that's done radio my whole life. Like, what qualifications do I truly have? You know, right? So, whatever. Like, I was just hoping to find something. And my anticipation

was like, hey, maybe you'll have to drive for Amazon or for UPS. And everybody had talked to, well, the good news is you'll get good benefits if you drive for FedEx or whatever. And I was like, That's not really my aspiration, but if I have to do that to survive, I'll do that to survive. So the plan was to leave St. Louis and move back to Houston. It was going to be Baton Rouge or it was going to be Houston. For obvious reasons, there was Baton Rouge. And I was thinking about just moving in with my dad for a while, but then we were like, we got a bunch of shit. And it'll be a pain on the ass to move all that shit somewhere, then move that shit again.

And we're like, listen, if we're going to go somewhere, we're going to go somewhere. We know somewhere that there's a chance that our connections could get us in somewhere for some sort of job. So we had pretty much planned to move back to Houston. That was the plan. And that's how it was going to go. And then I reached out to my guy here, Tony, who is the big boss or one of the big boss. He's like the second biggest boss, I guess, here in, and as far as programming, he is the biggest boss here in Detroit. And I reach out to him about the Houston job, as I told you I did. I reached out to him because he knew one of the people in charge in Houston. I said, could you reach out to this person, tell them I'm good at radio and that I'm a nice guy? He said, sure. I reached back out again and said, out of curiosity, do you guys have any rock gigs at I heart? And he said, as a matter of fact, I think we do. Let's talk. And then three, four months later, I'm in Detroit.

I have a job here, you know. And back to the initial point of this, which is the money, right? And I tell you, when I tell you that this is the lowest sum of money I've made, the only lower, the only time my salary has been lower since leaving Baton Rouge. When I was a kid, my last salary there for only a couple months when they brought me back in Baton Rouge was like 21-5. That was my salary. The only time I've had a lower salary than this is when I took the job in Houston initially and was paid $35,000. That was the lowest I've made. Because within a year, I got the afternoon job and they moved me up to like, what it is,

$52,000 or something like that. And then I got into the 60s, I think, in the 70s. I think the highest The salary I had when I was in Houston before I was about to get a new deal was in the 70s, I think, was the highest it got at 610. And then the deal that I turned down to go to Philly was three years like 95, 105, and 110. I think where the three years I turned down there, and I turned that down to make less money in Philadelphia to go do nights to eventually move to afternoons where I eventually made like 115, I think it might have been my base. and then the real money came in when I got to 790 because they just took all the money Charlie Polillo was making and they were just going to give it all to me they were like we can hire just some slap dick producer

and you'll make like $290,000 or some shit I'm like well I don't want to do that and I gave some to Jillie and some to Jim and I still think I was making like $250 like something like that so I'd tell you all this to tell you that then I went back down when I got to Nashville my base was in the 60s and then it was about to go back up before I took the job in St. Louis where the base was in the

mid-hundreds, like, and now I'm back down again. It's just been kind of a roller coaster. But the reason I bring that up is because, like, if I, like, I consider, there's a lot of people that complain about radio jobs and say, oh, I'm not getting paid what I should be getting paid. And, like, they'll reach out to people. Like, I have two part-time openings on my show. And as far as part-time pay goes, they're pretty good gigs, you know.

And people, they'll reach out to. Some of them will be like, nope, can't do that. I'm not going to do anything for anything less than blank and blank, which is, fine. If you believe that's what you're worth, that's what you're worth. But I'm somebody that understands that the money I'm making to do this, I'd rather be making this amount of money to do this than the same or less amount of money to do something that I fucking hate and don't know how to do. If my option was to make the same amount of money or less, which would have been the case had I worked at a furniture store or delivered pizzas or something, or done, not

construction, but, like, worked somewhere that I had to do manual labor. I'm a fat fuck that doesn't want to do manual labor. So if you can tell me, Josh, you can make the same amount of money to do either job and you know how to do one and you're good at it and there's growth opportunity or there's probably minimal growth opportunity, but you're going to make about the same, maybe less, maybe a little bit more. I'd take the job I know how to do and hope to grow it. And that's why I did that. But now, this goes all the way back to the podcast thing and why they're the number of commercials. There are months when the podcast. The podcast, the way I currently do it, equals one of my paychecks over the course.

So I get paid twice a month here with the radio show. There are months that the podcast actually makes me more. Like, I make about a, let's see, what is my take home? Like, there are times that after the take home pay for my checks here, if there are no endorsements or anything, there are times that this podcast can pay me 60% of what my actual salary is. is. So, which is pretty good because it pretty much pays the rent and all my bills when done right. And that's why I post five episodes. That's why I get up at four o'clock in the morning. I've never been someone who likes to get up at four o'clock in the morning for a

morning show. I am a, you know, get there at 5.30. I don't believe in telling my guys. And if anybody who joins this show, I'm not going to need them to get here at four. I don't think things are better because people get here at four in the morning. Really, it just ends up being a lot of sitting around doing nothing. I want people to show up if they're, if they need to be well-rested, be well-rested, get there at 5.30, get there at 540, we go on the air at 6, let's kick some ass. I don't have to get up at 4 to do the radio show. I could get up at 5. My house is 10 minutes from the radio station. I get up, I brush my teeth, I put on a t-shirt, I come in, it takes me 10 minutes to get here. Basically, every day, and this is without hustling,

this was with hitting the snooze once today. Alarm goes off at 4. I'm out the door at 420, I'm here by 430. I could probably tighten that up a little bit and get here. by 4.20, probably. Maybe, I mean, it'd be tight, probably about 420-ish, right? I could do that. I do that because this podcast can pay the rent. I don't have to get up at 4 o'clock. I'm not saying this to brag. There are people who get up at 4 o'clock and drive a truck or get up at 4 o'clock and do other things. Those people are putting in real work. This isn't real work. I'm an asshole talking on a podcast, okay? But when your argument is, and this person wasn't hostile about their argument. I want to be clear. It was just why are there so many commercials?

There are so many commercials because I get up at least an hour before I need to get up for my actual job so I can get here and get these episodes done so they are there for you to download and there for you to consume so I can make money to pay the rent. And who knows in three years or whatever it is when this radio show hopefully blows up and becomes something awesome, I'll make more money than I am now. I'm not complaining about the amount of money I'm making because you know how much I was making before that? None. You know how many radio jobs I had while I was sitting on my ass at home? None. You know how many calls back I was getting from people? None. So you're never going to hear me complain about the money that I'm making at this radio station.

I know the deal I signed. I know what the situation was. I'm fine with that. I mean, look, this job pays me a decent percentage less than the Nashville job paid me. And this city is 30 markets higher than that one. So, like, I know what I was getting into when I got into it. that's why you're never going to hear me complain about the money. But one thing that keeps us afloat, and that's why, you know, I need this. That's why I told them this. Like, I can't stop doing my podcast and you guys can't have my podcast because I need this podcast is the fact that I have to dump these fucking commercials in, and I know it sucks.

But the reason I dump these into these episodes is because it pays the rent. Like, you know, well, I'll tell you this, July won't because I didn't do enough episodes because we were moving. So that month won't pay the rent But like August will pay the rent I'll get paid for August for this And I guess October I guess is what I would get It's got like a month behind

So I'd get paid for this in October And that will pay the October rent It'll have enough downloads It will have enough interactions with people That'll do that So I just want to be Up front with you guys about that So I get it

It sucks I hate commercials too But there are podcasts that I love That play commercials and I go bang bang bang bang bang, skip through four minutes of commercials. It literally takes five seconds. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Less than five seconds to go through it. And then you have the rest of the episode. We took a break in this one within the first minute. So, anyway, more to come.