Bill Simonson of The HUGE Show joins us for a walk down memory lane. Discover the passion and the journey that drove Bill to become a radio personalty that’s bigger than life!

 

Transcript:

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00:07 Lynne Jarman-Johnson: Money, I’m Home, from finance to fitness. Welcome in everyone, I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Consumers Credit Union. I’ve got a very special guest today. I guess you could call him a huge guest here on our wonderful podcast. Welcome in Bill Simonson.

 

00:22 Bill Simonson: Lynne, first off, your Burton East Grand Rapids location here for Consumers Credit Union is amazing.

 

00:29 LJJ: Thank you.

 

00:29 BS: It’s like a state-of-the-art studio. I feel like I’m at ESPN or CBS Sports right now in New York City. I love it.

 

00:37 LJJ: And, you know, if you want, I can walk you over to our interactive teller, you can open up a CD. We’ve got…

 

00:42 BS: I saw the interactive teller. I mean, they look like it was on a big sound stage from American Idol last night. It’s amazing.

 

[chuckle]

 

00:50 LJJ: Well, listen, really thank you for your time. We really appreciate it. You are one busy entrepreneur and I really want to kind of pick your brain about how you’ve done what you’ve done here in the Michigan market, national stage. You truly are so well-respected in the sports industry. So just, give us a… When did you start and how did you know that, “You know what? Radio broadcast is where I want to be.”

 

01:19 BS: I was 11, up in Sparta, Michigan and listening to Ernie Harwell on the radio call the Tigers games, and I knew that’s what I wanted to do. You know, Ernie and Paul Carey could paint a picture like I was there. I think I went to the old Tigers Stadium two or three times as a kid and I had a family, didn’t have a lot of money, and back then traveling from Grand Rapids to Detroit was this unbelievable journey. Now with kids in sports and soccer, it’s…

 

01:47 LJJ: You go all the time.

 

01:47 BS: Yeah, you’re going like every other weekend. But back then it was different. It was bigger than life. And I think a lot of things when you’re young are bigger than life. And I knew I wanted to be in radio and then along the way, in junior high, in high school I was working the PA for, of sports, like volleyball and I’d get a little crazy and the teachers would say, “Bill, you can’t say that.”

 

02:08 LJJ: Settle. Settle down.

 

02:09 BS: “Settle down. How fired up can you get for a freshman girls volleyball match, right?” Are you kidding me?

 

[laughter]

 

02:16 LJJ: That just doesn’t sound right, does it?

 

[laughter]

 

02:17 BS: Ribbing the officials. Little did I know that was the beginning of a career but, and then I graduated from Sparta High, north of Grand Rapids and I knew what I wanted to do, and I went to University of Oklahoma. Had a great radio, television, and film department. I was able to get a ton of financial aid. I wanted to get away. I altered my ID not for drinking, but to be able to work for the school radio station. Freshman could not work at the station at that time. So I altered it to say sophomore.

 

02:50 LJJ: So already innovative.

 

02:52 BS: Innovative or illegal. We can pick whatever I-word you want to use there. When I say, “Alter my ID,” She’s like, “Great.” Now the drinking age was 18 when I was there.

 

03:04 LJJ: I said innovative, now. Come on.

 

03:05 BS: I got on the school radio station, I was doing sidelines for Oklahoma football and here I am a freshman from Michigan, Barry Switzer era and it was unbelievable.

 

03:16 LJJ: Wasn’t college radio the absolute best?

 

03:19 BS: Yeah, but college radio, it was different here because I remember the name George Ryan was an old TV anchor, and he oversaw the program and he was hands-on. And he would critique you, he would guide you, he would ride you, what a good… I think to be successful you need those people and they’re not parents. Because you reach a point where you stop listening to your parents and you’ll listen to teachers, coaches, a buddy’s dad.

 

03:43 LJJ: Mentors.

 

03:44 BS: Mentors who you don’t know they’re mentors at the time, but when you look back in your life, you’re like, “Yeah, what he said.” You know, and George Ryan looked at me one day. He had glasses. He was really stoic, kind of old school. He goes, “You know, Bill,” and he always talked like he was doing the 6:00 PM nightly news on Channel Nine. “You know, Bill, I think as soon as you’re not full of yourself, you’ll advance.”

 

04:07 BS: And then I’m thinking, “Good night, everybody.” Like it’s Walter Cronkite. So, but I’m 18, and I’m like, “Okay, whatever.” I loved being on radio, right? It was awesome. And I took a radio job two years after in the middle of college and I kind of knew then that my experience would be better for my resume than a degree. And George kind of told me, he said, “You know Bill, a radio, television, film program, TV stations make you have a degree to apply for a job. Radio doesn’t.” And I’m thinking to myself, “Thank you, George. You just saved me two to six years left of the remaining college time.”

 

04:50 BS: And I ran off to a station in Tucson, Arizona. I still went to school part-time, but was at an oldies station. But here I am at only 19 then, 20, DJing at an oldies station, and from there I took a job with their company in Bakersfield, California. Became a news director at 21, which was rare for a young guy. And then I discovered night club DJing in California at 21 and I was getting paid big bucks and radio didn’t pay squat to start. Okay, didn’t pay anything. So, nightclub DJing was paying four times what I’m making in radio. So, I leave radio, get into night club DJing, and then I come back to Grand Rapids, stayed in nightclub DJing with the old Electric Avenues and Club Eastbrooks and I’m making $80,000 a year DJing and it’s…

 

05:42 LJJ: Young.

 

05:44 BS: Young, you’re out, social, radio was a distant memory.

 

05:49 LJJ: Legal ID.

 

05:49 BS: I had legal ID now, 24 to 28. And when I was turning 30, there’s something about the 30-age mark where I said to myself, “I want to get back. I want to do radio to finish out my life. I want that to be my career.”

 

06:08 LJJ: Passion.

 

06:10 BS: Yeah. It never left me. Reality is, when you’re in your 20s and bills come, you know a car payment, rent, things that when you… You can’t have nine roommates your entire life, where you all split the bills. It’s a pretty good concept, but I think that’s called a commune.

 

06:30 LJJ: Yeah, now they call it adulting.

 

06:32 BS: Yeah, they call it adulting. [laughter] But… And I knew I wanted to chase this, so I contacted an old buddy, Danny Douglas, who had worked at KLQ in Grand Rapids, and he was working in Oklahoma City, and he called me back, he said, “Hey, they’re looking for a sports talk show host,” and I’m like… And I’ve done some high school play by play, but I’ve never done… This is 1992, the early ’92, and I’m like, “Oh gosh.” He goes, “Well, get a demo tape,” and I’m like, “Where am I going to get a demo tape for a sports talk show?” There was no sports talk shows.

 

07:07 LJJ: So how can you even get one?

 

07:09 BS: Right. The only time I had ever done a sports talk show was on the old AM 1340 which, ironically, I’m on right now with 106.1 FM. They’d carry the Michigan Panthers from the USFL, remember that?

 

07:22 LJJ: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

 

07:23 BS: Okay. I think it was USFL, and Ray Bentley, Anthony Carter. Well, one of the bosses had the idea for a post-game show after Panther football, and I think they were champions or whatever. So, he goes, “Well Bill, host it, and we got Town & Country Tire is going to be the sponsor and they’re paying. I’ll give you 50 bucks.” I go, “I’ll host it.” So, the Panther post-game ends and I’m downstairs at the Waters Building, Grand Rapids, remember this like yesterday. And Dan Dickerson, and… Was doing a show called Sports Call on WCUZ in Grand Rapids, one of the first sports talk shows, with Dennis Sutton and Tom Cleary.

 

08:01 LJJ: Yes, absolutely.

 

08:02 BS: Okay. So I go, “Welcome back. It’s Panther post-game show, presented by Town & Country Tire,” and “any comments?” We had one line. “Any comments?” I’m sitting there, nobody’s calling. Finally, the call rang. This was my first call ever in talk radio. The phone rings, I have to pick it up myself. There’s no producer; you guys have seven producers right now here for the Consumers Credit Union podcast.

 

08:30 LJJ: Thank you, Aaron.

 

08:31 BS: You guys have more than they have on SportsCenter Tonight. First caller goes, “Hey, what time’s the pig roast tonight at the… ” [laughter] I go, “Well, I don’t know.” And so, I had to stay on for an hour with no calls, no content, I’m 21, maybe 22 at the time. So that was the first talk show, and then, when I needed that demo tape, I went to the Sing Sing Recording Studio, right down the street here from the Consumers Credit Union.

 

09:07 LJJ: Boy, you are bringing back some…

 

09:08 BS: Hold on.

 

09:09 LJJ: Memories, Bill.

 

09:10 BS: So, I’m here, Breton Village, East Grand Rapids, Breton area at the Consumers Credit Union location, and now Centerpointe Mall, Eastwood Mall. I go to Sing Sing Studio, I bring two buddies in, I said, “We’re going to fake 15 minutes of doing a talk show.”

 

09:26 LJJ: That’s great. [laughter]

 

09:27 BS: So, I go, “I’ll buy you guys a couple beers, come on in.” And then, so I go to the Sing Sing guy and he’s like, he looks at three older guys coming in there, right? This is where you sang to the tracks.

 

09:37 LJJ: Oh, I know.

 

09:37 BS: It was like karaoke and you kept the tape, right? They had a big business going. And so the guy goes…

 

09:45 LJJ: I think I have a Cher track somewhere.

 

09:47 BS: I go… I think I have CC and the Music Factory with two buddies, “Make You Sweat.”

 

09:53 LJJ: There you go.

 

[laughter]

 

09:54 BS: Don’t pull that out too often. And so I… The guy goes, “What do you want?” I go, “What’s it for an hour?” He goes, “Well, we don’t do hours.” I go, “I’ll give you 50 bucks, I going to go do a 15 minute tape, just put it on cassette.” It’s early ’92, and I didn’t have the money for CDs, but it’s cassette, and we go in there and fake a sportscast. And I send it to Mike Elder, who Danny Douglas told me sent it to Oklahoma City, KTOK. He calls me back about three days later, he said, “Well Bill, thank you so much for the… ” Leaves a voicemail, answering machine, not voicemail yet.

 

10:31 LJJ: Yes, remember that.

 

10:32 BS: Answering machine. Producers are going, “What’s this? Is this guy an alien? What’s he talking about?” And…

 

[laughter]

 

10:40 BS: They’re like, “Voicemail?”

 

10:41 LJJ: You remember fax machines?

 

10:42 BS: “Voicemail? Cassettes?”

 

10:42 LJJ: Fax machines and their roll tape?

 

10:44 BS: They were cool! Fax machines were cool.

 

[laughter]

 

10:46 BS: Mike Elder left an answering machine message. “Hey, Bill, we’re going to fly two other people in, but thank you, good luck, you’re not involved.” Why I did it, I called him back and I said, “Hey, if I come down to visit my friend Danny, will you give me 15 minutes?” He goes… And I go, “I’ll buy you lunch.” And he goes, “Alright.” So true story, I drive Galaxie 500. Now, this tells you… Again, the producer’s going, “Galaxie 500? Is that from Star Wars?” It’s a Ford. Come on. I said.

 

11:25 LJJ: Now, stop. [laughter]

 

11:27 BS: Okay. So I drive all the way to Oklahoma City, and I was familiar with it from going to school at Oklahoma, and…

 

11:33 LJJ: You made it happen.

 

11:34 BS: And then I met with him first before we went to lunch. Now, this is a true story. It’s late March ’92, Mike goes, “I want you to meet the general manager.” He goes, “Go talk to him for 10 minutes, come back to me.” And we had talked for like half hour. And so, general manager goes, “Mike really likes you, and we’re going to hire you,” and this is kind of weird on my end, and Rex had a booster seat. He was a short little Texan, and he had a booster seat in his chair and I couldn’t help but looking at the booster seat, and he kind of looked like Spacely Sprocket from The Jetsons. I’m doing all these old school references right now. You’re going to have to put “Warning: Must be 50 to listen to this.”

 

[laughter]

 

12:24 BS: “To this Consumers Credit Union podcast.” You’re going to have to put, “Warning: You must be 50.”

 

12:29 LJJ: No, actually, I’m not, because what you are talking about is helping anybody live their dreams.

 

12:39 BS: So, Mike tells me, he goes, “Look out the window.” And I look, and they were up on a six-floor Oklahoma City bank building. And he says, “I believe you’re going to own this town.” And I go, “What do you mean?” And like, he goes, “There’s something, there’s something.” And he goes, “I just told Rex that I think… ” He goes, “I think you’ll spend the rest of your life doing this.” And I’m like… And I go, “Really?” And I’m thinking, “How much does it pay?” Well, the reality was I had to take a major step backwards from nightclub DJing, but I wasn’t thinking about the money, ’cause I believe if you chase a dream, and you love what you do, the money will come to a level that is sufficient for you to live the life you want to live. If you don’t put money first, if you look for a job and wonder how much it pays, you’ll be on that job for six months or a year and go on. If you look at that job and say, “You know what? I can start here, but man, I can take this to a major level.”

 

13:47 BS: So I got that job. Mike Elder, for 30 straight days after our show, from 6:00 to 7:00 at night, sat through the tape with me for 30 straight days and made me listen to it, and that was April ’92. And from there to Tulsa, to Austin, to Chicago, to ESPN Game Night, Fabulous Sports Babe to the HUGE Show across Michigan that started September 23rd 2001, to my home base here in Grand Rapids, to a Saturday night show on CBS Sports Radio, to doing voice work for the Kurt Russell movie ‘Touchback,’ the NFL Blitz video games, all that started because of that one trip to Oklahoma City. So you never know what’s around the corner.

 

14:36 LJJ: Bill Simonson, we can laugh about the memories and about the funny things that maybe individuals of a certain age might not know, but they know one thing, and that is a true human spirit that has passion to help others do the same in their life. Thank you so much.

 

15:00 BS: I think passion’s a big key, ma’am. Never… Just like Journey said back on my 8-track when I was driving to Oklahoma City, “Don’t stop believing.”

 

15:08 LJJ: Don’t stop believing. [chuckle] Well, thank you so much. I’ll tell you what, this was a blast. And our producer is Aaron Bowersox with Consumers…

 

15:16 BS: He does a good job.

 

15:17 LJJ: Thank you.

 

15:18 BS: And you know what? And I just… When we talk about passion and a vibe, and walking in and meeting Aaron and some of the other people here at the Breton Village Consumers Credit Union location, passion of vibe is what makes any business go. It makes a family go, it makes a team go, it makes a life go. When you’re around people who share a common goal, you’re going to get something done and I feel it here at Consumers Credit Union. I really do.

 

15:44 LJJ: Well, thank you, Bill. That is a very high compliment.

 

15:48 BS: I read that exactly the way Aaron wrote it out and just handed it to him.

 

[laughter]

 

15:53 LJJ: Money, I’m home! I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson. From finance to fitness, this is Consumers Credit Union.

 

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