Age: 39
Job Title: Host, The Jason Gregor Show
Why He’s Top 40: For using his media status to make a difference in the lives of others.
Key To Success:“I have a strong workethic that comes from my parents and the farm.”
Running into the farmyard, Jason Gregor saw a mother cow bawling loudly and a frozen, newly born calf lying in the snow bank. He scooped the calf up and rushed to the bathroom to warm it in the tub. Over the next six hours he bathed the animal, and slowly brought it back from death’s door.
“I had to put a tube down its throat and drain the milk into its stomach,” he says. “If you put the tube down the throat the wrong way you’ll drown the calf. It was nerve-racking, but it worked out and the calf lived.”
When he’s not moonlighting as a farmhand on his mother’s farm in New Sarepta, Gregor is the voice of the Edmonton Rush Lacrosse Club, a ring reporter for the Maximum Fighting Championship on HDNet and TSN2, and part owner of oilersnation.com, a hockey website that receives more than 300,000 unique visitors and 1 million page views every month.
But his biggest accomplishment is The Jason Gregor Show on TEAM 1260, where he applies his corn-fed work ethic the most.
Unlike most radio shows, Gregor runs every aspect himself including ad sales, developing and paying for marketing campaigns, and supervising his staff of two, which includes Meg Morrison, one of Edmonton’s only few female sport-show personalities.
Last year, the show raised $75,000 for cancer research, the Minerva Foundation, the MS Society of Canada and many other causes.
“I think sometimes media people don’t always use their platform properly to support charity causes,” Gregor says. “It’s one thing to lend your name to something, but that’s different than actually going and doing something. When I promote the MS Bike Tour, I go into the MS Bike Tour.”
Gregor is finding success in his professional life, but “I always go back to the farm because it’s grounding. When I save a calf’s life, it’s strange to think that if I wasn’t here this living thing wouldn’t have survived. I’m proud to say that I grew up on the farm.”
