Being successful in "The Business," or any business for that matter, requires a combination of passion, hard work, a little bit of luck, and treating others well. Today's guest personifies all of that.
Rich Davis from the Class of 2001 has been at SiriusXM almost since the beginning of satellite radio. He's also hosted talk shows, podcasts, and now has a daily show on Fox Sports Radio with his business partner and cohost, Steve Covino.
A Long Island native, Rich tells the story of how his high school principal challenged him to go to Syracuse, and not stay at home. And Rich's story of finding WJPZ may be one of the more unique ones we've heard yet. It involves breaking up with his high school sweetheart.
When Rich walked in to Z89, folks like Harry Wareing and Matt DelSignore were there, and the then-sophomore was immediately taken by the station. He soon gobbled up every on-air shift he could (starting as "Dickie V"), and made a name for himself. Eventually the folks at Hot 1079 noticed him, and he began getting commercial radio experience. Soon, he was sending tapes out to every station he could find in the top 50 markets, and spending a summer interning for Scott Shannon at WKTU-New York.
Rich tells the bold story of how he moved up from t-shirt folding to becoming Scott Shannon's "personal intern," what that involved, and Scott eventually introducing him to Kid Kelly. Kid was helping run Z100 at the time, and began frequently airchecking Rich. They'd chat weekly, and one night, Kid asked Rich to come down to New York and do a weekend overnight on Z100. He was off and running.
Today's guest will tell you that historically, he doesn't say "no" often. In fact, his ambitious schedule of being a full time student, working at Hot, and moonlighting at Z100 and Q102 in Philly eventually got him fired in Syracuse, "in the most hilarious way possible."
Following his time at Syracuse, Rich continued to be a utility player at Z100, until Billy Hammond was let go as the night guy. Rich was tapped to fill in for a "couple weeks" which turned into a couple years. Eventually they brought in a new night guy, and Rich was back to late nights, trying to figure out what was next, maybe even a move out of radio.
Kid Kelly, at that point in 2004, had moved on to something called "Sirius Satellite Radio," which was actually a punch line to many industry people at the time. But he recruited Rich to do music and talk shows, and soon the format took off. Now, he's on many different stations, where you'll never hear him mail in a break. Why? Insecurity. Rich explains.
After COVID and some cutbacks, Rich managed to avoid a non-compete and started fill-in work at Fox Sports, eventually parlaying that into a daily show with Steve Covino, which you can hear weekdays 5-7pm Eastern. https://foxsportsradio.iheart.com/featured/covino-and-rich/
Rich continues to be as busy as ever, doing a morning podcast on Patreon with Covino, voicetracking several stations for SiriusXM, then doing the Fox Sports show. And he has two little kids at home. But all of his success in the business traces back to WJPZ, as he reminds us.
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The WJPZ at 50 Podcast Series is produced by Jon Gay, Class of 2002, and his podcast production agency, JAG in Detroit Podcasts.
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JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. I am really excited about today's guest. He's been on my wish list for guests for a while. You won't find the nicer guy in the business. And he's pretty much on every single station on Sirius XM at this point. And that would be from the class of 2001. Mr. Rich Davis, welcome to the show.
Rich: Yo, what's going on, Jon? Good to see your face, by the way. And good to talk to you.
JAG: Likewise, we've, we tweet occasionally, but.
Rich: I'm telling you, I've been listening to all these, and they're fascinating because you're at Syracuse for your four years of fun, sometimes you don't realize what happened before you, after you.
So I'm loving all the perspective of people from the nineties, the eighties, after we were there. It was pretty cool.
JAG: I appreciate you saying that, and I'm excited to hear your story. Which starts where, how do you end up at Syracuse, Rich?
Rich: You know what, it's funny I should say that I, people ask you how you got into radio, but people never ask, hey, how'd you go to, how'd you go to Syracuse?
I was in high school and I was always the kid that was like, I wanna be on radio or television. That was what I wanted to do. I applied to Syracuse. That was probably my number one choice. And my high school principal, who I'm still in contact with today, Tom Dolan, Mr. Dolan, he was like, hey, listen, come into my office.
He goes. iF you chicken out, if he actually said, if you're a chicken shit and don't go to Syracuse, I'm not gonna let it happen. He goes, you can't. Don't be one of these kids that stays on Long Island and just goes to the community this or that. He goes, you're good. He goes, do it. Don't let anyone, don't let a guidance counselor be like, hey, maybe you wanna go to Hofstra or go to the Nassau community college.
He goes, go to Syracuse. I'm promising you. You're gonna thank me. So yeah, he pushed me. I remember going to Syracuse, Penn State or Boston University and I said, you know what? Syracuse is number one and he's like, then go there. Stop it. You're my Orangeman. Let's go. Let's do it. So.
JAG: Back when we were Orangemen. So you're not a chicken shit, Rich. And you end up at Syracuse. . And how do you find WJPZ?
Rich: This is where the story sort of gets fun because there's a fellow alum, Andy Laver, Andrew Laver. On the air at Z89. He was Puffy. Puff Andy. Now I met Andy through Speech Com, not Newhouse.
I was in Speech Com when I first started there, and Andy said, yeah, I'm at the college radio station. And I remember thinking like, oh, that's pretty cool. I don't know if I have interest or not. And I had gone through a miserable breakup. Jon. We're talking like, high school sweetheart, like I thought we were gonna make it.
I was like, this is it. I love this girl. I was the fool that thought I was gonna be like, maybe I'll end up with her. You know, college happens. I'll be honest. I'm me, so I end up like making out with some other girl and I stupidly told my high school sweetheart that I hooked up with someone else. Looking back, why the hell was I honest? Mistake. Honesty, overrated.
JAG: Spoken like a morning show host. Go ahead.
Rich: Yeah, and I'm like, honesty? What's that? So I get dumped, I try to win her back. She's in Binghamton. I drive down to Binghamton, but I first stop at the Carousel Center to buy a necklace. A Kay Jewelers, cuz that seemed like a great move.
I was like, oh, I'm gonna win her over. Every kiss begins with, Kay.
JAG: You know what? Every breakup ends with K .
Rich: That is true. Look at you. So I go to the Carousel. And I grab a little heart necklace. I drive to Binghamton. I follow someone into her dorm building. I knock on her door. Some dude with the backwards lacrosse hat and the goatee.
Very nineties. I believe you had a goatee probably at one point.
JAG: Still do.
Rich: Still do. There you go. He was like, hey, who are you? I'm like, "I'm Erica's boyfriend." He goes, "I'm Eric, the new guy." My first thought was Eric and Erica? How lame. She comes to the door and she's like "It's over!" I leave, I drive back to Syracuse, all miserable.
So for the next months, I'm just sitting in my dorm room right across from JPZ. I lived in Marion, which was like that shitty one right across the way. It was like two stories. Here I am in Marion crying oh, like a miserable sack of garbage. And Puffy. Andy, comes to my room and he is like," You gotta get outta here. Stop being such a little wimp. I'm going to Z 89. It's across the street."
I went in there and I looked around and I'm like, oh wow. This is pretty cool. And I remember seeing Harry Wareing, yeah. Was there Matt DelSignore, who probably one of the most legendary dudes to run the place. That was when he was starting to become the big dog at JPZ.
This is like 98.
JAG: Yeah. So this is fall 98?
Rich: Fall 98. My freshman year I did not do Z89. This is my sophomore year. And I remember Andy saying, come over here. And I remember looking at all the students saying I think I could do this. You know that feeling? You could say it's cockiness, but it's also like a confidence.
Like you look at other people doing something, you're like, oh, I could do that. If you put me in a room where people were breaking down math equations, I'd be like, Nope. Can't do it. I saw these people on the mic and I'm like, I think I could do that. And with the right practice and hard work, I think I could do this.
And I'm like, how do I get involved? And I'm pretty sure it was Harry and Matt DelSignore, cuz they were in the transfer at that time. They said, hey, you wanna do a shift? And I started just picking up any shift at Z 89 and I fell in love with it. I really did. I said, wow, this is awesome. The idea of just cracking the mic and being on the radio, I fell in love with it then and ta-da, boom. The rest is history,
JAG: I'm so glad you used the word awesome because you wanna share what your first on air name was?
Rich: My first on-air name. Oh, I had a few. I was Dickie V.
JAG: That's the one I remember. Yeah.
Rich: I was Dickie V on Z 89 and I remember that because I don't wanna be all over the place, but that summer, I had interned at WPLJ in New York, which no longer exists, for Scott and Todd. And one of the jocks on PLJ, Dave Stewart, would air check me. And I remember he would say, listen, you're never gonna get a job in radio outside of like maybe New York. If you don't stop saying, call us now. 443-HITS.
JAG: So you had to ditch the Long Island accent. Like I had to ditch the Boston accent.
Rich: Dude, I had a terrible, I was like, Z 89, call us now. 443-HITS And he's you gotta, he's lose the 443. I was like, all right, cool. So I would air check with Dave Stewart and I just feel like I had a great situation going, Jon I don't wanna be all over the place here, but I'm bouncing back between New York and Syracuse because I feel like Z 89 was something that no one else had. It was like this little golden ticket we all got. Like anyone else trying to break into radio, I almost feel like we had such a starting point over anyone else. You guys ran the radio station, like a real radio station because it is.
And anyone else in college radio would come back home and be like, yeah, I work for the college station. And they'd be like, yeah, like I play ole whatever music I want. I'm like, yeah, that's bullshit. You don't. I work at a real college radio station, Z89 was legit. You guys went through format changes. You were the Pulse.
Then you came back to Z89 like you had positioning statements, commercials, weather, bumpers. I'm like, whatever you're telling me about your college radio station, I'm gonna stop you right now. It's horseshit compared to Z89. That was my feelings.
JAG: There's the New York coming outta you and it turns out your high school principal was right about Syracuse for that reason.
Rich: Yes. I said this is the most legit operation I could ever have imagined. And I know there's other stations, radio and tv, even at Syracuse, but they all, in my mind paled in comparison to what Z 89 offered the student. It was working at a real radio station learning. I was never heavily involved in programming or music selection or being a music director.
I saw guys like you and Mina. And people that went on to become great programmers. They were programming at Z 89 and using those skills, they would get their first like real world job and be so overly prepared because of Z89.
Agreed.
JAG: And the feeling is mutual because I remember seeing you come in, I'm like, wow, this guy's good.
And it wasn't long that other people realized that because soon you were recruited to go across town. Do I have that right?
Rich: Yeah, you do. And you know what? I felt it was a bummer to leave Z 89, . It's the best starting place of all. But the reality is Z 89 is the best classroom in America.
The documentary talks all about it. Best classroom in radio and broadcasting by far. But you go to school to get a job and if you're gonna call Z89, the best classroom, that's preparing you for the real world. Hot 1079 called when Ryan Sampson, Hawaiian Ryan, who was also a Z89 alum, was over there. And him and Chris Mann another, Z89 alum, were working at Hot 1079 and they were listening to air checks of students to be like, who could we hire as the next part-timer? And they were just, probably mocking a lot of the local people or being, oh, with this crappy air check when they got to mine.
They're like, oh, Z89 kid. Hey, he's not that bad. And they helped me get hired at Hot 1079. And let me tell you, that was a big step also in my career, I became Rich "The Bull" Marino. .
JAG: Wow. Marino's gotta be one of the most popular last names in radio.
Rich: I don't know what made me choose it. I don't know what made me choose any of my names.
JAG: You're a sports guy. We're gonna come back to that later. You're a big sports fan. So you had Dickie V and Marino like the sports references everywhere here.
Rich: That was a big step to go to Hot 1079. But again, I was still trying to do what I could to help Z89 cuz Matt DelSignore, I always felt it was like the nicest, kindest guy to me. I know you and him are tight.
JAG: Yeah.
Rich: I always felt like he's one of those guys that you can never be kind enough to because you're like, yo, was I nice enough to him? Because he's so nice to me. Like I, every time I deal with Matt, I'm like, I hope I came out of that with him feeling like I was as nice to him as he was to me, that's Matt DelSignore.
JAG: I have long said, Matt is the only friend of mine that could run for public office because he's that classy and that nice of a guy.
Rich: Even when I see him at reunions, when I get to make it out there, I'm like, I'll have a nice interaction with him and his wife or you guys. And I'm like, I hope I was as sincere as he was. So Matt, Shout out buddy.
JAG: So where does life take you from Hot? And how long were you there, Rich?
Rich: While I was working at Z 89 And Hot.
JAG: Were you doing it at the same time, or they let you do that?
Rich: I was doing both. They allowed that for a while. So for a while I was doing both right.
And I was sending my air checks to anyone that wanted to listen. So I interned over the summer at WPLJ. And just a lesson to anyone younger that might be listening. Cause I know probably some of the maybe current students are thinking, what could I do to make a difference? So when I was interning at PLJ, I remember, it was probably ill advised at the time cause I didn't know any better.
But I just randomly went into Scott Shannon's office. He's like "Yeah, hello?" I go hey Scott. I'm one of the interns. I'm folding t-shirts down here. Not really feeling it. I wanna learn from you. Could I be your intern?
JAG: Wow!
Rich: And he looked at me like, that's awfully freaking bold. You know what? Starting Monday morning, you're my personal intern. So I was like, wow, my random ballsy approach is just knocking on Scott Shannon's door when probably someone I'm sure I was advised, don't go down that hallway. You never know unless you ask. And I said, you know what? As much as I wanna be a team player and fold t-shirts, why would I not wanna learn from one of the greatest broadcasters ever? So I picked up his golf clubs. I dropped off, you know, I went Christmas shopping for him. I did anything I needed to do for him. Also being the guy that helped him get his prep ready, learned from him, he would air check me.
And on my last day of interning for Scott and Todd. Scott Shannon calls me in his office and he goes Richie Rich, sit down. So I sit down in Scott Shannon's office and he goes, hold on one second, let me make a phone call. Picks up his phone, his office phone dials up.
"Hello, kid Kelly? Scott Shannon here. Remember I hired you as a young, 20 something year old guy?" So Scott Shannon calls Kid Kelly and he goes, I got this kid here from Syracuse that you need to keep your eye on. He goes, Kid Kelly, meet Rich Davis. So talking to Kid Kelly on speakerphone. So I then go back to Syracuse after the summer.
JAG: And where was Kid Kelly at that point, by the way?
Rich: He was operations manager at Z 100 in New York. OM and programmer. Him and Tom Poleman from iHeart were co-running WHTZ, Z100. And I went back to Syracuse in the fall. I'm in my house on Clarendon, and every week I'm sending air checks.
Jon, I'm sending air checks to anyone who wants to listen. This is like when I had ultra passion. Like before I was a 40 year old. I woke up, I went to the copy center on Marshall Street. I made 50 copies of my air check and resume and sent them to every pop station listed in like R&R Magazine. Everyone from New York down to Market 50. I sent it. Everyone like, please just gimme advice. I wanna learn. Four people out of 50 responded to me.
JAG: I'm impressed it was that high.
Rich: I know. And one of the people who I'd already been in contact with, Kid Kelly, would air check me every week, which at the time I didn't realize how valuable that was, that I had the operations manager and programmer of Z100 Air checking me on a weekly basis. Geez. He'd call my house on Clarendon and be like, hey Dickie, it's me Kid. What's going on? Oh, hey Kid. Hey, what are you doing this weekend? Oh, I'm going to Marshall Street, probably trying to hook up with some girls and drink and, do some more radio shows.
And on a random night, he calls and he goes, that's cool. Do you mind canceling your weekend plans? I go, why? He goes, do you want to come down to Z100 and do the Saturday overnight?
JAG: Whoa!
Rich: And I was like, whoa. what?! Jon, I was 20 years old. I was a junior. And he said, come down to Z100, do the weekend overnight. And I was like, absolutely.
So I go to New York to do the shift and turns out he liked my sound. I guess I Kid always says that I remind himself, me of himself. Okay. I remind him of himself. So he started putting me more and more on the schedule and then it got to the point where he is like, hey, can you do every Saturday?
And I'm like, yeah, I'm in Syracuse. So there was a year of my life where I was. Doing Hot 1079 during the week. I was a full-time student at Syracuse, and then every Friday or Saturday I would drive down to New York to do one or two weekend shifts at Z100 and then come back to Syracuse on Monday.
JAG: I wanna give you credit for your drive and determination at that age, because I had two similar opportunities as you that I did not take advantage of. When I was interning between junior and senior year. I interned at KISS 108 in my hometown of Boston. I interned for Dale Doman, who was a legendary afternoon DJ.
He said, answer the request line. I said, I'll be the best damn request line answerer you ever had. What else can I do? And then one day he like handed me his car keys and said, hey, can you go wash my car for me? And I didn't know if he was kidding or not. Cause he had a really dry sense of humor.
And I like hesitated. And because I hesitated, I didn't end up doing it and I think I might have been in with him if I had done all that grunt work stuff that you said you do for Kid Kelly.
Rich: Just wash the car!
JAG: I should have just washed the car. Years later. I'm in Burlington, Vermont doing nights full time, and I get an offer to do weekends on KISS 108, which I guess will be a three hour drive each way.
You had more than that going from Syracuse to New York. And my program director at the time is like, dude, you can't. You'll be burning the candle at both ends. You're gonna suffer on the air here. It's gonna be an issue. I can't have you do it. And I could have risked my full-time job, the do weekends of Kiss 108, 2007, 2008-ish. And I didn't. So you took advantage of two opportunities that I passed up. So I give you credit there.
Rich: I'll be honest, I was not good at saying no back then. Just recently in my life, I realized someone taught me that everything you say yes to means you're saying no to something else.
Before that, I was the yeah, sure. Yes. You wanna do this appearance? Yes. You wanna do this? Yes, until I realized saying yes to something means you're saying no to something else. Hey, you know what I, I don't think you should look back at that and regret it at all, but it really is a wild story.
When I think back of, yeah, every weekend driving to and from Jersey City, Syracuse, Jersey City, Syracuse, every weekend.
JAG: What is that? Four, four and a half hours. On a good day?
Rich: Yeah, about four and a half hours. And at the same time, remember I was telling you I gave the 50 resumes around the country?
I got a call. Chris Marino last name, Chris Marino, who was working at Q102 in Philly at the time, as the APD/MD. He said to me, he goes, Hey, do you wanna do a couple fill-ins at weekends at Q102 in Philly?
JAG: Oh my G-d.
Rich: So then I started doing this balancing act of Hot 1079, full-time student, Q102, Z100. Dude, I was burnt. I was starting to burn out from just all of that.
JAG: I'm burnt out hearing you describe it.
Rich: And then. The fun story of how I got fired from Hot 1079.
JAG: Okay, let's hear it.
Rich: I got fired for probably the funniest way a host could get fired. Jason Kidd was running Hot 1079, if you remember Jason Kidd?
He would always say, Hot 1079. Jason Kidd. I, he's still in the business. I know he does like a syndicated.
JAG: He's in Baltimore now. I think.
Rich: He's a Baltimore, DC guy. It's funny that he's a Baltimore DC guy. That plays into the story. So I tell Jason Kidd, listen, I gotta take a couple days off from Hot 1079.
And he goes, yeah, I can't let you do that. And I'm like, listen, I gotta go outta town. I need the days off. I don't know what to tell you. He's like, I need you on the air. I go, we have fill-ins. I need the days off. We don't budge. I'm like, listen, I can't do it.
Now. The reason I can't do it is because they're asking me to fill in and do afternoons on Q102 in Philly, and I'm thinking like, I gotta go, I gotta do this!
Who will ever find out that I'm on Q102 in the afternoon? Jason Kidd takes a weekend trip back to the Baltimore DC area. As he's cutting through Philly, he hears me filling in for whoever was on at the time, like Chio the Hitman or something. So he hears me on the air in Philly and he is I hate to say it, but you know what I have to do, and I'm like, I know. I know what you gotta do. So caught on the radio, Jon. Caught red, essentially red-handed, like you can't get caught in any funnier way than yo, I heard you on the radio.
JAG: Oh my G-d.
I wanna tell my favorite Rich Davis story, and I think I've probably referenced this to you before. So I am recruiting jocks to come to Z 89.
We're trying to fill the schedule. We're trying to get people excited. So we have our recruitment meeting and Rich agrees to come to our recruitment meeting. And he gets up in front of a couple hundred, I don't know, how many people at Schine or wherever we were. And he plays a tape. And the first part of the tape is him doing the nightly countdown on Z89.
And the second part of the tape is him doing the nightly countdown on freaking Z 100 New York. Basically saying, you start here, you could end up here. Every jaw in there, particularly those from the tri-state area that grew up listening to Z100, jaws are on the ground. Rich. I had 120 on air recruits that semester.
Rich: See, look at that. I love it.
JAG: And the fact that you were able to do that and show that to so many people, and some of those people are, have gone on to become such great alumni of our radio station. Thanks in part to you whetting their whistle to get 'em in the door.
Rich: It's interesting, Jon, because every time I think of Z89, I think of how important it was to me.
Because I'm on the west coast now because I don't get to go back often. I wish I could be a little more involved and maybe I could do a little more to help, but like sometimes I feel like I'm so out of pocket. But it did mean so much to me and I really took such joy in helping with that recruitment.
Sometimes I wish I could do more of that type of stuff for you guys, and I feel like there's so many cool memories I have from Z 89 and things I'd like to do to help.
JAG: I think that was very helpful and I'm thrilled that you're here on the podcast. Let's go after graduation. You get shitcanned from Hot 1079. You're doing part-time and fill-in at Z100 and Q102. Where do things go from there?
Rich: Much like everything, Jon, in broadcasting, a lot of times it's luck, timing, talent. You can't get by on just one thing. You need everything to fall into place.
You're a sports fan. Brock Purdy would never have seen the football field probably in the NFL ever. Couple injuries, he's the 49ers quarterback and can very well make a run at the Super Bowl. So if you don't think timing and opportunity plays a role in anything in life, it, it does. So I'm at Z100 doing every fill-in I possibly could because, as a young kid it's union so it's good money.
And so I'm like a kid just like I'm hustling. I'll take whatever shift you want to give me. The nighttime DJ, Billy Hammond. I think he was maybe rubbing people the wrong way or something, and. Tom Poleman and Kid Kelly made the decision to make some changes and they're like, yeah, we're gonna let Billy go. We're gonna move things around. We're gonna have Rich be the interim night guy until we figure out what we're gonna do.
So they're like for a couple weeks. We'll have you fill in until we figure out what we're gonna do. And those couple weeks turned into two years.
JAG: Wow.
Rich: So I did nights for two years and the crazy part about that was I really did think it was gonna be two weeks.
Cause they brought in Scotty Davis from KDWB. They brought in like a million people to audition, but nothing really, clicked for them. And the rating books kept coming in and I was doing fine at night. I was second to Funkmaster Flex every night. Cause that was just how New York was working.
It was like Hot 97, Z100. Like you almost had to eff it up not to be number one or two in New York if you were Z100 at night. So they were like, hey, let's roll with this young dude. And I was 20, 21 years old.
JAG: So you were in the demo.
Rich: I connected with the demo. I had freaking highlights in my hair, like I was in a boy band.
So all the teenage fans were like, oh, Rich is cool. So I was like, oh, awesome. I'm gonna run with this. Started doing stuff for Nickelodeon and MTV, a couple little appearances here and there. So I was like, really living in that world. And eventually Kid Kelly left and. Poleman brought in his own guy, Romeo, on the Radio, to do nights.
And that pushed me back to late nights. And I saw the writing on the wall that was like, all right, this is not the long-term plan anymore, but I'll, I'm gonna stay here until they kick me out the door. And as always said if you work hard on the air and you're a good guy, you try to minimize how many times you get burned in this industry.
It's cuz you gotta think most of the times people get burned is self inficted. So it's if you're a good guy and you're nice to people and you work hard, the cream will rise to the top. Like you'll go through your ups and downs, but you'll get back on your feet.
JAG: So let me actually dovetail off of that for a second, because I was at a gig here in Detroit. My last radio gig, we had a morning show producer. The morning show numbers were not good, and this guy was very difficult to get along with. And eventually they ended up firing him. And I remember the operations manager having a conversation with me and he said, You can be bad at your job or an asshole. You can't be both.
Rich: Correct. Agreed. Yeah.
JAG: One or the other. And if you can be a good guy, and good at your job, as you're describing, then the sky's the limit.
Rich: Yeah. You minimize the setbacks you have. Everyone has them. But you minimize the setbacks if you're good at what you do and you're a good person because people wanna work with good people.
And if you're good at what you do, the product will be solid. So I'll fast forward now. I worked at Z for four years. Great. There was one point, Jon, where I thought about stepping away from radio because I was like yeah. At that point I'm like, I worked at Z100. Where do I go from here?
It's almost your first gig being the starting shortstop of the Yankees, or Red Sox. I'm sorry. Red Sox.
JAG: Thank you. Thank you.
Rich: I'm a Mets fan, so nothing good about being a Met. Unless you're Steve Cohen. You wanna spend a lot of money. I said, where do I wanna go from here? Because at the time I was gonna interview at KISS 108 in Boston.
Y100 in Miami. They have no money, but they always try to sell you on the weather. Jon, they try to sell you on the weather. Y100 Miami. Hey, we'll pay you 1/5 of what they were paying you at Z100. But you'll get club nights and it's nice. I'm like no, I'm not.
JAG: To anybody listening who is in school or just out of school. Every radio gig, they will promise you a lot more money than your salary in remotes and appearances and club gigs. It is never guaranteed.
Rich: Nope, no way. And around that time, Kid Kelly said, we're doing this thing called Sirius Satellite Radio. I have a feeling that there's something here. Come here, come to Sirius Satellite radio.
And I'll be honest, at the time, everyone's like, Cyrus, what's that? No one gives a shit. Cyrus Radio. Let's be honest, in New York, it was almost like a joke in a way. Oh yeah, that's cool. You were on Z100. Used to be on K-Rock, or used to be on KTU. People that went to Sirius XM, or Sirius at the time.
It was considered like, oh, that's cute. Pat you on the head. That was the vibe. It really was. And I look at it this way. I started at Sirius XM in 04 and I'm still there. I've been to a lot of other places also. But I've been there for almost 20 years and we started at that place when no one gave a shit.
Howard Stern came aboard, millions of people came. I started there. There were hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Now there's what, 35 to 40 million? So we're talking about, I watched the company grow and I feel like I was part of that, at least a consistent voice on the pop channels for the last 20 years.
JAG: What did you start doing when you were there, Rich?
Rich: So when I started there, they put me on US1, which is now Hits One. But it was called at the time, US1. It's the pop channel. It was different and raw and everything. In fact, in the beginning they're like, it's satellite radio. You could curse.
And very quickly they realized, nah, it doesn't make sense to curse on top 40 because even if people have this uncensored product, they still want something they can listen to with their kids. So uncensored top 40 radio, realized very quickly, that's not really, that doesn't work. Come on.
So I worked at Hits one for years. I ended up doing the morning show there with Sampson.
JAG: Yep. Who's still there doing a great job.
Rich: Sampson's there doing a great job. Stanley T and Nicole who is fantastic. And a fun JPZ tie-in. Kid Kelly, cuz I was also doing, at this time when I was at Sirius XM, besides doing Hits one, that's when I started my relationship with Covino, Steve Covino, where we started doing our talk show Covino and Rich for Maxim Radio.
Now, the crazy part about that was Kid said, if you're gonna be doing talk radio and top 40 radio, I need a programmer. Do you know anyone? And I put my JPZ thinking cap on and I said, I know this guy, Ryan Sampson, who is a JPZ guy who then helped me get hired at Hot 1079. Wouldn't it be a nice time to return the favor to a good broadcaster?
So I put Sampson in contact with Kid Kelly, and the rest is history for Ryan. And Ryan's really good at what he does, but I'll be honest, if not, for the JPZ connection, Ryan Sampson might still be in Lincoln, Nebraska.
JAG: We'll make sure to tell him that.
Rich: You tell him that. You tell Ryan that. Rich wants to know how Lincoln would've been.
JAG: So you've really done so much at Sirius. And look I'm not gonna lie, I've listened to you a lot lately. I really enjoy the way you did the Pop2K countdown on the weekends, on Pop 2K.
Rich: It's a lot of fun.
JAG: And it's very obvious listening to your show, and this probably goes back to your roots at JPZ, that you prep the show. You can tell. And same thing afternoons on Pop2K and then I feel like you've popped up on every single one of my presets in the last six months.
Rich: Yeah, I'm, I'm on the Pulse, I'm on Hits one, I'm on Pop 2K recently. They're like, hey, do you wanna do fill-ins on Pop Rocks? I'm like, God, this, we're getting a little crazy here. Let's slow down.
JAG: You literally crossed every preset that my wife has assigned in our car. But no matter how many of these shows you're doing, they're prepped. It's well executed. There are some jocks who mail it in, and that is not you. Because you can tell that, I don't know, you have 50,000 jobs, but you still are putting the effort in every single time.
I hear your voice on the air, and I wanted to shout you out for that.
Rich: Oh, thank you man. And I'll tell you what it is. I agree with you. I won't be, I won't bullshit you. There's people that mail it in, right? Like I hear 'em. I won't call them out of kindness, but there's people on channels I'm on or other channels where they're just saying their name, the name of the song, boom. And their like, I could tell the lazy amounts of effort.
JAG: And anybody who's worked in radio can hear it.
Rich: Yeah. And I, and I remember something Kid Kelly once told me, he goes, doesn't matter what's going on your personal life, doesn't matter if the boss screwed you.
If you're having a good day, bad day, all that matters is what the people on the other side of the radio hear. And if you can't step it up for a couple hours a day. Or voice tracking, which is way less time. If you can't deliver, you never knew who's listening. I heard an interview with Howard Stern and Conan O'Brien on Conan's podcast, which by the way is fantastic. Second only to your podcast.
JAG: Thank you.
Rich: I say Jon Gay, Conan O'Brien. And I heard them talking about how performers, whether you're as popular as them or guys like you and I that are, doing well in the business no matter what level you're at. There are a lot of people that, there is a sense of insecurity that I'm okay with.
Like, I'm insecure that if I do a shitty break, someone's gonna hear it and be like, man, Rich Davis lost it. So when I do my show and there are times I do a break and I'm like, eh, that was good enough. I'll be like, nope, hold on, let me rerecord it one more time or something. Because if someone's in the car, an old friend,
Hey, you're in the car. Maybe Puff Andy, maybe Matt DelSignore, maybe Harry Wareing, maybe someone we worked with along the way. Here's me. And it's an unpolished break. I'm gonna feel like I'm feel insecure about that. So I think sometimes insecurity's not a bad thing. I'll be like, you know what? Yeah, we all have a little insecurity, and I'm like, I don't want to ever do a show where it's all garbage breaks.
And then, let's say you're listening, you're like, oh no, I promise this guy used to be good. I never want that.
JAG: Oh, okay. Congratulations on the recent gig that you and Covino just landed at Fox Sports Radio. Tell me about your typical day and then I wanna hear about the new gig.
Rich: Thanks, man. I like, again, I'm a mile minute and I'm all over the place, so I apologize and I appreciate you trying to wrangle me, because I know it's a hard job. So Covino and I have worked together for 18 years. It's interesting cuz it's like a marriage of sorts because my relationship with him professionally is longer than any girl I've dated. My wife, his ex-wife, his new girlfriend.
You work with someone that long, we're business partners. And we started doing that Maxim Radio gig together and we were on SiriusXM for 16, 17 years together. And then during Covid, SiriusXM said, hey, we're gonna offer you something. We want, cuz of Covid, they're like, we were asking people to take pay cuts with a non-compete and I said I can't do that.
I wanna work something out to stay at Sirius XM, but we need to work out something because you can't ask someone to take a non-compete and a pay cut.
JAG: It's like double dipping almost.
Rich: Yeah. Yeah. I was like, I if you're gonna say we can't give you what we were giving, Let me make that money somewhere else, cuz I know I can.
And they were great. Sirius XM has always been great to me in that regard. So after Covid, I started doing multiple things, Jon. And here's my day to day. I wake up and Covino and I do our podcast from 9 to 11 ish or so outta my home studio now. That's on Patreon. Okay. So it's a paid service, right? So $5 for audio, $10 for audio, video, and like extra stuff.
Now. At first I was like, interesting. I didn't know how this would work. But believe it or not, if you over the years have developed a listener base, you don't need millions, Jon, when you do the math, it's like you, you start saying $5 or $10 a person, then you start doing the math and it's like, all right, 5,000 or 10,000 people times $5 or $10 each month divided by a couple guys for a year.
You start seeing this is a lucrative avenue. And, Covino and I had also been involved in the sports world. We did a show on SNY in New York, a TV show. We did a TV show for ESPN. Also did fill in radio for ESPN. So I got my sports radio chops as well. So Fox Sports Radio, we started doing part-time there.
And it might be the best fit I've ever had, Jon, as far as broadcasting. They are fantastic. Julie Talbot Don Martin. A lot of these people that run iHeart, Fox Sports. Like now I'm working for iHeart and SiriusXM at the same time. I don't know anyone else that is, to be honest. I don't know. I might be the exception. Don't tell anyone.
But yeah this new gig. So I do the podcast in the morning, then I spend a couple hours voice tracking, and then I go over to Fox from 2:00PM to 4:00 PM my time and we do a two hour like pop culture sports show. And it's a lot of fun, man. I can never be bummed about it because much like you probably feel the same way, we talk and have fun and broadcast and everything we do for a living, you can't complain ever.
JAG: So you're doing the podcast with Steve Covino in the morning and then still, and then you're tracking how many stations a day? Probably three or four?
Rich: Two to three a day.
JAG: And then you gotta be really on it to be on Fox Sports Radio. After doing all those shows, I would imagine a lot of hot tea and lemon and honey in your life.
Rich: I might as well butt chug coffee, like college kids. You know how college kids put funnels up their ass these days?
JAG: That's after our time. Way after our time.
Rich: Yeah, way after our time. I might start doing that with coffee. But no, listen man, I'm a pretty hyper guy, as you know, from being friends. We've been friends for almost 20, like 20 years now.
I'm a pretty hyper guy, but I got two little kids too, so that keeps me fired up. But yeah, every morning wake up, we do our podcast, which is uncensored. So we talk relationships, life, headlines, what's going on. And then Fox wants us to do a guy show with a sports backdrop. They don't want us to be numbers.
And this they want us to talk more about the lighter side of sports. It's a lot of fun and like I said, if you're a good person and you're good at what you do, man, you bump into people. And Jon, something, I wonder if you've bumped into recently. A lot of people in important positions are now our age. So you relate like we're in our primo years of like really connecting with people.
JAG: Oh yeah. You make a prop culture reference to something we grew up with and it lands.
Rich: Dude, our boss for Fox Sports is my exact age, like a year older than you. And every reference we make, he thinks he might as well have hired Dave Chappelle and Louis CK or something, or Bill Burr. Like he thinks we're the funniest dudes because every reference is in his wheelhouse.
So all of our references are now in every important programmer's wheelhouse.
JAG: That is fantastic. I love that.
Rich: You make some you make some Jim Rice 1980s Red Sox reference. The 40 something year old boss gets it.
JAG: Pop culture reference to the movie Office Space or something like that.
Rich: Exactly. Yeah. Every silly reference. But yeah, man, I'm very blessed for my day. I love it and I love broadcasting and it all goes back to Z89 and right there walking down those steps, knocking on the door hopefully someone opens cuz I never ever had an ID for that building.
JAG: There's always a knock on the door involved in every JPZ story from Rick Wright to Rich Davis.
Rich: I would always knock on the door because no one, I never got the ID or key or something, but every time I ever did a show, I would just wait out there to trail someone in the building or knock on the door like that was one of my memories of JPZ, standing in the slushy snow, hoping someone heard me.
JAG: Rich Davis, congratulations on all your career success. You won't find the nicer guy in the business. Thank you so much for spending a few minutes with us today and one of these years. We wanna get you back across the country into Syracuse. Hard to sell Syracuse to a guy who lives in LA now. But we wanna get you back from one of these banquets.
Rich: Listen, I learned from Fox Sports Radio that after the Super Bowl sports people are allowed to take off. I was told like until Super Bowl's over don't go anywhere. This is prime time for sports radio, which I'm learning by the way. Another fun thing you're always learning, right?
Like I'm learning about the clock again. This is something that's wild. I'm sorry. I'll go on for five hours, Jon. You could cut all this if you want.
JAG: I'll let you roll. Go ahead.
Rich: I had forgot. You work at Sirius XM for so long. You forget. Simple things like I had never worked in a personal people meter world before. I left terrestrial radio when we were on Arbitron.
JAG: That's right. Diaries.
Rich: So when I was learning, the great people at Fox, like Scott Shapiro and Don Martin and all these guys are like, hey, listen, I don't mind you going long, but if you don't leave at least five minutes or so for your last segment, it can't count as a quarter hour. I'm like, hold on. Whoa, time out. Say this again?
JAG: Because you had to have PPM explained from scratch.
Rich: Yeah. You're talking about a guy that's been in broadcasting 20, 25 years that's, worked in all the places I've wanted to work in, but I had to be taugh ratings again. So I'm like, oh shit. Ratings again.
And Jon, there's no one more on the right track as far as JPZ alumni than you because podcasting. My goodness. The industry is as healthy as everyone. People say, is radio dying? I say, no. Audio entertainment is as thriving as ever before. It's a matter of can you make the PIVOT.
JAG: Another reference to our age.
Rich: Can you make the pivot from radio to podcasting or the hybrid of that, like we do our radio show every day. But what's equally important, Jon, as our two-hour live radio show is how it's packaged in podcast form. And how we social media promote the podcast. So all these things that you're teaching people in your whole world, you are, you're fucking on The Pulse, pun intended.
JAG: Ha! And we will leave it there. Appreciate the kind words and appreciate your time. Rich Davis. Great to be with you,
Rich: Jon, love you buddy!