Randy Malloy – President, General Manager, Owner, Worker Bee of WWCD Radio

Driving the Cbus

“Done is better than perfect.”

Randy Malloy has lived by that mantra unwittingly for most of his existence. Sometimes you just have to get it done.

WWCD Radio has gone through numerous changes over the past few decades. The format has remained the same, but most noticeably to the listener, frequency changes on the FM dial. Randy talks about this, and more about being an entrepreneur, the importance of local business, and how important local radio is to the local business community.

On the spray paint branding video to announce the move from CD102.5 to CD92.9…

When we moved from 102.5 to 92.9, I literally had three weeks. And so I kind of reached back into the guerrilla marketing playbook that sits on my shelf. What are we going to do to differentiate ourselves from what it was? Let’s just brand it this way. And I literally thought of the idea, grabbed a can of red spray paint. I said grab the video cameras and videotape doing it.

Randy’s thoughts on being local and how Columbus supports local…

We’ve been lucky. We’ve been lucky for the fact that Columbus is very supportive of the local community. I think the idea of shop local, rock local, be local, think local, all those things work so well in Columbus because it still has that community feel to it. Even though it’s the 10th largest, 12th largest city in the country, it still has a good community feel to it.

Randy’s heart and soul are all about local radio…

Radio as a whole…people sort of underestimate the power of it. And when we said we’re going off the air, it really was interesting to see the outpouring of support from people that had been listeners, were listeners, wanted to be listeners. What’s happening? We had about a million interactions from social media, to handwritten letters, and phone calls and faxes. I still have lots of fight left in me, and this is something that matters. And then to see this outpouring of support, that really helped cement that.

The Driving the Cbus podcast co-hosts, Scott McComb, CEO of Heartland Bank, and Kailyn Bucklew (McComb), a third-generation community banker, offer two different perspectives as they sit down and get real with local business owners. From well-established companies to startups, small businesses are the heart and soul of Columbus. Tune in to find out how it all began, what keeps them up at night – the current struggles they face, and what successes they are most proud of with some entertaining stories along the way.