“The Tom Sullivan Show,” launched early November 2007, is a daily, topic-driven look at news and issues that have or will have impact on your life along with a give-and-take discussion with listeners on those issues. One of the West Coast’s most successful talk hosts, Tom brings integrity, life experience, intellect and likeability, as a benchmark of his show. He actually launched his radio talk show career in July 1988 on weekday afternoons from 1:00-4:00 p.m. PT on KFBK Sacramento, and the show took and has held number one ratings ever since.
Previously, he served as financial editor for KFBK since December 1980 and for KCRA-TV since 1982.
As you’ll read, Sullivan has worn many hats—he’s a former stock broker, a tax accountant for Price Waterhouse, a state trooper and more. He’s also the managing director of The Sullivan Group, a brokerage he founded in 1980.
Self-described as “fiscally conservative, socially it depends”, the success of his show, and his personal friendship with Rush Limbaugh whom he met at KFBK in the early 1980s, resulted in his occasional appearance as a stand-in host on The Rush Limbaugh Show many times.
Sullivan joined the FOX Business Network (FBN) in October 2007 as an anchor.
On Wednesday September 19, 2007, Sullivan told listeners that he was broadcasting his “final show in Sacramento” but that he would still be heard on KFBK. It’s an affiliate now, as he hosts his show from New York City.
What makes your radio program unique?
I think from my own perspective looking out is harder, but the feedback I’ve always gotten is first and foremost I have fun. We have a lot of fun, we make it a lot of fun; we laugh. So it’s not all dry bones serious. You can do issues and at the same time have fun with them. I’m not all politics–not even close. I do politics when politics is worth doing but I don’t do it every hour of every day.
I’ve owned a number of businesses, I’ve met payrolls, I’ve started companies, I’ve sold companies and in addition to being in broadcasting since 1980. So people have said I bring a different view of the topic because of the fact that I have owned businesses and I was raised in a low-income blue collar Irish Catholic Democrat household carrying a card saying I’m a registered Republican but I don’t like either one of the parties as we speak.
Sounds like you can identify with a broad range of people.
I’ve done a lot of things. When I was in college I drove an ambulance. When I was at grad school I was a Highway Patrolman. I’ve owned a mortgage company. I’ve owned an investment company.
How do you assist affiliates in helping your program grow and helping their ratings grow as well?
One is obviously whenever somebody needs any kind of liners or promotions we get those things done as quickly as you possibly can. If they request personal appearances, yes, absolutely and when we do our research we’ll look specifically at the newspapers from the market and make sure we’re covering something that can be done on a national basis but has an interest to a particular city–or do a story about something that is very unique out of some city that is everybody’s concern.
What are the benefits of carrying your program that a manager, group operator or PD should know?
I’ve got a 20-year, for talk radio I’ve got a 20-year track record of major success. I’ve either been number one, two or three in the market forever and more ones than threes–especially when you get into importing demos and so forth. The ratings are what we work off of, but the other part too for the manager, the people in the front office, is again having owned a number of successful business that gives me a different angle that businesses like to advertise with.
What are the three focuses of your programming content?
It’s funny you say three cause there’s a three-legged stool that I’ve always lived by. My old friend David Hall told me that these were the key points that audiences are always asked about and that is entertainment, information and being relative to the audience, to the listener. You mix those up sometimes but most of the time I always try to put entertainment first. Sometimes inform comes first but generally entertain them before you can inform them. Then, of course, the third leg is it’s got to be relative to what somebody’s life or their interest–or they’re not going to stay and listen.
How would you compare and contrast the national show that you do today vs. the years you did the local show at KFBK?
I was one of the major fill-ins for Rush for years and people would ask me about what’s the difference and I would say, well, “nothing.” It feels the same except for if the Sheriff shoots the mayor I used to do that story where now I can’t.
What does somebody in Ohio care about something going on in a local market someplace in the country? I say there’s not a lot of difference Carl–and this goes back to when Rush and I worked together out in Sacramento. When he left New York (and that’s when I started doing talk radio because) there was an hour gap in there that needed to be filled and that’s when I first started.
I said to him, “You’re an old friend of mine. What do you suggest?” He says always try to do a national show even if it’s a local show. Always try and get national topics that people are concerned about. So even at KFBK I did mostly national topics but, yes, I did do localized stuff as far as California topics or Sacramento topics. So I can’t do certain breaking news that’s a local issue–they’ve closed down the local library because of a bomb threat or something.
What are the three most pressing problems we face as Americans today?
Well number one is, and I’ll steal this from former Mayor Koch of New York. Four years ago he voted for George Bush and he was a good Democrat. He said “I’ve never voted for a Republican before but I’m going to this time because terrorism is number one if we don’t control or have some way to define ourselves then all the other issues don’t matter.” So terrorism number one because it’s not going away.
The financial promises that have been made to people for their retirement that are not going to be kept. I think that is a huge problem that’s coming which ties in with the stress on our country from the boomers. The boomers have always been the big crunch going through the population and there is going to be a huge fallout from medical care on all kinds of things. What do you do with these retired millions of retired people? 70 million to be exact.
Probably more than anything else would be to the public school system needs to be revamped, better education for people in this country for the future generations to understand what the issues are. Right now it’s the same school system that you and I had. It’s the same school system our parents had and nothing else is the same way back when and it’s primarily in my opinion because of the teachers unions are short sighted about helping get benefits for the current teachers at the expense of education.
What can we do to solve some of these problems?
Well, short of a revolt by the citizens I don’t know how you’re going to change government policy and I don’t see a revolt coming or government policy changing until there is, they usually wait until there is a crisis to do something.
You had said you weren’t thrilled with either party right at this point. How do you view the status of the general political arena today as we get closer to the 2008 elections?
There’s no leaders, there’s no leadership–zero. Our Congress, you may have seen one of the last surveys taken Rasmussen was one of them 9% approval and the reason is there isn’t anybody that is a true leader. Basically all politicians today, whether Democrat or Republican or even some of the Independent parties, are all from the same stripe. It’s about becoming a celebrity, about getting power instead of truly being public service.
So you’re saying they’re not working for us anymore?
They’re not working for us–they’re working for them.
What can radio do to regain some of what it has lost especially with younger demos that are using iPods the Internet?
I will tell you, and this is a brand new answer you’ve probably never heard before. I have an I-phone, you can download various applications to it. One of them is AOL Radio and I have it now. I can push the little button for the iPod portion of my I-phone and can listen to hundreds of radio stations of different formats all over the country. That is the first sign of being able to get the radio out of the kitchen, the bedroom and the car and put it in the hands of a device that young people are using.
That’s excellent.
I think it’s huge. It’s a CBS Radio product. If the rest of the radio companies don’t follow, they’re crazy. I can literally drive along on the New Jersey Turnpike and plug my I-Phone or my the iPod version of the I-Phone and can plug it into my radio speaker and listen to KNX in Los Angeles.
Do you think they’re doing a decent job of covering inside the beltway topics and issues?
I think so. People talk about biases and whether it’s the newspapers, MSNBC or CBS or anybody else. I think the people that are interested in these topics are aware of the biases and that’s okay as long as they know where you’re coming from whether it’s a valid complaint or not. We have now the ability to get a sample of the news from a variety of different sources which I think is a lot healthier than back in the day when we all had to listen to Walter Cronkite and that was it.
How about research and show prep things like that? Do you do a lot on your own doing it or is it done by the producers?
No it’s half and half. We meet every morning and basically go over where they have gone and what they have found. I bring to the table what I have found and we mix those together and come up with the show. It’s really a half and half but I spend hours doing show prep.
What sort of sources do you use for show prep?
You should see my favorites list. I’m all over the map. I use mainstream media sites. I use blogs left and right. I want to hear what both sides are saying. That’s pretty much it there’s a series of web sites I go to everyday but sometimes I come up with nothing on sites that I used yesterday extensively.
What goals do you have with your show that hasn’t been achieved?
Get clearances. We’re in the baby steps. It’s a tough environment but it’s one brick at a time. So just getting clearances is the name of the game.
How about the TV show, how’s that going?
As far as I know it’s growing. They’re doing the same thing–they’re going out and getting clearances through all the cable companies out there around the country. It’s a noon show on FOX Business Eastern. I was told that Roger Ailes once said it took five years for FOX News Channel to beat CNN so he says be patient.
Are you working on any books?
Actually I am. I’m putting together a book that I’ve had in my head for a long time. I get asked all the time about what’s a good book for somebody to learn about investments.
–by Carl Marcucci
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