Rich Conway, Production Director, WCCC-FM, Hartford, Connecticut
This month’s RAP Interview visits the 46th ranked market in the U.S. where WCCC-FM, Marlin Broadcasting’s only Hartford station, sits comfortably as the market’s top rocker in the midst of clusters of stations owned by Clear Channel, Infinity, and others. At the production helm is Rich Conway who brings a style of imaging to WCCC aimed at setting the station apart from the others by giving the audience more than “movie drops, statics, and bangs.” It’s the concept of radio as a theatre, and the stage is alive at WCCC.
JV: Tell us about your background in radio and some of the highlights on the way to WCCC.
Rich: My first real job was at I-98 in Willimantic, Connecticut. I started there in 1988 doing a weekend overnight shift then was hired full-time to do nights. I was later called by Bob Bittens, who was programming WHCN in Hartford at the time, and interviewed with him for nights. At this point, my production skills were limited, and the interview went great until he asked if I could do production. To make a long story short, I didn’t get the gig. As a result of that interview, the next weekend I spent 48 hours straight in the production room and never looked back.
I spent some time at WHJY in Providence, Rhode Island where I was their imaging voice and producer, then I came to WCCC where I ended up on the air as a jock doing nights before Marlin took over. Then I went to do afternoons and middays at I-95 in Danbury, Connecticut for a couple of years. In 1998, when Marlin called me with an opportunity to do production full-time back at WCCC, it was a job I didn’t want to pass up. I already knew some people at the station, and it just seemed right. So, I gave up the air shift and went into production full-time. I miss not being on the air at times but never get sick of production. It’s an incredible creative outlet. The highlights along the way have been the people I’ve been fortunate enough to work with. Nothing is better than to being able to do something everyday that you’re passionate about, and do it with great people.
JV: I think our readers will get a good idea of the kind of stuff you do if you tell them the April Fool’s Day squid story. How did it start and what happened?
Rich: When I think of it in retrospect, it’s so cool. I remember walking in and hesitantly asking Picozzi, our Program Director at WCCC, about this idea I had for a report that had to do with the swimming patterns of squid. He just looked at me and said, “Whatever turns you on.” The first “Squid Report” rode that fine line where you couldn’t tell if it was real or not. In the report, this guy Gus Wilson just gives zany reports about the best places to go squid seeking. I talked about how squid were swimming off the coast of Old Saybrook, Connecticut and Long Island, New York. I talked about how beautiful their underbellies were when they poked out of the water. The reports seemed so real because this guy talking about the squid was so excited. I remember calling in Picozzi and playing it for him. As usual, he didn’t know what to say other than O…………K. It was so weird, he couldn’t possibly say no. After it aired, people would call and say, “what was that?” Before you knew it, people were calling in asking, “When is that weird squid thing going to be on again?” The reports were completely made up—even the names of the squid. It was the ultimate theater of the mind stuff.
A month or so into the reports I started telling listeners that the Giant Prehistoric Halipeano Sonoma Squid was coming, and according to my calculations it would surface in the Connecticut River between March 28th and April 18th. In the beginning, I never would have imagined what would become of an idea I had while driving down the road listening to a commercial talking about home heating oil prices going up and how I should invest now...blah, blah, blah.
On April 1st it all climaxed. At 6 a.m. I was at the station trying to figure out how this whole thing would end. I had nothing written. It was like the thirtieth report I had done in 15 days, and I was creatively fried. I produced a six-minute piece to play as the last break of our live broadcast which started at 10 a.m. or when Howard ran out of things to say. I found the sounds of this mammoth crowd and added the sound of ten friends from the station all chanting “squid, squid, squid!” It sounded like thousands were gathered at the river to see this huge event. When the live broadcast began, there I was standing in my scuba suit with our promotions guy “Craig the Porn Star” doing live breaks over this endless loop of screaming squid seekers.
At the river, we had no idea what to expect. Would people actually show? Then one car pulled in. Then two. Before you knew it, there was a large crowd of people who really thought a giant squid was coming. We thought, “What do we tell them when they find out it’s a joke? Will they start beating us up?” While we all waited for the squid, we treated them to seven 6-foot subway sandwiches. At noon, our midday guy Mike Karolyi opened the mic and sent it to the river for the historic event. Karolyi sounded so serious. Don Steel, who runs Howard in the morning at WCCC, gave play by play as Gus Wilson met his fate and was swallowed by the giant squid and carried out to sea. By this time, the people at the river were laughing, finally realizing it was a joke. But for the people listening, it sounded so real. People were calling the station all day and were freaking out. At 3 p.m. the station did a eulogy. Paul Turner, our station voice, cried as the WCCC Church Choir sang “Gus Wilson is dead.” And for those who wondered what became of Gus, he was eventually passed out of the squid’s ass off the shores of Arkansas. Long live Gus Wilson.
JV: How many stations does Marlin Broadcasting own, and how many of them are there in your facility?
Rich: Marlin also owns W-BACH in Boston, which is a classical music station. At the “asylum” in Hartford, WCCC is on the third floor; and in our basement, we have our Internet station, Beethoven.com, which as of April is one of the most listened to Internet stations in the world. I recently started doing some imaging for Beethoven.com. Maybe they’ll let me get farted out of a squid to Beethoven’s Fifth.
JV: How many production studios are there at your facility?
Rich: We have two production rooms at WCCC. We also have a room downstairs in Beethoven.com. That’s a brand new facility that’s real nice. I think every room in the building should be a production room, including the bathroom.
JV: What digital workstation are you using, and what other gear is in your studio?
Rich: At WCCC I use the Microsound MTU, and it’s great. For effects, we have an Eventide Harmonizer with 450 built-in effects. When everything goes out of our Autogram 20-channel board, it goes through a Dominator II limiter.
JV: How is WCCC doing in the ratings war?
Rich: We’ve been the #1 Rock station in Hartford for the last 3 years.
JV: What are your responsibilities as Production Director for WCCC?
Rich: At The Rock I do all the imaging, spots, promos, specs, dubs, copywriting and more. I also have an assistant named Holden Johnson. Recently we hired a continuity person who takes care of the administrative part so we can do more production and specs. I’ve learned to really appreciate working with a great staff that does excellent work. The way the department is structured, it gives me the time to constantly be creating new things and keeping our image fresh. Boyd Arnold and Jay Schultz, our General Managers, create a great atmosphere.
JV: What is your approach to imaging WCCC against the other four rock stations that can be heard loud and clear in Hartford?
Rich: I add many different dimensions to the way WCCC sounds by doing many different voices myself, and I am consistently adding new things that are unique and identifiable to our imaging sound. I’m very careful to keep the station constantly alive with new voices. Nothing should be too dominant. The more voices on the air, the bigger we sound. And the production I do needs to have a theme that holds WCCC together as one because our jocks’ shows are so different from each other. WCCC is an armed and dangerous network of zany sweepers, bits, promos, news reports, soap operas, and characters all stamped and approved by Squid Seekers spanning the globe.
JV: Theatre of the mind production often takes more on-air time to execute than simple 5-second sweepers and IDs or 20- and 30-second promos. How do you justify longer pieces of production when many programmers lean towards short, sweet, and to the point?
Rich: I visualize someone there listening alone, not knowing what is coming next. During the song, they’re thinking about their life and the things they need to do. How do you capture that person’s attention in just a few seconds and make them notice you? As much as I buy into the theory that things need to always be tight and right, that can’t always be the main focus. How much fun can you and your listener have together in five seconds? If they’ve taken the time to listen, you owe them an escape of some kind. If they wanted only music and not to be entertained, they’d be listening to a CD.
JV: Where do you go, in your mind or elsewhere, to get the creative juices flowing?
Rich:I try not to think about it and just let it happen naturally. When I’m really hard up, I sit naked in a bath tub filled with hundreds of transistor radios.
JV: How would you describe your “style” or the “attitude” of your production?
Rich: I believe each piece of production should have an attitude of it’s own and be different from the last. I like to go from a promo that rocks so hard it gives you the chills, to something so abstract it makes you wonder “what the hell was that?” Radio with the same attitude all the time sounds one-dimensional. I think radio should be used as a theater and be limitless and touch many different emotions. Sometimes I’ll do things that are serious and say, “This is the station that played Staind for the first time in the entire country…” This is the attitude that gives you creditability as a rock station. Other times, I like to argue with “big voice” (Paul Turner) about how he’s got to stop calling the other stations a bunch of pussies. In the meantime, the General Manager is yelling at us both that if we don’t stop we’re both fired. It’s funny when “studio guy” (me) and Paul argue and fight in a promo. This type of imaging lets the listener read between the lines themselves without us actually bragging about ourselves. I love it when we do things like this. It makes the listener feel like they’re part of a zoo. It also adds an entirely different kind of personality to the station. This has been how I’ve separated WCCC from the rest, by creating an image that’s fun and completely different from anyone else in the market.
JV: Do you have creative freedom to put just about anything you want on the air?
Rich: I’m very fortunate to have the green light to create what I please within reason. Things that are a little too nuts, I’ll pass by Picozzi first. I’m surrounded by many great minds that always have great ideas and feedback for me. Doing it alone gets to be a drag. I like the concept of a team environment—the more ideas the better. I don’t work with any egos, so it’s easy around here.
JV: Sounds like you have a good working relationship with Picozzi, the Program Director.
Rich: He’s a guy that’s constantly ready for the next goof. I really feel some of the things I’ve created in the last three years never would have come to be elsewhere. Most other programmers’ attitudes are in the “just play the music” vein. Picozzi thrives on good radio.
It’s also kind of neat working at a station that I grew up listening to. I know how WCCC has evolved over the years, and that has given me some insight on the way we need to sound.
JV: Interesting point—not many people get to image a station that they’ve grown up listening to. How has that knowledge of WCCC’s history affected your imaging? How important do you think it is for a person just coming into a market, to study the history of the market and the station before going to work?
Rich: It’s very important to study a market when you first come in. WCCC’s image for years had been that of a bunch of crazy degenerates who played heavy rock. WCCC has had many incarnations. I remember laughing with Harve Allan who hired me as an intern when he programmed WCCC back in 1986. At the time, we played the Pet Shop Boys, and all people ever said was, “oh, that heavy metal station.” WCCC could have played The Carpenters and would have still been called the heavy metal station.
Before Marlin took over, the infamous Sy and family never let the station have a true image. If people think you’re a crazy heavy metal station, then so be it, and be the best you can be. Marlin was smart. They made the station what it should have been the whole time. Insane. That was the market niche. Soon as I started doing the production full-time, after Marlin took over, I knew exactly what the image should be. WCCC is guitar, not static and lazers. WCCC needed to sound different from the modern station and the other rock and classic rock stations. WHCN was the long time winner and beat WCCC for years in its heyday because of image. WHCN could have played the Bee Gees, and it would have sounded cool. All WHCN’s production was done in-house, so those moments that should sound special did. I remember working at WCCC under the old management and mentioning how all the production sounded like a bunch of noise on the air. Everything was being played on old dirty mono cart decks, and the recording was 5th generation by the time it hit cart. You’d be listening in you car, and all you could hear was hiss and noise. The response I got was, “nobody cares. It doesn’t make a difference.” WCCC had a reputation for being the station that didn’t quite have its act together. So, for years, not only did WHCN pound on WCCC about how much of a dump it was, but so did the people working at WCCC. Some of the jocks did well in the numbers, but as a whole, the station had no credibility.
When I started, I knew that WCCC was missing polish. WCCC needed to have that class and cool that not only makes a person listen but makes them believe. Paul Turner has always been the perfect imaging voice, but that’s all there was. As great as Paul is, if you play only one voice all the time saying, “we rock,” it sounds cold and boring. WCCC needed to be alive and sound like a rock network. The production needed to rock and sound big, but it also needed a personality of its own. It needed to evolve daily. All the other stations were using your typical big voice with movie drops. I wanted to do something that came from in-house and was an evolving thing that created a station identity. So I created characters like Studio Guy, Gus Wilson, a drunk reporter from the WCCC news room, and the list goes on. The things people hear between the tunes on WCCC, they can’t get anywhere else, so they notice us more. Being original is the trick to standing out.
JV: Generally speaking, what is your perception of the production at the other stations in the market?
Rich: I hear other good production in our market, but everything seems to be movie drops, statics, and bangs. Being different has given us the edge. I do sometimes use drops and things but as little as possible. I’ll always try to create something original first. We do get the Rock Kit from MJI, which in a pinch comes in handy and has drops and some effects. But nothing’s better than creating something original—you’re guaranteed to sound like no one else, and the listener will more than likely notice you.
JV: What are some other imaging techniques you use that help separate WCCC from the pack?
Rich: I spice things up with many different voices. I look at each piece I produce as a vignette that needs a beginning and an end. I like to tap everyone I work with for his or her voice and input. I’m the station pain in the ass—“Hey, have a second to voice something?” I’ll stalk them until they do. People don’t realize the difference they make. Most of the voices I use are salespeople who say, “I can’t do that.” But with a little coaching, usually they’re even impressed with themselves.
I look at a station as a tapestry hanging on the wall at a specialty store. If you start to analyze it too closely and take away what you think are imperfections, you end up taking away what’s special and different about it. Then the tapestry is no longer unique, and it’s available at K-Mart. With radio, it’s the same deal. If you don’t look at the station as a whole and start to analyze each little piece you do, you’ll end up throwing away the things that give you character. Let’s just plug in something safe or generic instead. Sure, the listener is there for the music. But if they don’t notice that you’re the station that played their favorite song, you’re sunk. I’d rather have a listener say, “what was that?” than say nothing at all. At least they noticed you. Things always sound better when they’re part of the big picture.
JV: Marlin Broadcasting is a “mom and pop” operation compared to today’s huge radio corporations, yet Marlin seems to hold its own against the big boys in your market while keeping radio fun at the same time.
Rich: They look at the bottom line, but they also know what it takes to win, and they don’t cut many corners. I hear of stations where the midday jock is doing a full-time air shift, all the imaging, spots, copywriting, and more. The way I see it, everyone’s hard drive is only so big; the more you keep putting into your head, the more watered down the ideas become. Just listen to a bad satellite radio feed and how cold it sounds. How passionate can a listener be about something that has no passion?
Marlin is also great because of the way it’s structured. There’s no red tape to go through to get things done. If I have an idea, I just get it done. I know Woody Tanger who owns us, and can call him anytime if I need to. In today’s world, most people have no idea who they’re working for. What’s funny is that sometimes, when I think of something for a promo or sweeper that’s a little on the edge, I wonder, “hmmmmm…can I actually put this on the radio?” I solve the problem by having the president of Marlin Broadcasting, Allen Tolz, voice it. This way, no one can blame me. And 99.99999% of the time, he’s as excited as I am. The other fraction of a percent he just gives me a strange look. Allen is a diehard radio guy who has worked in Boston and has been around. He knows all sides of the business. It’s great to work with people who understand what you do because they’ve done it.
JV: Have you ever worked for a larger company?
Rich: Yes. I didn’t have any problems in that atmosphere, and it was great. I have excellent memories and friends. There’s a stereotype that things are a living hell out there, but that’s not true. Just do good work and you won’t have any problems. Everyone likes to hear good radio, so I learned early on not to ask and just do. The only time someone will say not to do something is if it isn’t good. When you work in radio, or any job, you should treat it as if it is your own business. You need to make and keep your company the best it can be. The rest will take care of itself.
JV: You also do commercials there. How busy are you with commercials and what’s your philosophy regarding this side of production at WCCC?
Rich: I do quite a few spots, and I like to create all types of spots. I like the way multi-voice spots sound on the air—like imaging, it makes you and the client sound big. I try to keep a balance of voices. There are certain spots I do, like local concert spots and such, and then there are spots better suited for other voices. I try to keep production away from the jocks as much as possible so they can concentrate on their shows. We have a great weekend staff that is capable of doing good work, so I’ll often leave them spots to be voiced and produced. This way, we always have plenty of voices on the air. In radio, part-time people are often overlooked, but they can really affect the sound of the big picture. And it’s great to give them an opportunity, too.
JV: It sounds like you crank out quite a bit of production every day. Do you ever get burned out?
Rich: I hate those days when there’s so much to do that it starts to feel like an assembly line. It’s important to me that the quality keeps up with the quantity, and I constantly have a hunger to create new and original things that are better than what was done yesterday. It gets hard at times, but I’ve learned that the creative process comes in cycles. So, I try not to get bummed out when it’s not there because it always comes back around.
JV: Are there any people in the industry who have been mentors for you to some degree?
Rich: There’s Bob Smith, who used to do the production at WHCN and later at WZLX in Boston. I always felt his work was an influence on mine. One piece of his work would be completely bizarre, then the next would be serious and really rock. I’ve also worked with some great PDs such as Tom Bass, who ironically is back at WHCN. My first PD was cool, too. His name was Jeff Spencer, a man obsessed with polish. I‘d do something, and he say, “not quite… do it again.” I‘d do it five more times or whatever to get it right. I remember him saying, “Someday, you’ll thank me.” Thanks Jeff, wherever you are.
JV: What advice would you give someone who is just getting into production?
Rich: Assembling production is like putting together a puzzle. The pieces can’t almost fit—they either do or they don’t. The only way to learn how to do it is through hours of practice. Make the commitment, listen often to what you’re doing, and focus on the little things. Do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. Remember, what you create needs to come from your mind. There are no rules. Don’t look at the piece your creating as simply going from point A to point B, but look at all the things that need to happen along the way to capture a listener’s attention. It’s really the small things that make the difference. Not everything has to be a grand slam. Consistently hit doubles and triples, and the homers will come. Listen to people around you and be open to learn from them.
JV: Tell us about your business on the side called Off The Dial Productions.
Rich: That’s basically the company for my freelance production work. I’ve done some things for WHJY in Providence in the past when Bill Weston was PD, I’ve worked for American Comedy Network, and I also do some spots for some of my own clients through Off The Dial Productions.
JV: You also have a commercial website, condomclub.com. Wanna tell us about this one?
Rich: Yes, mom is so proud. People keep coming and coming. CondomClub.com is getting bigger and bigger all the time. CondomClub.com carries 10 different brands of condoms, and people order from the privacy of their home. From weird sweepers to your sex life, I’ve got you covered…so to speak.
JV: What do you see yourself doing in the near future?
Rich: I’d like to do some additional freelance work and keep kicking ass with my friends at the Rock. But it would be really cool to be able to turn the “Squid Report” into a crazy TV show and get farted out of a giant squid live on TV. Then mom would really be proud.
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