The Roundup: A Conversation With Mac Watson

Wendy Corr: 

Well, hey there folks, welcome to the Roundup. We are a Cowboy State Daily podcast, and our focus is on interesting people in the Cowboy State. And it's a bittersweet one for me today, this is my final podcast as the regular host of the Roundup. 

But I am leaving you all in such great hands, because my guest today is the person that I'm handing the baton to when it comes to broadcast media for Cowboy State Daily. And that is Mac Watson. Yay for Mac Watson! 

Mac Watson:

Hi. Thank you. 

Wendy Corr: 

There he is! Now Mac, Mac has such an interesting story, so we're talking about interesting people - he fits right in. And, my goodness, the stories he has to tell. We're going to laugh a lot today. 

But before we go to our interview with Mac, I want to make sure that people know about the Wyoming Business Council "Business From the Basement" podcast. The "Business From the Basement" podcast is put on by the Wyoming Business Alliance. The Wyoming Business Alliance wants to promote business and business people - and the networking, the networking that can happen between business people in Wyoming. 

So if you are a business person, if you are interested in being a business person, if you want more resources, more connections, more networking, go to the Wyoming Business Alliance "Business From the Basement" podcast. Check it out, and you will thank me. You will thank me for sending you their way. 

But don't go there yet, because for the next little while here, we are going to get to know Cowboy State Daily's newest broadcast media director, who is Mac Watson, who comes from a - Mac, your history in the broadcast radio industry is just so colorful, and it's so interesting. 

But Mac, you've only been in Wyoming for about three years, but you've had connections to Wyoming for like almost 15 now, right? So tell us about your connections to Wyoming. What brought you to Northwest Wyoming, which is where you are now?

Mac Watson:   

So I was living in Phoenix, working in Phoenix at a radio station there, and I happened to start stalking a person who worked at the Attorney General's office. 

Wendy Corr:

Oh my.

Mac Watson:

Yeah, she's a lawyer, which is not a great person to stalk, by the way, unless, you know, you're in jail or whatever and you need representation. But anyway, I started stalking on social media this woman that I just found fascinating, and still do. And we met, we got married, and she is from Cody. 

She grew up in Cody, she was born in Casper, then they moved up here to Cody. Her dad worked for Marathon, worked for Husky oil, Marathon. He was a draftsman for years. So she graduated from Cody High School and then went to, you know, college, law school, University of Wyoming, graduate law school, and then worked for the attorney general's office in Wyoming, as well as Arizona. 

So I met her when she was in Arizona, and the first time, we'd been dating two weeks. And she said, Hey, I just gotta tell you I'm going back home from my high school reunion. And I knew, because she, you know, we compared exes - always a good thing - but none of our exes really were, you know, did things for her, right? 

So she said, I'm going to my class reunion, my 20th class reunion. I said, I'll go. And she was like, what? And I said, Yeah. And I bought a plane ticket that night, not knowing where Cody, Wyoming was. I flew into Bozeman. I was like this all the way until we landed, because there was nothing around. I come from the East Coast. 

And when we finally landed, I called her, and I said, I'm here, but I don't know where to meet you. And she goes, meet me by the bear. And I thought they had a live bear in the middle of the airport, because I'm such an East Coast guy. And I go, who the hell keeps a bear in an airport? She goes, it's a statue, dummy. Just meet me by the bear statue. 

And she drove me through the park. And I fell in love. Fell in love with Yellowstone. Fell in love with Cody. I've, unfortunately, I've never been east, so I've not been to Gillette or South Dakota, but we have gone all over, you know, central, southern, you know, down to Rock Springs, down to Salt Lake City, Denver. I've been almost everywhere in Wyoming, and fell in love with it, and obviously fell in love with her. 

So we'd come up every six months to help my father in law, until we physically moved here in 2021.

Wendy Corr: 

That is awesome. And then, of course, you continued your radio career, but that radio career has kept you - I mean, you've taken some really interesting, interesting turns in your career. 

So Mac, my understanding from chatting with you, because you and I have gotten to chat a lot in the last week or so, getting us ready to make this transition. But my understanding is that you knew from a young age that radio that's the kind of a dream job you wanted. So tell us about your seven year old, first experience as a seven year old there, figuring out, wait a minute, this is a cool career.

Mac Watson:  

So I grew up in outside of Baltimore, Maryland, and my dad grew up on a gentleman's farm near the Pennsylvania line, but he went to school and went to work in the city, every day, and he always had to wear a suit, always had to wear a tie, and he worked in banking. 

So one day, and we were on summer break, one day, he says, Hey, you want to go to work with me? And of course, it's a bank. I'm like, No. And he said, Well, I'm going to go to a radio station. I was like, oh, okay, we always listen to the radio in the car. Dad always listened to a certain station. Mom always listened to a certain station. 

And we went down, and the bank was right next to another building down in the city, and this is where WFBR was, and WFBR was one of the first stations in America that had what they called shock jocks, and my dad never listened to WFBR because it was too racy or whatever, right? It's too wild. 

So we met the general manager, and he was wearing a suit. So I'm like, whatever. We turn the corner and there's the studio behind the glass, and there's a guy standing at it, you know, in front of a microphone, in front of a radio board, and he's standing - and I'll never forget. He was wearing shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, those big, oversized sunglasses and moose antlers, and had his headphones on.

And he was doing something, but he was like, and then he took off the headphones, he came out. He's like, Hey, young man, you know, who are you, you know? And I'm like, Who are you? I mean, this guy was not a banker, this guy was not a suit. 

And I realized this guy could wear what he wanted. He could say anything he wanted, and he got to play music - because I fell in love with music at age six. I heard my first Rush song at age six, and had been a fan ever since. So music was very important to me as a kid. 

So fast forward. I'm just like, blown away, right? So fast forward. So we live in Baltimore, but my mom's from Providence, and every summer we would go up to see my grandmother. My grandmother lives in Providence, and we didn't want to hit the morning traffic or the morning - I know it's Wyoming. Nobody has rush hour here. Yeah, no, we didn't want to hit the rush hour traffic going up 95.

So we left really early. So my mom and my sister are in the back and they're asleep. My dad and I are in the front, and we get through New York City, and the morning shows come on. And this is New York right now, the big buildings, and, you know, just a massive amount of people and everything. 

And dad is flipping the station, and he comes on Z100, which is in New York, which is a top 40 station, is still a top 40 station. And WHTZ, I'll never forget it. WHT Z, New York, New York. Boom, you know, just this big explosion. 

Top of the hour ID, and on comes this guy named Scott Shannon, who invented the morning zoo concept. And Scott's like, you know, coming up, we're gonna do this. We're gonna do this. We're gonna do the wacky, you know, blah, blah, blah. And it's two degrees above a good time in New York City. Boom, you know, he goes into music or whatever. 

And I turn to my dad, and I go, what's the temperature? And my dad is driving. He does this, it's 71 Shut up. You know, 12-13, year old boy, you know, I'm like, you can say that? I mean, you know, we would say it in school, you know, and make jokes about stuff like that in school, but adults could say that stuff. Oh, my God.

Wendy Corr:   

And on the air too!

Mac Watson:   

Yes, it was a very different time. Very different time. Scott Shannon would go to a nightclub, do a couple bumps of coke, do a morning show, and then collapse in the morning and get up and go do it all over again. Very different time in radio. Very, very different time. 

So I was always listening to the radio. And so by the time I was 16, I had a medical supply and pharmacy route, and I was always, and this is, this is so - you know, proximity is so important to your career. I could hear DC stations, I could hear Baltimore stations, and I could hear Harrisburg stations. So I heard all this and all these different types of radio stations and radio personalities, right? 

But I was always told, you know, I went to a very competitive Catholic, all boys school. You're gonna be a doctor, you're gonna be a lawyer. You're going to be white collar, white collar, white collar. And I just never really was interested in school. 

I never did well in school. I didn't really like it. I didn't like, I would be diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder now. That's what I would be diagnosed with i