Here’s today’s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture.<\/p>\n
John Tesh: King of All Media.<\/strong> Forget about Howard Stern. John Tesh is the real deal when it comes to multimedia success. The former local reporter first found national fame as the long-time co-host of Entertainment Tonight<\/em>,\u00a0 a post the composer\/musician left to focus on a blossoming performance career that is still going strong even as he hosts a popular syndicated radio show and launches a new web-based internet channel called (appropriately enough) KTESH<\/a>.\u00a0 Somehow, he recently found time to talk with me. Here are some highlights of our conversation:<\/p>\n JWK: <\/strong>I remember you from your early days reporting local news at WCBS-TV in New York City.<\/p>\n JOHN TESH:<\/strong> Then you\u2019re an older guy.<\/p>\n JWK: <\/strong>This is true. Let\u2019s talk about your new internet radio project KTESH<\/a>. How did it come to be?<\/p>\n JT:\u00a0 <\/strong>We do a show called Intelligence for Your Life<\/em> which is basically just curated material from all over the world \u2013 (information like) Five Ways to be a Better Parent, Three Ways to Be To Trim Your Waistline<\/em>.<\/p>\n JWK:<\/strong> They play all the time at the local pizzeria where I go.<\/strong><\/p>\n JT:\u00a0 <\/strong>Oh, is that right. That\u2019s good news…<\/strong>(Anyway) we lost our station in Los Angeles. They decided to replace us with something else. So I thought, “Why don\u2019t we do a little experiment and why don\u2019t we create our own radio station?” One of my guys at the office said \u201cLet\u2019s call it KTESH!”\u2026(Then) we thought\u00a0 “You know what? Instead of advertising why\u00a0 don\u2019t we see if we can serve churches and we can have a partnership where we would have a Church Finder<\/a>…and promote pastors\u2019 messages and maybe special events they\u2019re having on the weekend\u00a0 and then they would send out to their parishioners a promotion about what we\u2019re doing on the radio.<\/p>\n What happens with terrestrial Christian radio is that it\u2019s just loaded \u00a0with commercials and a lot of it is just sort of time and temperature. So, we thought\u00a0 why don\u2019t we take what we know how to do best\u00a0 and curate this information — It\u2019s not \u201cChristian\u201d information but it\u2019s curated by a Christian guy so there’s nothing in there that not going to help you to move forward in your life and (help) you to have purpose — and then we\u2019ll surround it with contemporary Christian music and see what happens. And what started happening was that there are so many people who are listening at work now because they could just pop it onto their computer or onto their smartphone.<\/p>\n JWK:<\/strong> Is it a 24-hour-a-day linear channel?<\/p>\n JT: \u00a0<\/strong>It is.\u00a0 We have about six hours of new content\u00a0 every day, including music and Intelligence for\u00a0 Your Life<\/em>.\u00a0 There\u2019s a radio term TSL which is \u201cTime Spent Listening.\u201d \u00a0We found that most people\u2019s \u201ctime spent listening\u201d is about an hour and 20 minutes.\u00a0 So, it\u2019s almost like 1010 WINS in New York (which says) “You give us 20 Minutes and we\u2019ll give you the world.”\u00a0 You give us an hour 20 and we\u2019ll change your life.\u00a0 And so we just repeat it. We do give local Los Angeles news and weather and things like that.<\/p>\n JWK:<\/strong> So this is available to the people of Southern California but you can really get it anywhere.<\/p>\n JT: \u00a0<\/strong>Well, you can get it anywhere, yeah, but what we\u2019re trying to do is provide it as a place for folks in this area.<\/p>\n JWK:<\/strong> How can people access KTESH<\/a>?<\/p>\n JT: \u00a0<\/strong>It\u2019s just KTESHLA.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n JWK:<\/strong> When did you launch?<\/p>\n JT: \u00a0<\/strong>About\u00a0 two months ago.<\/p>\n JWK:<\/strong> How\u2019s it going so far?<\/p>\n JT: \u00a0<\/strong>It\u2019s going great!…We have somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 hours of listening a week \u00a0which is a lot, especially online. We\u2019re finding a lot of people are coming in from their smartphones. We\u2019re also getting a lot of people in…foreign countries listening. There are quite a few people listening in China. When I say quite a few people (I mean) it’s\u00a0 like a couple hundred.\u00a0 And then Uzbekistan and Cayman Islands and places like that. It\u2019s funny. We don’t really have to do any advertising. It\u2019s like people will go on their Facebook page and say \u201cHey, listen to KTESH) and then we\u2019ll also promote it on our Twitter feed.<\/p>\n JWK:<\/strong> You also broadcast Intelligence For Your Health<\/em> hosted by your wife Connie Sellecca (of Greatest American Hero<\/em><\/a> fame).<\/p>\n JT: \u00a0<\/strong>Yeah, we take some of her health show and we put it one there as well.<\/p>\n JWK:<\/strong> Is her show syndicated terrestrially as yours is?<\/p>\n JT: \u00a0<\/strong>It is.\u00a0 She\u2019s on about 60 stations.<\/p>\n JWK:<\/strong> So KTESH basically is comprised of your show, her how and the music.<\/p>\n JT: \u00a0<\/strong>Yes.<\/p>\n JWK:<\/strong> Are you going to add additional programming?<\/p>\n JT: \u00a0<\/strong>We might get a money expert involved as well.<\/p>\n JWK:<\/strong> You\u2019ve had a very eclectic career.\u00a0 As I said, when I was younger \u00a0I remember seeing you as a local reporter on WCBS-TV in New York City. From there you went on to co-anchor Entertainment Tonight<\/em>\u00a0 for several years.\u00a0 That was a very successful \u2013 and, for show business, stable \u2013 gig. \u00a0How come you left?<\/p>\n JT: \u00a0<\/strong>It was a very successful and stable job with no future in it. I loved the people that I worked with but I took that job because they offered me an opportunity to also work on my music at the same time…I look at it this way. God put in my path this amazing music career right about the time I had been on Entertainment Tonight<\/em> eight or nine years. I could have kept the ET<\/em> job. I could have continued to tour 50 shows or 60 shows a year but I would show up at church and the folks at church would go \u201cWow, you\u2019re on that show where you chase around celebrities and put everybody on in their underwear.\u201d And my daughter was like three years old at the time and she couldn’t watch the show. So, I\u2019m thinking \u201cYou know, it wasn\u2019t always that way. Things have really changed.\u201d<\/p>\n JWK: \u00a0<\/strong>It was a little incongruous.<\/p>\n JT:\u00a0 <\/strong>I think that\u2019s a good word. It was a little incongruous with the message I was trying to put out there personally and what was happening.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to be self righteous here. I can\u2019t tell you that I wouldn\u2019t still be doing the job if the music career hadn\u2019t really blown up at that point.<\/p>\n JWK: \u00a0<\/strong>Was it a little scary to leave a job that seemed so solid?<\/p>\n JT: \u00a0<\/strong>It was scary for everybody else. It was a seven-figure job. It was a great job. A lot of people know who I was.\u00a0 I had all that stuff. But, you know, I did some reading while we were on vacation\u2026and there was a like 50-question test (to determine) if you were in the job for which you were made and I got a zero.<\/p>\n JWK: \u00a0<\/strong>Really.<\/p>\n JT: \u00a0<\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n JWK: \u00a0<\/strong>That sounds like an Intelligence for Your Life<\/em> segment.<\/p>\n JT: \u00a0<\/strong>We\u2019ve actually done it many times…So, I started thinking maybe I shouldn\u2019t be doing this full time.\u00a0 And it was a lot of work — I mean not a lot<\/em> of work but that plus<\/em> touring and trying to be a dad.<\/p>\n JWK:\u00a0 <\/strong>You\u2019ve been so successful in your music career. What led you to take on talking on the radio?<\/p>\n JT: \u00a0<\/strong>I was just to be relevant (after) I left Entertainment Tonight<\/em> and I became a full-time musician. I started in radio and I really missed that.\u00a0 So, I started doing a weekend show for Westwood One.\u00a0 It was a sort of countdown show. Then, we thought \u201cLet\u2019s do something with a little more purpose\u201d and we came up with this idea of Intelligence for Your Life.<\/em><\/p>\n JWK: \u00a0<\/strong>It\u2019s a successful show, obviously, but you kind of go against the grain of what most other successful radio talkers are doing \u2013 you know, finding things to argue about.<\/p>\n JT: \u00a0<\/strong>Yeah.\u00a0 You know, I\u2019m one of those guys that reads (books like) Focus<\/em> by Al Ries<\/a>, Differentiate or Die<\/em><\/a> (and) The (Laws) of Disruption<\/em>. (In) everything we\u2019ve done, we\u2019ve tried to be as disruptive as possible\u00a0 and not do what everybody else is doing. You know, (so-called) “right\u201d thing to do in the radio world is, like you said, to just go on…and just be angry about everything, scream at everybody and take sides. \u00a0We thought, \u201cYou know what? Nobody is doing the other thing which is no celebrity birthdays, no politics, no meanness, no crying, no whining…We’re gonna will find you a better way to deal with your problems. We’ll find you a better way to find your mission and purpose in life. We call it “Welcome to your new and improved life.”…So, we thought “Let\u2019s differentiate ourselves and do something that\u2019s never been done on a radio before.”\u00a0 I think Dr. Laura is probably closest \u2013 where, you know, she’s an expert, of course, and she listens to people\u2019s problems and tries to find solutions in that area. We attack every category\u2014whether it\u2019s money and finances or health, wellness, fitness or even pets.\u00a0 We will attack all those categories.<\/p>\n JWK:\u00a0 <\/strong>You speak of faith a lot. How has that informed your career?<\/p>\n JT: \u00a0<\/strong>My faith exists at the hands of my wife Connie…I grew up\u00a0 (attending) Westbury Methodist Church and was the guy who sort of memorized everything \u2013 all the scriptures and all\u00a0 of that\u2013 but never really had a relationship with Christ at all when I came out of college and (went into) news and Entertainment Tonight<\/em>. Then I met my wife. She\u2019s a born-again Christian. She was the one that really brought me back into Bible study…And then, for about 15 years, I was worship music leader (in our church) and then sort of realized that that was a huge distraction for me. I know it sounds odd but I realized that as I went out on the road and played that kind of music that I\u00a0 had more of an impact than if I stayed in a tiny town church with 120 people.<\/p>\n JWK: \u00a0<\/strong>How long are you married to Connie Sellecca?<\/p>\n JT: \u00a0<\/strong>20 years.<\/p>\n JWK: \u00a0<\/strong>How did you two meet?<\/p>\n JT: \u00a0<\/strong>We met in Palm Springs. I was doing an event for Entertainment Tonight<\/em> and she was shooting a show .<\/p>\n