A little over two years ago, The Buzzard flew south to find its new PD and came back with Clear Channel-Jacksonville programmer Bo Matthews. Matthews had been pulling double duty in Jacksonville, programming both Modern Rock WPLA and Top 40 WFKS. But nowadays Matthews’ sole focus is on the heritage WMMS call letters and keeping the Cleveland Rock outlet on top of its game. Upon his arrival at WMMS, Matthews found a station well entrenched in the market, but needing a little tweaking. “My assessment of the radio station was that it needed to find its center musically, and also more edge, personality, life, and excitement,” says Matthews.
     Just this past week Matthews expanded his role at Clear Channel-Cleveland by assuming PD duties at sister-Top 40 WAKS (KISS).  FMQB caught up with Matthews for a conversation about his new role and his two years in Cleveland at the helm of ’s legendary Rock call letters.

On how it feels to be programming CHR again… I’m glad to be back. I haven't really stopped listening to the music.  My wife, kids and friends are KISS P-1's, so I stay on top of things.  CHR and Rock are different beasts – especially now with music trends.  I have always been big on imaging, and attitude, so I think that some of the irreverence/fun could be integrated a little more into CHR. 

On accomplishments during his tenure at WMMS… I am most proud of how we have grown the radio station – musically and also personality-wise.  We have slowly introduced a nice variety of Rock music on ‘MMS.   People want to be surprised.  We have opened up the music a little bit and gone deeper with titles that haven't been played in the market for some time.  We have done everything we can to make the non-music elements enjoyable and entertaining.  

On balancing WMMS' significant heritage with current relevance…  We don't sell that we have been "Rockin’ you for 38 years."  I am not sure that people give a shit.  We have done some testing of imaging and found that people want to be entertained.  They want content.  They don't want a Rock station telling them how cool they are because they have been around for 38 years. 

On delivering new music to the WMMS audience… I am pretty convinced that new music just doesn't matter all that much to a 35 year-old guy.  So we have to find the music that does matter.   So, we are playing less and less new Rock.  Right now, there are some artists that we can get to because they were the artists that were big when the 35 year-old was 16-21 years old and developing their musical tastes