The Tommy Show 2.0 radio show!

Posted on February 20, 2019 by Erika C.

Get excited, DMV, and brush up on your trivia skills, because some familiar voices are about to return to your mornings. The Tommy Show 2.0 is set to kick off Monday, Feb. 25 at 6 am!

After departing from their previous radio station four months ago, our friends at The Tommy Show got creative to find a new gig doing what they love. The duo of Tommy McFly and Kelly Collis will be the new Tommy Show 2.0. They explored all forms of broadcasting, and other markets outside of DC expressed an interest in them, however this dynamic duo couldn’t bring themselves to leave the area.

“We love DC,” Kelly said. “Our families are rooted here. My two kids are still in school in the area and my husband loves his job. And how would I survive baseball season without regular visits to Nats Park!! Tommy too, he moved here 15 years ago and is an active member of the community and his husband is from Baltimore.”

Aside from family roots, The Tommy Show family helped cement the team to the area.

“I think we were overwhelmed by the support we received from our audience,” Kelly said. “We hosted events in the following weeks after our former station changed formats around the beltway where hundreds of people showed up to just say hi and offer up a hug. I couldn’t imagine how we could just walk away from all the love we were a part of.”

The problem is there are a limited number of radio stations in DC, so The Tommy Show gang had to think outside of the box to find a solution. What they ended up with was essentially creating their own online radio station that allowed them to remain in DC and continue connecting with their Tommy Show family.

“Since I had some free time on my hands (thank goodness it wasn’t baseball season!) I started researching podcasting,” Kelly explained. “I also have a track record of being entrepreneurial. I saw where artificial intelligence through smart speakers and the onset of 5G along with watching how my tweens consume media, there was a real opportunity to take advantage of technology. I soon realized no one was doing a live broadcast that was like a traditional morning show that interacted live with their listening audience. I thought ‘how hard could it be?’  It was a little harder than I thought it would be. When I showed Tommy some basic research, there was not even a moment of hesitation. I said ‘lets do this, I am 100% in’. That weekend I cleaned out a storage room and started laying out soundproofing and insulating that room while Tommy did the research on what equipment we would need.”

It became a family affair, as Kelly’s husband (Steadman)  and Tommy’s parents helped build their new studio, and voilà! What they have is an incredibly innovative product.

Starting next Monday, people will be able to tune into the Tommy Show at 6 am, where they will hear a live broadcast just like any traditional morning radio show. The broadcast can be accessed through their website www.tommyshow.com or through their new free app, which you can find by searching “The Tommy Show” in both the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store. The app will allow you to listen to the show live, as well as listen to archived past shows. The app will also allow listeners to send recorded voice messages to the studio, which Tommy and Kelly will get in real time and will be able to play on air. They’ll also have a phone number, so listeners will be able to call and join in the conversation. The show will sound just like their old radio broadcast, complete with music and Can’t Beat Kelly! The benefit to running their own show is that they have total control over what music they play, and how much of it to play, so conversations will be more natural and less rushed, as there is no pressure to play a certain number of songs each hour.

It was important to Tommy and Kelly to develop a format that allowed them to remain engaged with their audience, so they wanted to create an option different from a podcast.

“We really wanted to provide our already supportive base an experience that they were used to,” Kelly said. “Not only being live but being able to call into our show. When we started developing the app to have a feature that allows people to also send us audio notes from the app that we can get in real time.”

And, fear not, Nats fans. Kelly wouldn’t let a connection with her favorite sports team slip away. Listeners can expect the same engagement with the Nationals that they’ve grown used to.

“We have discussed with [the Nationals] continuing some of the traditions we have done the last 7 years,” Kelly said. “Broadcasting on opening day at the field (and hopefully the first day of playoffs), hosting a game one night for our Tommy Show family and as a season ticket holder you can plan to see me and my family at many games!”

One bonus to their app? They have room for additional content including more baseball and unique features.

“We remain on the Nats press list,” Kelly explained. “I will be traveling and broadcasting live for a few days during Spring Training. We also have long form on demand content that will allow us to interview players, player wives and other Nats spokespersons.”

So get excited to get your Nats fix, both during their live shows and through additional content on their app.

There will be one huge difference as The Tommy Show 2.0 kicks off next week as Jen won’t be with Tommy and Kelly. Jen announced back in January that she would be pursuing other ventures while Tommy and Kelly began working on developing their app. 

“Jen always has a door open in our next venture. We support her and cannot wait to learn more about her next adventure,” Kelly said.

Personally, I also can’t wait to see what’s next for Jen, but I’m really going to miss her always positive, impossibly upbeat attitude so early in the morning. She was like a cup of coffee before I was able to get to an actual cup of coffee.

No venture is done independently. Besides hands-on help from family, Tommy and Kelly are also working with partners to help bring Tommy Show 2.0 to life.

“We have incredible partnerships with CitiOpen, Events DC, Rio Washingtonian, Downtown Silver Spring and Liberty Lorton as our launch sponsors,” Kelly said. “Carmine’s Italian Restaurant is sponsoring our daily trivia contest of Can’t Beat Kelly and of course our official cupcake sponsor will continue to be Georgetown Cupcake.”

Get your apps downloaded, or point your browsers to their website. The Tommy Show 2.0 is coming for you in less than a week! I have felt lost in my mornings before work ever since they went off the air, so I can’t wait to welcome Tommy and Kelly back into my mornings just like many of you will do.

 

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