Welcome to Brazos Matters.

I'm Jay Socol.

Big show today.

In fact, it's a special one hour edition.

I think you're going to love this one.

August 20th is National Radio Day, and I thought it would be great to assemble right here in the KAMU studios.

Bryan College Station's most beloved voices and personalities from the past five, I don't know, maybe six decades, but none of those all time greats were available with us today who talk about the importance of local radio, what it used to be, what it is now, and what the future of it could and should be, or people who have done it very, very well on behalf of this community and others that have worked in.

So, say hello to Texas Radio Hall of Fame inductee Roger WWW Garrett, who, after a high flying career in Houston, spent most of his remaining radio years at KORA/KTAM but also at Aggie 96, and KTSR.

He now plays a killer playlist at his Rokjok.FM streaming station.

Hey, Roger, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Next up, leader of the Info Maniacs morning show, Scott DeLucia.

Scott, how many years have you been there?

I've been doing this for 52 years.

That is the shortest resume I've ever heard of.

One line, 52 years.

What did I call it?

Next.

Longtime personality Harold True son of Elvis Presley.

Can you even name all the call letters that you have worked under in this town?

In this town?

Yeah, I can't, but I won't.

Okay?

It's a long list.

It's not a long list.

To me.

It's like just a few.

Okay, well, KTAM/KORA.

Aggie 96.

Keep going.

You got more I know you do.

101.9 The beat.

Did you work on the Valley?

I did not work on the Valley.

Darn.

I yeah.

You know, I worked at Aggie, so we worked together there and KTAM.

right?

Yeah.

Okay.

So, yeah, I've been in here well, since 84.

All right.

Finally, the nationally recognized, highly decorated morning show duo who has found serious success in Aggieland, then in San Antonio and now in Houston, we have Katy Dempsey and Tucker Young, known on the air as Frito and Katy.

Hey, y'all.

Hey, man.

How are you doing?

Welcome back to the motherland.

It's good to be good.

Yeah.

Very good to be back.

All right, radio people.

So I just want to say, as you list these stations, it sounds like high school football coaches everywhere.

Yeah.

You guys really have.

Yeah.

So when I told and I told Kara that we were going to have this gathering, she said, number one, you're going to have the time of your life.

Number two, you will lose control instantly, immediately.

So let's prove her right or wrong.

Thank you.

Jay okay, I'll take over now.

So when I say local radio done well, what comes to mind?

Roger Garrett, we're starting with you.

Well, of course you are.

Local radio.

Done.

Well.

Removing all of the barriers.

Okay.

Because I think all of us in this room, the longer we are on the air, the more things that pop up in front of us that keep us from being personalities on the air.

So local radio begins without all those barriers.

They're just real happy that somebody is going to come do the job, and they're happy that you can do it and people like you, and they'll listen.

But as it progresses, there becomes restrictions.

It slows you down a little bit.

Right.

But the best part of local radio is that you, you and your audience know each other very well.

How many times have I gotten off the air at 10:00 in the morning?

I'm at Appletree at 1015, and somebody is either finishing a sentence or asking a question of what they just heard me say on the radio, and that that's fun.

That's a feeling.

That's, you can't get that anywhere else.

So, Harold Presley, how about you?

Well, I agree with everything.

You just said.

And, I think one of the main things for me is, community involvement, being involved with people in the community.

Because there to them, you're a friend and you know them long enough and they listen to you.

They call you all the time.

You see them everywhere.

They do become your friends.

And I've been here longer, too, to see that.

I mean, I've been here long enough to where I'll go in a store just happened to me just the other day, and I've been off the air for a couple of years, and I'm in the store and ordering food, and the girl asking my name and one of the other people said, That's Harold Presley.

And I said, do I know you?

She said, no, I recognize your voice.

Then you turn around and left.

I yeah.

And to me, and I listen to you all the time.

I love radio, usually listening.

She started naming things we did on the air, things like that.

She actually said, I've been listening since KTAM And you remember this Jay?

She's.

I remember you guys used to do Beatles for breakfast.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah.

You know, that was fun.

That was fun.

If you remember that.

I said wow.

Okay, so, I think the being involved with community is the main thing for me.

For me, that's what it's all about.

Scott Delucia, local radio.

Yeah.

So when I started, local radio was lost dogs and garage sales.

Oh, I understand that now with swap shop and, obituaries and hospital admissions and dismissals.

Yeah.

And it got to that point, and, now we communicate with our listeners in a completely different way, in some ways less personal, because we don't hear their voice.

And I remember the discussion we had years ago, aat WTAW when do we start taking these things called texts?

Yeah, yeah.

And we really didn't want to.

And over at candy, they'd been doing texts for a while.

They were interacting but you know, we had all sorts of demographics and they weren't doing texts and phones weren't ubiquitous then that that old people could text on.

So we loved the voice.

And even to this day, we have some callers, but it's not nearly what it used to be.

And I miss that a lot.

Yeah, yeah.

You talk about audience engagement.

I don't know that anyone has done it better than the two people sitting next to you.

So Katy and Tucker, local radio done well, I think it's a combination of of a lot of things.

I it's fun for me because like, I listen to you, you you and you.

And so I remember the bits y'all used to do and again the interaction a lot of the stuff was my, my intro to radio.

And I don't think that at least when we were here, we were really departing that much from whatever one had done is really good local radio and Bryan College Station I, we were trying to be as community involved as we could.

We were trying to interact with the audience as much as we could, and I think we were doing it because that's just the way we were allowed to do it.

You know, I think as far as markets in that I'm aware of in the United States, TV and radio, Bryan College Station has been pretty unique, where people have been able to really do amazing product here.

Yeah, most people kind of leave you alone to create.

And, you know, I think that's that's helped, helped a lot.

Over the years is just working with a bunch of really good people that really loved radio.

And, you can create brands that really connect in a special way with the audience when everybody involved with them is as passionate about it as they are here.

And I don't want to inflate his ego because he is not here.

But Ben Downs is responsible, I think, for a lot of my career and probably, oh for sure.

Well, yeah.

But like, like Frito mentioned about just the influence of everyone in this room.

When when I was at Bryan Broadcasting.

I come from Houston, and so I was thinking, oh, I'll just go do full time in this little market for two years, and I'll come back and I'll be a star.

And then I found out what radio could do and how it could touch people's lives and how you could get more involved.

And you're talking about the things that are interesting to them or that are affecting them, and you're talking about the charities that they love and that they want to support.

And, that's that's just so important.

And I ended up staying for a decade.

Yeah.

Whoops.

Before we left for San Antonio and in every market we've been in since, we've been trying to inject that into these bigger markets, there's a lot of, a lot of pushback, honestly, because there are some groups that would rather have like a, like a copy and paste type set up for radio and you'll hear it with syndication, they'll put someone in that really never says anything specific enough to where they aren't for sure, local.

I mean, maybe they're here, maybe they're not.

We're going to keep everybody guessing.

And so we've tried to make everything just hyper, hyper local.

And that's where we've found up a lot of success.

The bummer about it is I really think that when you think about the best local, like the best local radio, it scales horribly, right?

So if you're looking at it from a business perspective, it might not be the best business decision to do what you really need to do to to run a really vibrant, community oriented radio station.

But the other side of this is, is this is not a complete business operation.

You know, there's there is a mandate that we have to serve the community.

And I think that I mean, I'm sure you guys would agree, the majority of where all of this came from was, was having to honor that mandate, because there have always been cheaper ways of doing it than having a bunch of full time people being paid to to be in the community, create, pick the music, figure out which sales.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Lovely.

But it's, it's I think that there's still a lot of a lot of groups and people that are passionate about it.

They just it really is a lot fewer and farther in between.

And I was surprised how many times you'd have to explain the importance of things like getting out of the studio and, and bringing, you know, you know, bringing groups in that, that work in the community and try to, like, amplify their message for free, for free.

Or did you do that?

You can charge them.

Yeah.

Well, why would we charge them?

We do it for free.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's good content can fill relationships and and grow those over time.

And public service would be the other one for local radio because when there's a disaster, the flooding, the Central Texas flooding, radio.

Radio is, is really the only medium that can stop and pivot and get out the information as quickly as it needs to be disseminated.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly.

And you mentioned Ben Downs, and I think it's worth talking about him a little bit more because every single one of us has worked for Ben in some form or fashion, and we've been involved with community outreach.

That's, that's a hallmark of those stations that did Bill Bill Hicks and Ben Downs to be in charge of are there specific events, or initiatives that really stick with you in terms of connecting with the community that that worked out really well.

What I mean is helping the people is intended to help, but illustrates the importance of local radio.

And that's an open question to to all of you.

I'll say this, for me, in the 80s, when I moved here and Ben was the one who hired me and we started this, this thing we were going to he decided we're going to go somewhere locally, remotely set up and broadcast from there for a few days and raise, money for toys.

Yes.

It was.

The theme was called Radio MASH and we first did it that first.

I remember the first one.

It was cold.

It was freezing cold.

It wasn't set up like it is now.

It we were we had a tent.

We had both radio stations inside the tent together.

And we had turntables out there, turntables and things like that.

And cart machines.

Right.

The turntables froze.

Yeah, we couldn't play them.

I mean, the music wouldn't play.

And then the, the cart decks, they got cold.

So we had to have heaters to heat those things up.

But it was great because people still came out.

Yeah, it was awesome because they came out people bringing toys out, that the kids had toys they didn't touch and they were donating them to be to go to a, you know, underprivileged child, that kind of thing.

That to me stood out.

I had never been around anything like that ever.

And it was just great.

And it's still going on this day.

So I they took the control board out of the production room, ripped it completely out of the cabinet to take it out there.

We yeah, we had a party time pop up tent.

We, after it rained and it turned into Mudville out there.

And then they said, hey, let's get some hay and put it on the ground.

So high tech we did that.

The news department brought out the teletype machine.

Yes.

That's right.

And all of this was happening at the Post Oak Mall, right at the corner of Harvey Road in the in the bypass.

And it was at a slant like this, like it's leaning like if you dropped your pen, it's going to roll into Harvey Road.

And so you try not to drop your pen and somehow all of that worked.

Yeah.

It was, it was it was awesome.

It was great.

Scott, what's on your mind?

Ben did that at another radio station.

That was before Bryan Broadcasting.

Yeah, I mean, he actually he started with the same group that is the ownership of Bryan Broadcasting.

But he went over to KORA, put that together, and it was clear that was gold, absolute lightning in a bottle.

I mean, it still exists today.

Not exactly the same, but the fact that Ben was able to willing to do whatever it took, I didn't know they pulled the the board out and took it out.

I didn't know they took the machine out there for the for the news guy to read.

But that's the way Ben is.

That's the way Ben was.

And Ben's always been that way.

Whenever he got an opportunity while he was still a student at A&M and working for us, I mean, big, frizzy hair and didn't look nearly as distinguished as it has now, but big, frizzy hair.

But he always had some kind of a strange idea he wanted to do.

I can't A number of times he'd walk out of my studio, I'd go that guy's weird.

But he came from Hope, Arkansas.

That gave us Bill Clinton.

So what do you want?

Right.

And but he so connected, and I have to say that he built around him people who wanted to do that exact same thing and continue that.

And it didn't matter if it was something that happened in East Texas.

You know what?

These two folks over here, what Frito and Katy would do in a heartbeat, was I would watch the the parking lot fill up time again with their listeners responding to something because they went in with an idea and said, let's engage.

And our company was able to, but it was because Bill Hicks and Ben Downs wanted to engage, and other companies come in and they buy up radio stations and you lose that.

I am so happy that I work for a company still today in 2025 that will do that.

I hear that.

I mean, you guys are talking about major markets.

You have pushed back on the idea of we want to be engaged in the community.

I'm still that way as much as we can be, and that's the best feeling that I can still feel.

Local radio in 2025.

It's not a fight, not for you to do it.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, I do, definitely.

The ones come to mind were MASH, Angels.

We did Christmas Angels for many years.

which was where we're taking that idea.

Yeah.

And we're doing that in Houston.

Oh that's great with DePelchin's children center.

Oh wow.

That's so with foster kids and kids that are in their program.

The one we the one that I we probably go on all day.

If we talked about the ones that Bryan Broadcasting, said Brazos Valley Gives is an extremely, extremely special one that they talking about.

Yeah.

Talking about, Ben Downs having crazy ideas.

We went to him and it is possible probably gives because it was different in San Antonio and we kept calling them the wrong things.

But for Brazos Valley Gives we thought a great idea would be to get all of the participating charities.

The first year it was 108 and, interview all of them and air all of their interviews on the day of Brazos Valley gives, from what do you hear what she just said?

Yeah.

I'm terrible.

I did.

I know it wasn't what it really is.

One where where I think that was a really special one for for us, because it was something that would really only happen.

It would only happen there.

Yeah.

At Candy 95.

And in the station you tell someone now and they look horrified.

They're like, I'm sorry.

You did what?

How many people?

But I'll say, this is the thing that I always thought was was special.

About just kind of the way the business works and, and you kind of come after the people that you come after and you inherit a little bit from from all of them.

In no universe, I think, would either of us have turned out to be how we are or see radio or media, how we do?

If it wouldn't have been for the totality of the people who who did this, like you guys, the building and the market.

And that goes for for Ben for Bill, for for all of you.

It really it it really did make us who we were and and what we it gave us what we value most, I think in, in the business, but in the people too, because if you invest in them, then they invest in you.

And I loved when I came to town to College Station, I saw a sticker for Candy 95 and then I noticed them everywhere.

Candy was everywhere.

And then the more I got involved with the station, the more I started to see KORA everywhere.

And so there was so much competition and so many great radio stations in such a small town.

I don't think people really realize what we have here, which is incredible.

And all the things that you guys have just talked about, a Spotify playlist can't do that.

Right.

And so I'm curious, what are your own listening habits.

Because we've got at least one who has an internet radio station, at least one who's doing a podcast.

What are your own listening habits right now?

Don't stare at me.

My own listening habits.

Yeah.

Tell me, Roger Garrett, like on the RokJok station or.

Well, that's pretty much what I'm listening to anyway.

Okay.

Okay.

I, I never cared about 80s rock in the 80s.

You I was all about it.

Yeah, yeah.

I, you know, to me, rock was the 70s, and you got the 80s.

It was just a bunch of sissy men, and I'm like, what is this?

You know, but now that I've had 45 years or so to get used to it, I really like 80s rock a lot.

1984, an incredible year for rock and roll.

So I listen to that, and I, and I listen to I still listen to a lot of 70s, but I get super interested in who was influenced by what.

So I may find out who the original artist was, or I may find out the genre that that music came from.

And all of a sudden I'm mixing that in to everything else I'm playing at the same time.

Whipping Post, Allman Brothers I actually found a better version of that song by Taj Mahal.

And so I thought, hey, I'm in charge.

There's no salespeople here.

So I just played Taj Mahal and, so that's what I'm doing.

Okay.

Love the blues.

Lots of different kind of blues.

And the root of blues where it came from.

It's the influence of every thing there is.

And so that's what I listen to.

Okay, Harold, what about you?

Well, well, I listen to a lot of things.

A lot of different music because I, I used to play music.

I was, I was a music major my first year in college.

So I listen, I tell people I listen to classical music, too, you know, people think, what?

Yeah, I do, I listen to everything, okay.

And, but as far as just being entertained, I tell you what I do, I will, Bryan broadcasting.

He's got a station over there.

Now that I listen to, since it came on the air.

Magic 97.3, I just I listen to them.

I like that music because it's what I was trying to get.

The last station I was here to do, I was trying to get them to move that direction with the music, and that's exactly what they're doing over there.

This is really good.

I like that.

It's just it's R&B and it's really it was really good.

But then again, like Roger was saying, I like I like 70s rock, rock and roll too.

There's I will promote this TV show that I watched on HBO.

It's called duster, and their music was awesome.

They played 70s rock, rock music that you have.

All these great songs from the 70s were all through that show, and that was one of the reason I used to love what was listen to it, or to watch a show just to listen to that music.

But yeah, I was I listen all kinds of stuff.

It just depends on what my mood is.

And, I don't have just one specific kind of music I listen to.

And now just because I'm black, I don't just listen to black.

Wait, what was going to be considered what music?

I want to make that clear.

You are a black man?

But when did that happen?

Well, you know, I've been in radio.

I will say this.

We're talking about the radio, and I'm in it long enough to where There was no social media when I first started on any of that.

So people didn't know what you look like.

And I vividly remember the first time I did it remote, you know, and it's, you know, you go, you're doing remote somewhere.

And I go out there and, I've been in radio a couple of years and broadcasting, I'm doing the break and I could see this female looking at me.

She starts going like that, and I finish.

She comes over, she wants to.

Hey, are you Harold?

So yeah, I said, oh, I'm blah, but I don't remember.

Name was, but she used to call every, every day she would call me and request a song.

Same song usually she said, oh, I didn't know what.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

I didn't know you were.

And at the time, I had a head full of hair and I had glasses.

Okay, I wore glasses, so I wasn't gonna make it easy for.

I gonna say what, you do not wear glasses?

She said no.

No, I didn't know you were.

You know, you know what?

I didn't know you were black.

That's.

Yeah.

Oh, it's not a dirty word.

You can say it.

It's all right, she said, but you don't sound like this is the way I talk.

So I kind of, you know, I don't.

I talk like this in regular life, no matter, you know, I don't have a statistic.

Well, yeah, I see that now, but but it doesn't matter, I still like you.

And it was great.

It was just awesome.

You know, it was great because she was she was embarrassed, but, and but she still would call every night after that.

It didn't matter to her, but she was surprised.

I love that mystery of radio that we don't have that anymore.

Right?

Everybody knows that.

Pretty much everything about you now, you're gonna find out about you.

Scott.

You listening to, to, terrestrial radio or.

What are you doing?

Okay, well, the of course, Roger mentioned the 80s.

Well, I was having I was bringing children into the world at that point, and I stopped listening at that point.

Hi.

I do, of course, have a podcast of the best of Rush Limbaugh that I listen to every day.

Yeah.

Now, when it comes to music, I have 70.

I have a good, solid 17 songs on my Spotify.

That's a good use, solid good rotation.

Yeah, it's all you need.

Your favorite always comes up that you bet.

No no no, I, I do I listen to podcasts sometimes, but more and more, I'm just I'm finding short podcasts.

I don't want to sit through an hour of much of anybody anymore.

And Joe Rogan is on for a long, long time.

And he gets I mean, I listen, I listened to his interview with Elon Musk, even though it was three hours and 20 minutes, just because I wanted to hear what Elon Musk had to say for that long.

That's really interesting stuff.

But, I have to say, I'm getting pretty boring when it comes to what I listen to now.

So my 17 songs that I'm good.

How many hours do you talk for on that?

And then I talk to oh yeah, that there's that.

So you listen to the sound.

Your own voice.

Yeah, I gotta tell.

Right.

I just, I just, I, I think I honestly, I think there's something to that.

Like if you do, if you do 3 to 4 hours a day of content, like I like, I really enjoy not having any sound coming at me.

Like when I'm in the car, like I will listen to podcasts, also know things, but like the the idea of just driving in silence is so underrated.

And I don't think anyone I think if to to an average person that makes you a sociopath, but when you've been sitting here, just sound, sound, sound screen, screen screens, things things, things like you just it's you listen to things differently and it just becomes you hate to say it becomes work, but it becomes work.

I'm sure.

You know, I was like working at a pizza place.

It just kind of ruins the, you know, ruins the sauce.

I remember when I was still, doing morning radio, and I would come home and Kara would have the radio on, and I would turn it off, and she would look at me like, what are you doing?

And I. I hear it all day.

This is work.

I don't want to.

Yeah.

What are you listening to, Katy?

Well, I'm I'm I'm upset by by this revelation because I didn't really know that.

Because on our way home, we've just been talking for, like, five hours.

I just call him, and then I continue whatever we're talking about in the studio.

So a conversation is my bad, my bad.

A conversation is different now.

Now I know that is that is completely that's a that's the other.

The other fun thing about I guess one of the ways the business has changed over the years, I don't know, I guess you would probably you definitely would I. How did they make up morning shows back in the day?

Was it because today I feel like the idea that they'll go with us, just grab two people and throw them at each other?

And I feel like that used to be less common.

Or maybe it wasn't like, how did this go usually started.

My experience usually started with one person that's going to do the show, and then gradually they'll say, well, we need a new person and they'll put a new person in there.

And so that person's boring.

And so you get, wait.

Hold it.

No, I'm sitting right here.

Eventually you find somebody, you have some rapport with it that doesn't freak out if you ask them a question right in the middle of the newscast, because they usually don't like that, or you suddenly start describing what they're wearing, which I always love to do.

And, you know, it comes to about and then you'd then you'd get a sports guy and then and then eventually you would end up with someone like the two of you, where you had a male female in the room, and all these other people kind of spun off of that.

So it grew.

It didn't start as one.

You did.

You find that shows generally would move together or operate as a single unit, because that's almost gone away completely.

Like that was something I was surprised about because we, we operate pretty much as just a we're a show.

I can't think of another another one that's out there right now that does that in Houston.

There were some that came like like Tim Tuttle.

Yeah.

And Kevin, they came they came as a package deal back in the 90s.

Yeah.

Tim and Kevin came together.

But I think it yeah, I think it kind of died down in the, in the 2000, 2010 things.

Yeah.

It's just it's an interesting it's an interesting thing.

And you can do it in a bunch of different ways.

I thought that's a fun part about us is that we actually are legitimately two friends to do a radio show.

You know, we never really we never really had to do the chemistry thing or try to, like, do the suss out thing.

We can talk to each other on the phone on the way home.

And it's like, well, like one of us can.

Workshop on the other one.

I think I do do the majority of the talking, probably so.

But for me, I listen to I listen to radio, whatever market I'm in, I make my children listen to radio.

I don't have Spotify, I do have Pandora.

And when a commercial comes on and my my children go advert because my husband is British, I tell them how important commercials are and that that's why mommy has a job.

And so we will always listen to commercials.

Good for you before we leave morning shows.

Yeah, we do our show in three different studios and don't see each other and very well.

And thank you.

The idea of not having eye contact.

And when I interview people, they come in and say, I'm talking to you.

I may not be looking at you, but just understand I'm listening to what you have to say.

But we ended up really needing to be able to listen to people tell a quick story to how that happened.

I was doing a show called The Muck and Mire Show just two of us, I was the young guy who's 25 years old and knew anything.

Everything.

Joe Monroe was the guy who I worked with.

He was about 50 at the time.

Joe suffered a stroke.

And so he's off the show for about a week.

And then they put him in the old hospital, if you remember where that is.

Yes.

Saint Joseph, they put a Marti unit.

That's a remote transmitter, folks.

What's that?

This thing would come on.

It can't even die on radio.

Yeah, exactly.

This little thing, he would turn on it two minutes till six and we would do three hours.

Now, we played music back then, but what I learned I had to do was listen to him.

I had to learn his voice.

I had to learn the way that he spoke so that we weren't trampling all over each other.

And it's nice to be able to have that.

And we've done good and bad in our morning show with the different combinations.

We had some better than others, but we really it's difficult because my news and sports people have other responsibilities in other stations, and so they would drop out, go do their thing and then come back to me.

But having to listen and learn the meter of that person's voice so that you can dive in, know exactly when to hit the button to go to the commercial, whatever is more difficult because we had no issues.

Yeah.

It's a, it's a I don't I think that's one thing that most listeners will never understand how, how much goes into just how much you have to know the other person or at least be comfortable with them.

And you kind of have to start thinking like even because it's it's a lot of different, a lot of different things coming at you a long time.

I, I've never understood how y'all did the three, you know, the three different rooms.

It's insane.

One of the things it works now and it's one of those things you think how the world do we do it before that?

But now we text during the show and I'll say, we're going to do this, this and this, and then it does.

Okay, I know secret, secret's over.

It's not quite as organic as it sounds, but quite often it is.

We don't get to the bits that we were going through, the subjects that we were going to, but we are at least able to communicate.

And it makes me think when I was working with Tom and Jay, how in the world do we do that?

Yeah.

I mean, how did we communicate?

Yeah.

Well, you would run down the hall and you would scribble something and throw it in front of me.

But, you know, you talk about us not having line of sight, where there is humor in Tom or Roger and me.

Yeah.

It just became natural.

Like, it didn't seem like an anomaly.

It just worked because we had the choreography worked out.

Now, Roger would interrupt me all the time.

Yeah, just a mess with me.

Yeah, but, Yeah, there's there's something kind of magical about that.

That sort of set up going to kind of reset things here if you just tuned in.

I'm Jay Socol, you're listening to Brazos Matters.

It's a special one hour edition in honor of National Radio Day with some of my all time favorite radio people.

Roger WWW Garrett, Scott DeLucia, Harold Presley, and Katy Dempsey, and Tucker Young, aka Frito and Katy.

So how have audiences and maybe their expectations changed over time?

In your opinion?

Let's let's start with, let's start with our duo over here.

I don't I don't know.

Well, I'm so young.

They haven't oh, they're the exact same way.

I honestly, I think that I don't know, they've changed as much as people say like to.

Yeah I like to believe they've changed.

And here's here's what I mean.

I think our audience is more fragmented.

Yes.

You have so many options.

They're going to be smaller and that's fine.

But the way people listen, I really think it's interesting how we all get so much in our heads about how to create a radio station and the way we all kind of decide to do it.

It feels like it's like we'll try to narrow it down and narrow it down and focus it and focus and focus it.

We've always found that people respond to way more than anyone believes that they would.

I remember going to San Antonio and we neither of us had done, and we had all been top 40 like deejays for pretty much our entire careers.

And we had done country stuff, but we had never been on a country, programmed country stations, but never hosted shows on country radio stations.

And it was an everyday discussion about like, y'all are country enough.

You need to do this to be more country.

You need to do that to be more country.

If you don't talk about the, artists wives in first name basis, they are not going to think you're country, how are you going to fit into their country lifestyle.

And we were just doing the same show we did in College Station, just basically being us.

And all of a sudden people responded to it and this was about six months of consternation about why are people responding to this?

Y'all aren't country enough for people to be responding.

And I don't know if it ever soaked in for, for, for some, some of the people that, that, were, were consulting us that it's all the same people at this point.

It's all the same audience.

Is there some differences here and there?

Like, I don't think someone who necessarily listens to you might jump over.

And I said, what's the am?

There's that's it's only it's only you're right.

What do you all share with NPR a lot is like a little crossover there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

We just have lunch together.

And then I think I think people like entertaining.

I think people like authentic.

I think people like connected.

I think people like something that that feels real.

And if you give that to them in a lot of different forms or fashion, you'll probably connect with most people.

Despite all the differences that it may look like they have on the all the confusion from everyone else as to how is this working.

But like we're talking about local radio, they want to know what's going on in their community.

They want to know, hey, what's what's the big concert this weekend?

Or what events are coming to town that maybe you have tickets to like everything's it's so expensive right now.

Yeah.

If you want to go to an experience like a Jurassic Quest in Houston, it's hundreds of dollars, right?

So if we're giving away family four packs will suddenly everybody's very interested.

They all want to win.

People talk about, the audience not being there for radio.

And granted, yes, we have a lot of, a lot of competition for for ears.

Right.

You really have to put something together that's special and that's thoughtful.

And I think the more work you put into it or the relationships you have with the people that you're working with, the better it's going to be.

I mean, you serve the people listening, and so long as you continue to do that, I think they'll continue to show up.

And like Harold was mentioning earlier, just being that that friend, that confidant, I think people still want that, especially where mornings are concerned, where they're driving to work, they're stressed, they're tired.

They might have had a really bad night.

They're alone and suddenly they're they're joining a conversation that's bigger than themselves.

Right?

So they get to weigh in, they get to hear other people's problems and suddenly might put theirs into perspective.

Yeah, it's a really special thing.

And I think radio is one of the last mediums that offers that interactive engagement the best.

The best thing I can think of in terms of like if radio and media in general want to improve, if we could just start looking outward and seeing how many people we could bring into a product instead of narrowing it down to like the exact person you start offering more, you know, find reasons to say yes to things.

Find reasons to connect with other audiences that you don't think are necessarily yours because you might.

You'd be surprised.

Extremely surprised.

You frequently are.

Yeah.

Why do we still have jobs?

Yes.

Scott, you tell me how the audience is changing their expectations.

One of the best contests we ever did was we gave away season tickets, to A&M football, basketball and OPAS.

Whoa, wait.

When was that?

Yeah.

And we said, this is a good package.

That's that's back when I look back when I was there.

Yeah, yeah.

And so that was great to to get registered.

We were just opening with.

All right ten minutes next ten minutes.

Your name your phone number.

And what do you do for a living.

That's right.

And that was an eye opener in a market I'd already worked in for 15 years going wow.

So I was harvesting some data.

Right, sir?

We would get a guy who was doing ground maintenance today, and him and a guy who was an assistant VP at A&M in the same call.

Yeah.

Call break.

Yeah.

So we learned a lot about who it was then.

I say that to say now for my radio station, it's difficult to harvest younger listeners simply because they're not critical thinkers.

They don't care what we're talking about.

Everybody who's on my show, well, when we first started, when you and I were working together and Tom was there, we were married, we had children, we were paying mortgages and taxes.

Right?

That was important to a whole lot of people.

Well, you know what?

That's not the group anymore.

There are a lot of people who aren't some of those things.

And so being able to bring them under the tent to listen to what we have to say is difficult to do.

And I don't know that I have an answer for it.

So all I can say is we continue to march in that direction.

You'll age into our format if you will.

Probably won't age out of it.

So we have probably that.

I think that's the challenge I have right now.

So overall, my audience, I believe, has gotten younger, I've gotten older and it's hard to bring in the younger ones.

Yeah, yeah.

Harold, you have a sense of audience changes, expectations.

The change is the right word.

I don't want to say it's better or worse or anything like that.

It's just different that now than it was when I got when I first started radio.

Big time and, before, because then everything was live when I, for every, every shift was live, you know, and you became you were, you know, it's a very intimate media.

Yeah.

Radio.

Yes.

Because when somebody listen to you at night, they can be in their bedroom, you know, sitting there looking at a magazine or whatever, listening you and you were like right there with him, right?

And you're their friend.

You're my friend.

And I listen to you every night, and you're dependable.

You're always there.

You're always there.

You got to tell me what's going on now.

You don't.

You know that you don't have that anymore.

Yeah, because the social media.

Because they can get informed of the ways they can get information out the way I remember being there my first year, my first couple weeks, I was on a very short time.

And this doesn't happen.

You don't get this from radio anymore.

You get it from from other places.

But I was on the air when John Lennon got assassinated.

Nobody knows.

Knew that then because you didn't get that from the television instantly.

Because the reason I knew it, it came up with it.

And you guys know AP it was, it came over the AP wire.

It was an alarm.

It came over I went to get it pulled it off I with what I'd be to talk about this on the air.

Do I need to call my program director?

What do I do.

So I called him up.

I said he said yeah go in there with it.

Okay.

What on what market was this?

This is in Nacogdoches.

Okay.

KEEE radio 12 three KEEE.

Yeah.

They were free to call because he had to be.

You had to not only because they were K-E-E-E because you had to enunciate those letters.

You couldn't just squeal like a pig.

I mean, that's what it said in the letter.

I was always a good thing.

That was a good thing.

EEEEEEEE don't do that.

But I remember giving that information over the air and the phones lit up.

People were listening, man.

They were.

Listen, I said, people really listen.

You know?

And I said, what did you just say?

And I told them what it was.

And I, you know, playing Lennon's songs, playing some Beatles stuff, that kind of thing.

And every, every ten minutes or so, I go talk about it again, that type of thing, those that kind of thing is that's no more and not in radio.

You can get in on the morning shows, right?

Because the voice on almost all of them are live or in some market.

A lot of markets are syndicated, but they do the syndicated shows live.

But still, you're not locally.

But these guy your your show is live and over.

Bryan Broadcasting they do live shows and and so you still get that immediacy I think that immediacy that that is, is gone.

It's different.

It's not bad or worse.

It's just different.

Yeah.

That's that's the main thing I'll say.

Well, in my experience, nobody got into the hands of listeners and was in tune with audiences more or better than Roger Garrett.

So what what do you sense in terms of audience changes and maybe changes in expectations?

If you've got people talking to you, they're texting everybody else.

They're going to give you their undivided attention.

They're going to be interested in you.

If you're giving them something to be interested in.

If you sound like you're having the same misery or the same happy that they are, the verbs and nouns don't really matter.

What matters is the emotional touch.

And what also matters is that you want that you want to talk to that person because you're in the studio and you're isolated and you've got something to say, and you get somebody to call you on the phone, and all of a sudden you're in a conversation and they you have their undivided attention.

They'll be there every day after that.

That's why I'm saying if they're talking to you, they're texting everybody else.

The best is when they would say, I never do this.

I have never called into a radio station before, but you get that we do.

Yeah, I like the we also get young listeners when we give away prizes, we'll put in their information.

A lot of them are new, they're not in the database, and a lot of them are in their early and late 20s.

I think it's I think it is it's infinitely more challenging.

It's going to get more challenging every single year because, again, the amount of options people have.

But I keep I really think that the thing that we do well is what you talked about.

Just trying to connect with other people through the medium and bring them in.

I mean, calls as many calls as you can get, talk about as many things as you can talk about that actually happen in people's lives, and talk like a regular person and, and genuinely listen to people when they, they call in to, to, to participate, especially if they're a first time caller.

There are so many people that talk at people and they're not listening to what they're saying, and they're trying to rush them off the phone.

Well, then why did you ask them to call?

Like, I mean, I'm sorry, how much time, how much time do we have?

Like let them go?

And that is anticlimax.

A lot of people go faster, faster, faster, faster.

But I think again you lose the opportunity.

And a lot of things if you.

You try to rush things, it shouldn't be rushed.

And a lot of times I think as an industry, we've tried to synthesize and synthesize and synthesize all the way past kind of the magic.

And yeah, we we still draw people that are in their teens, 20s and, and a lot of them are new to the radio station, new to radio in general.

But if you if you continue to just be real with them and give them something that that, like you said, feels like they feel and also feels special, I think you can still have, to some degree, that relationship where you can still be that friend in wherever they are, whenever they need to, to to pop it on.

And also if you let them talk longer, sometimes they do end on a joke and they kind of do your work for you.

Not as good as right?

So not as good as speaking a lot of content from them.

We'd have.

I've never seen someone punch out on jokes harder than him.

And that's that's anywhere.

So he's.

Yeah, it's but it's it's a real pleasure.

And I don't think this is the thing that I'll be really sad if we lose this element of it.

I know you will too, if it's just us yapping at each other.

Yeah, it's really not fun anymore for either of us.

And we're talking about ourselves exclusively.

Not.

Not in an attempt to get other people to call in and talk about their lives.

If we just end with, let me tell you this story about this thing I saw over the week, because we could easily and there nothing there.

Great podcasts.

We could easily sit here and do a podcast.

The fun thing is the immediacy for us.

And the fun thing is the connection and and the community that you create and that was always what I enjoyed about listening to radio.

That's what I've always enjoyed about doing radio, and I hope we can hold on to that for as long as we can, until someone pries it out of our cold, dead hands.

Who knows when that will be?

So talk to me about AI, oh I don't why?

Oh, do you want to talk to you?

Do you want to do you want to have this conversation?

Sure.

Take it.

Take a deep breath.

Are you sure you're talking to us?

Yeah.

Yeah, well, I'm talking to at least some of you.

Yeah.

So the only people that, like AI are consultants.

Yeah, people that sell, AI.

People that are selling.

AI are selling you on the fact that they know AI.

And before that, the same people under different names were saying, oh do you think maybe we could get away with just voice tracking a couple of shifts?

And before that it was, you know, it's it's the same old thing that no one who does this with the idea of quality in mind likes AI and the audacity that you get from people to say, well, you know, what you should do?

Should just get on board with it and use it and use it and use it because that's where it's headed.

That's where it's headed.

It's not good quality.

No, it's not good quality.

And if you say it doesn't work, what do they say?

They say, oh, well, that's your fault.

You don't know how to write a good prompt.

Yeah, I'll say this.

We had it.

We've had we were having a conversation today because this is, conference season and at any given conference season, what you'll have is you'll have people go pay good money as radio people, and they will never hear a thing about radio.

What you'll hear is here's how you can make AI work for you.

Here's how you can make the algorithm work for you.

Here's how you can get more and more with less and less and less.

And here's what you need to do.

And now they've transitioned into it.

Now here's how to get a side hustle.

Because none of this stuff is.

If you do all of that, you'll lose your job.

Yeah.

And you'll need a side hustle.

The truth is to people that that want to want to create content is you need to choose where you put that content.

You can't be a you can't work for everybody.

At the same time.

I will live and die by what we do on the radio.

This is work.

This is what this is what we work.

It sounds fun, but it's work.

I mean, doing these these bits, hosting all these interviews and being else.

Yeah.

As you are, Scott.

I mean, that's that's work this.

And it's a lot longer than the four hours that people hear us on the radio.

And I have genuinely no idea how, after all of these years and the dilution and the dilution and the dilution of what is one of the great magic connections of, of of American society over the last hundred years?

We're still listening to people saying that, yeah, you can do this cheaper or with less effort or less investment, and it's going to be just the same because it doesn't really require any talent.

Right?

It's just it is always going to be a labor of love.

It's going to be done well.

And my hope is that there are still going to be people that love doing it.

If it gets to the point where the only way that it's going to work for people financially is I, it's just going to be you may as well just dark everything.

There's no point.

Right.

Let's talk about that for just a second okay.

You know Roger, what was the first radio job you had?

How old were you?

Well, what's the first radio job I had?

What was your first shift?

What was your first air shift?

Mid days really I think I no no no afternoons.

No I did it was actually midnight on Sunday.

Yeah.

No I don't understand.

It's afternoons on an am daytimeer on Henderson Texas.

Yeah.

And I had to drive 30 miles to get there 30 miles back home.

And I think I worked about six hours a week and I didn't even know they paid me.

The problem.

That wasn't even in the conversation.

There's no farm team now.

No, there's there's no play.

Look, Bryan Texas was a little bitty place when I got to work there.

When I was 19 years old.

And you're on from six to midnight, so if you screw up, nobody's listening.

It doesn't matter.

And you, you earn your time in a better shift, and that's all going away.

That's all going away.

So as much as we all want this to continue, if you're not building a farm team, you'll never get to the to the bigger mark.

Well, I'll tell you why.

I'll tell you why it's going away.

As the youngest person on this panel, which is not offensive because I'm just the youngest person on the panel.

No radio, radio, radio.

We don't not that is not sexy, but we try to push people actively out of radio.

We we we we go into these conferences and we talk about all the terrible things about radio.

And we now we never celebrate what's so great about it and what brought us all in in the first place.

And we place such emphasis on social media.

Can I tell you that we're terrible on social media?

Look, we were number one in San Antonio, and I don't know that we ever posted anything.

Oh, well, I mean, I just I absolutely hate it.

We give all of our, our time and attention to the show.

If we've got good content, it's for the show.

Yeah.

I don't I don't say things to then put online to an audience that that might not be.

There's there's only so many hours in the day.

And I, I do think that that no one, no one hates radio like radio people, which is unfortunate.

And I, you know.

Yes.

Try to do as much as you can, get your content out there and everything like that.

But there's the way that content is disseminated when it's an actual radio show is different than how it's disseminated in a stream.

And social or whatever.

And I think that there are people that are still passionate about that, or would be passionate about it if we reached out to them and offered them jobs.

Now, the problem is, are there any jobs to give them?

You know, do you have people that are willing to fill out the the paperwork for interns?

Even?

I don't know that there's there's that much top credit.

I think they still need you could still do so, but it's Yeah, it's it's it is frustrating because the amount of people that are that used to be something you could almost take for granted that you would always have people that would be looking to get into the business and you could coach them up and get them ready.

It's you really have to look for them now, and it's because everyone got away from that for about 10 or 15 years, and now we reap the results.

We like like Scott said, the you there's no farm team.

Yeah.

You know, and I remember when I first got in radio and I was in college and I was in an, I was in an acting class with a guy.

He was on the air.

And, some of you might know Kevin Minitrey He's down in Houston.

And it's got to, you know, does voice work down there.

And, I went to school with him, and he was a and he said, you should come up here and apply for a job.

I said, no, I don't want to do that.

I didn't want to be.

I said, no, I can't, I can't do that.

But he talked me into it, went up there, got hired, worked 2 a.m.. This worked for our shifts 2 a.m.

to 6 a.m.

and I was going to school and I go to class 8:00 in the morning.

I never slept and I was I loved it, it was awesome.

And like you say, you work.

You know, I he liked what I was doing.

He moved me to the 10 p.m.

to 2 a.m.

was a big step up for me.

Yeah, that was a big step.

But your mom got to listen.

Yeah, but hour.

I had to work to board.

I came in on Sunday and I ran Casey Kasem's American Top 40.

Yes.

Those records.

Yeah.

Yeah, but the commercials between them, that's how I learned to work the board.

You don't like.

You don't have to do any of that.

You don't get to learn how to work the board, how to work the equipment, how to do this.

And do that.

And because you don't have that anymore.

Yeah.

You just jump in and and you're not prepared.

What do you remember when people would show up to the radio station or you?

My my sister was a diehard 104 fan in, in Houston.

And she, she loved Atom Smasher and she actually would go up and try to stay outside the studio to try and see Atom Smasher and ask about the Backstreet Boys.

And it was her.

And like a whole gaggle of girls.

And people used to think that that was such a cool experience.

It was so much fun because radio was fun, and now all you ever hear is radio is dying.

It's been dying for my entire life, right?

And yet here I am and I still have a job.

So I think if we just talked about it in better terms as people in the industry, you'd have people that are more interested in joining it.

TikTok is the perfect example because they're telling stories.

Those are the people that maybe you could tap to get on the radio.

But why would they do that if they think that they can make money easier, doing what they're already doing, then have to go and slug it radio?

Or it's like, well, am I gonna have a job tomorrow?

Yeah, I don't want to do that.

It's it's there.

There's still creative people out there.

I think you do have to reach out to those people in a different way.

And you know, it sometimes you have to bring them in.

You have to take the content for what it is.

You can't just take someone who's giving you what they want to give you and then say that what you did it is completely wrong.

Don't ever do it.

That way again.

I'm going to pummel you until you agree.

And, you know, I think there's still opportunities to, to, to get a good amount of the next generation in.

But I think it does take a really active, active, active role and that takes time.

And will anyone have the energy to do that?

You know, we'll see.

You know, it's it's it is it is going to be interesting to see where we go in another ten years.

So Katy and Tucker are killing it in Houston.

I think it's safe to say they'll be doing this for a long time.

And so I'd like to spend the final few minutes.

We have just under six minutes here, on this special National Radio Day show, allowing Roger and Harold and Scott to share their best advice for these two.

I would love to hear what you have to say.

So, Harold, let's start with you.

Well, my advice is keep doing what you're doing.

You said, and I can tell you guys love the industry and you love, touch and keep in touch, in touch with the listeners out there.

And you real good at that, at that sort of thing.

And as long as you have a love for what you do and you love it, I don't you're you're going to be successful, you know, and and people will feel that and they'll know that.

And to them, like, like I said before, the through the first 45 minutes, that we've been talking 50 or so minutes about how, you know, you, you touched the listener and you're the companion.

You part of their lives, they see you, they say, Frito how are you doing?

Listen to you.

This morning, I liked what you were talking about.

But, Katy, you know, and I think as long as you keep that love there and I can tell you guys, I can feel how you guys especially you, Katy.

You're really passionate.

You very.

You know, it's funny, I always tell people many take my passion is aggression.

Yes.

Oh, no, I don't think it was aggression.

I'm just very passionate.

I'll fight for this industry.

But I can tell you're very passionate.

Okay, let's move to Roger Garrett.

Advice for these two?

Number one, focus on the thing you love the most, and don't ever stop looking at it.

And no matter what it is.

So the subjects of what you talk about may change, but the way you talk about it shouldn't change.

You were talking about putting people on the phone and getting them on the air.

That's the most important connection.

Think about the first time you called a radio station.

Do you remember it?

I do.

was it a pleasant experience?

It was.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so you kind of learn from that.

And when you get that for that beginner listener, on the air and take time with them, that is a very important thing because two things are going to happen.

Number one, you're going to get a better call out of them than you ever thought or they ever thought you would with.

The second thing is they're going to listen to you forever.

Yeah.

So you've got to love what you do by loving the people that you talked to.

And it's got to be real.

You can't.

Yeah, yeah.

No doubt Scott, even when you guys started, what you did was magic there on the radio, man.

How cool is that?

Well now everybody can be on video and they can be on audio.

But what I learned, even though I've been in years of radio, was the nuts and bolts that these two would do to succeed with a promotion, the engagement that Candy 95 was able to do.

And Bryan College Station, we still do it, but it's based on the platform of what these two did.

So many of the things you've already got is right.

What I cannot imagine is that you are able to take that and replicated in the market you're in now, because you'd get to see a good percentage of people who listen to you on any given day.

Now, you don't.

You are still able to connect with them.

And God love the fact that they'll call you on the phone.

So important.

And the fact that you can continue to grow your audience, your demographics, continue to be as wide as they are in a market that large means you've learned well, but you continue to have your best practices that you've learned since then.

It is.

It is really it's different.

It it's also to to a large extent, the same.

I can tell you that we in San Antonio, the, the San Antonio, the community, San Antonio's is one of the most special places to both of us.

An amazing, amazing community, amazing group of listeners.

We got to work with some people that were were absolutely amazing as well, you know, were doing a lot of work in the industry and for some good radio stations, Houston is very similar.

So a lot of this, I think we've been very blessed to have gone to the places we've gone to that believed in what we were, believe what we were selling.

I will I will say it again.

I will always be beyond grateful.

More than anything in the business for starting here, where I grew up.

And that comes from you guys.

It comes from meeting her.

None of this would have happened the way that it did if I hadn't grown up listening to the radio stations that I was listening to and the talent that I was listening to and, and saying, I think I could do that.

That sounds fun.

That sounds like something that I'd want to do.

And then having someone give me the opportunity to actually hire people and put them on radio stations and, and, and, and teach, try to teach them a thing or two and meet co-host.

That worked out and won me a ton of awards and things like that.

So it's no, I, I, I, I will, I will always be the most blessed by the fact that I had the people around, me and us that we had and still have right here in Bryan College Station.

Right?

Yeah.

Right here.

And it's it's made it.

I hope it is made radio better at least around here for us.

Yeah.

So but it's been good.

Roger WWW Garrett, Scott Delucia, Harold Presley, Katy Dempsey, Tucker, Young Frito and Katy, thank you so much for joining me.

Because selfishly, for, sharing time with all of you, that's been beyond special.

And so thank you for doing the local radio the right way.

Thank you, thank you.

Thanks, Jay.

You be good and be good at it.

Brazos Matters is a production of Aggielands Public Radio 90.9 KAMU-FM, a member of Texas A&M University's Division of Community Engagement.

Our show is engineered and edited by a trio Matt Dittman, Bobby Etheridge, and Jaime Munoz.

All Brazos Matters episodes are available on YouTube and on podcast platforms like Spotify, Apple, iHeart, and Amazon.

Also on the NPR app.

In the KAMU website, I'm Jay Socol, thanks so much for watching and for listening.