Unknown Speaker 0:00
That’s important. She was a lot of fun. Yeah, that’s on my tombstone. She was good. And she was a good book

Unknown Speaker 0:05
title right? She was

Unknown Speaker 0:08
a member.

Unknown Speaker 0:09
Hey, it’s Nate Disarro and welcome to titans of industry, the podcast where I talk to industry leaders and innovators who are at the top of their game and leading the pack in their fields, uncovering some of the best stories in today’s business landscape. In today’s episode, I sit down with Ashley King, a former radio personality and host of daytime talk show Devine. Ashley tells us about her family’s roots in broadcasting how random interactions with strangers led to some of her greatest career moments and how she ended up in a Blake Shelton music video. And now let’s get to the episode. But before we do, it’s important to know that whether you’re a small business owner or the face of a multibillion dollar industry, your organization has a great story to tell and content Titan wants to help you tell it. We are a digital content creation powerhouse built for the 21st century providing all in creation. Do strategic production post production and distribution services for at 360 degree 24 seven world. In our world Titans are passionate, creative doers. They have the experience to take your project from start to finish minimizing your involvement so you can focus on what matters most running your business. So if you’re ready to take your content, strategy and production to the next level, our Titans are ready to help.

Unknown Speaker 1:27
Now here’s my conversation with Ashley King.

Unknown Speaker 1:31
All right, so Ashley, it’s been a long time coming. Thanks for taking the time to come and do this. Let’s just get a little background on you. So I know you grew up in a broadcast family. Tell me about kind of what life was like growing up.

Unknown Speaker 1:43
Well, I grew up in Clinton, Arkansas, little bitty town but that town of 2000 people 2000 people then 2000 people just about now it’s never really grown, but has a little radio station. So my dad is from Searcy, Arkansas and worked at dogpatch USA and here And I had

Unknown Speaker 2:00
no idea I remember going there with my grandfather really parents as a little kid. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 2:05
no theme park that was, at the time similar to, you know, a silver dollar city, but based off the little Abner comic strips and it was really big throughout the 60s and 70s. My dad was a drummer in the band, and he would work there every summer. And driving through Clinton, he noticed, you know, there wasn’t a radio station in that area, but there was there was an opening for a signal. So he at 24 built in, owned part of the radio station with my uncle, who was quite a bit older than my dad probably 20 something years older and was an established movie theater owner in Arkansas. So there was a tiny little movie there in a court square, you know, just one of those old movie theaters with a beautiful neon signs out front. And he said said I’ll help you put this radio station on if you’ll rent it all by this movie theater and if you run the movie theater, and you run the radio station, I’ll help you out. So, my dad went in with him. And now of course, my dad is majority owner but still owns it with his his sister. Now that was his brother in law at the time. And so his sister is part owner with him and, and now, my, my sister, my younger sister owns radio station and he were spraying so it’s definitely in the family and I grew up after school everyday running down, you know, and hanging out at the radio station until my dad got off work at five or six.

Unknown Speaker 3:29
Now those were the good old days of a radio station. Right. Right. So So what was it like back then what was it walking? I mean, because, you know, we’ve all seen the movies from like the 70s Oh, that was is that how it was? Well, so

Unknown Speaker 3:38
um, you know, he put the station on and I think it was 1976 and at the time it was just an am station and yeah, it was records you know, we had record players in the studio, which you don’t see record record players anymore. You know, the this. The cables solid media

Unknown Speaker 3:55
at all

Unknown Speaker 3:56
right? Yeah, you know, and it went from he had turntables To it was this big huge like reel to reel machine that you could just like put carts into that would turn and play the songs in the way that he had it programmed. So like, each song would just turn and you had these in there. Eventually it became for him satellite. So the music because it’s such a small town and he’s kind of a one man band in a lot of ways. It became where he would pull us out a live stream in and yeah, growing up with a dad in a tiny town owning a radio station means that I saw my dad is the GM, the sales manager, the engineer the morning show guy. I mean, he ran and did everything and he would have to you know, maybe three people at the most that would work for him. Maybe somebody up front and other person selling somebody work in the weekends but he has been on the air during that morning show consistently for I guess 44 years now.

Unknown Speaker 4:50
Still doing it still does it. Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. So I mean, you did you know, this is it. This is what I want. Oh,

Unknown Speaker 4:57
no. I Well, by the time that I was 12, my dad not shy like I am to just say like, Hey, can we come and hang out, you know, and I just want to meet people and network. He knew Bob still at CHANNEL SEVEN at K TV and at the time when I was really young, I would kind of do some little commercials and stuffs we would have to come all the way to Iraq, you know, an hour and 15 minutes from Clinton, which this was the big city. And once dad had to bring me in, he said, Let’s stop by K TV and want to say hi to Bob Steele, and maybe we can catch their newscast. We can actually watch it. So at the time, the newscast comes on, they tell me I can sit in the chair right next to the anchor. Of course, they have, you know, just a tight shot on her. But I’m sitting like right next to her just watching her do the news. And so I was that’s when I knew that I wanted to do TV in some form. That was the thing from the time I was 12 years old and I went to college Arkansas State in Jonesboro and I got my degree in broadcast news and got out of school and immediately got married and we moved back here to Little Rock where I actually did work for K TV but it was like the girl that washes the cars for the news director and gets coffee and I did get some experience though, as a field producer when they first put on Good Morning, Arkansas, this is in the early. This was around 2000 when I was hired and I got to do some associate producer type stuff for Daybreak so I got to do a little bit of that we moved to Jonesboro where at the time they only had k i t and applied for a job there and you know, I was thinking okay, this is it. Like I’m moving to a smaller market. I’ve been working at K TV so they’re gonna hire me and I’m gonna finally get to get on television. But they were like we don’t have anything so whenever to to talk to Trey Stafford in Jonesboro triple FM radio group and and said, Hey, you know, this was kind of like, I don’t really want to be in radio, but I don’t know what else I’m gonna do. So he hired me and he was Like, how you just kind of have a natural talent and you know, he is all the small town radio guys in Arkansas all know each other. So he knew you know who my dad was and then I grew up in radio. So he put me on the air. And when he started telling me like, you’re pretty good at this. I’m like, Really? Yeah. When people tell you, you’re good at something, you’re like, maybe I do like this. Maybe this is what I need to be doing something

Unknown Speaker 7:19
becomes like, yeah, I actually do want to so I

Unknown Speaker 7:23
did become very passionate about it. And I learned that I really liked entertaining and interacting with people and you know, answering the phone and just making people happy and playing music and I’ve always been a music fanatic. It’s in my family, my my dad a drummer. My mom’s a dance teacher like we’ve been around music my entire life. Are you

Unknown Speaker 7:45
a musician?

Unknown Speaker 7:46
I’m not I wish I were. But my daughter can sing like nobody’s business and brother’s a drummer as well. My sister’s musical so it’s in the family but on

Unknown Speaker 7:56
the other side.

Unknown Speaker 7:59
I’m like, Albert, There we go. They’ll tell me I can’t and I can’t sing but I know good music when I hear it. So I eventually went and worked for wi BK in Knoxville, Tennessee. We live there for a while I worked for also a car station there. So I wanted to point wine. And then we came back to Little Rock then worked in radio up until just four months ago. And now I work for thp 11. So finally, after all these years, my degree Finally, but the show that I do is still light hearted fun laid back. It’s a lifestyle show that features a lot of music. So I’m still getting now I’m gonna do the best of both, you know,

Unknown Speaker 8:38
yeah, you get to still talk and have fun and entertain people, but we get to see it right here now. Well, that’s funny, which ironically, that’s how we met was actually through doing a video project when you were a host at the point yeah 4.1 and graduated broadcast you you got into the radio business and you stay there for a long time. Yeah. How did you see it? That change and how did you adapt with that change along the way?

Unknown Speaker 9:02
Yeah, for sure. So when I first started in radio, actually I worked in I did work in radio in college. To me, it was just like, this is a job I can do. While I’m in college to make some extra money, it’ll look good on my resume when I go in and television, you know, wasn’t like something I thought would be a great career for me. So I did overnights which man I worked from 12 you know, from midnight until 6am on the weekends, and as college student and also on the dance team. That was tough. I mean, it was like I turned into this really grouchy monster through a lot of that that time. But my dad, I mean, gosh, like such a proud father. He’s like, oh, man, you’re on 100,000 watt radio station. I’m like, yeah, so what like, it’s midnight, you know, like, three in the morning. I’m just barely keeping my eyes open. I was playing a lot of like chumbawamba or whatever, like, a lot of the music at that time in the mid 90s, which if I hear those songs still to this day, but that was like basically A guy writing out, I’ve never been like on a station like that I’d played radio and my dad’s production rooms, you know, when I was after school when I was growing up, and I thought I knew how to do radio until this guy sits me in front of this control board. And I’m live for six hours in the middle of the night. And he’s he wrote out all of the instructions on a legal pad. And he just left it there. And I was like, Alright, we’re gonna figure this out. I just, there’s no dead air. And at that time, we had CDs. So we would have three CD players like stacked on top of each other, and you would pull your music for the hour, and then just hope you didn’t queue up the wrong song because on those days were like compilation CDs where it would have pop music, but it could also have like country music, or maybe like some rock music on there. And so yeah, there were times that you would actually queue up like George Strait on a car station, which is very weird. So you had to be really careful but so you know, that was all live shifts all the time. People working overnight. Voice tracking came in. So we didn’t have to be there all the time, but they still wanted you to be live like during the day on the weekends in case people were trying to call or anything were to happen to where now it’s like even on the weekdays, you might not even have live people in the studio, they’ve gotten to where it’s just a lot of syndication, like when I left iheart I was tracking stations all throughout Arkansas for me, I thought I was really cool because I’m like, you know, Ashley King radio network in Arkansas. I’m doing mid days, you know, in Fayetteville, Fort Smith, and here in Little Rock. But, um, but it just really changed and they they wanted to give the the concept of like, okay, you need to make it seem like you live there. So you need to go to Fort Smith sometimes and just show your face. You know, it’s it’s just kind of a weird, weird thing.

Unknown Speaker 11:52
So explain the concept of voice tracking because I think a lot of people you know, wondering don’t understand what what does that mean? Because like we said used to you sitting in front of a microphone. Yeah. And you hit a button and it plays a song. And then that song is over and it comes back to you on the right, you know, but that’s not how it’s been for a while.

Unknown Speaker 12:07
So everything you know, is digital now. All of the music, everything is is totally digital. And so musics already all scheduled for that day, but your program director and I think a lot of people have this misconception conception that, okay, so whatever the major radio group that you work for, they decide what everyone is going to play, nobody gets to decide. But that’s not true. Every programmer in every market can decide, do I want to add this artist? Do I want to, you know, how often do I want to play them how heavily or whatever, so that person schedules all of the music for you. I mean, I don’t get to pick it for my own show. But you know, people would do that. So anyway, that scheduled and then we go in, and there are certain places where we’ll show you like you talk here. So you go in and then it’ll play like the very end of that song. And then the very beginning of the next song so that you can do your intros. over those, and then it’ll play. Like if you’re going into commercial break. So you’re basically pushing like the arrow keys or start and stop recording

Unknown Speaker 13:07
play or whatever. So in 30 minutes you’re recording an hour’s worth of show.

Unknown Speaker 13:11
Yeah, yeah. So

Unknown Speaker 13:14
like when when I was working for I heart and now I was doing mid days, the 10 to three timeslot and I was on the three different stations, it would take me the majority of the day just because I would sit in there and I would do like, you know, the first block of Kissin and then the the SEC then I would go in and do the first block of kicks 104 and then the first block of a mag 99.1 I would get those done and then I would start it all over so that way I can keep it straighter otherwise I would be saying the wrong station on like, you know, I would say came back on Kissin which happened many times. But yeah, so that would take quite a while and people would say so you’re not laughing. I’m like, well, it’s weird because you’re not like live live, but I’m sitting there and I’m doing it probably maybe five minutes before goes on air sometimes maybe sometimes it’s 30 minutes before it goes on air, but because I was in so many stations and, and I think a lot of people think too that, you know, you’re like, Oh, you can stream on it, you do all of those stations, all of the brakes go on. But now I had to do each station because all of the playlist all of the logs were different and had to throw in those call letters, or whatever. So yeah,

Unknown Speaker 14:21
was the transition from the old CD player days to the voice track days. Did you enjoy one side more than the other? Or was it something that you easily adapted with?

Unknown Speaker 14:32
So um, it was definitely nice because you could go to the bathroom. Like when you had CDs or records It was like let me put on the longest song possible so I can run down to the restroom. But it also made it kind of boring you know, because you’re just sitting in there waiting for your you know, now I can push the the mic button and talk. And then you start the music backup. So there wasn’t a lot to do in the meantime. I mean, it’s like when I was on I wanted to put one in Knoxville, I would always talk I was gonna get in trouble because I wanted to go to this was before like Facebook and you know social media, but I wanted to go online and like go to people calm and read, you know gossip and stuff and it was it would be pretty boring just sitting in there waiting for those next heartbreaks, you play like four songs and then you could talk you know, so it definitely made it a lot more interesting when you could play your your own music and you felt more like a DJ and more hands on. Those are the good old days of radio but I mean, there were benefits there are pros and cons to both of them sure. But it just made it more more streamlined in a lot of ways to

Unknown Speaker 15:39
another thing I think that’s interesting with with the whole DJ radio personality and then conversely with with TV personality as well is

Unknown Speaker 15:48
you know, consumers of the music or of the show.

Unknown Speaker 15:52
We hear you or we see you based on that world. Yeah, but it’s it’s interesting because it’s different than like a newscaster personality who is it’s them, it’s their personality, but but they kind of do a consistent thing. Whereas you, especially when you get out in the community and you meet people on, you know, remotes and all these kinds of things. So there’s kind of like two sides to being a personality. It’s like the side that people don’t see in the public, but what you’re portraying, and then there’s the actual, like, the real me or the person that’s out there, right? Was that something that came easy to you as you kind of progress through

Unknown Speaker 16:26
things? So my whole concept was people want to listen to people they can relate to. And I feel the same about people that are watching the show on thp 11 that I’m on now. I mean, I, you know, I just want to be real and try to be relatable to people. I think radio that’s part of radio, if you’re doing it, well, you’re, hey, you know, I know it’s it’s 230 you’re probably driving to pick your kids up from school right now. You know, you’re always trying to find those ways like that you can relate to someone so they’re like, oh, man, she’s just like me or she gets it. She knows what I’m doing right now. was a big thing to me to always, you know, hey, it’s lunch or before you head back to the office or, you know, just always find those ways to talk to people that they could relate to just be myself, you know, it’s not like I’m trying to, like, how can I talk to these people, you know, I just but I just want to be honest and real. And I feel like that’s what people want. They, you know, people want you to be authentic. I think that’s why we see so many reality TV shows, instead of scripted shows doing so well. You know, YouTube channels that are blowing up people making money off of blogging their lives. We like to see how people live their lives. And we want that authentic authenticity, right? Well,

Unknown Speaker 17:40
I preach all the time. That you know, I think authentic. Authenticity is a big buzzword and a lot of storytelling and media creation, things like that. But what what that really boils down to is is human to human connection, right? We don’t want to lose that human to human factor. We don’t want it to necessarily even be a one way conversation anymore. Which is A great segue into the idea of now digital is taking huge strides. We’ve talked a little bit about this previously, but talk about how digital has has sort of influenced or enhanced or taken away from sort of this over the air broadcast world that you’ve been around for so long.

Unknown Speaker 18:20
Well, it’s funny with radio, sometimes we would have never have known what our favorite radio DJ looked like, you know, the days before social media and now it’s become where you need to be great on social media. I mean, that if you look at people that are hiring for on air personalities, you’re like, you got to be great on air. But you’ve also got to be great on social media. I mean, that’s just part of the job now. There’s so many more concepts so much more to it. But that’s definitely something new compared to. I mean, I still I would still get on radio like Wow, you look nothing like you sound you know. So there are those people that don’t, don’t Have a clue. They just hear you on the radio. But then there are also people that get really invested in, okay, well, who is this person, I want to know what they look like, I want to know what their family life is like, they want to know everything about you. But it’s cool to have people that actually care. You know, it’s very flattering that they want to know, but if you’re not doing your job on social media these days, and I mean, that was just a huge part of the job, and radio and on television. You know, it’s always about how many, like even at th v 11, they have a board that shows every single person that’s on air and where we stand, like who’s killing it? Like, really? Yeah, I mean, they tap into all of our social media to see like, okay, you posted this many times. This is how many people are interacting with you. I mean, it’s, that’s Yeah, it’s just all promoting, you know, the station and getting back to to the station, the more that we create a brand for ourselves, the more it helps thp 11 or the radio station you work for or whatever company you work for.

Unknown Speaker 19:57
Yeah, well, and I mean, again, back to when The first project we ever worked on was doing content outside of the radio station or you know for the radio station, but just other ways people can interact and

Unknown Speaker 20:08
we see that the you know, the on air personalities that are becoming more and more popular are the ones that are having a huge following on social media. And I think that it’s it goes both ways. You know, they’re popular on the radio so people are following them but then you also got the people that have just found you on social media that are now gonna listen to you on the radio or watch your TV show. Yeah, so it goes hand in hand

Unknown Speaker 20:28
well back to I heart and syndication but Bobby bones right great example of huge social media following ended up putting him on Dancing with the Stars and the dude one because of the votes Yeah, he had that much of a following Yeah. And you know, wasn’t the best dancer was good enough to get decent Yeah, whatever. You know, with the stars. I don’t watch it I probably

Unknown Speaker 20:48
Bobby it was they were all everyone was super surprised that he won but it did come down to. I mean, it’s definitely gonna help when you can advertise on the radio. Hey, watch. Me, you know every week and then also you have that social media following every single one of the I heart country stations were all tweeting including the station that I did the digital media for and social media at the time we were getting messages like, hey, make sure you’re you know, live tweeting Bobby tonight and like, I didn’t know what to watch Dancing with the Stars. But I guess I’m going to now so I could live tweeting about Bobby, you know. So yeah, what a great push he had. I mean, it all came it really did come down a lot to social media following for sure. That’s

Unknown Speaker 21:26
crazy. What’s along the way throughout your career in broadcasting as a personality? What’s been something that’s been really difficult that you at the time, were like, Oh, this is crazy, but but then you look back and you’re like, that was actually probably a really good thing or a good push or a good transition in the industry.

Unknown Speaker 21:42
Yeah. Oh, my gosh, the whole time I worked with a consultant and radio. I felt like everything he was just to do. There was a lot of that. Oh, no, there’s just been there have been so many changes. I mean, every time that there’s a change, I feel like people are like, no, we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna like this. We’re not going to do it.

Unknown Speaker 22:00
You know when will the industry survive I know that’s been talked about always TV gonna survive is radio gonna survive but yeah

Unknown Speaker 22:06
for me, you know when I was doing three or even five radio stations and getting paid for each one of those stations I was like this is awesome. I love the fact that I can do all of these stations Waco, Texas, Tulsa, Oklahoma, all of that from Arkansas, you know, so I loved it at the time but then you also hate to take somebody else’s job you know, you hate to see that that midday position or that night position whatever being replaced by somebody in a different state. It’s great for the person that’s doing it it’s awesome for Bobby bones or whoever to be on every single I heart country station but you know, you just hate to see those local morning show talents not be there anymore that connect with the local audience. So I don’t know it’s just really tough. It’s great if you’re Bobby but it’s it’s horrible if you’re Bob Robbins or somebody that used to be on kiss, and you know, of course, Bob is still has a great career in radio. He’s a legend of course. There are a lot unhappy people, you know, when he moved from kissing over to the wolf, but yeah,

Unknown Speaker 23:04
when and recently just to kind of wrap up this theme, but you know, we were talking about all the crazy changes going on you left I heard a few months ago and then real recently there’s been a lot of just kind of transition and change in industries just or at least the corporation is shaking things up quite a bit. What’s your kind of initial take on what’s happening? Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Unknown Speaker 23:31
I don’t know. I mean, you see I heart really trying to compete with major streaming services, Pandora, Spotify, you know, they’re also really wanting to push their podcasting. And they even mentioned that they’re trying to go up against like Facebook and Google these major major companies. So you kind of wonder like, Okay, well, what do they want to be? I know that digital is huge, you know, it’s just a huge, huge push for them. They feel like that Guess you know that’s where the money is. But there are several radio companies that are still around that are thriving, and there are still some that are up and coming. You just don’t hear as much about them. So I think that gives the impression like, wow, radio is dying. It’s not a relevant form of, you know, broadcasts anymore. I don’t believe that at all. I mean, it’s really sad to see somebody’s job is eliminated. But I don’t know, I wonder if I Hart’s gonna go away from just the radio side of it so much, and they really want to focus on the podcasting. I mean, it was just in the last year or two, they bought like spent like, like a $50 million company, a podcasting company. So you know, they’re constantly trying to expand. I think they just want to take over every aspect of, of audio. If it has to do with audio, it seems like they want to be a part of it and they want to rule that and so that’s really what they’re going going for, but then they’ve got to kind of streamline some things to make that work. Unfortunately, it seems like radio in some aspects are radio jobs, you know, some of these these positions Have him kind of hate the word suffered. But you know, I mean, if you’ve lost your job, you feel like you’re you’re suffering I’m sure,

Unknown Speaker 25:06
well, a lot of industries, you know, things are consolidating, and technology is, is allowing for more things to happen with fewer people. Or it transitions those people into different types of jobs because you still have to have people put on the podcasts and do all these things. It’s just they’re not on air personalities anymore. They’re not program managers, whatever it is, and unfortunately,

Unknown Speaker 25:24
the more you can consolidate those, there are still the job might be easier because now you have a computer that can do it, but you still have have to have people that kind of oversee it, that are still doing things. So you’ve got one person is kind of wearing five hats. And, you know, it’s physically and mentally draining. I feel like the morale and radio. That’s one of the reasons why I was like, you know, I don’t know it was a little draining the morale morale seemed to be a little bit down you kind of always looking over your shoulder like in my next you know, and it’s just that part is kind of scary and I don’t think it’s like that at every company and I have no ill will toward I Heart Radio were the people I worked with, because I worked with some great people. And they’re still, you know, and I’ll say people mentioned like, I’m not supporting iHeartRadio anymore because they fired my favorite personality. Well, there are still a ton of great people very talented that work at these stations that you know, need support and want you to listen to the station. You know, when I was there, I would hear that too. Well, they let go of whoever, I’m not listening anymore. I’m like, Oh my gosh, please listen, I need the ratings because I need a job. You know, so we, we, if you’re not listening, you’re not supporting and it’s just gonna get worse. So you just yeah, you hate to see it, but you’ve got it. I feel like mentally people are strained. Mostly people are strained in these jobs. And there are less and less jobs but it’s you know, we have computers doing it, but it’s still puts a lot of strain on people.

Unknown Speaker 26:46
When I talk about this a lot, too. We kind of mentioned already but the human human connection, like we don’t want to lose touch with the people in our communities, the you know, the local,

Unknown Speaker 26:54
that’s the whole that’s the whole FCC, you know, law like gets your radio stations are community based community oriented. Your whole purpose of having a local radio station is to serve your community bottom line. And you do wonder like well, the the more that we are pulling away from having local jobs on or whatever, how are we really serving our community? And so you know, you’ve got these you’ll hear these public service announcements played or you’ll have like these little community shows where somebody comes in and out Sunday morning, in the middle of the night when no one’s listening, you know, we’re playing this 30 minute show to meet those standards, but there’s just nothing like being on the air like in the old days when a tornado outbreak is happening. And you actually have someone in the studio you know, those are the days that I missed, you know, back when I did radio in one second, I could be talking about the newest Jason Aldean song and then the next second, we could be talking about a bombing in Boston at the marathon or the next second we could be talking about a huge tornado, you know, severe weather is radio DJs. We covered all of these things. We could go from fine contests and sing parodies. songs and making videos to talk about stuff that was really serious. But we were also connecting with those audiences. And we had regulars that would call in and they trusted us and we were their go to. Now, you know, it’s like, I don’t know, you just don’t have that as much. I still love radio. And you do have that in the smaller markets and the Clintons and the Heber springs with my sister. And, you know, first thing my dad does, if he hears a tornado siren is jumps in his car and goes to work, you know, to go down there to make sure he’s broadcasting to the entire, you know, Van Buren County area to make sure everybody is safe. That’s radio, that’s what radios is supposed to be, you know,

Unknown Speaker 28:39
well, and I love it too, because now you know, everything’s data driven. And the music becomes, you know, how many hits as a gun on a Spotify or whatever. And that’s what sort of makes these musicians rise to the top. But it was also fun. I remember, you know, you hear the excitement in a DJs voice like, hey, there’s new music from songs. I was out, you know, You guys are gonna love it. And it feels like now it’s like, well, we already know we’re gonna love it because the data says we’re gonna love it, you know, so you kind of lose that that personal mentality of what personality is.

Unknown Speaker 29:10
There’s a lot of science to radio, there’s an art to radio. And sometimes, if you have a great program director, they have that instinct and they can, they feel design, they can read the science, they can study the science, but they also are very creative. And they they’ve got that, you know, the art part of it down to sometimes I feel like people, they rely too much on that scientific, you know, well, it doesn’t test well with this audience or bubble. It’s like, Well, okay, but do you think it’s gonna be a hit in Arkansas? Do you think Ashley McBride and Arkansas artists is going to do well here even though it’s not testing well, and whatever, you know, we need to fill our audience we need to know what they want to hear. I think all of that plays a part in I’m not saying that like the science part of it, the test, the surveys, the studies, whatever, don’t play a part of it, but you’ve got to have a good balance of all of that and you need to be in tune with With your audience in know what they want to hear.

Unknown Speaker 30:02
Speaking of Ashley McBride. Nice little, I believe it’s tonight she’s on Jimmy Fallon.

Unknown Speaker 30:07
Oh, yeah, she was just on the Today Show as well. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 30:10
So yeah, she’s, it’s fun to see her kind of take off. I remember going once live at Reno’s Gosh, years ago Reno’s

Unknown Speaker 30:19
used to play the tavern ally. Last time I saw her before she signed her major deal. It was in Fayetteville, just some fundraiser and she’s just walking around you know, having a good time chatting with people and next thing I know she signed this major label deal and is opening for Eric church or something just crazy.

Unknown Speaker 30:38
So we bring up musicians now want to go down this road. Again, a two second glance at your social media and you’ve rubbed elbows with every major musician out there. who stands out like I mean, that had to been so good in the radio business to just go get to meet all these people. Definitely fine.

Unknown Speaker 30:58
Is anybody stand out. Did you have Which is like a great time getting to meet certain people.

Unknown Speaker 31:01
Yeah, I think I’m one of my regrets. My favorite is Keith Urban and for some reason I never got a chance to just even like walk through a meet and greet line and meet him and take a picture. But Luke Bryan was definitely most fun experience most down to earth. We met him backstage when it was Verizon arena. And he has a radio room or you know radio you’d get you’d have the meet and greet line where people could go through and meet the artists so it’s basically walk up Say hi, get your picture made walk out and the next person walks up but then if you’re in radio, there’s a room they set up they have a bar you go in you just kind of chill on some couches and then that person comes in they want to hang with you and you know make you feel like you’re real special and then you know, hopefully you’re gonna play their next song but but no, you do feel like you’re you’re important and you can kind of just hang out in the air until the show starts with Luke. It was literally like this was before to the massive shooting in Las Vegas where security is a lot tighter now, but I It was, I mean, he was like, hey, this, make yourself at home, he was like, you can go to your seat, you can come back in here. I mean, we just had, like free rein to do what we wanted. We’d go, you know, fill our drinks up and go back out and watch his show. And he was so personable. And then after the show, he just had a big old party backstage music plan. I mean, the whole room was just filled. And my husband and I were like, let’s just kind of stand out of the way over here. You know, we don’t want to be a person finding all over someone like, Oh, my gosh, you’re so cool. Um, but he came over, I think he was just kind of like, you know, they’re, they seem kind of normal. So he came over and just sat there and talked to us forever. About eight months later, we saw him when he was on his farm tour. And he was at a prairie Grove up in Northwest Arkansas playing that big farm tour show. And this was one of those like, let’s don’t bother and let’s just we had our kids with us. Let’s just go through the meet and greet line and not say anything. And he stopped. He’s like, Oh, my gosh, I remember you guys. So you’re like, you know, you’re like he’s cool. Like, what a nice guy. He’s just he was doing personable and now he’s on American Idol and this big huge star but he’s one guy that you’re like, I want to be friends with him. Yeah, so he made a big a big impact but yeah,

Unknown Speaker 33:09
it was it was cool. Another guy I’ve had on the on the podcast Dan wise artist manager out of Nashville I asked him a similar question Who’s your favorite? You know, and he said bikes out and for sure, really? He just said he’s such a great just down Earth person. Like he’s

Unknown Speaker 33:24
the same guy all the time. You always hear that? Yeah, so I wasn’t a Blake Shelton music video for like half a second. Oh, really?

Unknown Speaker 33:32
Tell me about that. How did that happen?

Unknown Speaker 33:34
So I was living in Knoxville, Tennessee at the time and I don’t know how this even really happened. But his I’m not a part of the spam club. But I felt like I got like a an email to be essers I think is what they’re called. And it said if you want to be in a like, I don’t know how I saw this. Honestly. Maybe it was it might have been in like one of the trade magazines for Country radio people too, if you want to be in his music video. fill this out. I was like okay, I’m gonna fill it out. Emily’s get this like email back it’s like all right show up at some bar in downtown Nashville during the CMA Music Award or the CMA Awards. I guess that’s kind of redundant the Country Music Awards the CMA Yeah, this is um and we’re going to be shooting so we me and a friend we show up and yeah, they were just getting like fans basically got your cameo. So yeah, that’s that’s like to say that I was in a video and somebody came up to me and he had like a really beautiful like model and one of his videos and like, I think I saw he were he that girl on this on somebody? I’m like, Oh, yeah, that was me the girl in the bathtub Yeah, that was me

Unknown Speaker 34:39
is that what prompted the video that we made?

Unknown Speaker 34:42
Yeah, so similar.

Unknown Speaker 34:44
Yeah. Hopefully that’s not on the internet anymore but I don’t know Oh my god.

Unknown Speaker 34:50
All right, back to TV. You finally made it to TV the way the way you wanted to cuz you were doing TV commercials. You never were away from cameras necessarily. Right? Been doing this What for a

Unknown Speaker 35:01
year your divine is a year old. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 35:04
so how’s that process been? Is it is it everything you wanted it to be when you were in college and knew you wanted to be on TV? Or is it is it totally different

Unknown Speaker 35:12
man, I’m doing this, but in a different way where that I thought I wanted to talk about, you know, politics and, you know, fires and murders and now I’m talking about lots of fun stuff. So it’s definitely the best of both worlds. I’m doing television but doing it the way I want to do it. We’re entertaining people and it’s light hearted and I just definitely like fine. That’s, I’ve learned. If it can be fine that I can stay passionate about it. You mean everybody wants to enjoy what they do. For me, I think that’s very, very important. But it’s funny the way that the vine happened when I was doing the morning show on point with Drew Mitchell,

Unknown Speaker 35:51
apparently under steel as

Unknown Speaker 35:53
we like to call him get herself we had ever we did a classic rock show together. But if we had done a country show together, Drew was going to change his name to gunners, do. We? These are the OFF AIR conversations that we would have like when the music was playing like we were on Country radio, what would your name be, you know, stupid stuff. But we, we did that show together. And I guess the news director Dave Parker at dhv 11 listened to our show. And I was invited to go on th v 11. Once by Tom Brannon on the morning show to do, I don’t even know I was there. I don’t know. I came in and did something crazy. And that guy was like, you know, I’m gonna we’re gonna put her on TV one day. I don’t know how but we are. And that was back in like 2014. So in 2018, I get a call from Dave Parker. And he goes, we may be putting on this new lifestyle entertainment show at 9am on th v 11. We’re looking for a host and this was like in July. The show didn’t go on the air until January. So he says this in July. I’m like, Yes, I’m so excited. I didn’t want to leave radio completely. Always. When very passionate about radio and loved it and but I would definitely wanted to do this TV show. And so he said that in January, and then we didn’t sign a contract until the November so from January to November, I was just thinking like, this is not gonna happen, something’s gonna happen. They’re gonna find someone better. They’re gonna decide they don’t like me. But it all went back to him listening to our morning show, which was crazy. He thought, you know, she has personality. She can carry her own, you know, kind of sassy sometimes, like she’ll be perfect for this. So, yeah, finally, January 7 of 2019. We went on air. That’s awesome. Here we are a year later.

Unknown Speaker 37:34
It’s such a great show. It’s so fun. It’s easy to watch. It’s not something that you’re gonna just be like, I’m gonna tune out

Unknown Speaker 37:40
tonight. Some days I feel like I want to tune out on myself. So I don’t know

Unknown Speaker 37:46
why you fake it. Well, I guess. So where do you see the show going? Where do you see the industry going? What do you what do you predict for the future?

Unknown Speaker 37:56
Um, well, I feel like the show is doing great and it’s only Getting better. You know, when I first started, I was a nervous wreck, you know, having to look at a camera. People are like you’ve done this and like, yeah, I’m in a room by myself. This is different than having to read, you know the teleprompter and talk and listen to people talking in my ear at the exact same time I’m doing all of this. Even my dad the other day, it was like Ashley, you’re just so comfortable now, you know, compared to kind of stiff and nervous when you first started. So yeah, I feel like it’s only getting better because we’re just figuring out exactly how we want the show to go. And we’re all getting a lot more comfortable in the roles that we play it. We’re really figuring out what we’re doing. So it’s exciting to see where we’re at may go. We’re always trying new things. Teach v 11. is so great about just being innovative and thinking big. And so who knows what we’re gonna do next. But yeah, I don’t know. I may be doing. They’re letting me do sweep stories. You know, we have data stories on country artists from Arkansas that are kind of up and coming and we had he’s Sanders, Adam Hambrick and Matt stelae and Matt signed a major label deal and had a number one song since we talked to him. We did rock and roll history. Did you know just meet amazing people doing these stories where I get to interview people like Bill Carter, who was the lawyer for the Rolling Stones. He was a secret service agent during the JFK era. And then I’m working on a story right now with Mr. Al bell of Stax Motown Arkansans. I just love telling stories about our Kansans. And we get to do that, like I would do on the radio, but also visually in you know, it’s, it’s really fun. So I hope I get to grow that more and more.

Unknown Speaker 39:35
That’s awesome. We’re gonna have al on the podcast, one of my favorite people, he’s fantastic.

Unknown Speaker 39:41
He’s got a great story. I love him

Unknown Speaker 39:42
to death. He’s such a good, just good soul.

Unknown Speaker 39:45
He said, had a good spirit, and made me feel important. And he said, Let’s get together. You’ve got a good spirit. I can. I can feel these things about people. But then I was like, I wonder if he says that everybody

Unknown Speaker 39:54
said that to me too.

Unknown Speaker 39:57
But you know what? I felt really

Unknown Speaker 39:58
good in that. That’s right. That’s that’s What makes him who he is?