We were lucky to catch up with Jesse Tack recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jesse thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So, let’s imagine that you were advising someone who wanted to start something similar to you and they asked you what you would do differently in the startup-process knowing what you know now. How would you respond?

Networking! It took me nearly 20 years in radio to realize that I was missing out on connecting with other professionals in my industry through networking. Now, to be fair, I knew that networking was a good idea, I just never thought that I would be able to pull it off in a way that would matter.

I’m naturally an introvert so the thought of “connecting” with strangers and other people in the radio industry sounded intimidating and exhausting but a good friend of mine pointed out that it doesn’t need to feel that way. She suggested that I simply take advantage of the people that I DO meet and capitalize on those connections, whereas before, I would simply let those interactions go to waste.

I also learned that I needed to be brave and to start volunteering for opportunities where I would be able to meet more people. This was a big step for me but it’s proven very valuable and I feel my network of peers has grown substantially in the last few years.

Jesse, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m Jesse Tack and I’m the afternoon co-host on B-105 in Cincinnati, a country radio station. I’m also the assistant program director.

My career started when I was 16 and was hired to be an intern at a group of radio stations in Davenport, IA. This was a very young start for me but I knew this business was something that I wanted to be a part of. I was hired on with my identical twin brother Joey. We had developed a love of radio by winning contests on the air and the DJ would play our phone calls back over the radio. It was crazy-exciting for a couple of 14 year olds.

Our internship had us going to the radio station once a week for a year, learning the ropes. We did everything from inputting information into the computers to cleaning CDs so that they wouldn’t skip on the air. We even swept the floor of the garage.
For the next 3 years, I worked almost every Saturday and Sunday morning from 12-6a, getting paid $5.75/hour. I clearly didn’t do it for the money. I was still in high school for 2 of those years and then went to college after that.

I decided I wanted to move in 2003 and took a part-time job in Kansas City, working for a pop station that played 80s, 90s, and newer stuff. I remember when I first walked in the door how honored I was that this radio station in the big city of Kansas City would even consider talking to me, but they did. They started me at $9/hour but I must have made a good impression because they gave me a raise of almost $2/hour after almost just a month. After 3 months, the station promoted me to Programming Assistant and overnight DJ. Ironically, I ended up taking the job of the guy who hired me!

I learned so much during this time about working in radio in a larger city and also the behind the scenes of a radio station.

After 6 months, I was promoted to the night position of 7-Midnight and I was able to develop my first real radio show. I was given a lot of autonomy and my boss allowed me to put my creative thinking to use. I absolutely loved it.

Then, later that year, our station changed music-formats and I was pulled into an office and told that I was being let go. I didn’t do anything wrong but it was just one of those situations where life hit me quick and I realized I would need to get a new job.

I was really bummed out for a month or so and after trying to find a job in KC with no luck, I decided to apply for jobs all over the country.

One of cities I applied to was Cincinnati and I was surprised when they reached out to me. It was an even larger city than KC and to be honest, I didn’t even know where it was, but they quickly flew me out for an interview and I decided to take the night position of 7-Midnight. I was only 21.

The first month was really hard for me as I knew no one in Cincinnati and was 6 hours away from my closest family members. I even tried to get a job back in Iowa and several family members and radio-friends encouraged me to stay in Cincinnati for a little while longer. I’m glad I did because after 6 months, I was promoted to middays (9-2) and slowly started to make some friends.

I continued working for that station for another year or so and on Halloween 2006, I was called by my operations manager and told that our station had been swapped with another station in a different building and that I would be working for a new employer the following day. This literally meant that I would still work for the same radio station and frequency but for a different boss and in a different building. It also meant I would work just down the hall from our main competition, B-105.

After some swapping of frequencies within my new building, we moved our country format to 97.3 and rebranded the station to “97.3 the Wolf.” I was named the afternoon personality. I really enjoyed this time of my career because I was given a lot of control and the ability to take chances and make mistakes.

Over the next 2 years, I began to learn even more about radio programming and was taught how to schedule music and even be a part of the meetings where we decide which songs our radio station wants to play.

Then, in July of 2008, I moved to B-105 where I became the night host from 7-Midnight, weekdays.

I continued in this role for 6 years and although I loved it, I found myself wanting to get out of the night position and into something more during the daytime hours. Thankfully, in August of 2014, out of nowhere, we had a prime opening in Afternoons (3-7) and I was named the afternoon host. 2 months later, I was told I would be having a new girl come in to audition as my co-host for afternoons. We had a great audition and they hired her almost immediately.

We did afternoons together for 5 years and had great success in ratings and awards, ultimately being named the CMA Large Market Personalities of the Year in 2017.

In 2020, she decided to leave radio and that left me to do the show alone for nearly 3 years. In early 2022, I was named the Assistant Program Director for B-105 and that allowed me to continue to serve as a leader and coach for co-workers as well as helping our program director with behind the scenes work at B-105.

Then, in the summer of 2022, my bosses told me I would be getting a new co-host and we’ve had a great start to our show so far. In the year we’ve worked together, we’ve created some great radio moments including the time we surprised a listener at Goodwill by singing karaoke songs with her, to the time we washed fire trucks in speedos, to the time we helped raise over $50,000 for teachers. Wee pride ourselves on creating unique, relatable radio content for our listeners and we hold ourselves to very high standards for what we bring to our radio show.

I continue to love to what I do every day and I’m very excited to see what the next few decades has in store for me!

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I love meeting the people who are affected by my work. Aka, my listeners.

I sit in a small room for my radio show and other than my co-host Anna, there’s no one else in there. So, when I have the opportunity to meet a listener who had a particular reaction to something I’ve said (whether positive or negative), it’s very rewarding.

I love knowing that they’re paying attention. I also like getting to know their backstory and what their typical day looks like, especially as they’re listening to our radio show.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Early in my career, I treated other radio stations as “competition” and I didn’t really give them the time of day if one of their employees was in the same room as me for an event that the media was invited to. At the time, I just felt that it was best if I kept my “secrets” to myself and I didn’t feel the need to associate with them.

About 6 months before I had been let go due to the budget cuts in Kansas City, an employee from a competing radio station emailed and asked if I had any interest in applying for the night position at their radio station. I remember getting the email and thinking “well I don’t even need to reply to this since I’m perfectly happy where I’m at.”

Fast forward 1/2 a year later and I had been let go and was looking for a new job. I desperately wanted to stay in Kansas City and I reached out to ALL of the possible options of stations there to see if they had any open positions, including the station that had tried to contact me earlier in the year about my possible interest in a job.

None of them wrote back, including the station I had blown off beforehand.

I ended up running into the specific employee who had emailed me and in a number of words, he said the reason they weren’t interested in hiring me is because I never wrote them back in the first place.

This was a hard lesson for me to learn but ever since then, I treat everyone else with respect, regardless if we work for the same company or not.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.b105.com
• Instagram: jessetackradio
• Facebook: jessetack
• Twitter: jessetack
• Youtube: jessetackshow