George Johns, a one-of-a-kind radio guy

Last month, we lost George Johns who was a one-of-a-kind. He was one of the brightest, most effective radio executives. His history of success in programming and consulting some of North America’s greatest stations speaks for itself. He had the ability to know what would be compelling to mass audiences and how to work out the details to bring it to fruition.

If you don’t know anything about him, here are some of the highlights. Early in his career he was Program Director of some great radio stations in Canada including CFTR in Toronto. He was National Program Director Of Fairbanks Broadcasting for stations that most notably included KVIL in Dallas. He was a programming consultant and founder of The “Class/Classy” format with his company FairWest. At one point he owned stations in Portland, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee. Eventually he returned to consulting and coaching.

I was fortunate enough to work with George Johns on two separate occasions (well sort of, more on that later). Prior to forming my own company, I was a consultant in my previous corporate job. Once of the accounts assigned to me was AC KZST/Santa Rosa the #1 station in Sonoma County where local legend Brent Farris hosted mornings. My role was to oversee the station’s music plus I got to work with George Johns! Another account of mine was also a George Johns collaboration with a Hot AC station. It was fun and interested.

The first was during the early days of the Hot AC format in New England. He along with a renowned research company had laid the groundwork for this new “Mix” type station prior to my being hired as program director.

The first day on the job I found a stack of FairWest memos in my desk, each one of them with the headline Thoughts on… followed topics such as News, What’s Hot – What’s Not, Leadership, Music, and a myriad of other topics. Although the station was no longer a consulted by George Johns, we were on the mailing list and would receive one of these memos in the mail every month. I learned so much from the philosophy he would share. To this day, I still have these memos in my filing cabinet and refer to them from time to time.

RIP… George Johns

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