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Welcome everyone to coffee with Kojo.

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My name is Demetrius Gilkey and I'm so excited tonight to welcome our guest.

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Our guest is Melissa Herbold. Melissa, welcome, welcome, welcome.

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Thank you for coming. Yes, thank you for having me.

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Yeah. Yeah. So we said this is virtual. So you're not technically here, but you get it?

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Yeah, totally. Yeah. So tell us about yourself, your educational journey, where you're from, a little bit about just who you are.

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So I'm originally from Webster, South Dakota. I went to one year school, Black Hills State out in Spearfish, decided that was not for me.

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And then I came to Watertown and went to the Lake Area Technical Institute.

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Now it's Lake Erie Technical College and took courses in their marketing, management and sales program and went through that,

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graduated and also heard on the radio, not also but heard on the radio one day that there was a job because I didn't have a job.

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Yes, well, that's not true. I actually had a job, but it wasn't my full time job, but it was supposed to have.

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After graduating, I heard an ad on the radio and it was asking for a sales position.

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So marketing in a in a in a radio station when interviewed, got the job, worked in radio for a couple of years and then got out of radio.

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In the meantime, I met my husband because he was at the sister radio station,

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got married, and my journey really started when I met a man by the name of Bob Payne.

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I had worked with him at a cable company that I was currently at and he said to me, I have a I have a job for you.

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I can't tell you what it is, but you're going to be great at it.

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And I went, Oh, okay.

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But at the time, I was not happy with what I was doing. And Bob was just a wonderful human.

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And I thought, okay, this, we can do this.

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Well, Bob had owned other radio stations here in Watertown, and he was starting what is now Cake's LG Radio, and he started that in 2009.

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And I started with him in 2009 and 2019.

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Bob got sick and he became terminally ill and he knew that at some point he needed to sell the station.

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He knew he wanted to sell it to somebody that loved it like he did,

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that was passionate about local radio and that knew the existence of why it was local radio.

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Right? Because we we do things different.

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We we love our communities and we're there for our communities and all the different things, all the severe weather and everything.

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He finally became really real when he saw that he was terminal and that he needed to sell.

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And I finally asked him, okay, well, what would it actually take for us to buy this station for us, meaning my husband and I, to buy this place?

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We started talking, we had conversations and he said, Just like I have partners, you're going to need partners too.

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So I had my husband and I and him and his wife had supper together one night and I said, So if we actually do this.

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And I was looking at his wife and I said, Will you be one of our partners?

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And she said, Yes, absolutely. And he goes, Well, there you go.

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There's your first partner. So now you just need to find two more.

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So needless to say, we got the job done found on my partners on November 30th of 2021.

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This show we purchased cake, sold you radio and look at me now, that is I don't say it like that, but it's wild.

4:19

Yeah. I love your story. That is beautiful.

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So that you follow. You met a wonderful person and look how it all just came together.

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I know. If. If I hadn't met Bob, I.

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I don't know where I would be right now, truly.

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You know, Bob was just he's such a good human, and he knew he knew a lot more things than I did because he'd been doing it for so long.

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But he he was definitely the guy that kind of put everything into place.

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And I always said to that if if it didn't help happen organically.

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Right that we weren't supposed to buy this radio station, that it wouldn't have happened.

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But everything fell into place. All the partners fell into place.

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A lot of them did it on behalf of Bob because they just knew Bob and they knew where his heart was and how wonderful he was.

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And they wanted to keep it alive for him, too. So you're the owner, you and your husband and your partners and you and your husband.

5:23

What is it like being an owner of a radio station and do you ever get on air?

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I don't think it's even officially hit me that I'm really, truly an owner yet.

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I was the ground like so when I started in 2009, I literally have done everything but to be on air.

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I don't know how to do a board shift. I can't do it. But promotion, sales, front office billing, all that sort.

5:52

Right. I can do all that. I found out that I cannot do severe weather coverage because I don't like weather.

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I don't like severe weather. It scares me. So it does.

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And I was the girl that was like, I'm going to be a team player.

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There's a really bad storm that came through and our one announcer and said, It's going to get really bad.

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And I was like, okay, that's that's fine. I'll be here, you know, I'll be here.

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She goes, No, like it's going to get really bad. And I never asked her like, well, like, how bad do you think it's going to get?

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And she said, Well, I didn't ask for that part. Well, that night there was like seven tornadoes that came through our listening area,

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and I was freaked out and my husband said, Go home and be with the kids.

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I will come in and take care of this. So him and Jan actually came on and the crazy part is, is that my husband is a trained radio broadcaster.

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Right. He went to school to be a broadcaster. So for me to fall in love with him, for him to get out of radio, I get into radio.

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And effective February 6th, he started his first broadcast here at the station.

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Oh yay. Yeah but day because he's here but sad.

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Our 45 year veteran Jimmy Sub had a brain bleed on September 16th on air so he is we

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have said he's on our injured reserve list and he will make his return at some point.

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But I needed to to move in and put somebody else in that spot.

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So yeah, yeah. Have quite the story. I love listening to it.

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So I don't know. I always think it's not really that crazy, but it's I don't know, it's wild, it is exciting.

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And I get to wear many hats still. But I love what radio truly stands for.

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Right? And I love that we're local and we're community and people reach out and ask for help and we can be there to help them.

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We have a very large footprint, but we also have a very large microphone to tell people about things,

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to educate them on stuff, and also just be there for our community.

8:11

And speaking of community, are there are certain events that you all do every year or known for or you come volunteering with?

8:20

Yes. So actually, the maybe if you guys are familiar with anybody at all, they award it's called the Crystal Award.

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And you put all this information together for what you've done for the entire year and they only give out ten Crystal Awards every year.

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And it doesn't matter if you're small market or big market.

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So Ice Little Water town, South Dakota went up against New York and Michigan and Wisconsin and all those.

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Right. We applied for it four different times.

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We were always in the top 50 every time.

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But on the fourth time we won the Crystal Award and I got to go to Vegas and accept it and it was wonderful.

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So it was amazing, right? What we just entered in our fifth Crystal Award for this 20,

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22 years have been nominated for the top 50 and then the top 50 all go to Vegas and only ten get awarded that day.

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But it's very exciting and that goes back to the whole community thing.

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So we have in 13 years raised over $350,000 for local charities here in the community with a golf tournament that we do every year.

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We also do a we call it a person forum.

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So it's wine tasting and orders and designer purses.

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And that money all goes to the water town breast cancer support group.

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And that one is probably in the $80,000 range that we've raised just for that group alone by doing that.

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This year we started Christmas in the country.

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There's a beautiful restaurant that looks like a barn out in the country that wanted to do something fun for the community this this year.

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And we got together a bunch of local singers and we had this beautiful Christmas concert.

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And I don't know if you're familiar asleep in Heavenly Peace Now.

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And I'm in Kentucky, too. Okay, well, so this sleep in heavenly peace is actually for they build beds for kids that are sleeping on the floor.

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Right. So, yeah, so we raised 20 $500 just in that little concert alone to for these kids, the Sleep in Heavenly Peace.

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It's an amazing charity. So that's the other thing, too, that I'm very proud of.

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We have these charities, we have this concert, and I had five people come up to me that night and they said,

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We don't know that this even exists and we don't know that the need is out there because people were naive.

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But if you don't know that kids are sleeping on the floor, why would you think kids are sleeping on the floor?

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You know, that is very amazing.

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You score Christmas curling to the nursing homes and assisted living places covered.

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Kind of put the kibosh on that. And that's also kind of why we did this Christmas in the country just to have that whole fun.

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But we've done so many radio finds.

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We did stuff for the Boys and Girls Club. We got our our neighbor is our local beacon center.

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So families and victims of domestic violence, we raise funds for them every year, bring Santa into the studio for kids to call in and talk to Santa.

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We just do a mix of everything, you know? Wow, that's amazing.

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Thanks for sharing that. That's that's awesome.

11:58

So as far as a certain genre of music, do you all play a certain kind or a little bit of everything?

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We play a little bit of everything. We say we're classic hits, but we really play eighties, nineties, today, some country, some nineties country in there.

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We also say and I should explain this to you when we originally started Kick sold your radio, Bob, the owner pretty much handpicked his crew.

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Right? So he took the best of the best in this industry and put them all under one roof.

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So we had a morning, man, that was the morning man for 35 years.

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Back then we had a news veteran.

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That was the news and the local news voice of Watertown for 35 years.

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I think one of you guys actually talked to him, David Jay Law. He was in the coffee combos for the Kojo, so he was just a local voice.

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Everybody knew who David was. And then Bob Payne had been in radio for years and years and years,

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and then we had Dan Robson and Kurt Hirschberg, so that's who it was when we started.

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So everybody really knew who these people were and we put them all together.

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We weren't very well known. Yeah, for being brand new.

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When we first started, we were more we wanted to be the local radio station.

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Like the news, the content, the information, the entertainment music was like a back seat to why we existed.

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So we didn't really necessarily have people listen to us because of the music that we played.

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They listened to us because they knew they would be able to find out information and be entertained in other ways.

13:37

Mm hmm. Bob when he started the station, he knew, you know, satellite radio, XM.

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Like, if you want to listen to music, you listen to them.

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But if you want to know what's going on in your local community, you're going to listen to Kix.

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LG Mm You know, that brings up the point, but I never really realized that the local radio stations, they do provide news and information.

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I just always think about music. Mm hmm. And we are more than music.

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We are community. We are live and local.

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We are the people that keep you safe during the storms.

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We are the ones that our local chamber came to us during COVID.

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Right? Everybody was struggling. Restaurants are struggling. Businesses are struggling.

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They came to us. And now here's the other thing. There's eight radio stations in this 20,000 population right now.

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So we were number eight back in 2009. But the beauty of it is, too,

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this local chamber got to come to each one of those stations and say we need to do a radiothon for these businesses, the struggling.

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And everybody said, yeah, let's do this. So we all got on board.

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We all do take out social media. Didn't do that right.

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Digital didn't do that. Instagram didn't put her didn't.

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Facebook didn't. Radio did that. And we managed to raise $60,000 in one day to support businesses and tell them how we want to support them.

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It's a beautiful story. So let me ask you this. It kind of goes along with that as you were talking about satellite radio and digital and things.

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So do you think that I know, like even with like cable TV now with that Netflix and Peacock, you got all these streaming through little.

15:35

Yeah. YouTube to be which I've never still seen or really watched or anything.

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But do you think that radio is here to stay when it comes to like the competitors of like Sirius and and all of these satellite radios and things?

15:54

Yes. Radio is definitely here to stay.

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I would say I wouldn't have to put my whole life savings into a radio station had I thought it wasn't a viable, like, you know, vehicle.

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Like, I always think, like we have so many ears right now and we have so many ears that we can talk to.

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And now I'm not saying anything bad about any of the other ones.

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Right. That because they all have an audience.

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But I know I have an audience and I know that if I talk to people and I tell them and I educate them on things,

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that it works for them and it works for those businesses.

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When you hear that everybody listens to Pandora and everybody listens to Spotify, it's not everyone.

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It's a percentage. And radio still dominates that percentage.

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In fact, 89% of people listen to radio on a daily basis.

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Where Spotify and Pandora might be in the 20% range.

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Yeah, that's good to know. Let me ask you this.

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So I'm not there. As I said, I'm in Kentucky, but if I was there, I would so want to work at your station.

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So for this, I know right now, if you ever go to South Dakota, you let me know.

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I will, honey. I will. I will definitely do that.

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But for the students that live in your area or graduates or people that are, maybe they want to transition into radio.

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What qualities or characteristics do you look for for your announcers or any of your roles at the station?

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You know, I would say just because it is such a competitive market,

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I feel like with maybe the younger kids not not understanding radio the way they think it is,

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I think maybe it's a past, you know, it's a dying thing or something or I don't listen to it, so I don't know.

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I just feel like they're not in a spot in their life that they need to maybe listen to it right as they get older.

18:07

They're going to want to know that information and that's when they're going to start tuning in and they are already consuming it.

18:13

They just don't know they're consuming it too. I believe that wholeheartedly.

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As far as people we actually do, and this is a long story to an answer.

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We bring in a weather kid every Wednesday.

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That is the age of third grade and up, you know, to high school that comes in and reads the weather live on the radio every single Wednesday morning.

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We do this and we do this because I think it's a great exposure for them.

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But I also think it's just is great exposure for us. So they know what it looks like at the radio station.

18:54

Right. We need to raise up new broadcasters and we need to show them that radio is a radio is a great vehicle to get people's messages out there.

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But it's also very rewarding to have that.

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You know, we have during those storms, we have a very important job, and that job is to keep people safe.

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But we also have so much fun, too.

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And that's where I would just tell anybody that's going through the journalism or communications, try out everything.

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Before you make your decision, come and visit us.

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Come and visit us and tour us and sit with us for an entire week and then make your decision as far as where you want to go.

19:44

That's a good, good piece of career advice, because I think that even for me, my dream is to be like, I want to be on camera.

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I want to be or even on a microphone either or combination.

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Like that's what I want to do. I love speaking. I love I have a big, bubbly, fun personality.

20:01

I can talk everything from pop culture to faith to this and that.

20:07

But I also love what you just said.

20:10

There's nothing wrong. And in fact, you should share and see what's out there, see if you like it and what resonates 100%.

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And, you know, when you talk about you want to be on TV, you want people to see you.

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Radio is so much more than just behind the mic and nobody's seeing you.

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First of all, they're going to get to know you through your voice.

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Right. But then our big thing, too, is because we're so integrated into our community.

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They know who you are. They know exactly who you are, you know.

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So you become this person on the radio.

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But then people also get to know who you are by going and doing your different community events throughout the community.

20:53

So I would I would just seriously. Yes. You to go to a local radio station, go to TV, go and do sports or digital or whatever it is, but.

21:05

Give him a chance before you just say, Yeah, I don't think that's for me.

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Trust me, I never thought I would own a radio station ever in my whole entire life.

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But it's pretty amazing. Where do you see yourself on the radio station in the next ten years or so?

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Have you thought about that or. Well, I see.

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Oh, I can't see. Five feet in front of me sometimes. We've had so much.

21:37

Bob was such a big mentor for me and such a role model and a father figure that when I lost Bob.

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It was very emotionally hard for me. I sit at his desk.

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I sit in his office. I haven't cried in a while.

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He he taught me so much. But I still find myself to be very young.

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And he was taken from me way too soon. And there's so many more things I wanted to learn from him.

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And I really just had to hurry up and and learn and fast forward on things and go with my gut and make a decision and just own it right.

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Own it, make my decision and move on and go. And right now, I know that I love this place.

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I know that we have a great group here and that every day I try and do my best and I try and do what's best for this community and this place.

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And in ten years, I can't tell you what is going to happen in ten years, but if it's anything like today,

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I know that I still want to be live, I want to be local, and I want to be here for my community.

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And I want to be the best that we can be to make our advertisers as successful as they can be.

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The other part is, yes, we sell ads, but we help businesses grow.

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Right? Right. And I love that part. Mm.

23:09

Yeah. You're kind of helping your whole community grow by doing what we do.

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This podcast is the property of the School of Communication and Journalism at South Dakota State University, which reserves all rights to its use.

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Music by Cody M Johnson and Tyler Addison James is licensed through AP Music.