DK: You also have a recording studio too

JB: Yeah, I have a full audio and video recording studio here

DK: When did you introduce that?

JB: I’ve had a studio all my life. I sort of got into radio by doing-I had a studio at my house. I actually got into radio with an illegal radio station when I was a kid, a little ten watt on 89.3 in Milwaukee so I was in the educational band so nobody got mad at us. Back then nobody cared about FM it was like “oh, FM, nobody listens to that”

DK: It was such an uncharted territory too

JB: See that’s why I’m at the beginning and end of all the technologies like I saw the end of FM radio as we no it. I mean, it’s turned into nothing; it’s satellite radio and Ipods now.

DK: What do you think about XM (well, you kind of just said that) but what do you think of satellite radio?
JB: I think satellite is just another, I mean, HD radio is available and stations aren’t even really doing that yet. You probably don’t even know what HD radio is. Are you familiar with it?

DK: Not too much, no

JB: See the business has done a terrible job in something that they haven’t even told anybody about. It’s like High Definition television, like channel 5 let’s say, has the ability to put up to six TV stations on digital on that frequency. So like channel 5 has got their main channel which is their High Definition or standard definition material. Then they’ve got 5-1 which is a weather channel. Like channel 11 has their main channel then they’ve got HD 11-1 which is their HD channel, 11-2 which is their standard definition rebroadcast and they have an 11-3 which is like a creative channel. The thing is our choices are getting like more and more. But nobody like radio hasn’t promoted the fact that “oh, we can have up to three different radio stations on that frequency now” (of course you have to have a digital radio)

DK: Unfortunately it always boils down to the end product that people have to buy new equipment.

JB: And the way I look at it, they don’t want to pay for things, do you want to pay for radio? I think satellite radio is just another attempt to try to save radio, I don’t know how it’s going to do. They’ve got two great test cases with Oprah and Howard Stern making 55 Million dollars each.

DK: Plus I think music is so much more diversified, I think people want to hear more variety too

JB: I think all the programmers don’t know what they’re doing because they tend to narrow cast a lot. Of course, I do too, I try to stay within a certain genre of music, more of modern rock, more of the modern artists, ya know. On the last show, I played a lot of old videos from Cheap Trick and AC/DC, it’s amazing how people like that stuff too.

DK: At least with Cheap Trick, there’s a lot of history that people here can appreciate too

JB: I wish I had a 24 hour TV channel because I think what MTV has done to the television world with the dumming down of whatever product that they thought they had and with these stupid reality shows that are all fake to begin with these stupid situations; they’re encouraging bad behavior of the young kids. It used to be videos were complained about “oh look at all that violence”

DK: I won’t let my son watch it when he gets old enough

JB: Well, it’s going to be hard because it’s everywhere

DK: It’s everywhere (said at the same time)

JB: And it’s on the palm of their hand with their phones. So, I think the modern generation doesn’t care about radio; they don’t watch television like they used to. In fact, I don’t think anybody watches TV like they used to. Television used to be something important to do like, “oh we gotta be home at 7 o’clock for All in the Family”. Now nobody cares, it’s like “eh, if I don’t see it, it will be on as a rerun”. Even news channels redo the same news casts every 30-40 minutes, it’s like “We just heard that story”. I mean how many more times do they have to redo the same stuff? And I gotta tell you my viewers get mad… there’s a brand new band from Detroit, The Vacancies and in Detroit, they can’t even get airplay so I played their video out of the blue and they were so excited they came in and we did an interview with them. We played their video a week or two later again and viewers go “why are you playing them again?” I go, “I think I like to play them because I want to make sure these new bands get noticed somewhere”.

I think we were one of the first to play Fall Out Boy way back when and a few other local bands and they go on to become famous.And who knows if a little show helps or there’s plenty of shows around too that are doing videos, but it’s all about exposure getting your product on radio or TV It’s just so important. The radio stations, they take local music and throw it on a Sunday night at their worst time slot at 10 O’clock.

DK: I know

JB: I mean, wait a minute, this band could be played a couple times during the week, ya know on an afternoon drive or wherever you want to put it, but why stick it in one little corner so we can hear Matchbox 20 again. Not that there’s anything wrong with Matchbox 20 but these radio people seem to think that if it doesn’t test well, it doesn’t deserve to be on the radio.

DK: Kind of a shame that it boils down to that but that’s what it has evolved to be

JB: Remember the golden age of the Loop here in town, I mean that was like a radio station that was a one owner station. They didn’t own five stations in town. Remember how they were in competition with another station? Now they’re in the same hallway, next to each other.

DK: I’m trying to think of what that other station was

JB: WMET

DK: WMET, yes!

JB: WMET and the Loop, yeah, it was an exciting time to listen to radio because you didn’t know what was going to happen, it was always something new every day. It’s not like right now oh the news is at this time, there’s going to be a commercial after this, they’re going to have a stupid, on shuffle now…

DK: Not to mention it seems like they all conspire to play commercials at the same times

JB: Well, yeah if I’m an advertiser and you’re running 10 minutes of commercials and I’m the first or second or middle spot; you’re not going to remember it. All this clutter, people don’t listen, they turn the radio down or change the channel. I guess then they go to XM or something. The problem with those are, it’s like listening to a computer and it’s very narrowcast. Well, we’ve got the 60’s channel, 1975 channel and it’s like all that music sometimes sounds better when it’s blended together with some newer music, it’s all programmed with some thought behind it. If the thought is only “oh that’s going to sound good after this song” then that is enough thought.

DK: By chance you don’t happen to know how many bands that you’ve interviewed

JB: Go on my website (www.jbtvonline.com) you can see a lot of them listed

DK: Have there been any performers that you’ve interviewed that have surprised you in any way?

JB: Ya know all the bands seem to respect when they come into our facility, we haven’t had any problems. I mean the two bands I thought I’d have the most problem with John Lydon when he came here. He did an interview with WXRT and I guess he walked out of their interview early. He came here an hour and a half earlier than he was supposed to; he just showed up. And Armando who shows people through the studio before they come into my studio. He says: “I don’t want to see the studio; I’m here to do one fucking question and that’s it”. We had no cameraman so I had to run my own camera and he stayed for like 90 minutes and he just talked because we didn’t ask any of the stuff that he’s so used to being asked. You just let him talk.
Then we had Oasis in and they walked out because I said, “let’s play some of the concert we just shot from the Metro” and they said “Well, we don’t want to see any of that crap”. Well, it was your music (laughs) and at that show and he sat down on the stage in between when the guitar solos are going like, looking at his watch like, “how much more boring can it get”? I cut around that incidentally cuz they sounded good, there was nothing wrong with them.

DK: Try to make them look as good as you can

JB: Yeah, I don’t want anyone look bad, I want them to look great on TV and sound great. I am trying to think of any others; I mean we had the Jim Rose Circus Side Show in and I had a lot of X-Rated stuff that I could never put on TV. He did a penis thing that’s like “OH GOD”, “Here I can make a hamburger”, “Ok Jim, I don’t think we can air this….”. And then we thought the studio would be burned down because the one guy he put 100 firecrackers on him and he like lit them and were seeing sparks flying and thinking “This is the end of JBTV”. So those were some of the more wild ones but everything’s been really good we’ve had a very good time here.

We’ve had a lot of really great performances here in the studio like Material Issue where they had a problem singing a Christmas song; he never finished it. Jim Ellison, Jeff Buckley played here, Dave Matthews Band one of the first TV things was here and a live performance here in the studio.

Ya know, Flaming Lips played here, Jewel… there’s hundreds of them and it’s just exciting to have artists come in and just talk to them. Because I don’t prepare to do an interview I don’t want to know anything about them. I know you guys are like experts on every artist, you know all the background and everything at your Guide. But for me I’d rather not know as much because it tends to taint… you know what I’m saying. Like when we had Sean Lennon in, we did the whole interview and at the end he says “You didn’t ask about my father at all” (laughs) and he says like “I could never go through an interview like in the first 30 seconds with the question so how was it growing up with your father John?” (laughs)

DK: Yeah, I also try to tend to avoid the obvious questions where I can especially with the larger performers. It’s like, cut them some slack, they’re cutting you slack by allotting time for you, try and come up with some fresh questions that will at least make it more enjoyable for them too.

JB: Remember Moby? There was a time when MTV would not play Moby and he went on JBTV and said “I grew up with this channel and they won’t even play me now”. He had that song “Revolver”, they made him re-edit it three times and so I said, “I’ll play your song, how do you want to play it”? “Oh, if I could get the original one” – “each time I reach for my revolver and blow them all away” I think was the lyric; they made him change all those lyrics. Re-record the song, redo the video, so I took the original CD cuz it was an old song, it’s not even his song, ya know? I took the original CD and lined it up with the video we had and he was very happy about that. After that interview and he complained about MTV, MTV gave him a TV show, he had a show on MTV for a while. So, I think sometimes they have to be persuaded that an artist is worthy. Even Joey Ramone that MTV wasn’t playing their stuff. I think it was the song “I Don’t Want to Grow Up” I think that’s the one. He had the nice animation and they said it was too racy for MTV.

DK: And now look at all the animation that’s going on now

JB: I know! It’s a double standard plus the stuff that they were playing was like, ya know… so. I don’t like censorship at all, I hate it, I hate when I have to censor a video. That’s what I really love about public access and I guess pay radio like satellite services cuz until the FCC changes it, their going to be able to play uncensored songs and to me that is the way you should be hearing the music. I don’t like rap music at all, but I don’t like the fact that they have to censor it. If I am going to listen to it, I want to hear it the way it was recorded

DK: As the artist intended

JB: Yeah, ya know. I don’t think Government or anybody should be censoring this on these areas. I mean, music is one of the free expressions left (I thought) (laughs)

DK: Have you ever had any trouble coming up with questions for a performer?

JB: No I sort of play every interview by whatever happens in the studio and I’ll listen to what their saying and I try to put my little points in. I’m not really a good interviewer; I don’t think I’d be a good… like Tom Snyder (laughs) when he had the late night shows. There was another guy from WOR in NY for a while and we were on after I forgot his name now darn, he was a great guy (he broke They Must Be Giants) and I had him on the show right after it. He was an older guy, but you probably never saw it… I’ll remember it probably two hours from now. Anyhow, when we were on WOR it was great because we had national exposure. See there was a time when cable first came out you could get WGN throughout the whole country, you could get KTLA (from Los Angeles) throughout the country and you could get WOR (from NY) throughout the country in your hotel rooms anytime you traveled cuz cable was new everyplace else but in Chicago. So, it was great to watch news from KTLA in Los Angeles, I think it is just interesting, we can’t do that anymore, they’ve restricted us now. The cable companies want every cent they can get “we want a million dollars to be on our channel” Do you remember those days?

DK: Not the news channels…

JB: Well TBS used to have a great show on Saturday nights called “Up All Night” or something like that?

DK: The name sounds familiar

JB: It was like a music video show and I’m going “Oh that’s great!” It didn’t last long because they figured (and MTV figured this out too) 30 minute programs, no matter what they are, get better ratings than music videos – hands down.

DK: Why is that?

JB: Because music videos are like mini movies, once you see a movie, how many times do you want to see the same movie? You may watch it one or two more times, but after that it’s really old. Music videos get so overexposed on the music channels back when MTV did play music it was virtually ever 30-40 minutes you’d see the same video again. It was like “Ok, we just saw that video” and then they’re talking to the artist in another show which we just saw the video again and then they’re on Beavis and Butthead and there’s the video again because they have a synergy between all their shows to break an artist, ya know? You tend to burn out an artist verses trying to help them. So, you initially help them and then it burns them out faster. Like Barenaked Ladies we were the first to play them in the US and I think when they got on that one commercial, it’s like “Shut up now” I mean, you could take a great band and if they’re on TV and radio every hour, you don’t want to hear it anymore.

DK: Peoples minds close quick when it gets forced down your throat

JB: Exactly

DK: How can we as fans help keep JBTV alive?

JB: I don’t know, maybe if they all sent in $10.00 each (laughs) but I don’t know because it’s hard to ask the viewers because most of our viewers don’t have money; they’re all working two and three jobs. All the viewers I’ve talked to tend to cuz we’re still on the broadcast TV station WJYS that you can get on real TV. A lot of people still don’t have cable because of the $100.00 per month fees. But being on broadcast is a bit of a plus

DK: Now that we’re on the 20 year mark for JBTV do you have any plans to celebrate this year?

JB: No

DK: You should!

JB: Let’s put it this way Oprah and I have been on TV the same amount of time in Chicago. Oprah’s made $50 Million dollars, wait a minute; she’s made more than that, right? And I’ve made nothing. And she’s not in high definition and we are

DK: Well you’ve got something on her then

JB: Yeah, we don’t make money but I’m having a lot of fun doing what I do and she makes a ton of money and I am sure she has fun doing what she does, but she’s not in high definition (laughs)

DK: What are your plans now with JBTV over the next few years?

JB: Well, it’s getting harder and harder to keep a show on the air. The FCC has just made a rule that all shows have to be closed captioned which started the first of this year. I’m trying to get a waiver on it, but looking at the FCC, much like with Howard Stern the FCC doesn’t have much room to do much of anything. They make a rule and you have to follow it and the rule is for a 60 minute show or a 30 minute show or any music video show you have to have closed captioning now; where the little titles come up saying what they’re singing, what their talking about. It’s going to add like $500-$1,000 on every show and I don’t spend that much doing the show. It’s a new FCC rule that is pretty much making it harder and harder and more expensive for anybody on a local level to do anything now to get on TV. I think the Government wants to have transcripts of what is being broadcast is what their goal is. I think it is probably the same way radio used to be before they had digital you know you didn’t know what they were playing; now you can see it on the radio. Now playing Elton John and that is a coding so somebody had to code that and I think that was probably another rule that somebody made. So that is a big thing and airtime, I mean, I am on a religious TV station and the airtime for that is really expensive and I’m paying for it one way or another with no commercials it’s very difficult. I’d love to be on channel 5, 7 or channel 2 or channel 50 now that they have no programming left. But see those stations only care about their dollar figure. That’s why these paid info shows are so popular because for a couple thousand dollars for the 30 minutes of airtime it doesn’t matter to them, they need to be on TV, it’s all about exposure. That is where the I pods are going to help because it allows a way to avoid the high cost but you’re on TV and you’re hitting a generation that doesn’t watch TV anymore.

DK: Do you think you’d make that kind of move?

JB: I already have

DK: I meant all the way

JB: 100%? I don’t know. I still like broadcast. There’s something about being on broadcast TV to me that is just really cool. It’s like being on radio, if you’ve been on radio, there’s something about being on a radio station when you’ve got the microphone and the equipment and you’ve got the feedback watching the phone lines. You’re playing music and just knowing that you’re affecting all these people out there and playing good music for them that reaches everybody in 100 different ways.

DK: Another question for you… Do you think you would ever retire and if so would you pass the torch on to a new host?

JB: Well, the problem is I do everything, I edit the show, I dub the show, I do the interview, it’s sort of a one man production company in a lot of ways. I’ve got Armando and Paul and Tim and Carol and Ryan and a few other people that help on the show, but it’s pretty much I’m here all alone at night working on editing it, putting it together and shipping it out. I don’t know who would do all that, ya know?

DK: Well, that is definitely a major undertaking that you do and a major sacrifice that we all definitely appreciate

JB: Well that’s what I care about, ya know. I’ve lost girlfriends over the show. “Do you care more about the show or me”! Well, I’ve gotta get the show done, it’s going to take two days to edit. (laughs) But, I think you’ve gotta love anything you’re doing whether you’re working at a magazine or publication or whatever; you gotta love doing it. Because if you’re doing something you don’t want to be doing, why bother?

DK: I can totally relate, the Chicago Music Guide is exactly what I love doing

JB: Exactly, you’re doing the Chicago Music Guide, it’s a big scene as you know and there are new bands every day. We’re going to be helping out Team Rockit, have you heard of them?

DK: Definitely

JB: Yeah, they’re going to be shooting a video here next week.

DK: In fact, Joe Sanzeri used to be in a band called Maelstrom which I knew way back in the day.

JB: Wow, you see, history. Did you go to one of their shows?

DK: A number of their shows, Joe and his brother Nick are incredibly talented musicians and I’ve always wanted to see them make it, they deserve it

JB: Yeah, and you go “Here is a band that has potential and they never had a video or exposure and then they ended up being something else.” But at least they’re still doing what they love doing

DK: True! Well, I’d like to thank you for this very cool interview and most certainly, your time also. It’s definitely appreciated!

JB: Thank you for having me! Take care

DK: You too!!

Website
www.jbtvonline.com