WTMJ's Rob Hart is a bit of an anomaly in the radio world. A former intern, he bypassed the small markets and jumped right in at the state's largest AM station. Just a year out of college, he still works radio's crazy hours, even during the prestigious morning drive time. But Hart is nothing if not modest. Talking with him, one gets the sense that this radio history buff feels a little out of place among industry giants like Gordon Hinckley.
Truly one of those guys who's "just happy to be there," Hart is also insightful and witty, traits that he is increasingly free to display on the air. We caught up with Hart recently in this latest edition of Milwaukee Talks.
OMC: You must be the youngest reporter at WTMJ, right?
RH: Yeah, I'm 22.
OMC: You're probably also the youngest reporter that's been here in a long time.
RH: I don't know about that. I don't know how old people were when they started here. I think (John) Jaegler was 25.
OMC: Yeah, but 25 indicates that you may have started somewhere else, whereas most people right out of college don't start in a major market like Milwaukee. Does that ever inspire awe in your day-to-day activities?
RH: I go through great pains to be deliberately pessimistic. I think the moment it gets to my head is when it will all fall apart.
I started out as an intern the summer between my sophomore and junior years at Marquette. I was working on the old morning show with Robb Edwards and Mark Reardon and Cheri Preston. They also had a producer shift that was open Saturday and Sunday nights. I ran the board during Brewers games and talk shows, and I did a two-minute on the air cut in with local news. Essentially, I was working five days a week, getting up at 3 a.m. Monday through Friday and working late nights, 6 p.m. to midnight on Saturdays and Sundays. It worked out very well, because I had a roommate at the time, and there was some heavy drama there. It was always a very convenient way to get out of things.
OMC: Did you keep working at the station during the school year?
RH: Yeah, but the internship was over, so I just worked Saturday and Sunday nights. Every now and then, they'd have me fill in on a weekday, doing news. In March 2001, there was a huge staff turnover. Bob Reddin, a nighttime reporter, left. Cheri Preston got hired by ABC in New York. Jerry Hudson, who was the old nighttime host here, was fired and they moved Mark Reardon off the morning show on to the nighttime talk show. So, now you had three people leave the news department in two months. Jon Byman got lifted up to full time, and I came in to do Thursday night and Friday night as a news person. Over the next year, I started doing more weeknights news shifts and was taken off weekends entirely.
OMC: Were you still in college at this point?
RH: It was toward the end of my junior year. I graduated in May 2002.
OMC: After you graduated, was this job just waiting for you?
RH: It took a while. I was looking for other places to go. In fact, I turned down a morning news anchor position in Dubuque, Iowa. I looked around to see what else was out there, and asked WMTJ to give me a reason to stay. So they told me they'd make me full time within a year. By the time October rolled around, they offered it to me. So here I am.
OMC: But it's highly irregular to get your start in Milwaukee. Most people do work in a place like Dubuque first.
RH: It is a little weird in the sense that I haven't been fired ... yet. It hasn't been traditional, so my perspective is awfully skewed. I have the fear that this is the best it will ever be. Maybe the easy part happened in the beginning and the hard part will be the rest of my life.
OMC: You've worked some pretty weird shifts at WTMJ, including some morning show hours, right?
RH: I do the morning show at least once a week, sometimes twice. I do some weekend morning shows. I fill in on the Green House. I fill in on middays.
OMC: Is it hard to have social life when you're maintaining the hours of a firefighter or emergency room doctor?
RH: It's normal for me, but I wouldn't say so much for my girlfriend, Stephanie. She works 9 to 5, and to stay up until midnight when I get home is a real sacrifice. I hang out with the people I work with. Who doesn't?
OMC: You're quite modest, but you are working on the highest-rated morning show in the state. Where do you go from here?
RH: I don't know. I keep saying I'm going to ride this train as far as it will go. Maybe it leads out of the business. I look at people like Gordon Hinckley, who came here from Wisconsin Rapids in 1949 and retired here in 2001. I'd like to come here and leave as an institution. Or I could come here and leave after a couple of years. I did grow up in Chicago, though. I wouldn't mind moving back there and doing radio there. I'll see where it can go. I honestly didn't see myself doing this three years ago.
OMC: You're somewhat of a radio history buff. You can rattle off the history of Milwaukee radio rather impressively.
RH: I'm a geek. I've always been a trivia dork, but I got into radio because of the history of the business. I originally wanted to do TV. Marquette has a campus TV station, but I wasn't good at it. I was really stiff on the air, always looking at myself in the monitor. I looked very shifty. And they made us wear makeup, so I looked like Ricardo Montalban. With radio, I just like the idea that I can sit behind a microphone and perform.
OMC: You have a somewhat anonymous job, I suppose, but do people recognize your voice?
RH: It hasn't happened yet, and to be honest, I'm happy.
OMC: Are people at least recognizing your name?
RH: Here and there. I was at Marquette for the Kansas game, and someone said, 'Hey, you're the Rob Hart on WTMJ.' Yeah, I suppose I am.
OMC: Rob Hart is a good radio name. Did you ever think of using a pseudonym like some of your colleagues?
RH: I was thinking of Moishe Weinstein. I think that would work out well.
OMC: What do you do outside of radio? I know you're a big fan of "The Simpsons."
RH: Oh great, this is going to read like a carbon-copy of your Gene Mueller interview.
OMC: That's OK, he's a good person to emulate.
RH: I like his attitude about things and the mere fact that he's funny in an intelligent sort of way. You can tell his a well-read guy.
OMC: Who else to you admire at the station?
RH: I also respect Mark Reardon. He can be a bastard at times, but it's usually because he's right. If anyone here has helped me in my professional growth, it's him. And Phil Cianciola, because he taught me how to be a human being on the air.
OMC: Your station is considered fairly conservative. Do your politics jive with those of the station?
RH: (The station delivers) entertainment. That's the bottom line. If you're going to use your political beliefs as a prism through which you're going to focus everything, you're not going to have a lot of friends. You're not going to watch a lot of TV. You're not going to do anything. If you only hang out with conservatives, you're going to cut off a lot of other people. But when you're working in the Top 40 format, you love Nelly. You're never going to say you hate those songs. Your tastes have to reflect your audience's, and over the last 10 years, AM talk radio has cultivated a rather conservative following. That's not to say liberal talk radio would fail, but nothing succeeds like success. It would have to be so huge and make a dent that it would make program directors take notice.
(Talk radio) is never about politics. I've seen Charlie Sykes, Jeff Wagner and Mark Reardon put their shows together and not once have they said, 'How am I going to advance an ideology?' It's what's entertaining (that they talk about).
OMC: How will the AM radio medium remain competitive in the next decade?
RH: It's 2003, and this station is still number one in overall audience and in adults 25 to 54. There are about a dozen FM stations with whom we compete, and we're still ahead.
OMC: So why is that? Because of the content?
RH: Absolutely. You're going to see that people like to have a personality on the radio. There's a reason why Howard Stern fans are so fanatical. Look at Charlie Sykes. Either people are extremely loyal and listen to him or people hate him and listen to him.
{INSERT_RELATED}OMC: If you could do anything at WTMJ, what would you do?
RH: I grew up listening to the Loop in Chicago. I wanted to be the newsman/personality. Can be smart, can do news. Ideally, I'd like to do what Phil (Cianciola) does.
OMC: Is there room for two Phils?
RH: We'll see (laughing).
OMC: What else do you do in your life?
RH: I try to golf. I think one of life's great stress relievers is the driving range. I try to jog everyday. It gets a lot easier in the summer. What's the point in going outside when it's 20 degrees?
OMC: Yeah, that's when you should stay at home, storing your energy.
RH: Like a bear.
OMC: Does your sense of humor ever get to come out on the air?
RH: More and more. You have to find times when it's appropriate.
OMC: As a Chicagoan, what do you like about Milwaukee?
RH: I'm fiercely protective of this city. I do feel like, as the oldest child in my family, I discovered Milwaukee, so I talk it up when I'm at home. I really enjoy the size. Everything is really near by. In Chicago, I had to take the train to school.
OMC: Where are your favorite places to hang out?
RH: Naming your favorite bar is like naming your favorite child. The BBC, I like that place a lot. I also like Bryant's. Drinks in very large glasses, some of which are on fire. It's a very fun place to go.
OMC: So Rob, is life good?
RH: I hope I don't come off as sounding depressed. I hope in five years it doesn't look that way, when I'm fired and living out of my car.
OMC: Well, you do seem a tiny bit uncomfortable in this high-profile role you've assumed. How long do you have to do this before you can accept that fact that you deserve to be where you are?
RH: It's a job, just as much as anything else. I go into work, go home and try to do the best I can. I am very, very happy that I have a job in a field that I love very much. Sitting around at a station that's been here for 75 years, I can talk to Gordon Hinckley, like as a colleague. That blows me away. Mike Gousha said hi to me in the hall the other day. It's the little things. For so long, I've put these people on a pedestal, but we're all equals, and we all go to the bathroom in the same place. Hey, I've peed next to Jonathan Greene.
Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.
Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.
Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.
