Episode Summary
Steve Schram, Radio Leader
Since 2006 Steve Schram has served as the Executive Director and General Manager of Michigan Radio. With stations in Ann Arbor, Flint, and Grand Rapids, Michigan Radio serves more than one million listeners each month, and was
named the Public Radio Station of the Year by the Michigan Association of Broadcasters for ten of the last 11 years.
In this two-part podcast, Schram tells us how he first caught the radio bug as a newspaper boy with a transistor radio taped to his handlebars, and how his father and an unlikely radio hero both fanned these flickers into a flame. In telling us how he rose from producing lunch time radio for his classmates at Catholic Central through Detroit’s top commercial radio stations to Michigan Radio, Schram underscores three take-aways: 1) Don’t say “No, because,” but “Yes, if…”; ; 2) Don’t focus on the next job, but being good where you are; 3) “Always be recruiting,” long before you might need to hire them. Bonus: sending handwritten thank you notes will separate you from the crowd.