Colorful phrases tend to roll off the tongue of Joel McCrea, if you can corner him long enough to have a conversation. He’s constantly on the go, managing five radio stations in Des Moines and two in Ames for Clear Channel Radio.

“There’s no problem that revenue can’t solve,” he tells his workers, or, “Go make a difference. Don’t just wait for it to come to you. You go to it. I love to fish for trout, but if I just go to a random puddle of water and drop my line, I’m not going to catch any. They love to hide down in the rocks, in the brushy areas and the deep holes. Seek them out there and you’ll catch a lot more fish.”

McCrea says he’s wanted to work for WHO, a Clear Channel station, since he was in the sixth grade.

“I grew up listening to Ev Hickman,” he said. “I thought it was magical how he could cancel school.”

The day he turned 16, McCrea began work at KCOB in Newton, and while attending college at the University of Northern Iowa, he continued to work in radio. In the summer, he commuted to the station, leaving home at 3 a.m. and sleeping in the studio.

“It got a hold of me,” he said. “Radio stays in your blood.”

When McCrea graduated in 1985, he went to work for the Northern Iowa Radio Network in Waterloo as a news reporter. In 1988 he became the news director. In 1992, WHO approached him to sell the advertising for its broadcasts of Iowa games. At first it was difficult for McCrea to give up his time on the air, but he says it was worthwhile in the long run.

“My ultimate goal was to get into management, and sales was the quickest path,” he said.

For McCrea, it was a quick path indeed. By 1998, he was sales manager at WHO. Two years later, he was named station manager. In 2001 he was promoted to general manager, and in November he was made manager of Clear Channel’s operations in the Des Moines-Ames market. He’s seen WHO radio grow and change from when it was owned by family company Palmer Communications to its sale to Jacor in 1996 and subsequent merger with Clear Channel.

“We have fewer people running radio stations,” McCrea said. “So many family-run stations had trouble competing with larger stations. Consolidations allow stations to compete better today than they could five years ago, and the expectations that Clear Channel has for us are no different than Palmer’s. They want a return on the investment.”

Although he works at a breakneck pace during the week, he reserves his weekends for his family. McCrea has a wife, Julie, an 11-year-old son, Jay, and an 8-year-old daughter, Jill. Among his favorite activities is coaching Jay’s soccer team and refereeing. His motivational and judgment skills have served him well on the field and in the workplace, creating a fiercely loyal staff, vocal in their support.

“People really like Joel,” said Cathy Erickson, event manager at Clear Channel. “I only came to work here because he was here. Radio is kind of a wild business, and not for the faint of heart.”

“One of these days, now that they’ve mapped human DNA, they will isolate the gene that makes you go into radio,” McCrea said. “Then we’ll all start treatment.”

Despite McCrea’s jocular comparisons between radio and disease, if he speaks on the subject at any length, reverence creeps into his voice.

“We’ve had such greats as Ronald Reagan, Jim Zabel, Lee Kline, Keith Kirkpatrick and Van Harden,” he said. “There’s something magical about this radio station and its heritage.”