Terry Phillips, Creative Director, WYCD/WOMC, Detroit, Michigan
By Jerry Vigil
“Texas” Terry Phillips may be one of the hardest working production dudes in radio. We managed to catch up with him one Saturday afternoon just as he was waking up. Seems he got home from a long Friday at work at 5:30 that morning. No doubt, Terry has a passion for his work, and it certainly pays off for CBS Radio’s Country and Classic Hits stations in Detroit, WYCD and WOMC. And there’s work for a number of HD and internet stations as well. You may have met Terry at one of Dan O’Day’s recent Creative Summits where he was a panelist. This month’s RAP Interview checks in with this busy creative as we take a peek at these two successful stations and Terry’s approach to their imaging. Check out some great audio from Terry on this month’s RAP CD.
JV: Tell us how it all started for you and some of the highlights along the way to WYCD.
Terry: I was actually one of those annoying kids who used to call the radio stations so much the jocks knew me. I even had a couple hotline numbers. I graduated from South Garland High School in a suburb of Dallas, Texas. I went to East Texas A&M, East Texas State, which became a branch of A&M. I worked at teeny little stations like KBUS in Paris, Texas, and KIKT in Greenville. That was my freshman year in college and part of high school. I also did an internship at KZPS.
Then I got a job as a board op at Y95 in Dallas, which used to be a huge CHR. Buzz Bennett was there when I was hired. He was a pretty famous CHR programmer in his day. I literally showed up every day with a tape and resume for nearly a month. The APD came out and kind of giggled at me and said, “You sure are persistent.” Then he goes, “I need a board op for tonight. I’ve heard your tape. I know you can run a board. We’ll see how well you can do on the air later.”
I looked at the board. Back then, everything was the Pacific Recorders boards, PR&E. The air check machine back then was cassette tape. It makes me sound ancient, but it wasn’t really that long ago. And the air check machine was fed by the Aux 2 buss – I figured this all out like the first hour in. The old boards, even some of the new digital boards, have multiple busses. So, I took the mic out of program, which went on air, and set it only for Aux 2, and I ran a live show on the air check machine with me on the mike, but I was just board op-ing actually. I took out the cassette and slid it under the APD’s door. I got woken up by the APD the next day with a couple of expletives, a laugh, and telling me he was driving home from the bar and listening to the station, so he knew I wasn’t on the air. But he wanted to know how the blank did I do that?
I explained it to him, and he goes, “You sounded pretty good. Can you be here at 10:00 a.m.?” I had just pulled an all–nighter, and it was about 9:00 in the morning. Literally, that meant me throwing on a hat, throwing on some jeans, and driving from a rural college town, Commerce, Texas, about 90 miles all the way there. But of course I said yes, and I did.
I did an air check session with him, and he let me on the air that Saturday for two hours. From there on, I was on the air. The morning show heard me on one overnight show doing some character voices, so I started doing some character voices for them. I was one of the backup swing jocks working fairly regularly, doing character voices on the morning show, and getting pulled into the production room to do some character voices for promos.
From there, I just fell in love with the production room. I followed Brian Wilson around so much, I’m sure he just hated me. I know I annoyed the piss out of him, but that’s why I fell in love with production. When Y95 shut down, I was able to hang on for a while when it was waving the oldies banner for five seconds because I was one of those people who showed up early, left late, and always asked for things to do.
Being a computer geek, they had this new graphics software for sales pitches and I was the only one who knew how to work it. So, on top of board op air shifts, and at this point, some backup production, fairly rudimentary stuff, I was also putting together sales stuff. Finally, I got pink–slipped as Evergreen slimmed the station for sale.
I had an interview with a gentleman who was being top secret about this new station he was signing on there in Dallas. We talked about the overnight position. I got an offer in the meantime to go to El Dorado, Arkansas, the middle of nowhere. But at El Dorado, Arkansas, the PD there had been in a major market, and he was one of those charismatic guys that you just wanted to work for.
So, I cancelled the meeting, and whether I would’ve gotten offered that job or not at the station that turned out to be the first Young Country, I’ll never know. Probably not. There were probably more experienced people for the overnight shift. But I took the job and did nights in El Dorado, Arkansas for a month. They moved me to mornings and gave me the Assistant Program Director stripes.
I stayed there for two years, then went to Wichita, Kansas for literally one book. I was in Tucson, Arizona for five years then got offered a job in Flint, Michigan to sign on a country station and be the Production Director, which is what I wanted to do. So, I took a step down to take a step up. I thought, “I’m young. I can recover from Flint.” Not that Flint is a bad place -- despite the bad press, Flint isn’t a bad place at all. I got a lot of experience. Our first book we signed on at number 3 in the market, and beat the pants off the legendary country station there -- knocked them down to six.
About two years later, I got a phone call from ‘YCD in Detroit, and yes, I did recover from stepping down to move up. That was almost ten years ago, and I’ve been at CBS Radio ever since.
JV: Brian Wilson must have been a tremendous person to learn from.
Terry: One of the best writers hands down in the business that I know of. Nothing disparaging against anyone else. I obviously had some close working with him, and I was wide–eyed. Between him and Buzz Bennett, everything they would bother to babble at me or waste their time with me on, I would just sit there like a sponge.
JV: Are you the Creative Director for the CBS cluster there in Detroit?
Terry: No. There is no official cluster Creative Director because we are in so many different buildings. Now, I am called on to do things for stations that are not mine fairly often, and for the group fairly often, but to say that I’m the cluster Creative Director or CSD or Production Director is a stretch. There are some talented guys in our group, but we’re all in different buildings, so that kind of corroboration is not possible.
I’m in charge directly of WYCD and WOMC, a country and a classic hits station here in Detroit. I’m also responsible for about five internet radio stations and HD stations, ranging anywhere from Super Oldies -- the whole Motown do–wop thing -- to Alternative Country, to Psychic Radio, which is a talk radio station with live astrologers, mediums and the like, taking phone calls. When we were putting together the station, they were looking for a slogan. I said jokingly, “We know you’re listening.” Greg Strassell loved it, and that’s been the slogan of the station since sign on. You’ve got to do something like that a little different. The imaging is very ethereal/techno sounding. We have a Brit with a higher register male voice doing the VO, and the bumper music and the music we use in imaging and the like is a cross between Lilith Fair, pop radio, and alternative. There are well over 1 million unique listeners regularly, so they’re doing pretty well.
JV: This is on HD or internet stream?
Terry: It’s both. It’s actually syndicated out on HD here in Detroit. It’s HD3 in Seattle, and it’s HD3 in Boston. It’s based literally on the other side of my wall, which is fun to the salespeople. I get to tell them I might be next to the psychics, but I’m not one.
JV: Country is obviously a monster format down here in Texas, and I wouldn’t have guessed that a country station would do nearly as well in Detroit, but WYCD has been a strong station there for some time, hasn’t it?
Terry: Well, as far as reporter status, we’re one of the biggest ones in the country, which you wouldn’t think in so many ways. There are challenges that other markets with country stations don’t face. Detroit has a 40 percent urban comp. So, when you’re dealing with a 40 percent urban comp in the metro, all of a sudden being the number one station in town is a near impossibility. But, quite frequently in our group, WYCD is the number one biller, beating out a monster in our cluster like WWJ, and WOMC with a legendary personality like Dick Burton doing mornings, and the like, even The Ticket, which is doing huge numbers – Tom Bigby has done a brilliant job signing on that sports station. They have every Detroit team literally.
The way we out bill these stations is that we’re an NTR monster, which of course is really complicated from a production standpoint, keeping the messages clear to the listeners when you’re doing, in the summer, as many as ten remotes and appearances in a week. You also have the Downtown Hoedown, which outside of Detroit, most people haven’t heard of. The Downtown Hoedown is a free concert, a three–day show. It is the largest free country concert in the world. Annually, an average of 1.1 million people show up for this show over three days. It’s huge. You would not expect that in Detroit. We’ve had almost every major act on their way up or on their way down at this show, including Garth Brooks, Toby Keith, Big and Rich, Gretchen Wilson. The only two that we have not had, of any significance at this point -- knock on wood we don’t miss any others -- has been Brad Paisley and Keith Urban. The Program Director at the time didn’t think they were going to be as big as they had become. So, we unfortunately missed that.
As far as ratings, with the flanker from Clear Channel at us, that has kept us down a little bit for a while, but we have usually been top five 25-54 almost every book since the day I got here, and every book but one has been top five 25-54 female, and that’s where all the money is. We have hit number one several times in 25-54, not regularly, but several times. We actually did hit number one 12–plus while I’ve been here, and in a 40 percent urban comp, you could’ve knocked us all over with a feather when it happened.
JV: How do you approach the imaging for that station? What’s your philosophy regarding imaging country, your style perhaps?
Terry: Well, first of all there’s the listener. I get hairs standing up when I hear people say, “Listeners are stupid.” They’re not stupid. They’re not paying attention most of the time, but they’re not stupid. I’m really crazy anal and like to have a sense of humor in everything possible. So, the way we run it is to try to keep everything fun, everything moving, everything upbeat. Think Hillbilly Deluxe without the twang, as far as imaging. Driving guitars, loud, busy production sometimes, but we step it down from time to time as well.
It’s kind of weird to me when people say, “Country stations doing CHR production,” as if they’re the only ones who can have intricate art of noise stuff. A lot of country stations don’t go there, and we go there a little bit. But more than anything, it’s a sense of humor. It’s having a voiceover person like John Willyard, who is so agile, and my goofy character voices that I’ve carried with me from the early days. When Willyard was on vacation once, and I had to pull a winning weekend out of my butt at the last minute, I pulled out of my tukus a Saints & Sinners winning weekend, which was all character voices, and had a lot of fun with that.
Nearly everything has some sort of angle of humor when possible. There are sometimes when you do have to pull up a little bit, but I’m the type that would rather stay late and try to make everything at least really good than to just knock a mulligan, and say, “Ah, good enough.” I got home last night at about 5:30 in the morning. We had to do two winning weekends, along with contests that started Monday that I didn’t get the details for until Thursday night, and stuff for University of Michigan football -- all the changes to the opens and closes based on the game, and sponsors. That all had to be accomplished in a day, which is not what every day is like, but it’s almost what every Friday is like.
JV: How do you meet the challenge of constantly coming up with humorous material?
Terry: Well, there’s one advantage after almost a decade in the same place: there are a couple of times a year where something comes up, and it absolutely makes sense to revisit something old. I would say three times a year, four times a year, for one of the winning weekends. Sometimes, depending on when Christmas falls, we’ll have 52 winning weekends a year every single weekend. So, regurgitation of three or four isn’t bad, and especially when you dive back five or six years to do it. I’m crazy anal with my files and everything else, so I literally have every sweeper and every promo session that I’ve constructed since 2001 on one of my portable hard drives, and I can literally load up the old session. Some of the plug–ins have changed, but I can update it.
So that helps me on the really bad or really busy, busy times like right before Hoedown or ‘OMC’s Dream Cruise, which is a big deal for ‘OMC. It’s gigantic. You get a whole bunch of classic cars going up and down Woodward Avenue, which was the first highway in America, classic Chevys and Plymouths and everything else. They broadcast from nine locations that day, and there’s somewhere like 40,000 classic cars driving up and down the road in a day, from downtown Detroit all the way to the upper suburbs. It’s crazy. It’s a community event, but the station has been the singular radio sponsor of it forever. Further back than I’ve been in the market by far. How far back? I don’t know. A million people show up for that as well.
JV: Does WOMC demand as much of your time as ‘YCD?
Terry: It does in a different way. ‘OMC is nowhere near as NTR crazy as ‘YCD. They don’t have nearly as many remotes. They have just as many on–air contests now, though. Since the Program Director of the country station, Tim Roberts, has also taken over ‘OMC – he did that a while back to help continue the change from oldies to classic hits -- since that’s happened, he’s brought the approach of ‘YCD along with him.
So now every weekend, there’s a winning weekend. Most of the time for both stations, it’s prize and music themed, like this weekend on ‘YCD, it’s a Rebel Rouser Winning Weekend, playing rebellious tunes and giving away tickets to two younger country acts that are coming to a smaller venue. And on ‘OMC, it’s a Michael Jackson weekend. They’re giving away tickets to opening day for the Michael Jackson movie, and a couple of box sets and stuff. Every weekend, there’s usually a prize tied in with a music theme, unless we can’t come up with a music theme.
JV: Sounds challenging.
Terry: Yeah, but you know that’s the thing right now with the economy; every single one of us, whether you’re in a small market or a major, you’re doing more. You just are. That’s how it is. I’m a big believer in those two kinds of people: the people who aren’t as good with the pressure, and the people who hunker down and just try to find a way to get it done. That may be an overly Texan attitude from me.
JV: CBS Radio’s “Idea Sharing Group” is something you headed up some time ago. What’s the story on that?
Terry: Well, it’s still very, very loosely organized. CBS still is very independent from station to station. So, there’s no way to do corporate mandates of things. I’m still in charge of the email list, and somewhat the community. I’ve been working on trying to build a community portal for them, and juggling with IT, and obviously in this economy, there’s a lack of budget. It’s not something that they don’t have a priority for at all. They’ve very, very, very supportive, but people are being stretched 18 ways to Sunday.
My project, which I have still sitting out in the wild in open beta called ProdNation has been on hold because corporate wanted me to build them one like it -- a little more resilient in some areas, a lot more secure in others. That security makes me reliant on IT, and additionally being busy with my stations, nobody at corporate wants me to not pay attention to our stations so I can take care of that.
It’s something that is in progress. It’s something that things are happening with. But like anything else, everything either happens quickly, or it happens so slow it’s like a herd of turtles. At the moment, we’re a little bit of a herd of turtles. We have a great group of creative folks in our company. Not saying that anyone else doesn’t, I’m just happy to lean on them and to have them ask for my help whenever possible.
We have it set up at the moment essentially so we can all contact each other instantly, and shoot out, “Can anyone do this character voice? Does anyone have this song? Does anyone have this? Where can I get this noise?” They can call out for help and get it nearly instantaneously. That’s because of everybody being helpful, rather than one full–time person, or a couple full–time people taking care of that. There are a lot more resources I would like, that they would like, and that all of us would like, but we’re getting there.
JV: Texas Terry Productions has been in business since 1993. What services do you provide, and how is business?
Terry: It’s good, trying to develop strategies and time to expand pretty much as everyone is. We provide voice over obviously and production services obviously. I’ve consulted a couple of small stations on approach and image, and I do some commercial work as well, and not just locally -- nothing to brag about nationally yet, nothing recent at least.
In 2008 I had two floods wipe out my studio. One took out the walls, and the next one took out all of my equipment. So, for a little over a year now, I’ve been rebuilding studios. I finally got my new studio done. I’m almost done building a new website with the bigger, stronger client interface. I’m hoping any stations or agencies haven’t fallen in love with anybody else on the planet, and now that I’m ready to roll again at full speed, I can bring in some of that business again.
I’ve been real fortunate and real lucky with the company I work for, and I’m one of those types of folks who really wants to make things work, and for them to be right. So I give a little too much of my energy to CBS Radio, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing at all. And as far as freelance is concerned, I’m staying involved. The latest area that I’ve expanded into is doing TV commercials, video animation and pre–rolls for radio stations. Figuring out how to price that affordably, competitively, and how to make it worth the investment is where I’m at now as I’m rebuilding the website.
JV: What program do you use for editing video?
Terry: For editing video I almost live in After Effects from Adobe, which technically isn’t a video editor. For chopping the video to fit, I usually use Vegas just because it’s a comfortable pair of shoes to me, and it can do pretty much anything Premiere can. And as with any person who is used to an audio editor and has ever had to go across the street and use another, once you get used to a comfortable pair of shoes, it’s not that you can’t retrain yourself, it’s that you can go so much faster in what you know.
After Effects is an animation tool that broadcasters use to spin things and make things animated and everything else. When you’re watching a TV commercial where you’re seeing arrows pop up, or video pop up, or things fly across the screen, most of that animation for television, network and commercial is done in After Effects. Anything that is not pure 3D, which is usually 3D Max, is After Effects. I always like to learn new things, so I dove into that program, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it.
JV: Having had the opportunity to rebuild your home studio, were you able to do something extra special?
Terry: I think so. It’s a compromise between the new analog and digital world in many ways. Some might say it’s far too digital, but I like the load out. I built the computer myself rather than paying to have it done. We’ll find out in a couple years whether that was smart or stupid.
I have a quad core three-gigahertz i7 processor and 8 gig of RAM. I have about 4.3 terabytes of hard drive space. I have two audio interfaces, a Digi-002 rack, and an M-audio 1010 -- the full rack model, not the ones with the plugs hanging out the back, which I don’t think there’s any difference between other than a couple more inputs.
I have two monitors, both 24–inch screens. I have Mackie monitors for the audio. I have two main microphones, a Rode NTK, and the Hollywood standard, as they call it, the Sennheiser shotgun. For outboard gear, I have one of the classic Eventides. I have a Symetrix 528-E, and I have a Liquid Channel. I also have a Mackie controller and a Mackie Big–Knob.
The really cool thing is with the construction and the move our group has done with ‘YCD, they had these big studios and production rooms full of that big solid furniture. They were going to throw it away. So, I rented a U–haul, backed up a truck, and I now have studio furniture that I probably wouldn’t have been able to afford, nor would I want to spend that much money on anyway.
JV: You basically rebuilt your studio twice. Looking back on those two situations, what did you learn about building the studio that you’re glad you did the way you did, and maybe something you wish you would have done differently?
Terry: Well, one of the things that I’m glad that I did: a long, long, long time ago when I started at ‘YCD, I had the challenge of hard drive space, and I went out and bought portable hard drives, and a FireWire card so I could take my work to and from home. I’ve updated the size of those drives several times over the decade, but I’ve always had a mirror copy on my home studio computer as my portable drives, thinking that if the portable drives ever died, I had a back up that was a couple days old at worst, you know, whenever I synced them up last.
After the flood, I could not have regretted I did that because my studio computer was completely under water and totally destroyed. There wasn’t anything that was saved in that computer. It was all garbage. I was also glad that I got sump pump insurance in Michigan and added a rider on my studio. When you’re already established, having a rider on your studio costs surprisingly little. If you already have some sort of insurance on your house, or on your renter’s insurance, it costs surprisingly little. You’d be shocked. If you can do it, get it. That was my wife’s idea, and she saved my life on that.
I learned a lot about sound dampening because I built a studio in my old house. We moved to a new house. I built that studio, had a flood, tore down the walls, rebuilt them, and had another flood. I tore down the walls and rebuilt them again. So, I’ve half–built two studios, and fully built two studios now.
There’s wonderful material out there called Green Glue. If you’re going to double board your walls, look into Green Glue, and put it between the two pieces of drywall. It does wonders. It’s just amazing. In my old studio, I had to have foam nearly everywhere. In the same house, with the same walls, in the same positions, now I can just spot treat it with sound panels, rather than having the whole room be Auralex. It’s amazing the difference it makes. Also, you can shoot insulation in your wall for super cheap. Go to Home Depot and look at the insulation that you just shoot in with the hose and the machine. It costs very, very, very little. It’s very easy to do.
JV: How about some advice for up and coming production people wanting to work their way into the top 20 markets, advice on how to perform in today’s radio environment?
Terry: Well, not that what I did is the right way to do it, but it is a way that worked for me. When I was in Tucson, I did the imaging for KIIM FM there, and I knew that being in market 61 and doing the imaging and having an air shift was not enough. I knew no one was going to hire me to be a Production Director, Commercial or Imaging Director, without me having had the full–time position before. So don’t think you can run into running, as the old proverb says. First, you must walk and crawl. It took me very little time stepping down to, I think it was market 120, to bounce back up to what was market 9, and has shrunk to market 11.
I also sent out lots and lots and lots of promos, and not to Program Directors asking them what they thought, but to creative people. You know, the Mike Lees, the Dave Foxxes, the Brian Wilsons, Ann DeWig and so on and so forth, back when Ann DeWig was at DC101. Don’t think she’s just a wonderful voice. Ann DeWig has incredible chops and skills. She may not have exercised the muscles in a while, but that girl rocks.
Reach out to your peers, all but the crankiest of production people, and even the cranky ones. They’re just tired and overworked, but they’ll give you their opinion. They’ll give you some good advice. I always personally asked them to tear it to shreds. I specifically asked them, and pleaded to them, “Don’t be nice. If this promo played on the air at your competition, what would you say? Rip it apart.” It was sometimes really, really painful, but always very, very helpful. It helped me hone my writing, my editing, and everything else. I have people from time to time who email me stuff, and I’m more than happy to give it a listen.
A young gentleman from a big small market recently sent me some stuff, and it showed a lot of promise. It had a lot of good things in it. I always ask, “Do you want me to give you a nice review and some encouragement, or do you want me to go all Simon Cowell and rip it to shreds with suggestions, with helpfulness?” Not mean, but with stark honesty. And I’m surprised at how many people actually want the stark honesty, which is really, really good. There are a lot of people out there, and this one person comes to mind in particular. He has been in this one market for a while, and he has felt very sedate, very stagnant, very trapped. I gave him a lot of words of encouragement like, “You’re only trapped if you want to be. You’re only where you are, if you want to be there.”
I was not the best jock in the world, but I did pretty darn well as a jock, and got good ratings everywhere I was. I may not be the best writer or producer, or anything else in the world, but I’m good at what I do, and I work hard, and I work long hours. I just keep at it until it sounds right to me. And whether you’re going to be the best at something, or whether you’re going to be the hardest working at something, both of those will get you places.