WEDNESDAYS 7AM

Salwa Khan:
I'm speaking with Tanya Tyler, and their show is The Wake-Up Club on Wednesdays from seven to nine AM. Let’s get a little bit of background on each of you. Tanya, why don't you start?

Tanya Tyler: 
I have been a professional in the radio industry for over 16 years, and I have done Seattle to Florida. I've been a co-host of morning shows and afternoon drive. I am also at this moment, a real estate agent, and I'm fairly new to the Wake-Up Club show, within the last two months.

Salwa Khan:
How did you first get into radio, Tanya?

Tanya Tyler: 
I was managing a Starbucks store for about five years, and I had a radio program director that was one of my clients. He kept saying, you should come on because you talk all the time. I can teach you how to run a board, but I can't teach you how to talk on the radio. We need somebody to do a fill-in show from ten PM to one o'clock in the morning, and that was my first two months of a gig. I quit Starbucks and went in that direction and did this overnight show, and it evolved into one of three shows that were with female hosts.
Then they switched me to the morning show with another female, and we were one of three in the entire country, one being in Los Angeles, one being in Washington, and I think one being somewhere on the East Coast. They hired a coach that was Jimmy Kimmel and Ryan Seacrest's coach. And that was the beginning of my radio career.

Salwa Khan:
Where was that?


Tanya Tyler: This was in Washington state, believe it or not. They hired him (the coach) because he was really good at what he did. I think this is funny, but they were trying to create a show to put on MTV (Music Television). This guy had all these connections in Los Angeles, and they wanted to have our show be a reality show on MTV. At that time, reality was big with Survivor. It just kind of fizzled out being a TV show. But then we stayed together for almost two years as a morning radio show.

Salwa Khan: 
Okay. Tanya, how do you go about producing the Wake-Up Club show?

Tanya Tyler:
After the show, we always kind of look at where we can change or where we need to tighten up things or make things a little bit more creative. Our goal is to bring the listener in and have them be more part of the show and have our show connect to people on many different levels, not just driving to work, but maybe streaming and listening to us.
John runs the board, or I run the board. We go back and forth. We both have that knowledge, which is really beautiful to have. 

We have different topics that we talk about and sometimes on the fly, we'll come up with something completely different, during the show. We've come up with a new one which is going to be the slapstick second and that's going to have some comedy involved. And we play a lot of music.
We produce the show thinking of the listener. If John or I were driving in the car, how would we want to be entertained, or how would we want to connect to the people that are in that show?

Salwa Khan:
What are the challenges of doing the show, Tanya?

Tanya Tyler: 
I don't know if I see any challenges. I think that John and I are kind of like shoes. We fit really well together. I mean, I've worked with a lot of co-hosts in my career. The one thing that I would say about John is he is just so easy flowing and I’m easy flowing. So we just kind of meld together. I guess we always look at the positive. That's what I like about him a lot is he's really super positive and we're positive together, and it flows out into the radio. John might have a different answer.

Tanya Tyler:
They do have so many choices nowadays. As we evolve and grow together and become solid in this show and make the listener part of our show, we really are inviting listeners to call in and request songs. If you want to call in, we'll give you the number. You can call in. We've just started that recently, but it's going to grow. If you look at traditional radio, because I've been in radio for so long, and I'm not doing it professionally, getting paid for it now, but If you look back in the eighties, the nineties, you were able to call in and request songs. The industry has changed so much, especially since 2008, 2009. It has taken a different trajectory into corporate America. If I remember the research, there's only like two percent or one percent that are independently owned. That's why our show is so unique because you can call in. If we happen to have it in the library, perfect, we'll play it for you.

Salwa Khan: What else would like to say about your show?

Tanya Tyler: The one thing I do want to stress is that when people are having fun at a party, people gravitate to that. I believe that whatever we are creating in that studio on Wednesday from, seven to nine is magical. And we want those people to be invited because it is such a fun place.
I mean, it is the middle of the work week. It could be kind of dragging us down a bit on stuff we have to do. Take the kids here, go to work here, whatever that is. But we want that morning for those two hours to be, hey, life is super happy. Life is great. No matter what's happening in the world, it is awesome.

Salwa Khan:
Thank you Tanya.