Kenny Smoov is a hardworking and respected PD whose well deserved recent promotion has put him at the forefront of many stations, 37 to be exact. With stints in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and North Carolina, he admits: “My come up has been the grind out.” Honored that he has worked with many of the industry’s heavy hitters like Tony Gray he said: “I’ve been a principal working with him on a lot of projects with his company and learning under his tutelage for a couple of decades.” Kenny started his first gig in Killeen Texas at KWIZ.
The former club DJ was previously in the military. A Desert Storm Veteran with 6 years of military service to his credit with tours of duty in South Korea, Ft. Hood, TX, and a host of other assignments. His decorations include Army Commendation Medal 2 Clusters, Army Achievement Medal 2 Clusters, and others.
He got his first shot in radio from Mike McGuire (DeDe McGuire’s brother) and he said his big break came when he was in a nightclub one night and somebody didn’t show up. McGuire said: “Hey man can you just cover this remote for us man because I’m in a bind and there is nobody here to cover this remote?” He covered the remote and has been on the radio every day since. He admits he wasn’t initially trying to get into the game, things just happened.
Kevin Ross: So Mike McGuire put you on the air with no experience?
Kenny: Well he knew me from the clubs of course in Texas at the time but I didn’t do any radio stuff so I’m on there, I’m flipping it straight over to the LP version I am not playing that radio stuff, I was in the club so it was that whole night he was standing in the box with me and handed me the records, I go through them and we blew it out that night man. I remember that night like it was yesterday and he’s still one of my really good friends in the business and we talk all the time.
Kevin: So you recently got promoted, tell us about that.
Kenny: A change in the guard was going on and I’ve been with Cumulus for a long time. I’ve been anassassin for the company, when they need something done and something needs to get fixed they send me in, I’ll go and fix it they know I’m going to work hard. What I lack in talent, I’m going to beat you in hard work, the army taught me that.
I’m known for coming to a station with a sleeping bag. I’ll come in the station I will stay for four days straight if I have to get it done and you don’t find that kind of tenacity from a lot of the psychos that are in the business that just love doing what we do and we go in there man and so whether it’s been Kansas city or if it was been Fayetteville I’ve done some Pop work for the company too for i106 etc. There was a guy that just left and the next day the VP comes in and says, “Can you just watch this for us for a minute, we’re going to fix it later?” Four years later we took the station to number three in the market 18-34 and somebody came and bought it because it was in a trust.
So it’s just that kind of stuff being a person that’s just willing to get in and do that or the talent side, hosting the Grammys, hosting billboards, hosting red carpets all over the country for the company, whatever needs to get done, I’m your guy.
Kevin: So how do you develop talent? I mean if you didn’t have the training that most jocks have and what’s your philosophy on training new talent and is there any new talent?
Kenny: I think the new talent pool is sitting right there on the internet, the new talent pool is on YouTube, podcasts etc now. What you gotta do is get those people that do that work. What I know about them is that it takes a lot of effort to get followers.
If you’re building some kind of audio based entertainment service, it takes a lot of work and so I know that you’re a grinder. That’s the first element for me, I can teach you technique but I can’t teach you passion so if you’re not going to come into the game with passion you’re not going to make it anyway.
And so I’ll take that and then I’ll see that they have some moxie and from there mold what they already have into what we need in radio and then take that and just put it into a form. A lot of the guys that are on the podcast, they have a lot of passion about whatever it is they’re talking about but no form.
That’s kind of where I’ve been the last four or five years in my opinion where I think that’s going to come from but if I got somebody that’s in the game already and they’re at a station and they’re doing part-time work, Saturday nights where I started at and I see that they have it, then you just kind of stay at them and air check them and, “Hey you might want to try this clean your diction up.”
You can still be lit on the air without saying ‘deese’ and ‘dose’ and this ‘dis ha’ You can still get to the people without having to do that matter of fact the ones that clean that diction up and still got the intensity are the ones that get the money, they really do.
Kevin: Do you think that if somebody is online though and they’ve trained themselves to promote themselves and market themselves on social media that they’d want to come to a situation where they may have a leash?
Kenny: That’s the other thing too because I have to tell them like if you’re going to come on this side, there’s going to be some rules whatever it is that you’re trying to give up. If you’re like, “Hey man, I’m sick of my 90 or 120 day paychecks coming in and I want to get something more consistent then you might give that up to get this every two week check but here’s what you’re going to give up to get to every two week check.”
I think if it was me starting right now and I’m 25 again and I’m starting all over and I’m doing my social media thing I’m doing everything to try to make these things ride together I’m doing everything I can to keep what I’ve already built and I think that’s the reason the company looked at me in the first place you liked what I was doing online so why would I take that away and then find a way to kind of mesh it into what we’re doing.
I think guys like Zach Sang who does Pop and when he was doing Pop, he came from that world, he came from totally online YouTubing and we hired him and now he’s over at Westwood One doing a chain of Pop stations for our company and he’s really talented.
Kevin: Have you hired somebody from online?
Kenny: It’s been a chore; it’s been like you said stepping up to the spot and trying to get it to turn over and I’ve missed twice but I am not giving up because I know that there’s synergy there. I know that there’s synergy there and I know that our business is heading in that direction every day, I think it’s a smart play.
Kevin: What do you think when people say that radio is a dying industry?
Kenny: I’ll say that they’ve been saying that about this industry for decades, every time the new toy come out, “Oh radio’s going to die off for this, radio is going to die from video, radio is going to die from the internet, radio’s going to die from satellite, radio is a roach.”
It’s going to exist in some form, maybe it won’t be I mean hell you remember they used to play orchestras on the radio, they used to have live acting on the radio and it just keeps morphing to where it needs to go. And I think you’re going to see another morph from radio but it will be in some kind of tact.
Kevin: That’s interesting because actually that’s actually happening, public broadcasting is doing plays again on the air like in the 50s and they’re doing concerts I don’t know if you’re into public broadcasting but the tiny desks concerts-
Kenny: The tiny desk concert is tough.
Kevin: – They have come so far from where they used to be the joke, always asking for money and having telethons, they have really come up and in a lot of ways when it comes to commercial radio they’ve surpassed it. They still ask for money but they found-
Kenny: A lot of Americans love what they do.
Kevin: – Yeah they find unique ways to ask for money. And some of them are even union stations when it comes to being more commercial.
Kenny: I think you’re going to see some of the bigger podcasts that are out there on the urban side eventually get those two-hour weekend slots and eventually continue to morph from there. I think it’s just going to be who is going to be bold enough to go out there and get it and put it on the air.
You can’t say that, “Oh I didn’t know to talk about this and cut the songs out while they’re on podcasts and they’re crushing whatever we got going on digitally, they’re killing us and they’re not playing music.”
So the people obviously have an appetite for it we have to figure out a way to put it inside our little clock structures that we have, quarter hours and figure out how to get it in there but you see like you said public radio has figured it out we’re going to be next.
Kevin: What do you think about the iHeart Black Information Network?
Kenny: I think it’s a good play, I always wonder about the appetite for it because you’ve seen BET, they used to have Ed Gordon and all these different things and the appetite for it wasn’t there and then they took it off you see Roland Martin stuff that was going on and I don’t know if there was some politics behind it because I’m not in that room at all and I don’t know if there was an appetite and there wasn’t maybe an appetite for the talent but I’m hoping that the appetite is there for the market because we need the information but I tell people my people die every day with their medicine on the table.
They know it’s there; they’re supposed to take it but they won’t and they die in their beds with what they need on the dresser. So will they do that with this? Hopefully not, hopefully they ingest it, we need the information, we need people that can speak truth to power about our situations because we have got a bunch of them.
Kevin: I think that it depends on how they do it, I agree with you, I think it may have been the hosts with the BET situation. I don’t think it was engaging and compelling when you watch Don Lemon is a great example, when you watch Don Lemon now, he’s compelling, he’s interesting but it’s like before he wasn’t. He finally found his niche and he’s interesting, so you want to hear what he has to say.
Kenny: I tell people all the time, look at the top TV shows and look at the top things that African- American people, women in particular are moving towards, I know
Yeah the 40 year old woman now, hell is finer than some of the 30 year olds. She’s out there, man, balling, doing her thing, this is a different 40 year old woman, you’re not going to pin her down with just Maxwell and Kem. Kevin: What’s the situation there as far as the coronavirus in Nashville?
