Clare Duffy and Eric Hanson are the co-hosts of The Morning Scramble, the morning radio show on KZIA (known by its broadcast frequency, “Z102.9”) the independent Top 40 radio station based in Cedar Rapids.
Clare and Eric join me to discuss the golden age of country music, Eric’s experience at Z102.9 in the late nineties, and how differentiating a radio station then was much different than it is today. Additionally, the duo share their morning routines, their secrets on how to work well as a team, and how they measure their real success.
I learned a lot and I think you will too.
Sponsored by MidWestOne Bank, this is the latest edition of the CBJ’s Real Success with Nate Kaeding and notable Iowa business and cultural leaders.
Real Success with Nate Kaeding was named Best Business Podcast at the 2024 Iowa Podcast Awards.
Nate Kaeding: I was going back in time thinking about this conversation last night. For any listeners out there that grew up like I did in the Iowa City or Cedar Rapids area in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Z102.9 was on the dial. I pulled up the Top 20 hits that would’ve been on Z102.9 when I was in high school.
Eric: I was playing those songs at that radio station. You were in high school listening to them.
I know! It’s crazy. I was probably wearing some cargo pants and jean shorts down below the knees, or whatever unfashionable Nate was doing back in Iowa City.
Clare: Yeah, we grew up listening to this station. I remember it as “The New Z102.9” and it was the coolest thing. I was obsessed.
Eric: We were the cool station, right? Still are. It was a country station when I was brought back in and that was the format they were hoping was going to work. It had this little spell of country and then made the transition to Z Top 40, which has now been on the air since June 5, 1998. That was the first day we signed on.
Growing up, I would listen to Casey Kasem, my countdown shows, and the all-request shows. So I think loving that as a kid gave me a little bug for it. Then I got into it in high school. We had a small little AM/FM in Washington — kind of the newspaper on the radio. So I started there. I was playing really slow ‘70s and ‘80s music at the time, which I think has given me a better appreciation for a wider span of music. I wasn’t into the new cool music. I was more into the stuff my parents listened to. But that’s the same station we used for the high school football games. It was everything.
So you came back onto Z102.9 in the mid-’90s and that station on the dial was country music?
Eric: It was country with 40 songs in a row. The whole idea was that we were new and we didn’t have a big amount of advertisers, so we could take down the other big country stations by “out-music-ing” them. More music, less commercials. In those Garth Brooks, Martina McBride, Shania Twain, George Strait days…
Clare: Who didn’t love country music in the ’90s?
Eric: …nobody’s going anywhere. A lot of those artists are on those reunion tours now, which is a lot of fun, too. But the cool thing, just from a business standpoint, was we left a hole in the market that nobody filled. Top 40 was just sitting there. There was one station, WMT FM, which is now a country station, that was kind of a mix format back then and they didn’t swoop in. They didn’t adjust their programming at all. So we basically turned off Top 40, then came back three years later with better research, music, and personality, then turned it back on and just flew up the ratings, which was great.
So what exactly is “Top 40”? How do you determine it?
Eric: Yeah, so Top 40 is a format, which means we’d take the 40 most popular songs and play the hell out of them. The radio station has SoundScan which is the number of albums sold. It used to be at your local Sam Goody or whatever you bought at Old Capital Mall. Right now, they can do it by stream, but you could do it by airplay on other radio stations. If you look at the American Music Awards, that’s an award show based on plays and sales. The winners are already known. That data is actually available. So all of that is compiled and then our job as a radio station is to say, “Well, that’s good nationally, but we’re in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City.” We have to put it through our local filters.
That’s where you get back to the research and what we saw early on was Cedar Rapids is pretty blue collar, so you’re going to be fine if you want to stray a little bit onto the rock or alternative side, and you’re always going to do well with a country crossover. Then you just have to find mainstream pop and have some guardrails there. The demographics always change a little bit, but I feel like that’s kind of the formula we’re in.
I will also say that a lot of input comes into the building. “What are you listening to?” Maybe it’s looking at what your kids are already noticing.
Clare: Or now it’s, “What song is hot on TikTok? What are the kids picking up?” Even though they’re watching videos over and over again, the song becomes popular there, too.
Eric: Back in 1998, TikTok was not a thing. All I’m worried about is what the other Top 40 radio station is playing and how I can play it more or louder or slightly faster? But now there’s all these other platforms that we have to be aware of because people are getting their music, and what they consider music, quicker than ever before and we’ve got to stay on top of all of that.
How did you think about ways to differentiate yourself versus other options for listeners to consume the music and the content?
Eric: So from 1998 until late 2003, I was the program director for Z102.9, right at the rise of satellite radio. The game we were constantly playing and reminding ourselves of is that this was just another distraction that cars have had forever. You had a car with a cassette player, then you had a car with a CD player, then you had iPods and satellite radio. It’s all just taking a sliver of our audience away. I think what we were playing wasn’t as important as the content you couldn’t miss because your CD player is not going to give you a school announcement or a weather forecast. You’re not going to hear breaking Hawkeye news. The only place to get that was either probably the news, the newspaper, or a radio station. Now there’s podcasts and other things everywhere that have kind of splintered that out, but in my world, at least from 1998 to 2003, we were just worried about what those other “onesie-twosie” distractions were.
Then I was out of the game for a while and I’m curious: Clare, you were producing Schulte and Swan. What conversations were you having considering other morning shows or other ways listeners were kind of consuming content?
Clare: I mean, we were never really as worried about other competitors. It was always, “What can we do for our town? How can we help out our community? What makes us a part of where we are? What does the town need? What do people need to hear?” It’s actually a service. It became really clear that that’s kind of where we needed to lean.
Clare, what does a typical day look like for you all? I imagine you’re up very early. Do you get your eight hours of sleep?
Clare: No, never. Maybe on a weekend. I try to go to bed earlier, but it doesn’t always work that way. I’ve got two kids. So I’ll go to sleep around 9 p.m. and wake up at 3:30 a.m. I like to get in some movement — yoga, walking, or whatever — just to get my brain started.
Then I inhale content by checking my email and seeing what I missed while I was asleep. Then we get together at 5 a.m. We’re heads down and focusing on gathering as much as we need to know for that day and then we do our show from 6 to 10 a.m., and then we’re working on the next thing by wrapping up that day’s show and then working on the next day or a week from now or a month from now or whatever that thing is that we need to be focused on.
Eric: I’m an old man so I try to hit bed at maybe 8 or 8:30 p.m.
Clare: So sensible.
Eric: My wife will tell you that if the TV’s on at 7:30 p.m., I’m probably dozing on the couch, but I don’t go to bed until 8 (p.m.) or 8:30 p.m. But I’m always up at the same time: 3 a.m. on the dial. When you do it long enough, your body’s used to it. We have no kids and two dogs, so my movement is feeding them and making sure they go outside, and then I get ready. I do a lot of checking what happened overnight. Especially around the time I go to bed, I do a lot of quick perusing of social media or news to see if there’s something I need to check up on the next day and take a quick screenshot.
A good example locally would be that Center Point-Urbana mascot that was up for a Sports Illustrated story. I just caught wind of that and made a note. We talked about it the next day. The school’s contacting us within hours and all of the sudden we’re making it a big deal. The mascot ends up winning, too. So I think our radar is always on. That’s part of the job.
How do you get listener feedback?
Clare: We love talking to people, whether that’s during our show with a couple of call-in segments or whether we’re just out in the community. We’ve got farmer’s market season coming up and we’ll just talk to people on the street. We’ve got a booth and people can stop by and spend time with us, grab a sticker, wave quickly, and be on their way. It is really fun to talk to people and hear what they like.
Eric: If we do something wrong, we’ll hear about it. That rarely happens. If it’s a fact check, they’ll call right away. If I get a school mascot wrong or I don’t remember something, somebody’s on the phone right away. If we have an opinion on something and it’s just rubbed somebody the wrong way, a lot of times that’ll come in through the management and we’ve got a great relationship with them.
Clare: They’ve always had our backs.
Eric: It is weird though. We will occasionally just get unsolicited praise. We don’t ask for it. People just randomly will call like, “I’m having a good time this morning.” It’s great. You can never plan on it, but when you get it, you love it. It feels so good. It feels very, very good.
Tell me more about working as a team. What are a couple of the key ingredients or must haves in terms of having a successful business partnership?
Clare: That trust is so important, and I think we developed it weirdly quickly. I don’t know if it’s that improv aspect or what, but yeah, we can trust each other. You’ve got my back.
Eric: Clare will agree, I don’t trust a lot of people. I have a small list of people where I’m like, “Yeah, I will let you run with this as I like to run it.”
Clare: So, so true. “Run it all.”
Eric: She says this all the time. I feel like I’m running the thing. I have all the controls and the computers. She puts the show together every day, so she technically is telling me what to do without doing it. There are some complimentary skillsets. Also, knowing your strengths and your weaknesses and being able to say, “Hey, can you run with this? You’re going to be better at this than I am.” “Hey, I think I made the producer mad. Would you mind starting that conversation?”
Clare: Yeah, he’s better at confrontation when we need to have a serious conversation. I can sense people’s emotions like, “Hey, I think that we might’ve crossed a line here.” I’m very sensitive and in-tune with how other people are feeling that day.
Eric: Not only do we have a radio coach but occasionally we’ll reach out to local business coaches and we’ll just be like, “Hey, could we go have coffee? Here’s how we’re working together.” Continuous improvement. I think by working on us, we’re working on the show at the same time.
How do you measure success? Are there key metrics that you have?
Clare: There are metrics that we can actually look at and see how we’re doing but I think, for us, a lot of times it’s a feeling. I find it rewarding because we had a good conversation. Somebody called in and had a great point of view on something or whatever.
Eric: I like to be validated. We’re both competitive, but I am a praise seeker, so winning awards I think is key to me at least. For sure. We won the 2022 Broadcasters of the Year award. We got a podcast award. But knowing where we rank is important to me. Being in this business for so long, the ranker and ratings are the language I’ve always spoken. “How many people are listening? What’s the demographic? How long are they staying with us? Who are we losing them to?”
Clare: He’s very good at breaking it down.
Eric: I do like to stay within that world. I do think that data does help us strategize down the road, but there’s times where the company will buy that data and other times the company won’t. Sometimes you just have to go off of a feeling. I think the big answer is that if we put up a good show that day, we feel good about it. We know something we did impacted somebody else. I think that’s looking down both the short road and the long road.
