Sunday Interview with Jimbo Martin: ‘ I've been very blessed ...’

A: It’s an unbelievable experience, very humbling. … The No. 1 thing I can say about it is I’ve been very blessed to have had some of the best employees anywhere that have worked with me on the PMB team. The only criteria that I did on my own was hang in the radio business. The rest of it about having successful stations, being graded well, and having the community involvement — that is strictly this team that we’ve put together here, which is an unbelievable broadcast team here in Columbus Ga. I’m proud that they recognized me. They recognized my staff through me.

A: I’m telling you, it really is. It’s special, especially from the Georgia Association of Broadcasters. It’s quite an honor. ... It makes you think about a lot. You really do. You look back on it and you see all the things you’ve done and you just start reminiscing. It’s just so easy to do. It’s fun — it’s really fun. To go up there at the award ceremony and to see so many folks that I knew, that I grew up with that started about the same time I did and that I’ve dealt with when they were like me, just doing selling and what have you, they’ve really progressed as well.

A: My family. I look at my family, not just my family, my son, and my daughter, but also the teams that we’ve built in the radio station. I’m proud of the fact that the people here, I think, are proud to work here. I’m proud of the fact that they come in here and when we first started this company, they were not doing that much civically. Now that they’re here, I don’t have to push them to do any more. Now, it’s a matter of me trying to hold back and just kind of hang onto it. I’m proud that we’ve got a business here that we run, that we run with top-end integrity.

A: My official start, I would have been 21 in 1973 with WEIZ FM — “All beautiful music all the time” — when the FMs were in the back room. FM wasn’t anything there.

A: WDAK.

A: Which was the No. 1 station in the market? I believe that station that year had a 47 share out of six AM stations. WDAK was a dominant force.

A: Never. I’m a sales guy. I remember going to the conventions when I was in my early 20s and I’d go up around there and all these guys had these big tremendous voices and what have you, and I’d walk up in. They’d say, “Son, where did you start off?” I said, “Well, I started off in sales.” All these guys started off on the air somewhere. I started off in sales. I guess I was a little bit different back in those days.

A: Absolutely not. It’s easy. It’s fun — it’s absolutely fun. Newspaper and television are really primarily news products and they both serve a tremendous thing to the market for news. That’s what you’re doing, you’re bringing news and information and what have you. Radio is more of a positive. I’ve teased with you before about what’s news and you’ve got to do the good stuff and then you have to do the bad stuff even though it doesn’t always look right, but you do it and then somebody’s got to make sure the public knows about that. Radio now has teamed up with local television stations to try to make sure that they give their news, but if you think about it, newspaper and television are really the news folks. Radio, we’re the positive because we don’t have to do all that stuff. We let y’all do that stuff.

A: We’re entertainment and we’re the ones that pull it altogether. We can be the positive note about it.

A: No.

A: That sounds absolutely logical for what you’re talking about. I’ll take you back in history. Are you ready for a little history ride?

A: All right. Remember when we were back there and 8-track tapes came out?

A: Oh my goodness, radio was dead. What happened to the 8-track tapes after you listened to them five or six times?

A: Then cassettes came out, right?

A: Radio was dead. Oh, my goodness, here comes the original Walkman where they’re putting them in there, running, and they did it, and they could record a few songs and they’ve got that. Then the CDs came out. Oh, radio’s really dead. Then here comes Pandora. … Do you remember how many subscribers that Pandora has?

A: You know, I don’t enjoy it as much as some folks because I have to listen to everything, but I love country and I love rock.

A: If you were to get in my car this morning and I’m driving my truck, I think it’s on country.

A: I’m not consistent with it. I like country, I like AC (adult contemporary), and I like all the genres. I even enjoy the classical.

A: My wife says, “Well, you don’t know the names of artists or the names of the songs.” I said, “No, but I know what I like.” I listen to what I like. I enjoy it. A lot of classical music to me is very motivational. If you caught me yesterday morning, I was listening to The Truth.

A: Which is our contemporary Christian station, right. Brian Hite was talking about some of the scriptures and then I noticed that Nancy had the same scripture later in the day which she utilized doing the same thing. That’s a tremendous radio station.

A: That was tough. This guy was ... I won’t go back. It’s pretty sensitive, but this is a guy that — when he was working here, we started The Truth — he said, “Mr. Martin, I want to work on The Truth.” He was on (W)CGQ. He wasn’t making a lot of money. I heard — somebody told me one day — that he was basically giving most of his check back to The Truth. That was his ministry. After it happened, I really saw more about what his life was about. Wow, what a loss. This guy was ... I had his things made that said “HJ” — you know, you saw them around.

A: I printed those and we put that up there. I think there’s a picture of him up in the lobby. What a great guy. I used to bust him for not wearing shoes. I said, “Man. ...” I’d fuss at him and said, “You know, we don’t need to go to promote some things with blue jeans ripped across here.” We hear later that that’s just the way he was. I want to go back and say, “Why did I fuss at him about wearing blue jeans? Maybe it was OK that he didn’t wear shoes to a client meeting.” He was an unbelievable human being.

A: If you’re going to be local, you’ve got to have local personalities. The difference in a corporate deal in a market like what we’re competing against is that they might sound smoother in some cases, they may do this, they all sound .... the term that I used to use was “sterile.” You don’t hear anything about local, you don’t hear about Chuck doing this, that, and the other. You don’t see the local charities talked to. Our deal here is we got five local morning shows. We like to have a nice cup of coffee for them when they come in to go around and be able to enjoy it. We work with St. Jude’s, we work with the Children’s Miracle Network, Heart Association, Alzheimer’s, the Ronald McDonald House, House of Heroes.

A: That is probably the best question you’ve asked. Let me tell you why it’s a great question. That is one of the largest challenges for the larger corporations. They say radio business is difficult because when they’re buying in any and all of these markets, they have so many high-profile personalities. Think about what they’re trying to manage from afar, OK? When a big corporation is trying to manage a Bear O’Brian from out of the market, you can’t do it.

They can barely manage the ones in the bigger markets, but they’ve all got long-term contracts. I spoke to a top personality in a major market and he sat with me the entire night in Nashville, and he says, “Jimbo, you mean you talk to your announcers?” I said, “Absolutely. When one guy wanted a truck, we got in the car and we went and tried to find him one. When Bear has a problem, he talks to me. When I’m making the wrong decision and Bear sees I’m doing it, he comes and we sit down and pray together about doing the right thing. We’ve helped each other. We’re that close in this family.”

… That’s a tough thing to try to manage and then how you put all your people together. ... I watched it happen when I was with Clear Channel. There’s nothing wrong, but they were giving me more and more markets, and at one point I had Columbus, Albany, Newnan and LaGrange. I was gone two or three days a week. It’s hard to stay on top of your people. You just see when things get so big you just start seeing the separation. When I did this station, I came over here and moved into this building, I said, “You know, we’re on top of each other, but that might be a good thing. We’re all together and we don’t have cliques. We don’t allow backstabbing.” With all of the challenges you’ve got, people. ... Look at what we’ve got here. We’ve got Al Haynes. He’s everywhere.

A: Ed Bostic, everywhere. Bear O’Brian, Brian Waters, Dave Arwood, Damon Free, Morgan Taylor, Edgar Champagne now. We’ve got every personality that’s ever been there and I work with them. How do you manage them? You tell them the truth. You tell them the truth.

A: No question.

A: He’s genuine, he’s normal, he’s outgoing.

A: Well, you’d have to understand the rest of us in radio. Bear’s normal. How do you look at somebody that you’re saying is working for a job when what he’s doing is what he wants to all the time, having fun about it? Just playing music or what have you, and he’s having fun, telling jokes. Wouldn’t that be fun? Bear is the kind of announcer — you can kind of spot them. Some announcers don’t like the doors opened. You go in there, it messes them up. Bear can be right in the middle of doing something, you can walk in, he’ll wink at you, he’d never miss a lick and just keep talking and going. Have you ever seen these guys that go up on a stage and they’ll read something one time, they get up there and they just spat it all out? I couldn’t do that. I can’t remember a phone number, but he can read it one time, remembers it all, and never misses a punchline. He’s unbelievable. He’s phenomenal.

A: I do. He was on the air with my competitor, so when I bough KISS FM, I was pretty aggressive. That’s when (then Ledger-Enquirer reporter) Mick Walsh started doing a little deal because we were very competitive with the McClures at that time. Joe is a great guy. I had an opportunity to work with Joe McClure, really enjoyed working with Joe. I probably knew him better than any of the McClures, but great guy. Still is. We were working with him and then I hired Bear and then it was a big article about, “Well, we didn’t really need him anyhow.” They really did. Then we’d be at Hardee’s, they’d be at Wendy’s, across the street from each other. It was a very competitive ... you know, the competition back then, when we had those two stations going at each other, we both did better because we were both on our game more and we provided a better product because we were competitive.

A: Absolutely, absolutely. Think about it, back then the newspaper was getting all kinds of stuff. I remember one time I hired three folks from him at one time that wanted to come. One guy said he’s coming. I said, “I’m not taking them all. We’ve got to leave somebody behind.” We ended up hiring another guy, so we ended up over here with two-hour shifts born in the night. I had a picture of somewhere, we must have had 10 people on the air on one radio station. Unbelievable. It was fun, you know?

A: I am.

A: I am no longer the treasurer. I’ve relinquished that position last year after four or five years and been on the executive committee for, I guess, five years. Still on the executive committee, more so now I guess in an advisory capacity. What a great operation, great operation.

Like many operations, like many businesses, the Chamber has been through its downsizing and they’re in the process of selling their office, the depot, to a Columbus law firm. Is that kind of just what’s happening? What do you chalk that up to?

I chalk that up to something that needed to happen. The Chamber is a wonderful operation, but I think what you’re seeing with the Chamber is it’s moving more towards a direction that it’s adjusting to what the city needs. It’s become really focused on community development and economic development, which is a major portion of it, and it’s really being adjusted to more of a size that really fits the community and its mission. I read written down a couple of points that I thought was kind of interesting. It’s reorganized and it’s re-sized, but what we’re looking at is we tried to change the focus and I think Brian Anderson has done a great job of changing the focus on it, what have you.

A: Well, it’s changed. It’s different. Under Mike’s leadership ... I love Mike Gaymon. I think he’s a great guy. He helps me a lot. That guy was a boss. I don’t see how he went to as many meetings as he did, but he was at every meeting in the world. He’s a great guy.

A: They’re different. They’re different and the committee, when we found Brian, they were looking for a specific thing with him — looking to kind of reset the Chamber. We’ve got some different needs. You’ve heard the mayor talk about how the employment levels are down here, there and the other. We’ve had some challenges and I think Mayor Tomlinson’s doing a great job with realigning us with where we need to be. I like her because she gets in there and stirs it up. I think that’s good. If somebody doesn’t agree with her, they just need to go to work and try to get it the other way. A lot of us, if you don’t shake things up, who’s going to take charge and just say, “OK, well, somebody else will do it”? I think she’s done a great job at stirring things up. If you don’t like it, do something about it. You’ve got the same opportunities she does. I don’t always agree with her, but I certainly respect her opinion and where she’s headed.

A: They took a bigger hit when we set on that building. We’re putting a lot of money back in reserve. The Chamber now has what it needs. The Chamber is very fluid at this point.

A: That we had fun. We just had a great time doing it and we made a lot of folks ... gave a lot of folks a great opportunity to be able to display their products and help them do business. We’ve done it with integrity and we’ve done it with sincerity. The biggest thing I preach to my people, we’ve got to have genuine concern about our clients.

A: Well, I’ve got two gentlemen ... Well, this whole staff, we’ve got a great staff. Joseph (Brannan) was talking about, I think, the folks that are here now, the average tenure with us is about 17 years.

A: I’m not going anywhere. I remember Carl Patrick told me one time ... he was getting on this plane. I had dropped him off at the airport and we were talking to him and I said, “Mr. Patrick, how’s it feel to be retired?” He said, “Oh man, it’s fine. All I do now is make the decisions.” That’s always been entering my mind. Why would I retire? I’m having fun, my people are having fun, and we don’t allow stress. We do not stress.