Born and educated in Winnipeg, Manitoba – Canada.

THE ’60s

I played Guitar and sang with Shayne and The Divines.
I also played guitar and led the band for The Rebel Raiders—the Phantoms. and The Jury.

The Jury’s Recordings:

Until You Do.
I Tried To Tell Her.
Back In My World.
Please Forget Her b/w Who Dat?

I also started my Broadcasting career.

Board Operator – CKY-FM Winnipeg.
Production Director – CKY
Music Director – CKY
Program Director – CKOM  Saskatoon
Program Director – CKSO AM/FM Sudbury

THE ’70s

Program Director – CFRA Ottawa
Program Director – CFTR Toronto
Station Manager – CFTR.

Vice President of Programming for Fairbanks Broadcasting:
WIBC/WNAP Indianapolis
WVBF/WKLB Boston
WKOX Framingham
WIBG Philadelphia
WRMF/WJNO Palm Beach
KVIL FM/AM Dallas

Studied with Mike Vance, Dean of Walt Disney University

THE ’80s

Formed The Johns Company, which consulted radio stations in the US and Canada.

Merged the Johns Company with Fairwest and syndicated three music formats:
Continuous Country.
Music Of Your Life.
Class/Classy

Radio Station Ownership:

KLLS San Antonio
K103 Portland
WZPL Indianapolis
WMET Chicago
KZTR Milwaukee

Every year, when the Winnipeg Jets come to town, my daughter Cami and I make our annual trek to Fort Lauderdale to watch them play the Panthers.
Cami, a huge Florida Panthers fan, has enough Panther attire to change every period, including triple overtime. However, my meager hockey wardrobe only consists of a Jets and Panthers Jersey.

Anyway, this year, the Jets/Panthers game was on Black Friday, and my Grandson Nathaniel, who came down from Brown University to spend Thanksgiving with us, got to go to the game too.

As you can see in the photo above, Nathaniel got to wear my Panthers jersey; Cami wore one of her many Panther outfits, and I proudly wore my Jets jersey, which has my name on the back, along with my old Transcona Nationals number.

I love wearing​ my Jets Jersey because it usually attracts other Canadians to wave and give you a thumbs up.
However, I’m really only interested in chatting with people from Winnipeg rather than other Canadians who are wearing a Jets Jersey ’cause they’re fans.

Whenever someone wearing a Jets Jersey approaches me, I immediately disclose that I’m from Transcona.
If they have no idea where that is, I knew they aren’t from Winnipeg because I’m pretty sure all Winnipeggers know about Transcona.

This year, after watching the Jets beat the Panthers 3-0, it was no different.
After nodding at a few folks in Jet gear as we made our way out of the arena to our pickup spot, sure enough, a couple of people sporting Jets Jerseys approached us. 

I, of course, immediately introduced myself as being from Transcona, and when he claimed St. Vital, I knew I was talking to a real Winnipegger.

Then, when he said, “Hey if you’re from Transcona, you’ve gotta know the bands that came out of there?”
What a great setup, so I proudly said, “Yeah, my band, The Jury​.”  

However, when he responded, “Never heard of them,​” I was kinda stunned, so I knew it was time to bring out the big guns.

I began with the fact that not only did The Jury release four records, but one of them, “Please Forget Her,” became the #1 Canadian record in Canada.
“Oh and,” I continued with, “We also opened for legends like Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash and played with The Guess Who, BTO, Neil Young, and Burton Cummings,” he said, “Well, them, I’ve heard of.” Bummer! 

It all became a whole lot clearer when ​I discovered that he was more than twenty years younger than me, and the only reason he knew my contemporaries was because they, unlike me, were still famous. It’s a bitch getting old.

GEOS LIFE-LINERS

Even the most minor defect ruins the whole picture.

To strive for perfection is noble; thinking you’ll achieve it is only wishful thinking.

How come a lot of companies haven’t figured out yet that Amazon has made 12-17 shipping days obsolete?

If you’re wondering where America sits politically, you need not look further than the approval ratings for departing Presidents. The top two are Reagan and Clinton. One is a little left, the other a little right.

Why are condo boards always filled with folks who have never been anybody?

What business do you think,  if faced with a difficult decision, would do the right the right thing?

Speaking of rich people, why are the politicians so afraid of them when the rest of us ain’t?

Speaking of politicians, don’t you wish they’d stop talking and start doing?

How much different are second wives? Just askin’.

The only way to win at Ponzi is to get into it early.

For radio to survive, it must do two things: (a) Move product. (b) Be able to prove that it moved the product.

Nothing changes until you change something.

I believe FSU should boycott the Orange Bowl; it would cost the NCAA millions.

The only question that needs to be answered following a disaster is, “What should we do first?”

COMMENTS

W.T.: Great piece, George, but programming can share some blame. You and the eight people in those pictures knew that it was what went on between the records that mattered. When radio more-music’d itself into just being a music service and factored out everything but records and spots, it left itself open to competition. With the coming of the iPod and car CD players, etc., it wasn’t Top 40 vs. MOR or AM vs. F.M. any longer. It became MY music vs. SOMEONE ELSE’S music. And to a lot of people, it was no contest. (Epiphany)
Geo: Yep, W.T. Even when Howard and Rush showed us another way, we still didn’t listen.

Doug Herman: George, your quote from attorney John King caught my eye since John and I have known each other for 50+ years. We were both young guys in the radio biz at KLIN in Lincoln, Nebraska … John was a newsman, I was a jock and a rookie PD. He later worked at Meredith’s WOW in Omaha. So, John was the perfect FCC attorney for both of us. His roots were in radio, so he knew the beast MUCH better than someone whose only exposure to the job was from law school. John kept Jack McCoy and me out of Leavenworth Federal Prison a few times. He looked at some of our promotions before we pitched them to a client station. (Memorable Things)
Geo: John is a great guy, Doug, and also a fantastic Attorney, but what I remember most is his saying, “George, you only need my help if you’re not planning to give the prize away.”

Ron Brandon: Agreed. The answers seem simple enough in retrospect. The solutions, not so much. I am a pessimist. Too many younger generations simply do not know what a radio is. I think it would take an enormous investment of cash to build a successful radio station today, and ROI would be very iffy. (Epiphany)
Geo: The only good news, Ron, is we can all afford to buy a radio station now, but do we want to?

Clark Smidt: “In my opinion, radio can only get back in the game by putting some compelling product on the air. That product not only needs to be local, but it also needs to inspire those it attracts to buy some shit.”It can happen again, even with AM on Digital FM. 1220watx.com (An Epiphany)
Geo: Thanks for the read, Clark.

Radio Geo’s Media Blog is a politically incorrect inside look at Radio, TV, Music, Movies, Books, Social Media, Politics, Religion, and Life, primarily written with men in mind.
For a peek at upcoming Blogs or to see some you may have missed, go to GeorgeJohns.com. On Twitter @GeoOfTheRadio. Sharing and commenting is appreciated.
If you’d like to subscribe, email your address to radiogeo@gmail.com.

As some of you may know, when I was a young lad, I was in a band called The Jury.
The Jury, who had evolved from The Phantoms, were fortunate enough to release four records in the mid-sixties. They all hang on my wall to this day.

Unfortunately, even though The Jury had the #1 Canadian record on the national chart, unless you have worldwide hits like fellow Winnipeggers, The Guess Who, BTO, Burton Cummings, and Neil Young, there ain’t no money in it. (See RPM chart below)

Luckily, while gigging with The Jury, I also had a part-time job at CKY radio, but when they offered me a position as their music director, it put me at a crossroads.
Not being what you would call a great musician and having a child on the way, I knew I would be unable to do both, so I chose broadcasting.

The move to radio, even though it meant giving up on a childhood dream, was a no-brainer because I turned out to be much better at radio than playing a guitar.
Fast forward some twenty years later, and there I am, living large in San Diego as a national radio consultant.

Anyway, while staring out of my office window at the Seals below playing in La Jolla Cove, I received a phone call from Winnipeg saying they were putting together a charity concert starring all the bands from the’60s..

Wow, a band reunion, how cool, and because I hadn’t seen my Jury guys for years, I thought, what the hell, and packed my bags and headed for the Peg.
(See me and the rest of the guys from The Jury hanging out backstage below)

What a great night, and you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Neil Young, Randy Bachman, and Burton Cummings doing a twenty-minute version of “American Woman.”
(Click the link below to see a clip of the concert.)

After hanging out with my guys for a while, I hooked up with Randy and Burton backstage, and they mentioned that they were considering going on tour as Bachman & Cummings.
They claimed they had about an hour and a half of top 10 records, which came from their time together in The Guess Who, Randy’s in BTO, and Burton’s solo stuff.

Fast forward another twenty years, and now I’m backstage at a BTO concert in Fort Lauderdale, talking to Fred Turner and Randy about the good old days in Winnipeg when we all played together. (See right above)
At some point, I say, “Hey Randy, whatever happened to that tour you and Burton were gonna do?

Randy replied, “We were all set until Lenny Kravitz recorded American Woman, and because Burton owns the publishing, he just went back to bed.

GEO’S LIFE-LINERS

When Dave Mathews inducted Willy Nelson into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he talked about when Jimmy Carter’s son got caught smoking pot in the White House. He then said that it was too bad Jimmy hadn’t been reelected ’cause we probably would have been free to smoke dope a lot sooner.” Yeah, Dave, fuck the economy.

Problems can be fixed, but not situations.

To be clear, ladies, trotting down the aisle does not turn conditional love into unconditional love.

If I were to do a new radio format today, I’d create one that the three Johns girls could listen to together. One is a Gen X, and the other two are millennials.

Blonde women earn 7% more; now, how dumb is that?

If ya wanna win, ya gotta keep on fightin’.

Seeing as only 9% of the population would participate in a radio survey, are we sure that they represent the other 91%?

Speaking of radio, I used to aim the marketing at the folks who’d participate in a radio survey. On air, we talked to everybody, hoping that some of them would go into a client’s store and buy some shit.

Interestingly, men are only referred to as Mr., while everyone else is now a Mrs., Miss, Ms, or Mx.

The only people who are free in America are the gangsters; the rest of us are tied up in bureaucracy.

If you haven’t stood on the corner of Portage and Main in Winnipeg during the twelve days of Christmas, you don’t know from cold.

If you can see it, you can be it.

There are seven intellectual gifts but only two artistic ones. You can sing, or you can’t, and you can draw, or you can’t.

Doing things wrong is the only way you learn how to do things right.

The other night, I watched a documentary about David Foster, who, like me, is a Canadian, so I so wanted to like him, but he made it almost impossible.

COMMENTS

David Chesney: Having worked for the largest record company (CBS RECORDS) for over a decade during the time of radio’s flameout, to me, the death was when music was available EVERYWHERE. Up to that point, radio was KING; they had the tunes – PERIOD!  Couple that with getting rid of all the personalities on the radio, add it up, and you have what we have now when we turn on the radio. (An Epiphany)
Geo: Yeah, radio got lazy when we had the music exclusive, David. Then, when Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, and a few others showed us that there was more to radio than music, we still didn’t learn.

Richard Skelley: Great descriptions of Winnipeg and The Guess Who in the Sixties. As a kid, I visited relatives near Selkirk every summer and zealously alternated between CKY and CKRC. A couple of Easter Holiday trips as well, when snow was still on the ground. It was interesting to read the commentary about radio from your contributor, who once worked as a broadcaster in Indiana. Coincidentally, one of the Guess Who’s post-Randy Bachman hits, Sour Suite, referenced the Indianapolis zip code 46201. That’s because Burton Cummings wrote the largely autobiographical lyrics in his Indianapolis hotel room while on tour. (Guess Who)
Geo: So weird, Richard, because when I got into radio, I left Winnipeg and the band scene behind. I eventually ended up in Indy and had no idea that the Guess Who was in 46201. However, now I’m proud that Burton wrote about a town that was very good to me.

The Countdown continues tomorrow with #5 from 2023.

Radio Geo’s Media Blog is a politically incorrect inside look at Radio, TV, Music, Movies, Books, Social Media, Politics, Religion, and Life, primarily written with men in mind.
For a peek at upcoming Blogs or to see some you may have missed, go to GeorgeJohns.com. On Twitter @GeoOfTheRadio. Sharing and commenting is appreciated.
If you’d like to subscribe, email your address to radiogeo@gmail.com.

As I look back, I’m just now realizing that I wasn’t in charge of life; life was in charge of me.
Looking back once again I now realize that I wasn’t very good dream chaser, thankfully, most of them, including some very pretty women, came looking for me. (Pictured below)

Anyway, this is the story about when I first began to lose my innocence.
It began during my second summer in Transcona, where I hoped to spend the summer going to a few dances and hanging out.

However, my father had other plans. He thought it was time for me to become gainfully employed, so I spent the summer hanging out at a service station pumping gas.
Around the same time, I started growing my hair out, James Dean style.
My longer hair didn’t go unnoticed at home so once again I got to hear, “If I buy your clothes, you wear what I want you to wear, and if I pay for your haircuts, you’ll get it cut like I want it cut.”

“Sorry, Dad, ain’t going to do it; I’ll just pump a little more gas and pay for it myself.
That’s me in the photo above, wearing shades and sporting my new James Dean “Do.”

How’s that Sam Cooke song go? “Another Saturday Night, and I Ain’t Got Nobody.”
So there I was on another one of those Saturday nights when unbeknownst to me, my life was about to change big time. 

So there I was, standing outside of the EE Community Club on this about to be a life-changing evening, when a sultry voice from a car that had just pulled up said, “Hey, sweetie, can you come over here for a minute?”
Doing my best, James Dean, I sauntered over and found myself staring through the back window at a young Marilyn Monroe. (See above)

As I stood there just staring at her, she asked if I had a light, and when I mumbled something about not smoking, she smiled and asked if I could get her one.
Within seconds, I was firing her up, and she said, “Hey, you’re kinda cute; what’s your name?

When I told her George, she took hold of my hand, slipped a piece of paper into it, and whispered, “Georgie, my name is Pat; call me sometime.”
As I stood there dumbfounded, the car slowly disappeared into the night.

It took me a few days to work up the courage, but when I finally called her, she asked if I knew what dances were going on.
When I told her that there was one Friday at the Maple Leaf Community Club, she asked if I would like to pick her up.

Luckily, before I could confess that I didn’t have a car and wasn’t even old enough to have a driver’s license, she said taking the bus would be easier than explaining where she lived.

Ok, picture this: a fifteen-year-old punk strolling into the “Mapes” with this voluptuous Marilyn Monroe look-alike on his arm.
Suddenly, I was surrounded by the seniors from TCI who were acting like we all hung out. Hell, I didn’t think they even knew my name, but they sure did that night.

We spent most of the dancing, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she was one of those bad girls my Dad had warned me about.
Being fifteen, I had no idea what you did with these beautiful creatures, but I was eager to learn.

Unfortunately, the only thing I learned from her was how to smoke, which I only did in an attempt to look older.
Thankfully, though, she did make me aware of something I’ve taken advantage of my whole life.

It makes no difference how much money you have, who you are, who your family is, or where you’re from, “It’s he who walks into the room with the best-looking lady in the room on his arm, who owns the room!”
(A few examples are pictured below.)

GEO’S LIFE-LINERS

Once you become a father, you’ll never ever be the same again.

After retiring, one of the toughest things you’ll have to deal with is the realization that you’re not as important as you used to be.

Why does growing old happen so fast?

The best and worst thing I didn’t do was listen to advice.

I remember when radio was always looking for the “new thing.” 

What a young man needs to think about today is what he will say when his grandchildren ask him what he did with his life. Luckily for me, that’s a pretty long story, but unfortunately, because of tender ears, I may have to leave out some of the better parts.

I wonder if my father ever felt disrespected as I do occasionally.

As I try to get things done here in South Florida, I’m reminded of what my tax accountant said years ago, “George, nobody moves to Florida to work harder.”

For thousands of years, men have been held responsible for the well-being of their loved ones which makes stepping aside difficult because it goes against our natural instincts and pisses off mother nature, who doesn’t like to be fucked with.

While binge-watching “House of Cards” a few years ago, I remember thinking how far-fetched it seemed. However, after rewatching it, I realized most of it was probably true.

Does stopping to answer the question, why achieve anything besides slowing you down?

I loved what Dennis Hopper said when he divorced Michelle Philips after only seven days of marriage. “The first six days were great.”

Why doesn’t the government, while trying to come up with a decent health plan,  spend a little time investigating why my recent CT scan cost four thousand, and my brother’s crown replacement cost almost two?

People don’t care about what you know until they need to know what you know.

Jack McCoy once told me that every successful project has a secret. What’s yours?

COMMENTS

Gary Donohue: Well then, the first order of business, CANCEL RATINGS, estimates services. With 100% reach in a market, the only remaining advertiser question will be CPM, just like false flag digital media CTRs, leveling the playing field against the Digital juggernaut.
Second, MEASURE RESPONSE to advertising at the POS, establishing true ROI to any business based on the actual ad schedules day time rates. Prove the quality of the audience reached and responded through an audience universe customer database tied to actual purchases.
Third, CAPITALIZE RATES – integrate supply and demand rates like the stock market. Unlimited inventory due to 100% ownership gives the marketplace control over the rates, NOT a greedy accounting bean counter.
George, financial freedom has always been the lynchpin in the success or failure of a radio show, aka The Prize Catalog. This leads to effective risk-taking in publicity stunts, aka blowing up a phone circuit and having the TV news out to report on it as you beg forgiveness. Unlimited financial freedom paves the way for creative geniuses like George and Reg Johns to deliver compelling entertainment ON REAL LIFE. (AI)
Geo: Great Insights, Mr. Donohue.

Radio Geo’s Media Blog is a politically incorrect inside look at Radio, TV, Music, Movies, Books, Social Media, Politics, Religion, and Life, primarily written with men in mind.
For a peek at upcoming Blogs or to see some you may have missed, go to GeorgeJohns.com. On Twitter @GeoOfTheRadio. Sharing and commenting is appreciated.
If you’d like to subscribe, email your address to radiogeo@gmail.com.