Ryan Koch has been one of your favorite voices for years, but now you’re just hearing him somewhere different.
After being let go from Rock 106.1, he and his wife Kennedy decided to pursue a passion they’d always wanted: podcasts.
“But with radio in Savannah, radio sucks all your time up, so we didn’t have the time to do it,” shares Ryan. “Well, when radio slashed my job, it was like, ‘Okay, this is what we’re doing.’”
Thus, the Kennedy Koch Show was started.
“We try to take it back to when we were younger,” says Ryan. “We have organic conversations about sensitive topics with amazing guests. It’s about everything and anything—we’re big on comedians.”
That’s proven to be the formula for an easily approachable podcast.
“The biggest compliments we’ve gotten about our podcast is that people feel like they’re actually sitting down and hanging out with us,” says Ryan. “That, to me, is the point of a podcast—if you feel like you’re comfortable enough to hang out with us.”
Ryan’s radio background has definitely informed how he approaches the podcast, but now he gets a little more freedom.
“It’s funny, I read a lot about podcasts and the big thing they do say is, in a way, treat your podcast like radio in the sense of having recurring themes and recurring topics,” says Koch. “I don’t like to ask specific questions, man. I like a conversation to go where it’s going to go. And if it takes an hour and a half to get there, then that’s the beauty of the podcast.”
In radio, Ryan says, the main goal was to create short soundbites, which went against what he was trying to do. Once, he had a conversation with Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols that ended up being 16 minutes long. He was able to cut it to six or seven, but the station wanted him to make it only a minute and 20 seconds long.
“How do you condense that?” Ryan asks. “It just got worse over time.”
Now, working for themselves, Ryan and Kennedy have more freedom to have longer interviews and build the community the way they’ve always wanted.
Now based out of Detroit, they plan to keep featuring Savannah guests on the podcast, as well as bringing Detroit talent into the mix.
“Savannah is only a phone call away,” reminds Ryan. “Detroit gets a lot of entertainment, a lot of comedy and things that come through on a nightly basis. We’re trying to get involved with that too and take it to the next level.” – Rachael Flora
Runner-up: WRUU
