On Friday July 25th Paul Iwancio, BSA President and Founder, interviewed Stephen Yasko, the General Manager for WTMD FM 89.7, the recently re-formatted AAA public radio station in Baltimore. http://www.wtmd.org. Yasko, who has more than 15 years of experience in the public radio business, was previously national program marketing and program operations manager for National Public Radio, marketing associate and producer for WAMU’s The Diane Rehm Show, and a consultant for WAMA and WUOM. He graduated from American University and has completed graduate work at the University of Maryland College Park.

Paul: This spring WTMD changed its format to AAA. For the benefit of our readers, can you tell us what AAA is?

Stephen: AAA officially stands for Adult Acoustic Alternative or Adult Acoustic Album, depending on your point of view. Alternative has morphed into a word that’s a little tough for some people to associate with the kind of music we play, which is adult and acoustic-based. That doesn’t mean that we outlaw electric guitars. Its a “not intensively produced sound.” We play artists that have stories to tell. I think the craft of songwriting and the stories are really important. Anyone can write a power ballad love song that really doesn’t scratch the surface. It takes a real talent to craft poetry into music.

P: How does your station differ from others in the Baltimore area?

S: We don’t have any commercials! What makes us different from commercial radio is that commercial radio, especially now, has a responsibility is to its shareholders and its customers. And that means advertisers and shareholders in the company. By being listener-supported and generating the bulk of our operating revenue from listener contributions it creates a more intimate relationship and direct relationship with our listeners, because they are our customers. And that gives us a chance to be more community-minded and more integrated into the fabric of Baltimore.

P: How many watts is WTMD?

S: We’re 10,000 watts at 84 meters.

P: What is your broadcast range?

S: Our signal reaches from just a little before the Pennsylvania line all the way to near the Capital Beltway. And from Frederick to the Eastern Shore. I tell underwriters that there are 2 million people under our umbrella.

P: What are the favorite parts of your job?

S: The favorite part of my job is that moment when I talk to a listener or hear about the impact of something I did and realize that I get paid for doing that. A great example is when we were doing public service announcements for Gay Pride Day this past June. I recommended a song to put under it. I told them “it’s a really cool song, trust me.” It was Malcolm McLaren’s Madam Butterfly from the mid-80s, which is an old personal favorite song of mine. And we don’t really play it on the air that much. It’s not in regular rotation, because it is very avante garde. Well, we put it under that promo and it played quite a bit and finally one day a guy calls up and says “is that Madam Butterfly under there?” The DJ said yes and the listener begged for him to play the whole song. So the guys played it for him and then right after it played three more listeners called, a couple of women practically in tears, saying how they remember that song and what an important part of their life it was when it was popular. To me, that’s my favorite part of the job - making that kind of stuff happen.

P: Music plays an important part in people’s lives.

S: Even if you’re not a real intensive music person.

P: It might define a moment.

S: There’s actually an interesting story that was on NPR a while back that talked about how the brain imprints memory. And how individual melody lines and rhythms within songs aid in the impression of memory.

P: Speaking of playlisting and repetition, let’s talk about how much freedom your DJs have in what they play.

S: We have a music director that pretty much decides what gets on the air. He does that in a variety of ways. He looks at what other stations like ours, across the county, are playing. He works with the record labels for what they think and we concur is valuable music that should be heard. I will say that a lot of people see record labels as pretty evil. But they’re really not. One of the things about the advancement of technology is that anybody can be a record label. You can run a very successful record label with a computer and a little room. You can go out and represent artists and do that. What we’ve found is that there are a lot of mid-range labels that are really receptive to the kind of music that we play and are receptive to working with us because they’re shut out of some of the other models that are out there.

The individual jocks do not have much leeway. That’s because we don’t want every hour of WTMD sounding like something unique. People need dependability in their radio station. So it goes back to the business model that we have to supply our listeners with the kind of music that they want to listen to for a long, long time. If we were to do an hour of wacky stuff, three times a day, we wouldn’t generate the amount of listening required for people to feel we were valuable to them. So the individual jocks present songs, and we’re always on the lookout for new stuff.

P: Are your DJs paid staff or volunteers?

S: Its a combination right now. The goal is that all of our air staff will be paid employees.

P: What’s the exact process for selecting music to be played on WTMD?

S: If someone really wants their record played, they would submit their package to Mike Mathews. He will listen to it and evaluate it. If he thinks it’s good, he’ll give it a couple of test spins. Listening to music through a CD player in an office is much different than listening to your radio in a car. So he’ll give a couple of test spins and see if it gets any reaction on the phone. And that might be one spin every couple of weeks. We try to rotate our music in patterns to create that reliability but also to go to the edge of the envelope and surprise people at the same time. It’s funny, when you’re scheduling music, the computer will take the set of rules that we give it and will throw it all together. Then as we go through it to massage it, we sometimes find ourselves, like a listener would, going back to the same songs to fit them in somewhere. So once something is in rotation and it starts to gather steam that’s how it gets played more. And that’s on the local side.

P: For the local singer-songwriters reading this, how would they proceed to send their stuff to the station and what might give them an edge?

S: Your first approach is the one that’s going to count. So I would say don’t make the approach until you’re really ready. And being really ready means, well if we get a CD with a paper label on it, it ain’t going anywhere. Because you’re not ready yet. You haven’t made the investment into what you do and have that show up graphically. In other words, if you said to yourself, I’m going to make a real run at this thing, you know you’ve worked the day job and scraped up 500 bucks to go down and have a couple hundred CDs made. The way technology is now studio time doesn’t take anything. You get some good heavy foam rubber and a computer and a 300 dollar sound card and a 100 dollar microphone and you’re pretty much good to go.

P: What are you looking for in a submission?

S: We’re looking for someone who has a serious package. Someone who has really thought through this, who’s gotten past “oh, my music is really good - you’ve got to put this out, everyone who hears my music loves it.” You need to be able to describe why your music is good. You need to be able to say to us in the package “this is who I follow, this is who has influenced me, this is what I have to add to the discussion.” In a way what you want to present to us is to think about the answers - that if you feel an interview is appropriate, you’re almost giving us the answers to those interview questions so that we can understand your music better. And then if it fits in sonically with what we do. And that’s a really important thing too, I mean, we don’t play hip-hop.

P: What would you like to see in the future for Baltimore and WTMD?

S: You know, we just passed a really great milestone with our first emerging artist concert on Tuesday. It was such an overwhelming success. It sold out in 10 days. We had 250 people at the show. And (BSA member) Joanne Juskus was so generous to open up for Alexi Murdoch - she helped in so many ways that night. And it was really wonderful to put a local person with what turned out to be a true emerging artist. We’d like to do more of that - do more concert series, be a bigger part of community organizations and events, bring popular culture in Baltimore to the forefront of everyone’s minds. I think that one of the things that’s odd about Baltimore is that it’s a really great town that even the people who live here don’t realize how great it is. Being able to bring people together through music and to celebrate life in Baltimore is great. It’s presumptuous to say that a radio station can change the personality of a city, but I think a radio station can unite people who have a similar passion. And if you unite those people into a kind of psychic vibe, which a radio station can provide, I think there’s a lot of power in that.

P: What’s the possibility of WTMD having a weekly local music show like WXPN?

S: My idea is more integration. My fear is that doing something late on Monday night doesn’t do anyone any good. First of all, no one is listening to the radio at that time, and it’s a lot of work for everybody. At the same time, for people who are casual listeners the words “local music” mean “not as good quality as national music.” I want to break that perception. My idea is that I would rather play a three-song set in the morning drive time that has a local artist in the middle, a really good local artist, and then have people call up and say “that’s great” and we say “oh yeah, and they’re local.” I think that is more effective for the singer-songwriter community than to do the local program. That doesn’t mean that we won’t do a local artist spotlight at some point. That doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t highlight local artists in other ways. But my job is to work with local musicians and present their music in ways that will be most effective for radio listeners. In a certain way you want to be sneaky in radio. You want to sneak things in every once in a while and have people say “cool, what was that?” And if you can get people to say that then you’ve got something. Right now we have over 100 songs we play by local artists.

P: What can the community do to support WTMD?

S: Become members, that’s the most obvious. And becoming a member doesn’t mean that you have to give a hundred bucks. Become a member at whatever level is comfortable to you. We truly believe that once people give $10, they might give us $20 next year, as we become more valuable to our listeners. Another way to support us is to come out to events that we put on, tell people about us, and support our underwriters. Be part of the club. Being part of the club means you’re not going to like everything we play, but we hope you choose us for the majority of your radio listening time.

P: Can people volunteer to help WTMD?

S: Yes! One of the best ways to volunteer is to come in during the fund drives and answer the phones for us. That’s being part of the club and you get to talk to other listeners.

P: And there’s great food!

S: Yeah! I have to stay on the air during the fund drives just to make sure I don’t eat too much. Volunteering is also a way for us to get to know you and maybe learn of other skills that can help us out in the future.

P: We wish you guys the best and hope that the BSA and WTMD will have a fruitful relationship in the future. Thanks so much for your time, Stephen.