The Last Conclave Starts Today and On The Dial Is Headed to Minnesota for Radios Final Great Reunion

For nearly half a century, radio people have made the pilgrimage to Minnesota carrying airchecks, résumés, ratings stories, programming theories, bad jokes, great ideas and enough call-letter memories to completely confuse any normal human being sitting nearby. Today, September 15, one of broadcasting’s most remarkable traditions begins for the final time as Conclave 45 The Last Conclave opens in Bloomington, Minnesota, bringing programmers, personalities, managers, owners, consultants, creators and longtime friends together for three days that will celebrate where radio has been while asking some uncomfortable and necessary questions about where it goes next.

And On The Dial is going to be in the middle of it.

President and Publisher Steven Mills will be there.

Kevin Fodor will be there.

On The Dial contributing writer and veteran programmer Robby Bridges will be there.

Three members of the On The Dial family.

One final Conclave.

And we’re not going to Minnesota simply to pick up badges.

WE’RE GOING TO COVER RADIO

Today It Begins

The official schedule is surprisingly simple for Tuesday.

And that’s perfect.

Registration and badge pickup opens at 2 p.m. in the second-floor foyer.

Then from 5 until 7 p.m., the Conclave 45 Welcome Party takes over that same space.

No marathon schedule of panels.

No 8 a.m. PowerPoint presentation.

No racing between ballrooms.

Not yet.

Day One is about something The Conclave has always understood better than almost anybody.

PEOPLE

Because Before Radio Was An Industry It Was A Bunch Of People Talking To Each Other

And Tuesday evening may prove to be one of the most important sessions that isn’t technically a session.

Look around that welcome party.

Former coworkers will find each other.

Old programmers will encounter former air talent.

People who haven’t seen each other since three ownership groups and four formats ago will suddenly be standing six feet apart.

Somebody will inevitably say:

WAIT YOU WORK WHERE NOW

😂

Somebody else will tell a story that starts with:

YOU CANNOT PRINT THIS

Which, naturally, is exactly when On The Dial starts paying attention.

😂

That’s The Conclave.

There Is No Next Year This Time

That’s what makes tonight different.

Every conference creates excuses.

Couldn’t make it this year.

Budget didn’t work.

Too busy.

Maybe next time.

THERE IS NO NEXT TIME

This is Conclave 45.

The last one.

The organization that has spent nearly 50 years bringing broadcasters together is closing the conference chapter after this gathering.

That changes the emotional temperature of everything happening inside that hotel.

You’re not simply saying hello.

Eventually you’re saying goodbye.

But Before We Get Sentimental Wednesday Gets Down To Business

After Tuesday’s reunion, the classroom opens Wednesday morning.

And the schedule is loaded.

Breakfast begins at 7 a.m., followed by opening remarks at 8:15.

At 8:30, the first major conversation throws almost everything onto the table with an open-question format featuring programming consultant Harv Blain alongside Bob Leighton, Dennis Corbett, Dan Cash, longtime KDWB personality Dave Ryan and Superadio’s Raphael George.

Look at that collection of experience.

Ownership.

Management.

Legal.

Digital.

Affiliates.

Programming.

Talent.

And Dave Ryan.

Which means anything could happen.

😂

Then Comes One Of Radios Biggest Questions

At 10 a.m.:

THE FUTURE OF TALENT

Brian Wright and Valerie Geller will tackle an issue that should be keeping every programmer in America awake.

Where does radio’s next generation come from?

How do we discover them?

How do we coach them?

How do we keep them?

And perhaps most importantly:

WHERE DO THEY GET THEIR FIRST BREAK

Because radio cannot spend the next decade complaining that there aren’t enough great personalities after spending the previous decade eliminating many of the places where personalities learned how to become great.

That’s a conversation worth having.

Then Fred And Paul Jacobs Get Fifty Years To Fit Into Fifty Minutes

Good luck, gentlemen.

😂

At 11 a.m., Fred and Paul Jacobs will present a session built around lessons learned across five decades of radio.

Think about the period their careers have crossed.

AM dominance.

FM’s explosion.

Album rock.

Classic rock.

Morning-show wars.

Consolidation.

The Telecommunications Act.

Satellite radio.

The internet.

iPods.

Streaming.

Smartphones.

Podcasts.

Connected cars.

Artificial intelligence.

And somehow

WE’RE STILL ARGUING ABOUT WHETHER THAT SONG TESTED

😂

Some things never change.

Then Radio Honors Its Own

Wednesday’s Rockwell Awards Luncheon runs from noon until 1:30 p.m.

And because this is the final Conclave, these aren’t simply another year’s Rockwell Awards.

They are the final Rockwells presented at a Conclave gathering.

The honorees are Herb Hoppe, Mark Bolke, Dave Chachi Denes, Joe Knapp, Lori Lewis and Hubbard Minneapolis executive Dan Seeman. Hoppe’s recognition is posthumous.

That’s going to be a room.

And I suspect lunch won’t be the only reason people are reaching for napkins.

Then Paige Nienaber Gets Loose

At 1:45 Wednesday afternoon, promotions mastermind Paige Nienaber gets more than an hour to walk through his selections for radio’s greatest promotions.

Anybody who has spent five minutes around Paige knows this could go anywhere.

That’s exactly why you go.

Radio promotions used to be one of the great laboratories of broadcasting insanity.

Cars.

Cash.

Concerts.

Stunts.

Treasure hunts.

Morning-show madness.

Things involving swimming pools that almost certainly would require twelve attorneys today.

😂

But underneath the craziness was strategy.

Create attention.

Create talk.

Create memory.

Give listeners something Spotify cannot.

That’s still the job.

Social Media Gets Its Turn

At 3 p.m., the conversation moves from the transmitter to the phone.

Jonathan West moderates a social-media discussion featuring Jodi Koontz, WIXX Green Bay’s Baby Haze and KDWB’s Jenny Luttenberger.

And this subject couldn’t be more important.

Radio once asked:

What happened on the show today

Now it has to ask:

What happened on the show today that somebody will watch tonight

Different skill.

Same brand.

Then We Talk About Programming Itself

Wednesday afternoon also brings a major discussion about the future of programming featuring Hubbard’s Greg Strassell, Midwest Communications’ Jeff McCarthy, SonicTrek.ai’s Joel Denver and Peoria programmer Chad Taylor.

That’s potentially one of the most consequential conversations of the conference.

Because what exactly is a Program Director in 2026?

Music director?

Talent coach?

Content strategist?

Social strategist?

Data analyst?

AI referee?

Digital programmer?

Brand manager?

Revenue partner?

Therapist?

Occasionally janitor?

😂

YES

The job didn’t disappear.

The job swallowed six other jobs.

Wednesday Ends The Way Radio Conferences Should

At 5 p.m.:

THE LAST CONCLAVE COCKTAIL PARTY

Not a Conclave cocktail party.

THE LAST ONE

Those words are going to start landing differently as the week progresses.

Then Thursday Ken Levine Gets The Room

If you’re going to close nearly 50 years of broadcasting education, Ken Levine is one hell of a person to hand a microphone.

Thursday at 8:30 a.m., Levine delivers the final Conclave keynote.

His résumé almost sounds made up.

Radio DJ.

Major League Baseball broadcaster.

Television writer.

Producer.

Director.

Comedy.

Sports.

MAS H.

Cheers.

Frasier.

Seattle Mariners.

Baltimore Orioles.

San Diego Padres.

And decades spent learning one skill that every radio personality should understand:

HOW TO TELL A STORY

Technology changes.

Platforms change.

Distribution changes.

Great storytelling doesn’t.

Then One Of Our Own Takes The Stage

And this one is special for us.

At 9:40 Thursday morning, On The Dial contributing writer Robby Bridges will moderate the final Conclave discussion about syndicated programming.

Sitting with Bridges will be Mason of LiveLine, Tony Lorino of Throwback Nation, T.J. of The T.J. Show and legendary programmer and syndicator John Garabedian of Jamchannel.

That is an extraordinary amount of syndicated-radio knowledge sitting in one place.

And the topic is exactly the right one:

What works?

What doesn’t?

Because syndication itself isn’t the enemy of local radio.

BAD RADIO IS

Great syndicated programming can create enormous personality.

It can give smaller markets access to world-class talent.

It can generate appointment listening.

But it has to feel alive.

It has to understand affiliates.

It has to respect the audience.

And somebody still has to make it sound like it belongs on the station carrying it.

Robby Bridges knows that territory.

Thursday morning, he’ll be helping lead the conversation.

And Then KDWB Comes Home

Perhaps no session could better close a Minnesota radio institution than one celebrating another Minnesota radio institution.

At 10:40 Thursday morning, Kelly K3 Doherty moderates a massive KDWB retrospective featuring Rich Davis, Angi Taylor, Scotty Davis, Falen and JJ Kincaid.

Think about the personalities that have passed through KDWB.

Think about the programmers.

Think about the imaging.

The contests.

The music.

The morning shows.

The outrageousness.

The talent pipeline.

KDWB didn’t merely make radio.

KDWB MADE RADIO PEOPLE

And bringing generations of them together at the final Conclave feels almost ridiculously appropriate.

Then Noon Comes

Thursday.

September 17.

Noon.

The schedule contains five words that don’t look particularly dramatic until you understand what they mean.

THE LAST CONCLAVE FAREWELL LUNCHEON

That’s it.

Forty-five Conclaves.

Nearly half a century.

Thousands of broadcasters.

Countless sessions.

Jobs found.

Mentors discovered.

Friends made.

Ideas stolen.

Ideas borrowed.

Ideas everybody independently claims they invented.

😂

And eventually

lunch.

On The Dial Will Be There For It

Steven Mills.

Kevin Fodor.

Robby Bridges.

ON THE DIAL

We’re going because this is news.

We’re going because this is history.

But more than anything else

we’re going because we’re radio people.

We’ve programmed it.

We’ve been on it.

We’ve lived through format changes.

We’ve lived through ownership changes.

We’ve watched friends become major-market personalities.

We’ve watched great broadcasters suddenly find themselves unemployed.

We’ve watched radio get declared dead approximately 47,000 times.

And somehow the damn microphone keeps turning on.

We Want To See You

If you’re attending The Last Conclave, find us.

Seriously.

Come say hello.

Tell us what station you’re with.

Tell us where you started.

Tell us the greatest promotion you ever pulled off.

Tell us about the worst format change you ever survived.

Tell us who’s doing great radio that nobody is writing about.

Tell us what’s broken.

Tell us what’s working.

Tell us what On The Dial should be covering.

Tell Robby what question he absolutely needs to ask Thursday morning.

And if you’ve got a radio story that begins with:

YOU CANNOT PRINT THIS

Well

come find Steve.

😂

The On The Dial Perspective

I’ve been thinking about what makes this conference matter.

It isn’t simply longevity.

Lots of things survive a long time.

The Conclave mattered because generations of broadcasters came here and discovered that radio was bigger than their own building.

The kid doing nights in Market 173 could sit beside a major-market programmer.

A young PD could meet somebody whose work they’d studied for years.

A personality could find a mentor.

A programmer could find talent.

A broadcaster who had just been fired could walk into a room full of people who understood exactly what that felt like.

Sometimes a conversation became a friendship.

Sometimes a friendship became a job.

Sometimes a job became a career.

THAT’S THE CONCLAVE

And starting today, we get to do it once more.

Not next year.

Not someday.

TODAY

Registration opens at 2.

The Welcome Party starts at 5.

The badges go around the necks.

The handshakes begin.

Somebody sees somebody they haven’t seen in twenty years.

Somebody laughs.

Somebody tells a story.

Somebody gets an idea.

Somebody meets the person who changes the next chapter of their career.

And somewhere in that hotel, surrounded by generations of people who have spent their lives talking into microphones

THE LAST CONCLAVE BEGINS

Steven Mills will be there.

Kevin Fodor will be there.

Robby Bridges will be there.

ON THE DIAL WILL BE THERE

We’re going to listen.

We’re going to learn.

We’re going to report.

We’re going to celebrate.

We’re probably going to laugh entirely too much.

And when Thursday’s farewell finally arrives, we’re going to make damn sure we remember what this gathering meant to the people who built their lives around radio.

Forty-five Conclaves.

Nearly fifty years.

Three final days.

One final reunion.

LET’S DO THIS RADIO

The Last Conclave starts today.

And On The Dial is headed to Minnesota.

#TheLastConclave #Conclave45 #Radio #RadioPeople #Broadcasting #OnTheDial