Radio Cobra Detroit is an internet radio station based in Metro Detroit. It can be found at https://www.radiocobradetroit.com/ Android and Apple platforms and on Alexa. It features several unique shows a week, playing a range of styles of alternative music from the 70s to today.
Earlier this year, Rock in Detroit interviewed Jennifer St. James, Vice-Honcho and Ops/Program Director of Radio Cobra Detroit. (The transcript below has been edited and condensed.)
ROCK IN DETROIT: So first–“Radio Cobra Detroit.” Does that name have anything to do with the Detroit Cobras? Or is that just a coincidence?
JENN: It actually does. Greg St. James, who is the founder of Radio Cobra Detroit, started 89X a good 30 years ago. When he started that station, he thought it was going to last a year or two at the most. He made the logo, came up with all the branding, the ideas, and got that station running. 89X was so successful beyond expectations, and it lasted 30 years. So when the station folded in 2020, a bunch of us got together, a couple of 89X alums, and started working a few ideas. Greg was in the Shinola Hotel with me a couple of years ago, and he said, “I need to come up with a station that represents Detroit, like Shinola is doing with their brand. Something that allows us to have our own niche that is cool. There’s got to be something bigger than what’s out there on terrestrial radio right now.” Greg thought about that and put his ideas in the blender, and hence Radio Cobra Detroit was born.
It’s not just a radio station. It’s a brand. It’s sexy. We don’t know why Shinola is hip, but it is. It’s gotta have swagger. And you know, we thought, Hey, Mary Cobra and the rest of her band is doing something right. So, Radio Cobra was born out of that. We play the Detroit Cobras and many local bands from Detroit as well as alternative rock, funk, soul and other great music.
ROCK IN DETROIT: So tell me a little bit more about the genesis of Radio Cobra Detroit.
JENN: Once Greg came up with the idea, we started talking to a few creative people in the business, and we had our preliminary meetings. We started scheming about: Well, what does this look like? What kind of logo? What kind of music do we want to play? Who is going to be the voice of Radio Cobra?
Radio Cobra Detroit just kind of morphed into that. And then we started getting investment on a streaming software, which was the bare, basic thing we needed to do to get it on the air, and then I dumped probably 3,000 songs or so from my library, as well as getting subscriptions to YouTube, Apple Music and other music services, and finding the rest of it to play on the air.
ROCK IN DETROIT: And how about you personally? What are your musical tastes?
JENN: I’ve always been an alternative-rock girl. I absolutely love alternative music. It started in the 80s. I loved The Cure and Depeche Mode in high school. That stuff really resonated with me. Plus, a lot of the new wave artists, and even some of the pop, punk, and some of the 70s classic rock which I still dig. So music is in my DNA. I also love the singer songwriters and folk music scene. There are so many great artists and talent out there that needs to be discovered.
ROCK IN DETROIT: And how about Greg St. James? What was his background and vision?
JENN: I met Greg through the radio industry back in the day when he was the nighttime DJ at WRIF in Detroit. I was an intern in broadcast school when he was talking about putting 89X together. Back in the 1970’s, Greg worked at W4 and WABX, where he started in the business early on with rock radio. WABX wasn’t your typical classic rock station. It was called the station of your wildest dreams, and they pushed the envelope on creativity with their DJs and music. Chuck Santoni is one of the legendary WABX DJs and does our midday show from 10am-2pm and he features many great artists from the 60s and 70s with songs from that era on the X-Files every weekday from 12-1pm.
When Greg was working at WABX, he began to understand that formula of creativity when it came to music and what was a good radio show. You have a program director or general manager that slaps a playlist in front of you, and these days you can put it into a computer and program the station’s music content. But back then, you just had records, reel to reel or cart machine tapes. It was easier to break format when the program director or the boss wasn’t looking and go, “Oh, yeah, I’m gonna slip this in.” So DJs were getting away with more in the 70s and 80s than they ever could today.
Local radio was king until corporate suits—big corporate media companies—got involved and took over and some guy in an office in NYC says to the local GM, “Well, we’ve never really been to a concert. We don’t even know who this band is, but based on our statistics, this is who you should play”. The DJs now have less to say. They were not, you know, being creative. With the talent, radio corporate executives started automating shifts and limiting creativity with what DJs could say on the air. That started happening in the 90s and 2000s and it changed the industry forever. It all became about money and marketing statistics rather than local homegrown radio with personalities.
Greg became disillusioned by what happened to the radio business over the last 20 years. The corporate suits took it over. They were playing more commercials and less meaningful music. I tune in occasionally when I am driving around Metro Detroit to some of the legacy stations these days and you have to sit through all of those commercials just to go into another overplayed classic rock music—the same darn ZZ Top song. You just want to barf. It’s not real radio anymore. We joke around about when we hear someone reminisce about the good old days of radio. There are some things that just need to be left in the past. We think radio is dying on the vine, and it just doesn’t fit the way people want to be entertained today.
ROCK IN DETROIT: I like ZZ Top. I could listen to them.
JENN: I do, too, but here’s a better band as an example: Foreigner. All these mainstream 70s and 80s artists that just got too much air play. It’s the same old regurgitated classic rock that nobody really cares about unless you’re stuck in 1978, which a lot of people are unfortunately, even in this city. And you know there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s their jam. But Radio Cobra was not meant to be that.
ROCK IN DETROIT: What’s the idea behind Radio Cobra Detroit broadcasting on the internet?
JENN: One of our slogans is “Radio Cobra is the best radio not on the radio.” I don’t really like the term internet radio. There are a lot of stations out there that use that term. I like to think of it more creatively. If you think about social media and the way people are navigating media in the 21st century, you will notice there’s not a lot of print media sources left. Everything is online. Social media, Twitter X, Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram. There is an app for everything. AI is taking over and is becoming larger than life these days. This is where the 21st century is taking us.
Social media is the new antenna. If you think about it, a traditional radio station like RIFF or WHEELS still operates from a brick-and-mortar box somewhere in Southfield, or wherever, and they’ve got a transmitter. It’s a dying business, and they’re not making any money at it. They’re still playing 12 minutes of commercials.
So when you download the Radio Cobra app, listen on Alexa or visit our website, Radio Cobra Detroit is using social media as the new antenna to reach people. The whole goal behind Radio Cobra is to put something out there that gets people in the door. We don’t want to just bring you there for the music. Yeah, the music’s great, but there should be something more behind it. We want to get you in the door it so that we can offer you something bigger through social media platforms.
ROCK IN DETROIT: I know that your title at Cobra Radio Detroit is Vice-Honcho. What duties does that entail?
JENN: I do the tech and behind the scenes work. I program the station. I’m a co-founder. I spent countless hours putting in music, making sure that the levels didn’t sound bad. There were lots of uploads and managing that database and that content. I was also working with our talented digital content genius Terry Phillips to make sure the website looked good. We hired a bunch of local radio talent to work at Radio Cobra. It is hard these days to find people who wanted to work for free. I think that many of them were willing to do it because terrestrial radio wasn’t giving them a job and they are all passionate about Radio Cobra and what we are doing. Every one of our staff members are Michigan born and raised.
So the Vice-Honcho part means I’m managing that day-to-day operations and the staff, I am making sure that everything sounds good on the air. All the shows and the playlists are programmed in a way to play in categories based off of genres. I work with the staff to make sure that things are done the way we envisioned it, but we give them a lot of room to be creative and original. We do a lot artwork and AI generated art and creative photos on our social media pages to get our brand across.
ROCK IN DETROIT: I assume you are trying to make it sound good to an audience of all ages. One thing I’ve always wondered about is, what are young people listening to these days?
JENN: Well, it’s funny that you asked. I have two daughters and they listen to Pandora or Spotify. It’s definitely not how we listened to music growing up. Some of them might be going back to their parents’ roots. My kids like a lot of music that I’m mentioning. The emo bands, the newer alternative, the Mumford and Sons, maybe Taylor Swift? They’re into some interesting stuff, but they’re all listening to it on Spotify. They won’t touch terrestrial radio with a 10-foot pole. I don’t know exactly what they’re listening to as far as music genres, but I think that depends on the person.
I was at the Lager House a couple of weeks ago. There was this blues band that they should have had a bigger venue or a smaller amp, because my ears were blowing after the second song. Their vibe was like soul meets Motown, meets blues, meets rock. I was just like “Whoa! This is eclectic!” There were a lot of younger people there. I do think the younger generations do get out to enjoy a concert, but as I am getting older, the larger bands at the big arenas don’t appeal to me as much as a smaller listening room with an unsigned artist or someone that is trying to break through into this industry.
ROCK IN DETROIT: So tell me about the Homeboy show.
JENN: So this was something 89X did back in the 90s and 2000s. They featured local artists from Windsor, artists from Detroit, artists from the Michigan area. And of course, people would send their demos so that we can play local music—any band wants to get on the radar. We try to support any local band that’s trying to their best to give it, is playing the clubs in the Detroit area, wants to get gigs, wants to get exposure. Who knows if they’re going to go anywhere? But they’re having fun doing it, right?
So last fall, I had been tossing idea around with Greg, and I’m like “Greg, we gotta get a homeboy show on.” Jamie Flanagan, our assistant PD has done that. He put together a playlist of local artists that we play every Sunday from 5-7pm. So we’re in the process of scheduling and different interviews with different bands, and hopefully we can put the word out about local music. We want to feature all up and coming unknown singer songwriters—Detroit musicians, Michigan musicians. So we’re expanding Homeboy to that. And then we’re going to take it a step further. What if you’re a homeboy from Nashville? What if you’re a homeboy from Portland, Oregon? There’s a homeboy band in every town in this United States.
ROCK IN DETROIT: What sort of shows and music do you feature on the on Radio Cobra
JENN: You get different feels from different musicians. It’s not just rock and roll we’re doing. We have an acoustic show on Sundays—Acoustic Alternatives with John Bommarito from 6-10am that plays singers and songwriters and local up-and-coming Michigan artists that you see in some of the smaller intimate venues in the area. We don’t just want to play bands that make people’s ears hurt. We have a great blues show Sunday night with Bruce Kahn from 7-8pm. Bruce has a great selection of hand-picked blues music that is timeless and sounds great. We also have a great morning show with Greg St. James, Ron Robinson, Bruce Kahn, Lisa Lakian and myself that focuses on local news, interesting conversation and content every weekday from 7-10am.
ROCK IN DETROIT: How do local bands get on and get their stuff played on the Homeboy show?
JENN: Basically you send an email to our music and programming department at music@radiocobradetroit.com. One of us will get back to you. We will review that content and pick songs to play on the air, especially if you’re releasing like singles or a whole CD. That content will air during the Homeboy show so it plays and rotates. This is what we’re still working on. We just started this show probably 5-6 months ago, but I think Jamie’s getting it on the right track. I think we want to start scheduling more artist interviews. He has a podcast studio where he can have guests to interview in studio.
ROCK IN DETROIT: How about plans for the future? Where do you see Radio Cobra Detroit going? Where would you like it to go?
JENN: I would love to see it be well known across the country as a station that can deliver not just good music, but good content, sponsorship, and partnerships with businesses. Getting national sponsorships, being able to promote concerts a little bit more. Having that financial stream—whatever that looks like in the 21st century—because it’s really hard to monetize internet radio. We’re trying to collaborate with others who run internet stations that are trying to accomplish the same thing to find a way to come up with creative sponsorships and revenue streams together. Everybody and their brother can do an internet radio station or a podcast. But what makes it unique?
ROCK IN DETROIT: And even if it is unique, how do you attract the ears?
JENN: I think social media, and being an influencer, is probably the secret sauce that I want to tap into more. We want to use the youth- people like J. Bone, who is our new afternoon guy with a show every weekday from 2-6pm. He’s got some great social media ideas. He likes to influence people on Spotify and on TikTok, so we’re looking for him to kind of lead the charge on that.
Our parents’ generation didn’t have computers. My generation grew up without internet or cell phones and computers were just being introduced. My kids were born with a cell phone or a tablet in their hand. It’s just so hard because the younger generation has a huge pulse on social media and they have tuned out of traditional broadcast and news mediums. If we can influence, we’ll get younger listeners. Where does that revenue stream come from? Ask a TikTok influencer that’s making fifty-grand a month. I don’t know.
How long do we want to give it? So that’s the proverbial question. But again, I think that we are moving forward with the tools that we have. We’re reaching not just local bands, but local businesses too. We’re trying to be involved in the community, like a local radio station would, but we don’t necessarily want to be a traditional radio station. I still think AI and social media is going to dictate how and when people listen. I think people like on-demand content versus what is programmed in a radio station format. This is the future.
ROCK IN DETROIT: Is programming another way to reach a wide audience?
JENN: Each Cobra pilot (DJ) can put in their own little flavor to make it special. I encourage our jocks to do that because if we just did the boring corporate FM radio format, then we are just like the rest of them with bad songs and too many commercials.
We dare to be unique, so we encourage our DJ’s to be creative, and so it’s a mix of all different things, which makes it really cool. It’s almost like a college station, but it’s different. Hopefully we can reach out listeners in creative ways. We are seeing listeners from all over the world on our app. We get some listeners in Europe who listen overnight.
ROCK IN DETROIT: So back to you again. What’s your favorite music?
I like a lot of different music, but for my favorite stuff you will have to tune in to Radio Cobra from 6pm-Midnight for my show the Next Gen Night Service. I feature many of my favorite artists there with a show called 90s at 9 every weeknight from 9-10pm. There are many great bands that will take you back to one of the best decades in music.
ROCK IN DETROIT: Will do!
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