With voiceover pro Joe Cipriano as the announcer and Benztown founder and President Dave “Chachi” Denes as host, the Chachi Loves Everybody podcast has offered behind the scenes looks “on the myths and legends of the media and entertainment industries.”
Among those Chachi has interviewed of late are Connoisseur Media founder and CEO Jeff Warshaw, former Meruelo Media leader Otto Padrón, Saga Communications President/CEO Chris Forgy and veteran West Coast radio host Chet Buchanan. For Episode No. 71, Denes spent more than 90 minutes chatting with the President/Publisher of Radio Ink and the Radio + Television Business Report.
The wide-ranging conversation includes a humorous yet insightful tale of Parenti’s first encounter with the Chicago-based advertising agency handling restaurant chain Bob Evans, Campbell Mithun. “I had made good friends over the phone with the buyers there,” Deborah Parenti tells Chachi. “It turns out they’d never been to a Bob Evans and didn’t know anything about it so I stopped at picked up some pies and things that weren’t perishable on my way up and took them in and said I’d like to meet the boss, the CEO.” He wasn’t in the office, but Parenti was able to leave a note in his office — with the pies.
Upon returning to the radio stations in Dayton she worked for, her boss expressed astonishment, asking, “Who do you think you are??” She replied, “I’m Deborah Parenti … what’s your point?”
Parenti broke barriers by becoming the first woman to manage a radio station in the Ohio market, and later led a major station group in Philadelphia. She also pioneered one of the radio industry’s first consolidated sales platforms in the 1990s.
In the podcast, accessible here through Apple Podcasts, Parenti and Chachi share stories about falling in love with radio as a child raised in Dayton; relocating to Los Angeles to help syndicated a Wolfman Jack-hosted radio program; and overcoming shyness to learn how to put herself out there and go for it.
The wide-ranging conversation also sees Parenti share the value of marketing and research in radio and the importance of knowing where statistics come from; what makes for a strong company culture and good teams; and, more recently, her work creating and growing the Hispanic Radio Conference and Forecast events.
