Long Time Experience Gives Local Broadcaster Unique Perspective

(Utah Pulse)--John Webb is well grounded in the broadcasting business.

But way back when he first entered the field, his dad Arch’s instructions were very explicit: DON’T get grounded! John’s task was to climb the radio tower at KVOG AM1490 in a pasture outside Ogden, Utah, and change the burned-out lights. As he explains it, you had to jump completely off the ground and catch the lower rung of the tower’s ladder and THEN pull yourself up. To be caught with your feet on the ground while touching the tower was bad for your career.

And since the sixteen year-old Webb had some aspirations to join the exciting field of radio broadcasting, completing the circuit and grounding the radio tower was not advisable. Returning to Mother Earth had to be equally as precise. If nothing else, John Webb, owner and operator of Capital Broadcasting in Salt Lake City, the privately held corporation that runs KBZN Smooth Jazz and KLO World Class Talk is precise.
Today, that precision calls for “numbers scribbled on the board”—sales written up weekly, daily and hourly by his sales team that spell out success in a hotly competitive radio market. KBZN and KLO are anomalies in the radio business in the 21st-century, where huge media conglomerates like Clear Channel and local behemoths like Bonneville dominate the marketplace. John Webb prefers to withstand the storm like a solitary figure on an island in a sea of vicious competitors. He relishes it.

“Yes, I could sell out, maybe put a few million in the bank, and then what would I do, golf?” Webb asks rhetorically. Yes, he probably would golf. Or ski. He’s quite adept at both. But, he relishes the challenge, the hunt and yes, the hard work of running his own enterprise. With that comes change and progress. His AM station, KLO, a name recognized by oldtimers in northern Utah as “the official radio station of Ogden”, is in the process of finding a new home in Salt Lake with its sister station, the FM instrumental station John has nicknamed “The Breeze.”

Within weeks, an enlarged office and studio will house both properties and the Webbs will have continued their ongoing process of improving, fine-tuning and adding upon the family business. John’s wife Sharon can often be seen redesigning office space, even occasionally grabbing a paint brush and redoing a studio wall. Their son and heir apparent Matt is KLO’s sales manager. He, too, will soon be making the move to Salt Lake. Matt, like his father, wasn’t offered any shortcuts. Both were thrown into the deep end of the radio business and told to swim.
In John’s case, he graduated from the precarious assignment of changing the tower lights to producing old KVOG’s Sunday morning Gospel Hour, featuring two fiery African-American Baptist preachers, the Rev. Robert Harris and the Rev. George Gray.

Conveniently, for both the preachers and his father, his ultimate employer, the young Mr. Webb was officially not of the opinion that one should receive filthy lucre when in the Lord’s employ.
Instead, John Webb’s compensation came in the form of barbeque sauce.

After doing some preaching of his own a few years later, it was revealed to John that “man cannot live by barbeque sauce alone.”

So John Webb went to college.

That wise decision resulted in a union with the lovely Sharon Webb and subsequently a job offer at Poole Broadcasting in Detroit, Michigan. His apprenticeship as a boy broadcaster and his training in accounting and finance served him well in his five years back East. He eventually learned, however, that the big money was not in counting beans. So, while he became well acquainted with the financial operations of running broadcast facilities, he realized that if he wanted to make the big bucks, he would have to move into sales.

However, management didn’t see it exactly the same way, and it took the same kind of determination that he had to draw upon when climbing the tower to get his foot into the sales department.

Not everything in the Webbs’ life, however, was unfolding as they had scripted it. Two of their four children came into the world with serious disabilities, requiring incredible demands on their time and financial resources. Then, when Arch Webb suffered a heart attack back in Utah, the Webb’s packed up the station wagon and headed home.

Upon his return to Utah, John Webb helped his parents sell the radio station, and then when that was completed, he filed an application with the FCC for an FM license in Ogden, Utah, with the transmitter on Farnsworth Peak in the Oquirrh Mountains west of Salt Lake Valley. Other established broadcasters didn’t like the idea, citing a “defacto reallocation in violation of the Burwick Doctrine” and kept his application tied up in the courts. After four years of winning the small battles in court, his efforts were finally rewarded and he was allocated the license for 97.9 FM and launched a new country station dubbed KZAN.

When his children’s health challenges required some serious money, John reluctantly decided to sell the station to an investor. But, sometimes fate has a way of turning the favor; the new owner defaulted on his payments and the Webb family reacquired the FM station and then launched Utah’s only Smooth Jazz radio station, FM 97.9 “The Breeze.”

When the opportunity presented itself to buy Utah’s third-oldest radio station, KLO, Webb jumped at the chance. For at least a generation, it featured a “Music of Your Life” format that appealed to listeners in the 60s and beyond.

But not one to avoid a calculated risk, John Webb recognized a golden opportunity when he saw one and switched to the up-and-coming conservative talk format. That was in 2003. Each quarter since then, KLO has been accumulating audience and growing. Today, he encourages his sales staff to sell the two stations “in combo.”

“We can now point to the fact that for many adult ‘demos’, our station combo is generally in the top 6; and when you consider our rates, we offer a very efficient buy for the local advertiser,” he explains.

Arch Webb, who was trained as an attorney, but gave that up after serving in World War II in the South Pacific, saw radio as the wave of the future. More than 50 years later, many pundits maintain that radio’s best days are behind it. Arch’s son John pays them no mind.

“Everybody’s got to be someplace, and this is where I choose to be,” John Webb declares. It hasn’t been easy, but he doesn’t complain. He hears all the doom and gloom, that all the experts are predicting that “satellite radio will spell the end of local stations” and that “the Internet will dry up local ad revenues.”

“You have to deal with situations as they present themselves. Yes, I’ve been fortunate despite the challenges. Life thrusts things upon us; we can’t take credit when things go well, and we shouldn’t despair when they don’t.”

Outside his office, electricians and painters go about their business. The expansion continues. The radio business is alive and well and all a bustle at Capital Broadcasting.

And John Webb’s feet are square on the ground, holding firm.