WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The WRFH Interview: Benjamin Yount

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

WRFH host James Joski sits down with Benjamin Yount, morning host for News/Talk 1130 WISN in Milwaukee. Yount also serves as a Contributing Partner at the MacIver Institute and a contributor at The Center Square.

This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm James Jawski, and with me today is Benjamin Yon. The morning show host for WISM in Milwaukee. Well, thank you for coming on the show, Ben. I appreciate it. Thank you for calling me, Ben. No need to. Benjamin is a mouthful.

There's no need to. I actually, they wanted to change my name when I first went on the air. They wanted to call me Ben Williams because nobody knew what Benjamin Yant was. In fact, when I first started doing newscasts, It was Ben Yount and nobody could, Daniel? So Benjamin forces me to close my mouth and yaunt. You're a Wisconsin guy. Back home, it's pronounced Robin Yount and I pronounce my name Yant.

And so at least once a week I get somebody telling me how I'm pronouncing my own name wrong. But, but yeah, it is wonderful to be here. Thank you so very much. Glad to have you. So could you first start by just telling the audience a little bit about yourself and the work that you do at WISM and your freelance in? Yeah, I'm the morning show host in Milwaukee, six to nine central time. WISN is one of the best talk show stations in the country.

We are unique in it. We're live pretty much all day, six o'clock in the morning till six o'clock in the evening, with the exception of the old Rush Limbaugh show, Clay and Buck, we're live. And many, many, many, many, many stations across the country don't have live. hosts all day. I started as the news director and I was a news director of a staff of one. So while it sounds impressive, it really wasn't. But I started five o'clock in the morning, had to wait for some legends of broadcast to finally retire and I matriculated my way up. And yeah, I've been doing mornings since the first of the year. I love it. It's an early start to the day. Usually,

alarm goes off about 115, 1.15. 130 in the morning and then you put everything together. The benefit is, I'm done by nine, out the door by 905, and when there is a brewer game with a 110 first pitch, I get to be in the stands. But I love it. Milwaukee is a wonderful city. If you've never been, you should absolutely come. Summers are beautiful. It is the city of festivals and American Family Field, formerly Miller Park, my second favorite place to see a ball game. You've been to the Paps Theater down there? No, I'm bad. I'm really bad, James.

It's the ballpark, the casino, Bobby's Bar, 147th in Lisbon, by the way, if any locals are listening. And then I don't go anywhere. I work so early. And I'm not a big live music fan. But yes, the Papps, beautiful theater. Fiserv is a great place.

I went to the gift shop for a Bucs game, but never stayed for a Bucs game. I'm bad. I'm not the cultural touchstone guy that you want. But yeah, if you want to know good places to get fish fry and a miller light, then I'm your guy. I don't think a Wisconsin man can ask for much more. So my understanding, you are an independent contributor to the McIver Institute. Is that right?

Yep. So that's a think tank based in Madison, Wisconsin. What exactly is the institute, what does the work it does? And what do you contribute to it? You are not the only one to ask, what is it the McGiver does? McGiver is one of the great things about new media is they launched themselves originally as a news service in a think tank. And for a long time, it was an awful lot of news and not an awful lot of thinking.

But they've done a great job of really looking at where state money in Wisconsin is spent. They do a fantastic budget overview. every year. And they have some very, very smart people who take a look at state government from sometimes a 30,000 foot level and sometimes a day-to-day level. I'm lucky enough that I get to contribute to the news service. I write them a story every single day. I also, if we're going ahead and chalking up all of my work, I contribute to the Center Square in Wisconsin. And that's another News Foundation that is dedicated to covering state government. As I've said a couple of times in my fortunate time here at Hillsdale to teach them classes, most of the legislation that's passed in this

country is at the state level. It takes Congress a long time to agree to anything, but your state can and will raise your taxes in under six months. They can and will decide how road money is spent, how schools are run. Most people don't don't pay enough attention to state government, it's kind of boring and rather dry. And outside of Madison, you have a lot of state capitals that are in the middle of nowhere. Springfield is two and a half hours, Springfield, Illinois, is two and a half hours, three hours from Chicago. So it's out of sight out of mind, but the government that's closest to homes is the one that you need to pay attention to. Not just state level government, but city council government. Those

those folks can raise your taxes in a month if they really want to. And has there been a decline in involvement in those local or forms of government over the years? In terms of the local officials, no, they're still there. They run for office every two years. They're more than happy to get themselves a government paycheck. But in terms of, is there enough media paying attention to local government? No, there's not. I started at a radio station in Bloomington, Illinois, that had seven full-time news people.

They had four dedicated part-timers. I was lucky enough to be one of those. They covered everything. Town boards, county government, the airport board, which some people don't realize is a thing. Every night they had somebody at some of these meetings, and now that station has zero people doing news. If you take a look at local newspapers, it's the same thing, that there's just been a hollowing out of local news. And it is, it's a tragedy because that's the government that people can change fastest. Joe Biden got 80 million votes when he ran against Donald Trump in 2020.

You can win school board elections with a couple of hundred votes in some cases. And your local school board does a lot more for your. day to day life, particularly if you have kids, then whoever is in the White House. Sure, the president can assign orders and, you know, send the jets over to Iran, but the people who decide what your kids learn in school, that's 100% at the local level. And why do you think that shift has happened, that there's so much focus on national politics and not a lot on, you know, state and local money. Money. Money. I love the internet. I use the internet. I have the internet at home. It's a, it's a wonderful tool. I watch an awful lot of

YouTube shows. The Sam the cooking guy, phenomenal. He made some stir fry beef the other day. It looks delicious. But the internet stole all of the advertising dollars that used to prop up local newspapers, local newsrooms. And so when you don't have the commercials or the ad space, you don't have the money and it costs a lot of money to do local news. You have to pay somebody to go to the school board. You have to pay another person to go to the city council. You have to pay another person to keep an eye on cops and courts. And as local ad dollars dried up,

because everybody wants to advertise on the internet. When you look for something of your generation, when you look for anything from a raincoat to a car, the first place you go is the internet. You don't tune into the local radio station and wait to hear that one commercial for that one place. And, you know, dollars follow eyeballs and eyeballs are on internet. But yeah, if I had to say, why do we have far fewer people writing local news? It's because it's very expensive to do news.

And there just aren't as many local advertising dollars, which is one of the things that makes WISN very unique. We still have primarily local commercials from local businesses. And it is those local commercials that allows us to have a morning show, a midday show, an early afternoon show and a late afternoon show. And I think we're better off for it. I really do wish my only goal in life was ever to be on the radio station that my grandmother could listen to. and they never hired me full time and now they don't have anybody working there

and it's a sad loss. It is. It is a loss for that community. And for WIS, as far as when you say local, what are we talking? Like, are we talking Milwaukee County? Are we talking southeast Wisconsin? Southeast Wisconsin. If you're unfamiliar with the geography of Wisconsin,

start Milwaukee, go up the lake to Green Bay and then draw sort of a jagged triangle down to Madison and back down. and back down 94 over to Milwaukee, inside that triangle, two-thirds of the state lives. Two-thirds of the, so four million people live between Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Madison. And we, while it is WISN Milwaukee,

we're primarily a suburban audience that this is going to sound uncouth. I don't really care about Milwaukee crime. It's there. We'll talk about it, But when we talk about local stuff on WISN, it's the suburban communities. And again, we don't have a new staff. It's not like we're sending somebody to the school board in Cudahaye or to O'Connor-Mawks City Council meeting.

We don't have the staff for that. But when we talk about local things, we talk about that triangle with more of a focus on the Milwaukee suburbs. And I like to talk about statewide stuff. again, it's the state capital nerd. I spent 15 years covering the Illinois Capitol and the Wisconsin Capitol day to day. And that shows in my show. But that's one of the things that we do that nobody else can do. You can find national talk show hosts talking about President Trump, the war in Iran, Congress, Hakeem Jeffries,

what it is that John Foon is or is not doing. You can find that almost anywhere, but if you want to hear somebody talk about local and statewide stuff in Wisconsin, we're the only show in town. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm James Jawsky, and I'm talking with Benjamin Yound. So as far as your work with the McIver Institute, then, are you hoping to bring back some of that local news we have lost? You will always need somebody to be there at the state capital. You will always need somebody to be able to write about state and local issues because that's what impacts people's lives. If they, look, if I could still be a state house only reporter, I loved that job. It was an absolute blast.

There is nothing better if you are a young journalist, if you're looking to cover a beat, that is not only interesting but challenging and important, you couldn't do any worse than your state capital. It is a vibrant place. The state budget for the state of Wisconsin is about $55 billion a year. Almost no one else in the state of Wisconsin is spending $55 billion a year.

So just tracking how that money is being spent, the differences between where Republicans want to spend it and Democrats, it's extremely interesting. Yeah, I love writing for McGiver, but the show is really where I put most of my focus. And not to jump too far in the weeds, I give McGuiver 325 words every day. I write 10,000 words a day for WISN because that's what it takes to put on a three-hour show. And so I'm lucky that not only do I get to talk about state politics,

but that I get a right for the Center Square and McGiver. And really, I wish that we could get back. When I first started at the Illinois Capitol, I want to say there were almost 20 news bureaus, just covering the Capitol. And sadly, even in a great state like that, where they had a great press room, it's shrunk. So, yeah, I would love to think that somehow I'm part of a state capital news

renaissance, but I'm just a. guy making sure you're listening to the next commercial on talk radio. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm James Jawsky and I'm talking with Benjamin Young. So doing a show that's in Milwaukee, southeastern Wisconsin, a lot of local news. Do you get a lot of interaction with the community? Yes.

We have the adventenose.com talking text line 4147991130. And it is, it's a great way for people to text in, which it's easier to talk. to text. People call. Most callers have one good thought. And so you let them say they think, thanks so much. And you hang up on them immediately, not because you're mean or cruel, but because they've got one good thought and the next one's not going to be as good. I like to talk to people. I say that it's a conversation. It would be boring if it's just me talking at you for three hours. So when I get a little bit of interaction, when I get a lot of interaction,

it makes the show better. And you get a sense as to if what you're saying is connecting, sometimes we can fall into a rabbit hole. Sometimes I can, oh, I've got, I've got a issue. It's this and this and this. And you understand, you realize very quickly, if you're talking over people's heads, if what you're focusing on, they don't even know about it. And not in sort of a way that I'm smarter, but just, you know, if you could, when you figure out the issue that you really like, put putt, golf or brewer baseball or model cars or grilling, you can go really into the weeds on that issue. And so the listener feedback is great because if I'm being way too navel-gazy, the people who listen to WISN will remind me, they're also a good check. It is, it is

really, really nice when people tell you, no, you missed the point there. And there's nothing that will humble you more than when people text you out of the blues. I didn't like that, Ben. No, no, you just did. That one wasn't one of your best segments, but it makes it fun. And radio when done right is a personal medium. You're talking to one person. You and I are sitting here in the studio talking to each other. When radio's done well, I'm talking to you. Even though you and you and you and you and you and you and you are listening, but I'm talking to you and people feel that sense of community.

And I'm blessed that they feel that sense of community enough to tell me sometimes, that one wasn't it today. It was the best show for you. And you take that and you get better and you come back the next day. And it, you know, they haven't fired me yet. I must be doing something right. So is that why you think there's a lot of popular with podcasts too in the same sense that it is that dialogue between two people in a room? Podcasts, I'm, I am a little late to the game on podcasts.

It's fascinating to me because I had to wait years. I had a full career before I ever was given the opportunity to do a talk show. And I did a talk show for a long time in Illinois where, I had to learn how to be a talk show host. And I was grateful for the years that I spent learning and the years that I spent reporting to get to the point where I got a show. It helped me be a much better host. Podcasting is super interesting because young guys like yourself, you can just jump to the

front of the line. You don't have to wait for somebody to retire in order to get a time slot. But podcasts are very popular because it is exactly like you said. I get to listen to you. talk about something that's interesting to you, that's interesting to me. And when good podcast hosts connect, boy, do they ever connect. And you can have podcasts about things. There was a couple of students who I met here at Radio Free Hillsdale that were doing a podcast on the national parks.

I want to listen to that. People who really like national parks talking about, that's super interesting. I watch Joe Rogan, but, you know, famous people talking to famous people, that's not my jam, hearing somebody talk about an issue that is interesting to them and to me, you can't get it passed. And yeah, podcasts are the new radio because the old radio is slowly, slowly withering on the vine, unfortunately. But small market radio still, some of the best radio there is. I know it gets a little old to have to hear the high school football game every Friday night and the high school basketball game every Tuesday.

But in smaller communities, that's the lifeblood. That's what it is. Knew a guy one time had a show. They were reading school lunches because that's what the people who lived in that community wanted to know, what are my kids going to have for lunch today? And it was always fish sticks and green yellow on Friday, very, very, very popular. So we've had a lot of talk about, you know, community one-on-one connection when it comes to the radio and the podcast. We have about a minute

left, but what would you say is at the heart of radio, that even as it changes and evolves, what is it that, you know, gets you out of bed every day, gets you passionate about the work well, I probably shouldn't say the money. At the heart of radio is storytelling. And Paul Harvey was one of the best telling stories. Rush Limbaugh was a great conservative story. storyteller, that this gives us a chance to tell people a story in a way that when you read it, it just doesn't, it doesn't pop as much. I get to use my voice, my words, my inflection, and I get to show you my passion, my disinterest. You don't get that in any other medium. Even if you're doing it on television or on video, there's so many other things that you're

constantly worrying about. You've got to sit on your jacket. You've got to make sure your makeup's done. when you strip all that away and you get audio, when you get radio or podcasts, you can tell how that person is feeling. And I can share with you how I feel about this issue or just about the day. And that's why radio had the connection that it did and why radio and podcasts will continue to have the connections that they have going forward, even if you're not listening to me on the radio, because let's be honest, outside of the car radio, not everybody has a radio in their house anymore, but the heart of it, why radio connects the way it does,

storytelling. That's what it's always been and what it always will be. It's a very well-put way of sharing that. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure to have you. Thank you so very much anytime. Awesome. Our guest has been morning show host for WISM in Milwaukee,

Benjamin Yout, and I am James Joski. I'm Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7. enough.