News article on Midwestern's Chris Warren

[Milk]

https://www.elkrapidsnews.com/

Imagine you’re a young piano student in the late 1940s. Your instructor has arranged for you and fellow students to play live over the airwaves of Traverse City radio station WTCM. It’s your turn at the ivories, and you begin struggling through Ferde Grofé’s “Grand Canyon Suite.”

All of a sudden, the door to the studio swings open. A man you’ve never seen before slides onto the piano bench — nearly pushing you off — and says, “This is how you play the ‘Grand Canyon Suite.’” It’s Grofé, himself, and everyone’s treated to a mini concert by the master composer.

That kind of delightful radio history fascinates 1988 Elk Rapids High School graduate Chris Warren. “Grofé was listening to the station driving through town to teach at Interlochen Arts Academy,” Warren explained. “He heard this kid butchering his music and stopped at a gas station to ask where the radio station was originating. They pointed him here.”

“Here” is the iconic WTCM building in downtown Traverse City where, as general manager, Warren oversees Midwestern Broadcasting, its ten radio stations and 50 employees. “I desperately want to preserve this building,” he said from his office situated behind one of the original classic glass block windows that flank the station’s Front Street entrance. “This building played a pretty big role in the formation of 20th century Traverse City.”

As an Elk Rapids High School student, Warren wasn’t particularly interested in radio or history. It was an accounting class that grabbed and held his attention as a senior. “It happened to be about the only thing I understood, so I went down that road,” he explained.

That road led to four years at the University of Michigan and an accounting degree. Although his mother had married Ross Biederman (president of Midwestern Broadcasting and the son of the company’s founder, Les Biederman) while Warren was in high school, he says a career in broadcasting management was “happenstance.”

“The business manager here at the station had a stroke,” he explained. “My dad was in a rough position because they were really on the cusp of computerized accounting. So I started working here focusing on accounting. I had no sense of radio business.”

It was supposed to be a temporary, part-time arrangement, but within a year it was clear Warren was a perfect fit for the accounting void at the company, and radio was a business niche that suited him well. Nearly 30 years later, Warren now guides the daily operations of the media conglomerate blanketing all of northern Michigan with country and rock music, classic and top 40 hits, sports, and news-talk programming. The company also has a sales staff to develop and produce marketing strategies for advertising clients.

Warren says every day is unique as he interacts with the directors of three key departments: engineering, programming, and sales. “It was good for me to understand the business side first,” he said. “Truth is, I’m still functioning more as a business manager, because I have so many talented people who are wonderful at the programming side. I lean on the creative people to handle the on-air stuff.”

The biggest challenge facing his business today, Warren says, is the proliferation of entertainment and information options available to the public. Satellite and streaming internet music services have upped the technology ante, and competition for attention is fierce. The good news, he says, is that local radio satisfies a unique and abiding need, and when done properly, is as much in demand now as it was in 1941 when Midwestern Broadcasting sent out its first programming signals.

“Technology has obviously born alternatives to local radio, so the challenge is to differentiate ourselves from them,” he said. “The important stuff for local radio are the non-music elements, the interaction with on-air personalities, the news, the information. We’re truly in a relationship business, and technology doesn’t always work well with relationships. We keep relationships at the top of our priorities.”

The relational factor has also helped local radio survive, even thrive, through the Coronavirus pandemic according to Warren. While target audiences spent less time at work and in their vehicles (prime radio listening venues) during the last couple of years, connecting regularly with familiar and reliable media personalities provided them a sense of well-being and stability in trying times.

“These have been some dark days,” he acknowledged. “For a lot of folks, having that trusted companion with them on the air is very comforting. We invest in on-air talent, and we have some of the most talented people in the state. They connect with listeners in a really personal way. That’s the secret recipe to good local radio.”

Warren and his wife, Julie, live in Traverse City with their 17-year-old son, Colton, and three rescued greyhound dogs, Richard, Chilly, and Bowie. He enjoys golfing with friends and travelling with family. If he could give one piece of advice to this year’s high school seniors, he would tell them, “Embrace your 20s as a decade to be broke and without worries. You have the rest of your life to worry about job security, savings, and retirement. I was broke in my 20s and they were some of the best years.”

Reflecting on his ERHS days, fond memories surface of teachers Don Glowicki (“He taught us to type on honest-to-goodness typewriters. Who knew we’d need (keyboarding skills) so much in our daily lives?”) and Sally Ketchum (“When you’re 17, you don’t care about creative writing, but in retrospect, I must have absorbed a lot, because in college it really helped to know how to write properly”) and substitute teacher and Elk Rapids Cinema owner Joe Yuchasz (“He was fun. We all liked him. If I was going to take a trip down memory lane, I would go to Joe’s theater.”)

Warren also expressed gratitude for then-superintendent Dr. Elmer Peterman, who signed off on his request to remain a student at ERHS after his family moved from Williamsburg into Traverse City. “Back then, you had to go to school where you lived, “he recalled. “I didn’t want to go from a class of 70 to a class of a thousand-plus, especially my senior year. I don’t know how it all happened, but I was so thankful.”

Although he added five or six inches to his height after high school, Warren said his days on the Elks basketball team found him mostly “riding the pine.” Still, he added, high school was “a warm and comfortable time, and that’s H*** for a kid. I had friends in all the different cliques. I really enjoyed that.”

And perhaps that’s what paved the way into the career he never could have imagined, work that relies not just on spread sheets and bottom lines but also on relationships and interactions with a variety of people and personalities. “I love it when a mom comes into the station with her daughter to pick up tickets they won to a concert,” he said. “And I love the people I work with. It’s a fun place to work. The radio business only works if we’re all having fun.”

[Jim Sofonia]

Interesting story Chris, I didn't know your background. Nice job.

Jim S.

[Frosty]

That's damn good writing, too. Did not expect that from a little weekly. Kudos to the ER News.