Wolf and Monty: Talking Podcasts and Radio

Part of the journey of getting older is the connection we have to places and people from our past. This episode I invite you to join me as I reconnect with my old radio partner, and fellow podcaster, Jeff Alan Wolf.
Picture this: It's the 90s in South Florida, a time when local talk radio was the heartbeat of community conversation. We were right in the thick of it, riding the waves of unpredictability, enjoying the excitement of our live radio talk show until it ended unceremoniously during a July 4th weekend. Join us as we share personal tales from this vibrant era, recounting encounters with controversial personalities like Steve Kane, and exploring the industry's shift towards shock value—a route we consciously steered clear of. Through our stories, we weave in our broader reflections on the media landscape past and present.

Now, as we embark on our new adventure from the sunny realms of Florida and Arizona, the excitement of podcasting beckons. With a blend of humor and nostalgia, we say a fond farewell to our radio chapter while embracing this fresh start. Who knows where this uncharted path will lead us, but we're ready to explore it with optimism and camaraderie. Come along for the ride as we fuse the past's charm with the future's promise, sharing insights and laughter along the way.
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Check out A World Gone Mad with Jeff Alan Wolf
pod.link/1724089771

Tales From South Florida: pod.link/1724673458

Chapters

• 0:00 Radio Broadcasting and Podcasting Evolution
• 12:22 Podcasting Farewell and Greetings

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Bill Monty's Guide for Getting Older.

Speaker 2: 0:11

On this episode of Bill Monty's Guide for Getting Older. I have my friend Jeff Wolf here. Jeff has a great podcast called A World Gone Mad. It's a political podcast and I invite you to look that up anytime that you possibly can. Jeff and I go back so many years that we actually used to ride dinosaurs to work, but no, seriously, we, we did radio together. Jeff was already a radio broadcaster and we met in the mid 90s. Is that correct?

Speaker 1: 0:40

we met. I was doing auditions for sound international, okay, and I needed someone to lip sync. Uh, that were in other, or movies in other languages Italian, spanish and I met you that way. Right, you came in and did an audition, then we found out that you were doing the show that my girlfriend Lori was in.

Speaker 2: 1:00

Yeah, that's right If that's wrong, then whatever. So yeah, so this is near the end of local talk radio. South Florida radio was huge back then. Talk radio there was, I know, outside the South Florida market names aren't really that big but Neil Rogers, steve Cain entire stations were developed to have nothing but talk local talk radio. This was before you had Rush Limbaugh's and everyone else that was syndicated coming through. We kind of came in at the tail end of that whole thing. Our timing has always been perfect.

Speaker 1: 1:33

Just a little clarification. You joined me at a tail end. I was still doing stuff earlier with a talk show yes, about six months to two years before, and then at night, overnight. But as far as doing a team-up, it was towards the tail end, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 1:47

Yeah, so we ended up doing overnight at this one station. Then we did the mornings morning drive for a while. Then one day we were celebrating our success In radio you wait to turn the corner and we had turned the corner like the first corner it wasn't a big corner, but it was a corner and we were out celebrating at one of our sponsors, a restaurant, and you got a call from the station manager saying this is a July 4th weekend. I remember Monday morning we're going to become a Caribbean station and we don't need your show anymore.

Speaker 1: 2:19

You were actually at the Italian restaurant with about 10 people that you invited and I was elsewhere. I called you up and I said how's it going? In the name of the great restaurant, the husband and wife work 90 hours a week Was it like three brothers or something like that. No three amigos something like that.

Speaker 1: 2:39

I should remember, because we would eat there twice a week, lori and I. I called you up and I said I call you up. And I said where are you at? You said I'm at the table and you know they're very nice to me and I said well, uh, don't spend a lot because we don't have a show. Yeah, and it was like what the right? So, yeah, a radio is fun it ended that. It ended that fast yeah yeah and that was that was what was that 1999 or 2000 when?

Speaker 2: 3:06

when was that?

Speaker 1: 3:07

something like that. And someone once told me though, um, and I forget who she was, either a weather person, no, I'm sorry, she was a news anchor for winz or somewhere like that, or iod, and she said once you're in radio, you'll always be in radio, because it's that type of industry. Well, not, apparently in South Florida around that time. Yeah, because it. It just became into uh, steve Cain's uh hate wars were argumentation and cross arguing between hosts was what they thought. Mock, mock controversy.

Speaker 2: 3:40

Mock controversy is exactly right. That's what was huge. That was 1999. It's 25 years later and Wolf and Monty are on the air again. I got to go.

Speaker 1: 3:54

Sorry.

Speaker 2: 3:55

I just got a call that we were canceled. I wish we could get word to our listener that we're back on the air.

Speaker 1: 4:11

Hey, just a quick interjection on a story you'd get a kick out of. You may have heard this before from me, but when I was working, when steve kane took over uh, wftl, yeah, and brought in his group of mock contours, craig worthing, al rantel, um, norm kent, and I would fill in for norm kent, I would fill in for al rantel. He called me the last minute, said jeff, can you do? Yeah, right around the corner, steve calls me into his show on the air what he was doing in the morning and he basically looks at the phone lines and he's on a break and he says watch this, watch the phone lines, and I'll clean it up.

Speaker 1: 4:38

He said basically those black people, those Italian people, those Jewish people, but, using the derogatory slang, phone lines lit up left and right, left and right, left, right. Then he goes to a break and he turns to me that's how you get calls. And I said I don't need to do that to generate calls. That's not really working. I said you have more money than me, but I have integrity and I just didn't want to do that type of radio same, same integrity to Steve Cain would be like showing a cross to a vampire, I would think.

Speaker 1: 5:15

And that was his attitude. You and I talked about this with Howard Stern. Admire Howard Stern for everything he's done, every money. You know. Remember the joke in the movie Private Parts or whatever it's called Private Parts? Yeah, and he's reading the call letters and I'm making up the callers. And he's reading the call letters and I'm making up the callers, w-i-n-z. And the salesperson who goes can you read it a little bit younger? W-i-o-d. And he reads it the same exact way and the guy goes that's exactly right, that's what I need, it's all bs. Yeah, the controversy, the mock, the integrity's gone out the window. Hence fox entertainment. Right, fox news is not a news station it was a very different world back then.

Speaker 2: 5:55

We think about, in the 25 years since we were doing that, where the world has changed. And now here we are and we both basically do radio shows, but we do it through this, uh media now called podcasting correct. A years ago you were actually doing online radio, yes, so you were doing kind of liberal talk right.

Speaker 1: 6:15

Well, I tried to get hooked up with the station in. I keep saying Florida because I'm from Florida. When we moved from Florida and I moved here to Arizona, I said let me go to the largest talk station here. Unfortunately, it was all conservative Republicans. Put in my resume which I thought you know, I'm not Steve Cain, I'm not, you know, craig Worthing, I'm not all these, but I think I do a damn good stuff and everything I've done with my background Put in the resume. Well, we really really can't use you and we'll call you kid. You know one of those things.

Speaker 1: 6:50

So I built a station in my house. One of the bedrooms did online and unfortunately, the online station that I did was one of the stations was liberal. Second station was all Republicans. Third station I got lucky I followed Tom Hartman. So Tom Hartman had his show in the mid-morning and I followed after him and that went very well. But yeah, it's a whole different generation. So I did the terrestrial radio, so to speak, from the house, but it wasn't podcasting and, as you and I have found, podcasting is completely different.

Speaker 2: 7:29

Completely different animal. So one of the things is we know from looking at all the statistics that we do older people not like you and me, like we're a couple of young kids, but older people generally, 55 and up, really don't consume podcasts in the way that other demographics do. At least that's what everyone would have you believe. And yet what would you say? Your average? Are you looking at things like age, demographic for your audience?

Speaker 1: 7:57

Yeah, and I found it. And it's a good thing you brought that up right now, because recently I found on the latest stats I'm skewing 55 and older for the majority of my listeners, but I'm also getting 25 to 35s, which is okay, I guess, Mr Podcasters and except for the recent photo I put up on my logo, nobody really knew how old I was. I don't say it on the air, I don't give a birth date. It's not an ego thing. If my face is there, they go oh, I like him, I like his face, or I don't like him, I don't like his face.

Speaker 1: 8:31

So I try to keep it generic. It doesn't matter how old I am or what it looked like. Listen to the message. So I'm finding, yes, the older people are gravitating, but I'm getting a mix. But what's interesting is, you know, because you've tried to explain podcasting to people older, they still don't understand what podcasting is. They text and say when are you on the air live so I can catch your show? And I tell them we're recorded and you could listen at any time, whenever you want to listen, and it's still not sinking in.

Speaker 2: 8:59

It's not radio. It is kind of like you can find a podcast for whatever your interest is. So if your interest is growing, radishes, whatever it is, plumbing, fixing car engines, just like going to a library and let's say you like murder mysteries, well you could start on one shelf and work your way around the other way, the bookcase and everything, the library and find all of these books. And one of the things that I know I come up against I don't know if you do is you know we kind of worry about well, what time do I release my podcast in order to get the most listeners on that day? But the thing about podcasts is people are listening whenever they want they, they.

Speaker 2: 9:37

You know we can release it at 2 am On Tuesday, or, like my tales from South Florida releases on Wednesday at 5 am, but I find I get most of my listeners the following weekend. The three days later is when I see my numbers start going up on Tales from South Florida, and then it just it's funny because, coming from the radio background, I have a hard time wrapping my head around. What I know is the truth of podcasting, which is I want it to be like a TV show. So if you're like in CIS it comes on at nine o'clock on Mondays and you're going to be there, but the new world is actually. You can stream it on Paramount Plus and see it anytime you want.

Speaker 1: 10:16

Yeah, and the interesting thing you brought this up, I did a and I know you did the same thing. I tried to explain in a voice, a voice piece on my Facebook group what podcasting was, and in a brief segment. I'm not going to go forever. Brief segment was when we had a radio show. Let's say Bill and I were on at eight in the morning. There were five or six other stations, seven stations on at eight or nine in the morning.

Speaker 1: 10:40

Howard Stern doesn't mean we were competing with him, it was just another choice Sports, you know there was a Spanish station and there was a religious station depending. So everyone knew Wolf and Monty would be on in the morning Monday through Friday, whatever. You had a set time. So you captured the audience and I guess that's good in some ways and bad in some ways. With podcasting, like you said, everyone tells you you need to release at 12, midnight, 1, 5.30. So people are starting their day, they can download you and have you while they're driving to work and listen to you or while they're doing the housework, et cetera. But it's that open-ended whatever. And also there's hundreds of thousands of podcasts, not just the radish podcasts but the beats and the rutabaga.

Speaker 1: 11:26

There's so much stuff literally 440,000 active podcasts yeah, and it's hard to break free from the noise.

Speaker 2: 11:33

So real fast because I, I think our, I think our recording is going to end and I just want to say a world gone mad. Podcast, jeff Allen Wolf. If you fear our future, if a certain orange haired buffoon becomes president, you need to be listening to this podcast. Bill Monty's guide for getting older. It's not about being old, it's about the journey of getting older, which we are all doing every single day. And tell us, from South Florida, where I'm recounting, the history, the adventures, the people, the places that made and make South Florida an incredible place to live. These can be found on Spotify. They can be found on Amazon, apple.

Speaker 1: 12:10

Listen to one episode, people, and I think you'll be hooked on Bill's shows. I know I am, and good friends, but listen to one episode. Give us a try, one episode and I guarantee you'll have fun.

Speaker 2: 12:21

Yeah, you will. All right, that's Podcasting 101, Wolf and Monty back on the air. Who knows, we might do this again sometime, if this episode ever sees the light of day. And we're going to say fare thee well. Right now from Florida and Arizona two states that end in A. Hello, hello, cheerio, just because I don't want to go, and we will hook up after this recording ends. All right, sounds good. All right, sir. Everyone be safe and be kind. How do you turn it off?

Speaker 1: 12:53

Stop playing with it, oh my Welcome to Bill Monty's Guide for Getting Older.