Garth Buchko: Relationships Matter

Tara Sands  0:02  
The sound of podcast. The show about podcast and broadcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:13  
I met Garth Buchko go in July of 2006 we met at the infamous, but no longer there, manion's Tavern in Montreal for a round of roast beef and beer. He was the general manager of Chorus radio. Winnipeg home to legendary stations like C, J, O, B and power 97 soon after, I was hired as Program Director of power 97 Garth is now retired, but I wanted to have him on this week as some sort of strange full circle moment, because after 19 years in Winnipeg, I'm moving back to Quebec. So I figured this was the episode to have the person who brought me to Winnipeg 19 years ago to tell his story. The first few minutes of the episode was lost because of a connection issue. So I'll narrate what I remember from the conversation. Garth grew up in Winnipeg and discovered the magic of broadcasting late at night, huddled under the blankets listening to distant signals from stations like WLS in Chicago, WCCO in Minneapolis and KMOX in St Louis. Imagine a 12 year old captivated by the voices coming through the radio, dreaming of hockey broadcasts and the mysterious art of communication. Garth later met the legendary Ron Abel, whose name you might know from being morning men in Winnipeg and Montreal, and that would change everything. Ron noticed Garth's passion. He went to radio school, and then his first stop in radio was at C, j, y, M in rosetown, Saskatchewan, and that's where we're going to pick up our conversation. Garth Butch CO is speaking to me from Victoria BC.

Speaker 1  1:46  
The person who hired me was Jim Blundell, and Jim and I, from that moment, were radio friends as he moved across the country and operated radio stations and divisions for many, many years, we always kept in touch from that, from that one year that I worked for CK KR in rosetown. He was the beginning of it

Matt Cundill  2:06  
all. Jim Blundell is the father of Dean Blundell, for those following along at home,

Tara Sands  2:11  
yes, that's right, yes, that's for sure. So that was my beginning. I worked at CK KR for one year in sales, then less, he and I came back to Winnipeg for a holiday, and I thought I would go, I went back to ckrc without an appointment to see Hugh Delaney and to see if I can get a job at ckrc, the receptionist told me that Hugh Delaney no longer worked there, so I started To explain to her my whole my whole story, how I came in, gave him my demo tape. He said, get into sales, get an education, get a job, and come back and I'll hire you. And as soon as I'm finishing the story, this gentleman in the best looking, most expensive suit I've ever seen in my life, walks out of the office and says, Hey, kid, come on in my office. And that was Gary miles. He said, that's quite a story. Anybody who can tell a story like that and cold call a radio station twice for a job deserves an interview. So he said to me, I'm going to set up an interview with my sales manager, and he'll give you a call. So as I was leaving the office, Gary said, Are you from Winnipeg? What's your history? So I told him about my history, where I lived, and about my wife, and he said, What's your wife's maiden name? So I said it was Leslie Fox. And Gary said to me, her father is my sponsor for AA, can you believe that? And I said, really? He said, Yes, red fox. He's my sponsor for AA. So I said, Oh, that's kind of a neat story. So I left, Rick Jack, you called me up. We had a meeting, and he said, I would like to hire you, but I can't offer you a job right now. He said, how long you want to pay for us? So I said, two, three days. So he said, I'll give you a call back. So then I left there, and I was feeling really, really good about myself, so I drove down the street to C j o b, and I cold called C j o b, and I said, the same thing, I'm here on holidays working radio. And I had a quick interview with a fellow named Mark Olson, who was in radio for many, many years in the West. And he said, I'll give you a call within two days for a follow up interview. And by the time I got home, my mom said, Rick Jack, you called you from ckrc, and he wants you to call him back, because that was before cell phones, right? So I called Rick back and I and I had a job, so I went to this station. He gave me my first agreement in radio. And by the time I got home, Mark Olson called me from cjlb and said I'd like to meet you one more time, but he said, we're interested in hiring you. And I said to him, Listen, Mark, I I've already accepted an offer from ckrc. And his comment was, when you get tired of working for number three, come work for number one.

Matt Cundill  4:59  
You. Yeah, and I think this is a good time, and you're really the perfect person to say and talk about the competitive nature of the Winnipeg market.

Tara Sands  5:08  
Yeah, it's as you know what, as any broadcaster knows across the country, how competitive and how really outstanding the Winnipeg radio market is. You look back for the the years and years of Moffitt communications between of all the broadcasters that went through city, FM and CK, y and little Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan. And if you were part of Moffitt, if you didn't work in Winnipeg, or you didn't work in Moose Jaw, you probably didn't work for Moffitt radio, right? And Winnipeg was the same. Winnipeg, all radio was the same. There was such great broadcasters, and the competition was so fierce, because at the time, it wasn't a huge revenue market. It was still probably a below a mid market for radio revenue. We had three, four great FMS and three outstanding am stations and a small revenue pie to share from. So it was challenging, but people would come, love Winnipeg, for what it what it is, and build careers from Winnipeg. And there's still, I count it today, Matt, there's about 14 Winnipeg announcers still on the air that I had a hand in hiring over the years. That really, really, really makes me smile, that great people like Ace Burpee is still on the air, and he was a young kid who walked in up the street and said, I want to be in radio. And here, what, 20 some odd years later, he's still doing great radio in Winnipeg.

Matt Cundill  6:38  
Yeah. And I think that's another thing about Winnipeg that a lot of people don't understand, and that's the talent. It's such a great place to come and to learn and to spread your wings. And it doesn't matter if it's on air or in sales, it's just a great spot to do radio, I think

Tara Sands  6:56  
too. It's the it's kind of the isolation part of it, and being in the middle of the country and being so cold, as we all know, but I recruited two really outstanding program directors, not including you yet. So chorus encouraged me to take assistant program directors and give them a chance to mature and develop with a new radio station, a new format. So we hired, first of all, Steve Parsons from Vancouver. And you know, every time we brought someone to Winnipeg who was from a larger city where they couldn't afford a house, they couldn't afford to have a lifestyle, they'd come to Winnipeg be able to buy a house, start a family, and be able to not only grow their radio career, but grow their family and get a good start on having an asset in a house and build their career. So Steve stayed for a couple of years, and then Christian Hall came in next and I see Christians now in Toronto doing great radio still, and he worked for us for a couple of years too. And then Lachlan, and then I was lucky enough to find out about a matt Cundill in Montreal who was assistant program director, who was next in line to become the next great program director of power 97 so just think, in four years, we had Parsons Hall, Lachlan and yourself 456, years, And then you were there till well past after I left.

Matt Cundill  8:23  
Yeah, I was there till 2014 actually, there's a picture of all of us together that I'll put on the episode page at soundoff podcast.com I can also say that all those people have been on my podcast, with the exception of Steve Parsons. I still have to have Steve Parsons on this podcast. It is my bad. I have not had him on

Tara Sands  8:40  
yet. All those guys, you know, I they came in and, like every program director that kind of worked with me, or worked for me, or we worked together, every one of them had their own, their own style, right? Everyone had their own image for because when I was working in Toronto, I had Pat Cardinal working for me and with me, and Pat's a winnipegger as well. But everyone's different. It's that's the coolest thing about working with program directors there. Everyone's different, and everyone has their own idiosyncrasies, but they all wanted to learn, and they all wanted to make mistakes, and they all wanted to make their mark in the world of programming, FM, rock stations. And I'm very, very appreciative and thankful that every one of them has done so well. So

Matt Cundill  9:26  
a couple of things have come up as I drive around Winnipeg. Still, you and I went up the Henderson highway one day to have a client meeting, and you told me about all the sales stops you used to make. And I think you used to call it Tuesday or Monday, and you would go up and down the Henderson highway and make all your visits. So tell me about making sales in Winnipeg, because it's about relationships. And it's one of the first things you ever told me about Winnipeg is that it's a relationships town.

Tara Sands  9:54  
First of all, it starts and ends with relationships in business, and I found. That out when I was in little rosetown understanding. When I went to rosetown, I never even knew what a tractor was. I was a city boy who was never to the farm, and every business I called on was farm implements or something to do with farming. So I knew that you had to build relationships and trust really quick with people. So when I came back to Winnipeg and got into just general sales, I once again build relationships. Build relationships get respect. And I was told once by Ralph Warrington that I needed to be involved in more charitable organizations. The best way to get relationships is to be on boards for the hospitals, get on boards for Special Olympics and those kind of things. And, yeah, relationships is everything, and trust and credibility is everything. But when it comes to making sales calls, though, Matt, you gotta knock on doors, and you can't be afraid to make cold calls. And it's a humbling business. You get told 18 times in a day, no or doors closed on you. It's hard to go into the 19th door, but that's the secret to great selling.

Matt Cundill  11:10  
Talk about Ralph a sec, because you just mentioned him. He was long departed after I was there, but he would always send us programming reports on how the radio station was doing completely unsolicited and was entertaining,

Tara Sands  11:23  
oh, Ralph was very, very he'd be up there the top three of my mentors, and probably number one, because he gave me the biggest opportunity. He recruited me from chum. I went from ckrc to chum. I went from Business Development Manager at chum, then I went to retail sales manager, and then Ralph recruited me to go to CJ, O B, to be the retail sales manager. And here's a good story about Ralph. Before I even knew him, I turned down the C, J, O, B job because I was being interviewed by the sales manager. And I didn't know Ralph, but I did hear about Ralph and read about Ralph, and the newspapers in Winnipeg were not kind to Ralph Warrington, so I was, I was a bit hesitant to leave a good job at chum as retail sales manager, to work for this person that I didn't know that well. So one day, he called me up when I turned down them down once and said he'd like to have lunch with me. And I walked into the restaurant, or wherever we were, and once again, like Gary miles, I saw a guy with the second best looking suit and the second most professional looking guy that I've seen ever in radio. And Ralph just floored me with his business acumen and his knowledge of Winnipeg radio and C, J, O, B, so I didn't give him the job right away the next morning, at nine o'clock, there's a ring at my doorbell at my house, and there's a Cadillac sitting on my front driveway, and it's Ralph Warrington with a job offer delivered to my house. And that floored me too, but it taught me I want to work for a guy like that. He wasn't going to let a sale go. He wasn't going to give it a chance to fall off the rails. He made a cold call. He came to my house and I signed a deal and went to work for him at CJ, O, B, did

Matt Cundill  13:19  
you have any favorite morning shows. Well, that's another thing

Tara Sands  13:22  
that Ralph did for me when I became General Manager and president, General Manager of cgob at the time. That was in 1995 and Ralph was just in the midst of changing classic rock 97 five to power 97 but it was still Classic Rock, 97 five. And keep in mind, we went through brother Jake twice. We went through scruff Connors and Ralph tried everything to make that format work in Winnipeg, but we were getting hammered by city because city was so strong. So when I became General Manager, Ralph handed me Hal Anderson and BJ, BJ Burke, who's now in Halifax, and so thankful that he's doing so well with his cancer and wonderful, wonderful team and one of the best radio teams I ever worked with in my life. So then BJ left in those 2003 I think it was, and then we had a decision where to get the next guy to be partnered with Hal, because Hal, as you know, in Winnipeg, was larger than life. So we went out of market, and we had a choice between Dave Ace Burpee or Dave Wheeler, and we chose Wheeler because he had morning show experience. And that was the start of another great, great morning team, but it's all because of Ralph he set that up. We did change the power 97 and we went for 10 years. We had two stations, cglb and power from 1996 97 for 10 years, we had two stations in the top. Three adults, 2054, every year. And it was all start. It starts with the morning show. It's just like great football team. Start with a quarterback and strong offensive line, strong defensive line. And we had the we had the right quarterbacks for our stations. Yeah. So there was

Matt Cundill  15:17  
a lot going on there when it came to revenue. And I got to be in some of those meetings, of course, because I was management, but we were out punching all the other stations in town money wise, and maybe because cgob has a lot more revenue possibilities, but the sales team was just far and away better than everybody else, more inventory, more options, more flexibility. One Two in the marketplace. And I think at one point we had a 33 share of all the ad dollars on radio.

Tara Sands  15:44  
Yes, we did. We were between 30 and 38% of all the radio revenue, and at that time, was about a $32 million market. So yes, we were based on the tram and based on our share, based on ratings, we significantly out punched our weight class, and we had great teams. When I was at chum, we had a great team. And when I came to cgob, it took a few years, but I brought a couple of people over from chum, and we had a great nucleus of senior veterans that were at CG O, B and 97 for a lot of years. But you know what? We worked harder than anyone. Matt, I think we worked smarter. I read an article or a it was a podcast you had a couple weeks ago, but the gentleman who said that we didn't sell 32nd commercials, we sold ideas, and that's how we did so well. It's not about here's the rate card. How many commercials Do you want to buy? 30s or 50s or 60s? We sold ideas and we sold solutions to clients problems. I'm not sure if this

Matt Cundill  16:51  
is a Manitoba thing, but there always seemed to be a little bit of government money that was attached to a number of the things that were going on. It could have been a concert. It could have been a lot of launch perhaps, but there's because Manitoba government sort of has their fingers and everything. There's always a little additional government money that you could find. Was that your experience?

Tara Sands  17:10  
Yeah, for sure. And it starts once again with having relationships. I'll give you a short story about a relationship building with the premier of Manitoba, Gary Dewar, at the time, I was in Toronto and Hamilton running the radio stations in 1999 and 2000 with our Winnipeg radio stations. And I used to hear in Toronto and Hamilton so many casino commercials, running casino, casino, casino. And I go back to Winnipeg and the the casinos of Winnipeg wasn't using radio for part of their advertising mix, so I brought the premier was in this radio station on CG will be doing his weekly show. And after the show, I asked him if I can meet with him for a few minutes. We sat in my office, and I asked him why they don't use radio. And he, of course, he didn't know, because he's got a CEO who does that. So I asked him if I can make a president presentation directly to him, the premier, on why they should be on radio, the casinos of Winnipeg and the Manitoba Liquor commission be on radio. So he said, Sure, make an appointment. So I made an appointment. I went in with my ghetto blaster and made a presentation. Played him commercials from Ontario. And then we did some demo spots, and he said, I love them. And so my pitch was, we were launching the helicopter traffic in Winnipeg. So the branding would be the air 680 casinos of Winnipeg air traffic. And we gave them the branding that was like 14 times a day they would get the casinos of Winnipeg air 680 traffic. And he loved it. So he said he set up an appointment with the CEO of Manitoba lotteries and the casinos. And, long story short, we walked out with $110,000 and we got 100% of all the radio in the marketplace because of a relationship and government having money to spend,

Matt Cundill  19:05  
just for context for people, CG, O, B would play 22 minutes of commercials an hour. And nobody knew how anybody could get away with that, but you could totally get away with it.

Tara Sands  19:18  
Oh, my goodness, I had more fights with program directors about adding time, but it was typically 16 to 18 would be the max. But when we were sold out, we would hammer 22 minutes of commercial. So yes, I'll say guilty as charged.

Matt Cundill  19:35  
Matt, you also managed to sell garbage day. It's garbage day number one, garbage day is brought to you by a 15 second tag for someone

Tara Sands  19:46  
garbage day. And we sold cook books. We have announcer who was a chef off the air. So we gave him a radio show that was an hour every Saturday afternoon, and then he used to ask people to send in recipes. From listeners. And then I said to him, what do you do with them all? He said, I keep them in this little file folder. So I said, let me see them. I said, Why don't we make a cookbook out of this and sell it at the local bookstores, and we'll put coupons in it for restaurants and businesses in town, and we'll sell sponsorship with it, we generated hundreds of 1000s of dollars in revenue from cookbook sponsorship sales, which included a commercial package as well. So yes, it's we would sell everything and anything, as long as it was saleable and it didn't. This is ultimately, which is very important, we would never do anything that would lose the integrity of the quality of the product.

Tara Sands  20:43  
Sound design of the sound off podcast is inspired by mega tracks, the sound of entertainment, providing music and sound effects for radio podcasts and media professionals. Mega tracks is your one stop shop for library and custom tracks. Start your music search now at Mega tracks.com the sound off podcast with Matt Cundill.

Matt Cundill  21:08  
One of the charitable things that we did was hunger for hope, which is, you know, raising food for harvest here in Winnipeg. And that was something that we really worked on. But here's an ingenious idea that came out of it was donation bins at the airport.

Tara Sands  21:24  
Yes, that was one of my most gratifying accomplishments, not only by myself, but our team, when we, collectively with Winnipeg harvest, came up with a solution for their problem, which was they never get donations for hungry babies and infants, which is baby formula and pablum. So our solution was to create our own charity at the radio station called hunger for hope, and asked businesses in Winnipeg to support us through putting bins, little bins in their stores. But the Winnipeg airport put large bins, which they still have under a different name in the airports in Winnipeg, and so people can drop their currency that maybe is from some European country and to the bins at the airport, and they're all Plexiglas. You could see the money grow, but in five years, we generated almost $1.2 million in donations and corporate support. And that changed Winnipeg harvest for all the babies and infants who were not being fed nutritional food, our couple of radio stations changed the lives of many, many parents and many, many babies during that time. And it still goes on, but it's now. It's not it's not in your face anymore. It's just kind of subliminal. But it still works, and it's still going on. And I'm really proud of all of our team for what we did for the community.

Matt Cundill  22:46  
You touched on it earlier, and that was the time that you spent in Toronto, and I believe you were working for WIC at the time and perhaps selling at Q, 107, but it was also the same era that Howard Stern was on the air in the mornings.

Tara Sands  23:00  
Yes, this whole thing happened at the end of 19 I was 1999 Doug Rutherford was our president of WIC radio, and he had a mandate to get things really lean before chorus took over. And lean meant he came to see me in Winnipeg and said, We're going to let go all the general managers in the country except for you and me. And I would like you to run Toronto and Hamilton and Winnipeg, and he was going to run the West Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. At the time, from discussions I think Doug had with some of the chorus people. They wanted me to move to Toronto because they were thinking that I could then stay in Toronto and run the radio stations. And I said to Doug, I don't want to move to Toronto until the whole sale is completed. So how about if I stay in Winnipeg and I'll commute to Toronto and Hamilton, and I did that for almost 14 months. One week Winnipeg, one week Ontario. My son was born on July 31 1999 and August 1 I was in Toronto starting the new job. So it was an exciting 14 months. But yes, Howard Stern was the morning guy. It was a pain. It was a pain. And that's when we had, we think the dollar is low. Now we had a 6769 cent dollar back there, paying stern over a million dollars a year in US funds, and then having to spend upwards of $35,000 to have a content producer in our studio so we can take delay it by 20 minutes and edit out all the not so nice things Howard was doing. Yeah, it was, it was terrible. Anyway, the clients were starting to get tired of Stern's games. So really short, funny story about Howard Stern and Pat cardinal and Doug Rutherford and Pat Cardinal. Will rest in peace, my friend as well. So we had this great idea, Doug Pat and myself, that we should go to New York meet with Stern's agent. Stern just fired him a couple weeks ago. Howard, he was a lawyer anyways. So we said, Yeah, let's go see him, and let's see if we can negotiate Stern's contract down. So we, the three of us, fly New York, go to his office on Broadway, or wherever it was, and we go upstairs, and Stern's agent walks out and shakes our hand by the elevators, and he said, Oh, you guys, so nice to see you. It's too bad you just missed my client, Molly greenwild, she was just here, and I wish you could have lunch with her, but no. So he takes us into his office, and we're starting to make the pitch on why he should lower the price, because us poor Canadians the dollar. And he gets up behind his desk and says, You guys wasted about two hours, three hours of your time coming here. You probably wasted $2,000 in flights. He said, Howard's not going to renegotiate. In fact, Canada is a pain in the ass for Howard. And he said, If you want to cancel the contract, cancel it and pay him for the next three years. And I'm going to put Howard in Buffalo tomorrow, and he will kick your ass. And we said, well, thank you, sir. We'll consider that. We'll get back to you. And the three of us ran back to the taxi and said, What the hell just happened to

Matt Cundill  26:34  
get a chance to listen to Howard Stern at all these days. And what do you think of the show? Because it's very different now.

Tara Sands  26:40  
Yeah, you know, I think Howard is a great broadcaster his show, I do listen to it once in a while. I think he does interviews better than than many others, but I think his time is is well past the due date. I think everyone has their past due date, except for Aaron Rodgers. I think he can play for another 10 years and win four Super Bowls for the Steelers. That's just a joke, Matt, but I don't listen to him that much. I still think he's a great he's a great communicator, and he's done a great job at morphing himself over the years and and losing some of that, the nonsense he didn't, he didn't

Matt Cundill  27:17  
need to do. So you were just mentioning about expiry dates, not that you're milk that's going to go bad, Garth, but at some point you decided to move on from radio and CJ O B and the bombers came calling. How did that come about? Well,

Tara Sands  27:33  
we were the broadcast rights holder for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers for many, many years, and I negotiated many CJ will be blue bomber contracts with the bombers, and they always had a board of directors who negotiated the contract. And we always had such a great relationship prior to me with Ralph. Great, great relationships. So when they were looking for a CEO, I had a visit from one of their board of directors, one of their very, very prominent board of directors, who suggested I should apply. I was hesitant, but it was a very, very intriguing offer. I was 54 years old. Been in radio for 30 some odd years. In my mind, I wasn't ready to leave radio, because I accomplished everything. But I kept on thinking to myself, I accomplished quite a bit, and maybe there's one more thing I should try before I leave radio. And the bomber thing just seems so intriguing, and I'm very, very happy I did it, because it was a lifetime experience for everyone. I wish the stadium debacle wouldn't have been involved. I made lots of great friends and lots of great relationships. I hired a good lawyer who negotiated a great contract going in, and when we both decided that this wasn't a great relationship, we parted ways, and I've never watched another bomber game since, but it was a lifelong winnipegger dream, who loved football and saw the opportunity, where I thought I could do something, and I brought Finn Patterson over from cglb to be my director of sales at the bombers, and him and I would have died on The job, because we worked so hard. We worked so hard seven days a week for months and months and months, but it didn't work out. And I hope my kids look at that, because they know what I went through, and say, You know what? That's part of life. I swung for the fences. It didn't work out. But you know what, Matt, it did work out because it opened the door for my next opportunity, and that was the last of me swinging for the fences. Well, I

Matt Cundill  29:50  
want to bring that up in just a sec, but you've unleashed another memory here, and that's when the Jets came back in 2011 and you put together the deal. Yeah, for the rights so that cgob could carry the games. And I remember it because we outbid the other guys, but we didn't get it because we didn't have TV, and they wanted a TV radio package, and all we had was radio. Does that sound about

Tara Sands  30:14  
right? That sounds bang on. And I'll give you the shortest story of this predicament. So when the original jets left 15 years before the next jets came in, the owner of the Winnipeg Jets now Mark Chipman, along with David Thompson, Mark Chipman approached me as soon as the Jets left Winnipeg the first time and said, I am thinking about bringing the International Hockey League to Winnipeg from Minneapolis, I would like you guys to be the broadcaster of it, but you have to promise me that you will treat it as it's a NHL team and put the resources and the effort behind that. So him and I went to Minneapolis. We saw a game. We met with the Minnesota fighting saints. We came back and I said, Yes, we will do the broadcast for the International Hockey League, or whatever you have going forward. So he bought the team. Then it became an American Hockey League team and a very successful Hockey League team with the mantle of a moose. They constantly drew the most fans in League, and we handled the broadcast like it was the NHL. We covered every game. We paid a play by play and color guy to go to every game. We spent tons of money. So when the NHL was rumored to come back, he said, Yes, you got the broadcast rights. Garth, you got the broadcast rights, like we talked about, yes, so I made presentations after presentations after presentations, and TSN just launched their national sports talk radio, as you'll remember, and TSN wanted the TV and radio rights, so at the time, there was a time where Mark convinced them that, no, you take radio, because I have my radio guy already done. We have cglb, we're good. And then last minute, TSN came in and said, If you want TV, you need to give us radio. And that broke my heart. It still breaks my heart.

Matt Cundill  32:22  
I mean, yeah, you done. You've done all the leg work to bring the team back. You paid for the production, and by today's standards, Rogers doesn't even pay for the Maple Leafs to get a game called on

Tara Sands  32:33  
the road. Yes, I know. I know. Yeah, you know what, Matt, when I think back about the bombers that stung me so bad that when the bomber opportunity came up, I thought, yeah, jeez, I just need a I need a change. We built a new radio station in Winnipeg. We moved from a 50 year old property to a brand new, one of the most beautiful radio stations in Canada. We didn't get the Jets rights. We renewed the bombers rights, and we were kind of still sailing, and I thought, Ah, maybe it's time to give it one more shot. So the Jets really, really did suck the wind out of me, and it took a lot for me to be beaten down, but that beat me down pretty bad.

Matt Cundill  33:19  
Yeah, it changed the market too. It changed sales. It changed the direction of the way the money flowed and the entertainment dollar flowed.

Tara Sands  33:27  
Yeah, it did, it's but what we did was, the first year when we didn't have the rights, we kicked their butt because the old jets were in Atlanta for a number of years. So like a great boxer professional fire. We came out swing, and we hired the play by play from Atlanta to be our road correspondent for all the Jets games and the first season. And he traveled everywhere from Atlanta and did updates from every game. We did a pre and post game with the best pre and post game that money could buy, and it cost us a fortune, but we had higher ratings in our pre and post than TSN did, and we did more revenue than TSN did, because I could tell by the tram how much extra revenue we are bringing in than TSN, but after That year, we just couldn't afford to keep that up.

Matt Cundill  34:23  
Yeah, no, I remember that well, but I'm glad you kept swinging for the fences and then you found Kamloops.

Tara Sands  34:31  
Yeah, that was a wonderful opportunity, and it came out of nowhere, Matt. But first of all, I have to give really, a big, huge kudos to to one of my mentors in life as well, which is Elmer Hildebrandt. And Elmer and I, he was a neighbor of mine in Winnipeg, lived just down the street from me, and Elmer was the first phone call I got when the bombers and I parted ways, and he said to me, when you get back, because I was out of town, I was on actually, I was on holidays. With my family when I when I got terminated from the bombers, they called me at six o'clock in the morning and terminated me in the hallway of the Western hotel. But anyways, and Elmer gave me the best advice in the world. He said, Sit back and relax, because I've never been terminated in my life from anything. And he said, The best way to handle it is, sit back and relax. Don't jump at any one opportunity. Take your time, because he said the right opportunity will come up. I left the bombers in August, 2013 Elmer then hired me to be a consultant for his Winnipeg radio stations, which was very nice of them. And I had a couple other consulting jobs, and then out of the blue, Ralph Warrington calls me and said, My friend Robbie Dunn in Kamloops might be interested in you coming to Kamloops and purchasing some of his ownership, because Robbie was the majority owner of the three stations in Kamloops And one in Merritt, and purchasing some of Robbie's shares so he can step down as operational guy and be the president of the company, and I'd be the vice president and be a pretty large shareholder in the company. So it was interesting, very interesting, but interesting enough. Five years before that, Robbie offered me the same opportunity because he wanted to before I left for the bombers, he offered me come to Kamloops, buy some of my shares and be general manager. And I turned them down. And then I golfed with Robbie a couple times after that, and we hung out together. So when the time came for me to look at Kamloops, and my family look at Kamloops, it was much easier because I already, I did my research previously on whether this would be a good opportunity for our family. And it was, it was, yeah, it's, it was, you know what the biggest challenge was. When I did leave the bombers, I was in a very, very, very good financial position, so I we went to Kamloops. I give my children and Leslie all the credit in the world for us to pack up after what we went through with the bombers, and having such a great life in Winnipeg, and having so many friends and so many acquaintances and the kids leaving school and we moved to we went to Kamloops in early April, and the kids went swimming in an outdoor pool downtown, and they said they wore shorts for three days we were in Kamloops and said, Okay, this isn't Winnipeg. So Robbie and I and the other partners did the deal for me to become a shareholder in NL broadcasting, and I thank them all to this day for the opportunity. And I was made General Manager, and for the first time in 15 years, I became sales manager again, and that was a bit scary not having done sales meetings. So with the help from Steve Dubois, the sales manager in Winnipeg, he sent me some reminders of stuff that we used to do, and I did some digging out of both files, because I'm a pack rat things that we used to do, we made it work. And I love to tell a story to clients that I would meet clients in Kamloops who were non advertisers, and I would say to them that my family moved from Winnipeg to Kamloops, and we are all in. We put every penny that we have at our disposal into this venture, and I'm not going to let it fail, and if I let it fail, that's because I haven't been right with my clients. If our clients aren't doing great business on our station, then I'm going to fail. So I'm not guaranteeing you that your advertising will be successful. I'm telling you that I will do everything in my power to make sure it is successful, and everyone bought it. And relationships, I met two people within the first two days in Kamloops who own businesses, and I found out quickly. Those two people met me, introduced me to four people. Those four people introduced me to another five people. And in Kamloops, if you knew these 25 people. You were a rock star, and they helped me meet the right people. And we, we exploded. Our ratings were never through the roof, but our our revenue exploded, and our bottom line did very, very well. It was only three years and we were up for

Matt Cundill  39:39  
sale. You know much the way Elmer reached out to you and said, Would you do a little consulting? You did the same thing for me when I was out of work and we got to work together. These radio stations were fairly familiar to you. I guess format wise, there was a country station in there, but there was classic hits and as well, a talk radio station in NL radio. I mean, having. Am station and two FMS is not foreign to you. So tell me something obvious about a change that you needed to make in order to really make that revenue grow.

Tara Sands  40:10  
You know, I think it started with just getting in the door relationships, because Kamloops is $100,000 market. It's a very, very small revenue market, but if you did even not a large amount, and Winnipeg, that would be a small amount, but we didn't have to sell gazillion millions and millions of dollars to make it work. So there was a lot of clients who weren't advertising on the station. And you know, it just came down to making relationships. Give us a chance. Give me a chance. We'll make it work. Car dealers who weren't advertising. And this is the other thing, our competition was pretty lazy, and I found that out very quickly, that they were lazy and old school and very, very complacent. And our team wasn't we were energized. We would go. I made sales calls, we did pitches, and I was on the board for the hospital. Within two weeks, I met the owner of McDonald's, who owns six restaurants. He happened to be from Winnipeg, and once again, it just went on and on and on, and we got in the door to make presentations, and that's all I asked. People said, you don't have to buy us. Just give us a chance to make a presentation. And it worked. It worked. And we worked hard. We worked really hard, but we gave a crap, and we didn't promise results, because you can't, but we followed up. We did everything right. Sales. 101, what

Matt Cundill  41:43  
goes through your mind when a company like Stingray wants to buy the properties?

Tara Sands  41:47  
Well, we sold it to new cap, and we kind of figured new cap would be the buyer, because they owned a lot of radio stations in southern interior, Kelowna Vernon and that, and they own lots of radio stations in northern BC, but Kamloops was right in the middle, and Robbie Dunn did a great job as being the front person for the sale. And we agreed that if we can get the price we wanted, we would sell. And we kind of knew that new cap would be the one that would be the perfect fit, and they were a perfect fit. And I was gone by the time. Because I left, I had a year agreement to stay on as part of the sale agreement, but I stayed for nine months. And then after that, Stingray purchased it, but Stingray was a major investor in new cap anyways, and vice versa. So really the same company, but just different head offices.

Matt Cundill  42:42  
Did you know you would be retiring in Victoria?

Tara Sands  42:45  
Yeah, I did. When we were in Kamloops, our son finished high school, and he was accepted in engineering school at UVic. So we moved him out here and got him set up, and then we visited him one or two times, and then we came back. We came here in January or February, and people were playing golf, and the grass was green and there was no snow. Even though Kamloops winters were wonderful, we just knew this is where we wanted to be. And as you know, we have a son that has disabilities, and he's 37 years old now, and we also knew that we needed to get to a larger center to give him more opportunities and resources. So Victoria, we've been here for six years, and it's a dream. We love it, but quite honestly, Matt, I think about radio almost every day, but I think about the people that I work with, and I was fortunate enough to be part of for 35 years, and from a young kid, 1214, years old, dreaming about this, to be able to have such a great life doing it is all of us are blessed to be part of this business, at least the way it was when I was in it.

Matt Cundill  43:56  
Garth, thanks so much for taking the time to do this and answer questions and share the stories.

Tara Sands  44:01  
Hey, Matt, it was great. It was always so much fun working with you. We had so much fun, and at the end of the day, that's what makes radio great. It's fun, and Friends Take care, my friend.

Tara Sands  44:11  
 The sound off podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill, produced by Evan cerminsky, edited by Taylor McLean, social media by Aiden glassy, another great creation from the sound off media company. There's always more at sound off podcast.com you.