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Joe Connolly: Making Radio Waves

Joe Connolly knows what the worst thing in the radio business is: when listeners turn the dial.

“Radio is show biz. If you’re boring, people are not going to listen,” he says. But they listen to Joe, whose one-minute business reports on WCBS radio are one of the station’s longest running and most popular features.

On a recent morning, it was only 8:30, but Joe had arrived at his Connecticut shoreline studio at 4 a.m. to prepare for the day’s seven one-minute broadcasts which air weekdays every half an hour from 5:55 a.m. to 8:55 p.m.

He was unsatisfied with a snapper, the closing item on broadcast earlier that morning. He didn’t think it was strong enough.

“I like to end on something positive,” he says.

Joe can fit as many as six items into the broadcast, sometimes admitting that he can go 10 or 15 seconds over.

“People say it seems like a couple of minutes,” he says

He uses new information as the morning progresses for different potential audiences.

“Teachers go to work early, so that’s 6 a.m., and blue-collar workers getting to their jobs,” he explains. “By 7:05 a.m. it can be marketing and advertising people.

He will not substitute an item he finds less relevant, however, just to have something new in the broadcast.

“I’d rather repeat than use a story that’s less significant,” he says.

Joe points to a painting on the wall of lower Manhattan. He looks at the windows of the high-rise apartments and thinks of himself talking to a single person behind one of the windows. Sometimes, he adds, he thinks about someone listening as they are driving on the Merit Parkway.

“I ask myself what does that person want to know. I am always thinking about who is listening and I talk to that one person,” he says. “What is useful to that person; what is worth knowing, worth repeating.”

Business reporters, Joe says, often concentrate on Wall Street news. But, he points out that most people don’t work on Wall Street.

“The Deutsche mark, bond rates, that’s not really interesting on radio. Those are print stories,” he says. “My goal is to give a businessman something they can say in a meeting today.”

Joe knew he wanted to be in radio by the time he was seven years old. He had already built a make-believe studio at his home in Massachusetts where he pretended to be a disc jockey and even interrupted the music occasionally to give a new bulletin.

“I was blessed by knowing what I wanted to do at an early age,” he says.

He was so much of a regular at radio stations by his teen years that when he got his driver’s license at 16, he would call local late-night disc jockeys to ask if they would like him to bring over coffee and donuts.

When he was still a student at the University of Massachusetts, he worked weekends at local stations. He made tapes and sent them to program directors.

“If they replied at all, they said you’re not ready yet,” he recalls. Undiscouraged, two or three months later, he would send another tape and ask if it was better.

He went to work at radio stations after college, not only broadcasting, but writing commercials. He remembers one he was very proud of for a local furniture store, until the station manager criticized his copy writing.

“Savings begin with a capital S means absolutely nothing,” the boss said. “What you want to say is couches are on sale!”

Joe got first big break in the New York City market by phoning in reports to WCBS radio, though he was not a staffer. He says the idea came from someone whom he saw phoning in reports to WABC.

His first real assignment from WCBS came when they asked him to be a night time street reporter in Manhattan at Thanksgiving. He says if you ask broadcasters when they got their first break, a lot of them will say it was at Christmas, Thanksgiving, or the Fourth of July, when the regular staff wanted a day off.

Joe has covered Connecticut politics in Hartford; he worked in Washington and New York, for both RKO, where he was managing editor, and CBS radio. He remembers when he started covering the White House, one of the assignments he had was to be on hand when Ronald and Nancy Regan returned by helicopter from a weekend at Camp David in case the President had anything to say to the press.

Joe knew the best way to get a comment from Reagan: stand next to Helen Thomas, in those days the dean of White House correspondents. If Reagan had anything to say, Joe explains, he would say it to Thomas.

“I wanted to be as near as I could so I would get it on the microphone,” Joe recalls.

To this day, Joe actively focuses on the advice he got from legendary Washington disc jockey Eddie Gallaher; “Connolly, always remember one thing: leave them wanting a little more.”

When Joe returned to WCBS in New York he was anchoring newscasts but switched to the business reports for which he has become famous when, as he describes it, “the business guy got sick.”

In addition to the radio reports every weekday, Joe does a longer daily report on small business. All that broadcasting adds up to some 40 radio programs a week. He also does a weekly 15-minute business video, as well as various speaking engagements.

When he is not broadcasting, Joe spends his time in the office chasing down information for upcoming programs and condensing the interesting points to make them comprehensible in a one-minute program.

He is always eager to give advice to young people, and not only those starting out in broadcasting. A recent morning report featured an item on the need for skilled car mechanics.

“We still need car mechanics; if someone has a son or a daughter with no career plans, that could be a good high-tech job,” he says.

He urges young people to seek out internships and not to be discouraged, if it turns out the field is not for them.

“Keep trying; if you don’t find it interesting, move on to something else,” he says. And he makes a distinction between a hobby and a job. “A hobby is your bliss. A job is what you are good at, what you find meaning in,” he says.

Joe never had the urge to move from radio to television broadcasting.

“On television, you get one, maybe two chances to do a report, he says. “Radio is like baseball; there’s always another chance at the plate.”