HomeFeaturesPeople › Johnjay Van Es Interview- Uncut - Page 2

 

Why so serious?

 

When did you start tweeting?

Years ago, Rich taught me about Twitter and I was like “That is stupid.” But that was years ago, No one was on it. ’08 maybe? ’09?

 

When did you become addicted to tweeting?

I don’t know when that happened. It’s like your own little reality show.

 

Any awkward twitter situations you'd like to share?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten in trouble for tweeting at meetings. Tweeting while driving. I got a photo radar picture. I’m tweeting in the picture. I know it’s dangerous and stupid and I shouldn’t do it. People shouldn’t do it. But it’s addicting right now, I’m trying to stop doing it.

 

Has Twitter ever gotten you in trouble?

Oh god, yeah. I got in trouble with advertisers. Because I said something about something I was doing that was countering something an advertiser was doing on our show. Just yesterday I was in a meeting about a new endorsement, and the problem is I just trashed them on Twitter two weeks ago. I got in trouble with my sister for tweeting things about my mother. I tweeted a picture of her and I hugging and she said “she looks like she’s on her death bed.” She was. I got rid of it.

 

Does your wife get pissed at you for tweeting inappropriate things or at inopportune times?

Every day. Every day my wife is mad at me. Every day. I tweet in church. My mother passed away recently. and she said “You’re not going to tweet at the funeral, are you?” and I said “Absolutely. Why wouldn’t I tweet at the funeral?” So that’s a dilemma coming up.

 

Obviously this allows your listeners to provide you with instant feedback- any cool stories?

I found out Michael Jackson died on Twitter. Before I heard about it on CNN. All the time, we have such a cool audience, they tweet, it’s like a conversation. They’re all a part of our show, they’ll say “why don’t you talk about this today?”

 

Does it ever drive your show?

All the time. Or if we have a satellite problem, we were off the air in Tucson yesterday and nobody called, they tweeted at us to tell us.

 

How has Twitter boosted your fanbase?

That’s a good question. I don’t know. Our audience is pretty strong. I think it works hand in hand. I don’t think I’d have as many followers if the show wasn’t doing as well as it is.

 

Tell us about what you consider to be your big break. When do you think you “made it”?

I don’t think I’m there yet. I’ve made it at different levels, as far as radio goes. I’ve made it as far as my wife and I struggled to have babies and we finally have three beautiful boys. I struggled for a long time to get back home to Arizona and now we’re back home in Arizona. I feel like I’ve made it there. I struggled to lose weight and get healthy and I’ve made it there. As far as radio, I don’t think we’re there yet. Our show is going forward and picking up new cities. We’ve had the opportunity, we had the chance to take our show to Los Angeles and instead we wanted to base it out of Phoenix. If we had based it out of LA we would probably be more successful monetarily or what not, but as far as quality of life we decided not to take the show to LA. I probably would be hosting some TV show if I’d taken the show to LA three years ago. I love it here. I will live here the rest of my life. And Pinetop. Look at the weather right now.

 

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