PUSH TO SHOVE, A REVOLUTIONARYHe was instrumental in adding two formats to the dial, and in developing a system that will change the way ratings in Canada are calculated. But, to most, John Hayes is known as one thing: The Man Who Fired Howard Stern - twiceBy GRANT ROBERTSON
Globe & Mail
MEDIA REPORTERJuly 25, 2008
Some of the best advice John Hayes ever got in radio came from a small sign that hung inside a station he worked at early in his career. It read: Play the hits, talk dirty, give out free money. That was the easy part; unfortunately not everything in the industry always ran so smoothly.
As he prepares to leave as president of Corus Entertainment Inc.'s radio division this summer, after seven years of restructuring that business, Mr. Hayes is being credited with helping revolutionize the industry, both in Canada and the United States.
He assisted in bringing two new formats to the dial - new country in the 1980s and adult contemporary in the 1970s. More recently, radio insiders say he has been the driving force behind a shift that will take place this fall in the way ratings are calculated in Canada.
Despite those accolades, there is one part of his legacy Mr. Hayes knows he'll never live down.
It's the part that never ran smoothly - his notorious run-ins with Howard Stern during his days as the controversial shock jock's boss at WNBC in New York.
Tales of how Corus boosted revenue at its radio operations after Mr. Hayes was brought in to whip the division into shape may not make scintillating conversation at dinner parties. But people seem to love a good Howard story.
Like the time back in 1985 when Mr. Hayes was managing WNBC and he looked up from his desk to find Mr. Stern trying to break down his office door - live on air.
"Howard had this wireless mic, and he liked to rag on the managers," Mr. Hayes recalls. "So I'm sitting in my office talking on the phone and Howard comes to the door and starts pounding on it. So I put the phone down and go unlock the door a crack, and I'm saying 'Howard, not now! Not now!' Then he starts pushing on the door and I didn't like that, so I push him out and he pushes back. And I push back."
Now immortalized in Mr. Stern's book, a subsequent movie and on the Internet, the shoving match, as it has been coined, and the pair's fractious relationship have since taken on mythic proportions - along with Mr. Stern's on-air nickname for his former boss: the Incubus.
When NBC higher-ups eventually decided they'd had enough, Mr. Hayes officially became known as The Man Who Fired Howard Stern, one of the most successful personalities in radio. "I try to point out that it wasn't really like that, word came from above," he says. "But it is what it is."
As legacies go, it's a red herring. At 58, his true impact on the business is more subtle, but far more significant. When Mr. Hayes departs Corus at the end of August, one of his biggest effects will kick in only a few weeks later.
Starting in September, Canada's radio sector will adopt a new system for tracking audience numbers that Mr. Hayes advocated for years. Pager-like devices, worn by randomly selected listeners, will be used to electronically track tuning habits. These devices will record which stations are heard throughout the day and the data will be crunched to generate ratings.
It may not sound like much, but the pagers represent a remarkable leap forward. Until now, the industry has grudgingly relied on a system of antiquated surveys filled out by volunteer listeners in an attempt to extrapolate market data. It was a process fraught with problems, since advertisers often questioned the accuracy, while station managers lived in fear that a few rogue responses could sink them.
"It's a pretty dramatic change," says Hugh Dow, president of the ad buying firm M2 Universal. "It is what radio needed, and it came with significant costs to the industry. John had to rally the rest of his counterparts at other radio groups to really steer it through. He was the force behind it."
Mr. Hayes hasn't decided what he'll do after Corus. Having completed the restructuring of its stations, a few weeks ago he told John Cassaday, the company's chief executive officer, that he was ready to move on. He may return to his roots and run his own operation - perhaps online. "I've started thinking about what I want to do for the last hurrah, if anything," he says.
The irony in leaving now, is that he won't be around when the first batch of electronic ratings come on stream in December. "I just hope John is somewhere that we can shoot him the first official numbers," says Jim MacLeod, president of BBM Canada, which will operate the new system.
Mr. Hayes was recruited to Canada when Corus needed someone to tidy up the radio division, following a period when it expanded rapidly to more than 50 stations, from 11, through several acquisitions.
His task involved deep cuts - including jobs - but the plan paid off. Since 2004, revenue at Corus Radio has grown 21 per cent to $275-million, outpaced only by its specialty TV division, which grew by a third to $436-million.
The role of clean-up man is fitting for someone who got into radio after quitting his job as a garbage collector in Buffalo. But his reputation as a turnaround artist was forged after he revived several money-losing stations by devising new formats on the dial.
It began in 1978 when he and a few executives at NBC took a struggling San Francisco station and switched the play list exclusively to soft rock. It would become the first adult contemporary format in the business, rising to No. 3 from No. 30 in a matter of months.
A decade later, Mr. Hayes pulled off a similar trick, taking a sleepy rock station in Dallas and flooding it with young country stars. At the time, no one else had thought of this, including the other stations in Dallas that were still dominated by Willie Nelson and Hank Williams. The station soon cracked the top five, poking fun at the banjo playing yokels across town. The new country format soon spread across the industry.
But Mr. Hayes knows his role as Howard Stern's much-maligned boss is probably the one he'll be remembered for. Of course, it doesn't help that when Corus cancelled Mr. Stern's show in Toronto in 2001, after complaints about lewd conduct on air, it was their new radio president, Mr. Hayes, who presided over the decision. It makes him the only man in radio to have fired the shock jock twice, in two countries.
He holds no grudges though. Looking back on that bizarre shoving match with Mr. Stern, he knows it was good for ratings. "It was just such great, funny radio," he says. And WNBC didn't even have to give out any free money that day.
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