Good Neighbor Podcast: North Shore
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of North Shore
Good Neighbor Podcast: North Shore
EP #12 - Bridging Cultures with Steve Warren and Chinese Pop
Ever wondered how a passion for radio could lead to the creation of a unique cross-cultural platform? Join us as Steve Warren, the visionary behind China America Radio Station, shares his fascinating journey. From early influences like his father and his high school radio days to founding MOR Media in 1987, Steve's story is one of innovation and cultural connection. His insights from Sirius XM Satellite Radio unveiled a market gap for Chinese pop music, leading to the launch of China America Radio in 2007. Broadcasting 24/7, this station brings vibrant Chinese pop music to New York and beyond, driven by Steve's mission to make these sounds accessible to everyone.
Discover the intricate tapestry of Chinese and Asian cultures through Steve's experiences. He draws lessons from past broadcasting missteps with Hispanic communities, emphasizing the need for cultural awareness and understanding. By showcasing music from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Chinese American artists, Steve champions diversity and education. His personal journey across states and countries has enriched his perspective, fueling a forward-thinking approach to radio. Learn how China America Radio bridges cultural gaps with features like a free music player offering translated song titles, ensuring that even non-Mandarin and non-Cantonese speakers can enjoy the lively world of Chinese pop music.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Yuhuan Godfrey.
Speaker 2:Good morning and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Are you in need of a Chinese pop radio station that operates 24-7 and is globally found? Well, today in our studio, we have Steve Warren, owner of China America Radio Station. Steve, welcome to our podcast. We thank you for being with us this morning. How are you doing?
Speaker 3:I'm doing fine. Thank you, Yolanda.
Speaker 2:Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Steve, we're thrilled to have you here and we're eager to learn more about your business. But before we dive in, I'd like to share two important things about the Good Neighbor podcast. It launched during COVID-19 to shine a spotlight on local business throughout the North Shore community and help reconnect them with their targeted audience. Once again, we're really excited to have you here with us today. Can you tell us about your company, Steve?
Speaker 3:Yes, my company, the parent company that I started back in 1987, is called MOR Media, and we started because I was a radio person on the air and program director at a lot of different stations and cities around the country. So we started MOR Media as a consulting company to help radio stations get off the ground or change format or do whatever it is they needed to do. And the outgrowth of that is that we started producing our own programs and I ended up going to work for Sirius XM Satellite Radio, which was a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week delivery system that got a lot of niche formats out into the population that probably wouldn't have gotten to the population had it just been on local stations, one by one around the country. So in 2007, just ahead of the Beijing Olympics Summer Olympics we started China America Radio because we looked around and saw that there really wasn't any Chinese radio stations except a handful of little AM stations in the Bay Area or even around here in New York, and they primarily did not play any pop music, they were basically talk shows and things that were done in Cantonese or Mandarin. So we started a 24-hour streaming radio station along with a partner that I found that was working here in New York for a Chinese company. He was very familiar with the pop culture and brought some of his music CDs with him to keep company.
Speaker 3:And I said that music's pretty good.
Speaker 3:It's not the stuff that you think about when you think about Chinese music, like the guy in the subway that plays a one-stringed instrument, or the drums and the horns and the cymbals that you see in the parades, or the Monkey King, or you know traditional Chinese, but there's a big pop culture in both the Cantonese and Mandarin worlds that most people don't know about.
Speaker 3:But if you go to any major Chinese city or Taiwan, your host will want to take you out to a karaoke club and sing along, and these are the singers and the songs that you would be subjected to. So we started it in 2007. And here we are, this many years later, streaming, and New York has got a lot of Chinese people in various pockets around the city, whether it's Flushing or Brooklyn Sunset Park. Those areas and those people, as generations have progressed, have gravitated actually into Nassau County particularly, and there are a number of communities with large Chinese populations throughout Nassau County and it continues to grow. So here we are. So wherever you are, whether you're in Hempstead or whether you're in Indianapolis, you can hear our station Wonderful.
Speaker 2:Appreciate all that you just shared. You've also shared with us how you got into the business, but can you expand a little bit more in terms of consultation and service that you provide to other radio stations?
Speaker 3:Well, there was a time that most radio stations not only had their local management team in place, their program director, their manager, their salespeople, but a lot of times they were not terribly skilled at programming. Local management team in place, their program director, their manager, their salespeople, but a lot of times they were not terribly skilled at programming and reaching out to the audience in an effective way. So we started MOR Media, which stood for Mature Oriented Radio, working with stations that had adult formats, and we did country music, big band, we did jazz, we did talk programs and that was our niche for helping stations do that. And actually because of our consulting company, we got brought in to work with Sirius Satellite Radio and programmed all of their country music channels and then they brought me in full time on staff to be the program manager.
Speaker 3:Now many of the New York people and Long Island people might remember hearing me on New York City radio stations because I was a DJ on all of the country stations, back to WHN in the 70s and then Kick FM and then WKHK and then also I was on WNBC and a few other stations that people may remember and we had a big listenership in Long Island. So I guess maybe some of the people of my demographic might remember my name, but it's all I've ever done really. I started in radio broadcasting back in Indiana in the early 60s. My dad was actually a part-time DJ in the Louisville Kentucky area so I got dragged to work with him from time to time and my high school back in Indiana has the first FM station that was ever in a high school in the US, going back to 1948. So it's kind of in my blood.
Speaker 2:Okay, I appreciate that. Now is this a one-man operation.
Speaker 3:No, actually we have. Well, I'm kind of the puppeteer, the puppet master, but I have about five or six other people, all of whom are Chinese, who do various chores to help me select the music, help us. We do a lot of promotions. We go out in person and play music. We go to parades, we go to trade shows, set up our booth, we have a big inflatable panda, we play the music. So I have people we can call on depending on where we're going to be and what we're going to do, and also people that speak a variety of Chinese dialects.
Speaker 2:Okay, by the way, do you speak Chinese?
Speaker 3:Dui Dui Boishwa yi. Diar potokwa, I speak a little badly. Usually there's somebody around me who can pick up the slack. I travel to China frequently. I was just there this past spring, in Taipei as well as over in Beijing, so I've been there frequently enough to know how to deal with day-to-day stuff. I couldn't carry on any deep philosophical conversation, but I can check in and out of the hotel and order a meal and not make a fool of myself. Well, maybe I do make a fool of myself, but I'm unaware of it.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right. So, steve, are there any misconceptions or myths about China America radio station or radio station in general that you partner with and help them through certain areas of uncertainty?
Speaker 3:Well, I think the biggest misconception and I get asked this frequently is that I think most non-Asian people tend to lump the Asian communities plural into one bundle. People tend to lump the Asian communities plural into one bundle. They made the same mistake 30, 40, 50 years ago with the Hispanic population, thinking that the people from Mexico are the same as the people from Cuba, are the same as the people from Madrid. So I think probably the education of people knowing that there are different Chinese cultures and different languages and different places in the world where the people have lived and come from, goes a long way toward helping people explain that there are differences in the culture and that you have to kind of want to learn a little bit about people. You may have a family that lives down the street from you. They may appear physically to be Asian, but do you know beyond that who and what they are, where they came from, what their background is?
Speaker 3:It's a vast culture, it's the largest ethnic population in the world and you can't go to any country anywhere and not find a Chinese community of some size. And so I think those of us who don't understand much about the Chinese culture owe it to ourselves to put on our learning cap and try to be a little more I guess, a little more educated, and don't assume that Koreans and Filipinos and Chinese and Japanese are all the same people, because it's totally different. As I mentioned, it's the same mistake that the Hispanic radio broadcasters made back in the 1950s and 60s. They think anything Spanish would fall on the same ears. Now you can go anywhere in the country and find a multitude of different Hispanic music radio. So that's the biggest misconception and it's a general misconception, not specific to radio.
Speaker 2:I love the comparison. It gives more depth to how you explain that. Thank you, not just for myself, I'm sure for others.
Speaker 3:Well, you have to think about it, but somebody has to call it to your attention in the first place, and that's kind of what we try to do. That's why we take our radio station to trade shows and to business expos and places, just to expose the fact that there is a pop music culture and it varies depending on where the music comes from. Most of the Mandarin music comes from Taiwan. Most of the Cantonese music comes from Hong Kong and yet there are still some Chinese American artists that do very well and many of the Chinese singers come here to our neighborhood and they will perform in Atlantic City or Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun and sell out 5000 Seed Arena. As I like to say, everybody knows about those concerts except white people, the black people and the Spanish people, but everybody else knows about them and let's try and bring more awareness to them, hopefully.
Speaker 2:So. Steve, outside of work, what do you do for fun?
Speaker 3:I'm kind of a foodie. I like shopping for food, I like cooking food, I have a decent wine collection and I've traveled to many countries in the world I think something like 19. I used to teach at a radio school in Switzerland. I enjoy travel. As I say, going to Asia now on a regular basis is pretty time consuming just the travel itself and exhausting. But I have a garden so I plant stuff, and mostly herbs that I go buy and pick. Instead of going to Whole Foods and spending $5 for a baggie of basil, I can go to my garden and pick up a handful free.
Speaker 3:So that's one of my big things.
Speaker 2:You got to eat. You know Absolutely, and you know exactly how you grew those fruits and vegetables.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know what's in them and I like to have guests at my table and I'm happy to tell them. This came from my garden and this I. You know, air dried last spring and now I have it all winter. So I picked up my Asian cooking a little bit more too, simply because of the cultures that I deal with. I'd say 90 percent of my personal friends are from some Asian culture, primarily Chinese, but but also Vietnamese and Cambodian and everything in between.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. Let's change gears. Can you describe one hardship, steve, or one of life's challenge that you rose above, and can I say, because of it, you're better, you're stronger, what comes to your mind.
Speaker 3:There was a time in the radio business that a company could only own five, and then later seven, and then later 12 radio stations. And now we have companies that then later 12 radio stations, and now we have companies that own hundreds of radio stations. And during that transition period from a small ownership to big corporate ownership a lot of people lost their jobs. A lot of consolidation, a lot of automation, a lot of centralizing programming in one place and spreading it out. So it was on 27 radio stations across the country.
Speaker 3:Because of that and because of the fact that I've been around forever, I've relocated a handful of time and there's always a hardship there. But I think it taught me to be versatile and it made me learn about different states, different cities, different cultures, different backgrounds. So I've lived in California and in Texas, in Florida and in New York and in Ohio and in Indiana, and then I've worked in other countries. I was a teacher at a radio school in Switzerland for a couple of years. So it's jarring to have to change your lifestyle where you live, get a new group of friends, learn a new job. But I think that made me stretch a little bit. I maybe hated it at the time, but when I look back on it as I'm speaking to you, I think it was a valuable experience. It made me a lot less myopic than some people are, who just stay in one place forever.
Speaker 2:Thank you. So, steve, please tell our listeners one thing that they should remember about China America Radios.
Speaker 3:Well, one thing that we decided to do originally is we understand that not everybody will understand the language the Mandarin or the Cantonese but the music is really good. It's very light FM sounding, it's boy bands and girl bands and harmonies and rhythmic and all of that. And we have a player on our website which you can click on and hear the music and it's free. We wanted to protect the privacy, which is a big thing in the Chinese culture, so we didn't ask people to sign up for anything. It's just there. We make our money based on commercials and advertising, but on our player on screen we translated the title of the song into English and we put the singer's name in English there as well. So if they like what that singer sounds like, they can go on YouTube and put in that person's name in English and their music videos and other songs and stuff will pop up. So we've sort of become one-stop shopping for people who are curious about or interested in the Chinese pop music world.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you. And how can our listeners learn more about China? America Radio.
Speaker 3:They can learn more about it by visiting our website, which is Chinamerica Radio. All one long word China. It's not China, america, it's Chinamerica. One word radiocom. And listen, live up in the corner, click on it, turn on your speakers, sit back, relax, enjoy. We have video stories, audio interviews, podcasts that you can listen to. We have pictures of our station in action, at events, in places.
Speaker 3:I'll say, the name of the singer and the song displayed on the screen so you can learn a little bit more about them. But I think by looking at our website and going to the various pages. Plus, we've archived all of our video and audio interviews going back to when we started in 2007. So we have a good collection and we have a reporter that works for us, who's mostly in the Washington DC area, who's done some really extraordinary video stories and interviews, and whenever I travel, I take my video camera with me and we produce documentaries about whatever. Like.
Speaker 3:I was in Taiwan this spring and we went to a tea farm and showed how tea is grown and processed. So we went from tea farm to teacup and we went to a village, a tiny little village north of Taipei called the Cat Village Hutong, and it's a village village, a tiny little village north of Taipei called the Cat Village Hutong, and it's a village that was a coal mining town and people moved out when coal mining died and people moved in because it was cheap and most of those people had cats, and now cats run the town. There's like hundreds of cats and the city takes care of them. So as soon as you get off the train. There's cats in the train station waiting for you, and we have a video on that as well. Cats in the train station waiting for you, and we have a video on that as well. So interesting things you run into when you're plopped down into another culture.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Stephen. I also really appreciate you being on the show with us this morning.
Speaker 3:We wish you and your business, China America Radio, all the best moving forward. Thanks, Yvonne. I appreciate having you talk to me this early in the morning. I don't normally see another person until after lunch.
Speaker 2:Well, we appreciate you Again, good luck, and we thank you for joining us this morning In.
Speaker 3:Chinese, that would be xie xie ni, thank you. And zai jian, which is goodbye, xie xie, ni. Xie xie ni, thank you. And zai jian, which is goodbye, xie xie, ni, xie xie, ni, xie xie ni. Yeah, that's thank you, or xie xie is just thanks, xie xie ni.
Speaker 2:Okay, and then how do you say Zai jian is goodbye Zai jian Zai jian Zai jian X. You got it. And for our listeners, if you would like to promote your business on the Good Neighbor podcast, please reach out to us. We specialize in business branding and proudly publish Swampskid Neighbors magazine, which reaches approximately 3000 homes in the Swampskid, Massachusetts area on a monthly basis. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPNorthshorecom. That's GNPNorthshorecom, or call 857-703-9406.