Everybody has a superpower. You do. I do, and David Wood certainly does.
“I have a knack for identifying talent,” the veteran program director explained. What he does daily in the radio world is like show business. When he recently put out an ad for on-air radio talent to join a morning show, he put out what he refers to as a ‘casting call.’
“I’m good at seeing not just what is, but what could be. In that respect, I guess I’m like a casting director.”
Wood is an Indiana native, and before you ask, in high school, he sucked at basketball. “I was too short and slow to play basketball. It didn’t help that Marion, Indiana was a powerhouse.”
Wood said when you’re a kid in Indiana, you either want to play professional basketball or broadcast professional basketball. “I went to school to become a high school history teacher,” Wood said. “I kind of stumbled into radio in my hometown and started working at WMRI in Marion, Indiana. WMRI went on the air in 1955 but was soon sold. The station later spawned an FM station, the present-day WXXC.”
Wood joined Emmis Communications in 2010 and currently serves as Vice President of Programming for Emmis-Indianapolis. There aren’t many radio executives who can say they got their big break out of a cheese business.
“I met the GM of a station when I was assistant manager of a Hickory Farms cheese store,” Wood said. “We got to talking as his daughter was about my age. I had a background in theater, and he asked if I listened to the radio.” He told Wood if he ever thought he’d like to audition for a radio job, to call him sometime. Wood did.
Wood took on everything in his first job in radio; engineered high school basketball, read the news, mowed the lawn. He bounced around a few stations in Indiana, including Marion and Kokomo, Indiana, about 45 minutes from each other.
When he turned 21, he had a life-altering epiphany. “I realized I was making more in radio than a first-year high school history teacher, so I stayed in radio,” Wood said.
During his career, Wood said he’d run into co-workers who knew for a fact they wanted to be on the radio when they were kids. That just wasn’t the case for Wood. “I was the opposite of that kid. Our family listened to a lot of radio together, and remember thinking I could never do that. It was too cool, too magical.”
After a while, he had another epiphany. “I was adequate on the air, perhaps slightly above average,” Wood said. “I’d seen a couple of PDs get fired, and I thought I could do better than those guys. So, he dropped the microphone and went into radio management.
He said he learned a lot of management lessons from a captain of the USS. Enterprise–Picard, not Kirk.
“Kirk always acted emotionally, kind of reckless, on his own,” Wood said. “Picard would ask opinions of those around him, seek advice.”
Wood said one of the lessons he learned from a mentor was not to treat every person the same way. “It’s unfair,” Wood said. “People respond to training and criticism in different ways. I could be very blunt with one of my on-air people, and they’re good with that. I tell them to put their big-boy pants on. Others, I have to treat them with kid gloves.”
Like many of us who didn’t play high school basketball, we aren’t immune to the lessons and charms of the film Hoosiers. “I watch it at least once a year,” Wood said. “It’s absolutely accurate, not an overdramatization.” He explained how the film was based on the ‘Milan Miracle’ in 1954.
Wood described how football is to Texas and what basketball is to Indiana. “I think football is becoming more important here,” Wood said. “That’s a direct result of the Colts and Peyton Manning.”
When I asked Wood what constitutes a great radio executive, he didn’t hesitate to answer.
“Being a student of anthropology,” Wood said. “You have to be curious about people. You have to figure out what’s important, how to work with people.”
He’s not only from Indiana; he’s a fan of the place. “It’s a big small town,” Wood said. “We have a Midwestern aura, but there are enough amenities to keep you entertained. Great steakhouses, Broadway tours, the Indy 500, the NFL.”
When he’s not working, Wood says he likes to read. “I don’t watch a lot of television,” he said. “For one thing, we’ve got television sets on all day at the station, tuned to sports or news. I like to read articles, listen to audiobooks.”
What is he reading now? “Fascism: A Warning” by the late secretary of state, Madeleine Albright. “I also read a lot of presidential biographies. The most recent on Ulysses S. Grant.”
So, what’s the future of radio look like, say in 2032?
“I think we’re going to have more spoken word formats,” Wood said. “I also think we’re going to see a lot more female-leaning content.” Wood believes things will get tougher and tougher for music programing as people have so many different options right now.
“We’re in a push-medium in a pull-world,” Wood explained. “The younger people are really technically savvy, and there are things they don’t want to put up with, music they don’t want to hear. The older they are, the more accustomed they are to being presented with music we think they want to hear.”
Even with all the changes, Wood thinks classic rock is safe. “My 29-year-old son likes a lot of stuff from that era,” he said. “He grew up listening to my music, and he loves it.”
I asked Wood if he was ever impressed by meeting someone in this celebrity-driven business.
“Not exactly,” Wood said. “I saw the late actor Jerry Orbach in a restaurant in New York,” Wood said. “We were sitting across from each other, and I knew the last thing he wanted was for me to come over and bother him. So, we exchanged a couple of nods, and Orbach smiled. That was it.”
It’s kind of a shame Jerry Orbach never got to hear if Wood preferred him in Dirty Dancing or Law and Order. I’m guessing the latter.