Decoder Ring: The New Age Hit Machine

Summary

Hit Parade | Decoder Ring: The New Age Hit Machine

Host: Slate Podcasts
Date: December 26, 2022
Guest Host/Story By: Evan Chung
Main Theme:
How did little-known instrumental “New Age” musicians like Yanni and John Tesh become unlikely chart-topping superstars in the 1990s—before the age of the internet? This episode explores how the PBS pledge drive, an old-school fundraising event, propelled fringe artists into mainstream musical phenomena.

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Episode Overview

Decoder Ring’s “The New Age Hit Machine” peels back the curtain on a surprising chapter in pop music history: the unlikely rise of New Age instrumental artists, focusing on Yanni and John Tesh, in the pre-digital era. The episode traces how PBS pledge drives, through calculated risks and made-for-TV concert spectacles, enabled artists to bypass traditional gatekeepers and reach millions. The narrative contrasts the viral music moments of the TikTok era with the analog “virality” of the 1990s, revealing the peculiar alchemy of TV, spectacle, and public television’s fundraising ambitions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Comparing Today’s Virality to 1990s Music Breakthroughs

• The episode opens by explaining modern music virality via Olivia Rodrigo’s “Driver’s License,” whose TikTok-fueled rise (01:06–02:55) serves as a modern parallel to the TV-powered breakthroughs of earlier decades.
  • Quote – Rachel Hampton (01:56):
    “TikTok basically runs like the Billboard charts at this point. TikTok is the way to make your song go viral.”

2. Pre-Internet Pathways to Fame—Setting the Stage for Yanni

• Before social media, musicians had to find other routes to mainstream success. In 1994, Yanni—a Greek New Age synthesizer maestro—achieved fame not through radio or MTV, but via a self-produced concert aired on PBS (03:02–04:46).

  • Quote – Evan Chung (04:46):
    “If you thought this was Yanni’s reward for being world-famous, you’ve got it backwards. Yanni wasn’t on TV because he was a star. He was a star because he was on TV.”

• Yanni had been “categorized as elevator music,” unable to break beyond his niche (05:26–06:05). Even his public relationship with Linda Evans (“talk show fodder”) hadn’t moved the needle.

3. The PBS Pledge Drive: A Surprising Hit Machine

Structure and Strategy (07:31–09:08)

• The pledge drive was a workaround to raise funds since “we couldn’t air commercials” (07:47).

• Concert films, unlike long-form documentaries, were well-suited to the pledge structure due to their natural breaks and emotional arcs.

  • Quote – Pat Callahan (08:47):
    “Pledge shows, successful pledge shows, have little story arcs… They build for 15 or 20 minutes and then you go to a break.”

The Three Tenors as Proof of Concept (09:24–10:17)

• The 1991 broadcast of The Three Tenors concert shattered fundraising records and introduced classical artists to the U.S. mainstream, inspiring imitators.

  • Quote – Pat Callahan (09:52):
    “I never saw anything like it—just amazing to see those phones ringing and ringing…”
  • Quote – George Varis (10:37):
    “We just knew that if we could get on public television… we had nowhere else to go. Nobody believed in us, nobody.”

Yanni’s Gamble (10:58–13:41)

• Yanni self-financed the epic Acropolis concert (at a $2 million cost) specifically to license it to PBS pledge drives, with no guarantee of success.

  • Quote – George Varis (11:20):
    “That was a big risk… We had no guarantee on that.”
  • Quote – George Varis (12:22):
    “It was like doing an Olympic opening ceremony.”

• The concert’s TV production, shot to look grander than reality, made Yanni seem like an established superstar.

• PBS viewers (especially the “55-year-old women” demo) were captivated by Yanni’s looks, charisma, and soaring music (14:07).

4. Immediate and Lasting Results

• “Within three weeks” the concert album hit #5 on the Billboard charts (14:19), triggering a surge in sales and concert demand.
• Quote – George Varis (14:39):
  “I don’t believe without the PBS special it would have happened. Absolutely not.”

5. Copycats and a New Era: John Tesh and Beyond

John Tesh’s Parallel Journey (15:20–19:34)

• Known as the “Entertainment Tonight” anchor, John Tesh dreamed of a music career but struggled to be taken seriously.

  • He followed the Yanni PBS model, self-funding a televised Red Rocks concert (even giving away tickets to fill seats) with a production budget over $1 million.

  • The concert included spectacle: pyrotechnics, gymnasts, and visually dramatic staging.

    • Quote – John Tesh (17:38):
      “You give away the tickets… I was shocked that 12,000 people showed up.”
    • Quote – John Tesh (19:05):
      “If you have somebody evangelize… it’s so much better than just having your song played on the radio.”

• Initial PBS skepticism evaporated after a test airing became a pledge smash; Tesh’s TV concert “changed everything” for his career (19:12–19:34).

A “PBS-Driven Blockbuster Era” (19:34–22:01)

• PBS specials for Riverdance, Sarah Brightman, Andrea Bocelli, Celtic Woman, and others followed.

  • Some groups, like Celtic Woman, were literally assembled for PBS specials.

• Major record labels took note, investing in these spectacles as springboards for new talent.

• Stations sometimes aired these specials “six, seven, eight times a week,” filling fundraising quotas and capturing huge audiences (20:43–21:41).

  • Quote – John Tesh (21:25):
    “For about a year and a half, two years, you couldn’t get away from it…”

• The trade-off: traditional PBS viewers were “very upset,” but new audiences poured in (21:46–22:01).

6. Backlash and the Limits of Spectacle

• For many, Yanni and John Tesh became punchlines (22:13–22:37).

  • Quote – John Tesh (22:37):
    “That Red Rocks thing is awful. Moving on. But, you know, when Triumph the Insult Dog made fun of me, it was like, well, I feel like I’ve been recognized.”

• Despite mockery, their risk-taking and innovative strategy won begrudging respect.

  • Quote – John Tesh (24:07):
    “If the guy who used to read the celebrity birthdays… is now playing piano and millions of people are coming to see that, then we all need to go to our closet and get our clarinets out, because anything can happen.” (attributed to Conan O’Brien relayed by Tesh)

7. The End of an Era—New Age Artists’ Lasting Legacy

• It’s “impossible today” for an act to replicate this route to fame: the media landscape has shifted and PBS pledge drives no longer command the same audience power (23:24).
• The Yanni/Tesh method stands as a model of DIY stardom in a pre-digital age—a blend of risk, spectacle, and seizing unconventional opportunities.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “Yanni wasn’t on TV because he was a star. He was a star because he was on TV.”
  — Evan Chung (04:46)
• “We had to get it out there and let the public decide.”
  — George Varis (06:37)
• “You give away the tickets... I was shocked that 12,000 people showed up.”
  — John Tesh (17:38)
• “If this guy can do it, I can definitely do this.”
  — John Tesh (20:30)

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Notable Timestamps

• 01:06–02:55: TikTok’s role in Olivia Rodrigo’s rise—a contrast to 90s methods.
• 04:46–05:39: Yanni’s entrance; he became a star after being on TV, not before.
• 07:31–10:17: The mechanics and breakthrough of PBS pledge drives.
• 10:58–11:28 & 12:22–13:41: Yanni’s self-funded Acropolis spectacle and its staged grandeur.
• 13:58–14:54: Yanni’s breakthrough metrics & career transformation.
• 15:20–19:34: John Tesh’s copycat approach, televised concert, and PBS’s response.
• 19:34–22:01: The broader impact: PBS as a universal springboard for multiple cross-genre artists.
• 22:13–22:37: The cultural backlash—critics and comedians take aim.
• 23:24–24:27: Reflection on the unrepeatability of this phenomenon in the current era.

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Tone & Style

The tone is equal parts journalistic deep dive, affectionate nostalgia, and sly humor—blending archival clips, insider interviews, and cultural commentary to narrate an unlikely chapter in music history.

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Conclusion

“The New Age Hit Machine” is a fascinating look at a pre-viral era when musicians’ fortunes could be made not through radio, MTV, or social media, but via public TV spectacles crafted/funded by the artists themselves. Yanni and John Tesh’s “PBS path” stands as an instructive and entertaining reminder that sometimes, the wildcard route pays off—and that the medium can, in fact, make the star.

Transcript

[Willa Paskin]

You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.

[Hit Parade Host]

Hey, Hit Parade listeners, I've got something special for you this week while we catch our breath over the holidays. It comes from one of my favorite Slate podcasts, Decoder Ring, hosted by Willa Paskin. In this episode called New Age Hit Machine, Slate senior producer Evan Chung digs into the surprising success of instrumental artists like Janny and John Tesh back in the 1990s. What helped them scale the Billboard charts? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. We'll be back with a new episode of Hit Parade later this week. In the meantime, I hope you'll subscribe to Decoder Ring wherever you listen. Here's host Willa Paskin.

[Willa Paskin]

Before 2021, the musician Olivia Rodrigo was best known for appearing on the Disney chann.

[Rachel Hampton]

She was in High School Musical the Musical the series.

[Willa Paskin]

That's actually what the show is called.

[Evan Chung]

Last season on High School the the Series, who is ready?

[Willa Paskin]

Rachel Hampton is the host of icymi. In case you missed it, Slate's podcast about Internet culture.

[Rachel Hampton]

And so she already had a musical career. She was an up and coming Disney kid.

[Willa Paskin]

And like a lot of up and coming Disney kids, Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, other less successful performers, she decided it was time for a solo record.

[Rachel Hampton]

And so her first single was Driver's License.

[Pat Callahan]

I got my driver's license last week.

[George Varis]

Just like we always talked about.

[Willa Paskin]

Driver's License is a breakup song and.

[Pat Callahan]

You'Re probably with that blonde girl who.

[George Varis]

Always made me doubt.

[Willa Paskin]

And some listeners began to speculate that the lyrics contained hints about the breakup, which seemed to involve other Disney actors. And by now we should have all watched that 30 minute video about, you know, like the love triangle that's going on. So in that video there's a live of Joshua Baxter.

[Rachel Hampton]

Basically, this is the perfect storm for TikTok in that they love a mystery. They love to get in somebody's business that is not their own. And so this song becomes inescapable on TikTok because the first level is the mystery and the second level is just that it's extremely catchy. Everyone was like, I'm crying about these teens that I know nothing about. And now I love this song.

[Willa Paskin]

Within three days, the song was atop all the streaming charts and would soon be atop the Billboard Hot 100 as well. It got to 100 million listens on Spotify faster than any song ever.

[Rachel Hampton]

That's basically what TikTok did for Olivia Arrigo in that they made her inescapable.

[Willa Paskin]

And she's not the only one.

[Rachel Hampton]

I mean, TikTok basically runs like the Billboard charts at this point. TikTok is the way to make your song go viral.

[Willa Paskin]

But if TikTok is the way to do it now, it wasn't always 30 years ago. Before TikTok, before iPhones, before the Internet, there was another way for musicians to go viral. Frankly, it was kind of a bespoke way. But it worked. And in 1994, a mustachioed Greek musician made it work for him. In the mid-1990s, the new age musician Yanni and his flowing mane of dark hair became a star and household name by selling millions and millions of records. All thanks to some old technology. This is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. For this episode, we're re airing a story from Slate senior producer Evan Chung about how Yanni and a number of other surprising acts made it big in the 1990s. It's a throwback to a simpler time when it was still hard for musicians to break out, but they could do it using a telephone, a television and our undivided attention. So today on Decoder Ring, how did Yani become a star? Here's Evan Chung.

[Evan Chung]

The 1994 TV special of Janni's concert at the Acropolis and has all the trappings of a musician doing a victory lap after really hitting the big time. There he was set against the backdrop of the Parthenon, backed by no less than the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, tossing back his dark flowing locks as he tapped at his synthesizers while an enormous crowd cheered him on. But if you thought that this was Janny's reward for being world famous, you'd have it backwards. Janni wasn't on TV because he was a star. He was a star because he was on tv.

[George Varis]

Janni was a niche player. He was big in his area, but that's relative.

[Evan Chung]

George Varis produced and directed the Live at the Acropolis special and worked with Janny for years.

[George Varis]

He wasn't considered a big player in the overall music field.

[Evan Chung]

Janni's field was the world of instrumental electronic New Age music. He had been releasing albums for a small New Age label since the the mid-80s and they got respectable sales within that market. But the general public dismissed all that stuff as music for hot stone massages or being put on hold.

[George Varis]

He was being buttonholed as a New Age artist and there was no superstar in that genre.

[Evan Chung]

If Yanni was well known for anything, it was for being the new boyfriend of a celebrity.

[Pat Callahan]

So I opened the front door, opened the door I took one look at him, I lost my heart.

[Evan Chung]

This entire 1990 Oprah episode is actually devoted to Dynasty actress Linda Evans and her meet Cute. With Yanni, it was as if he.

[Pat Callahan]

Was made just for my eyes.

[Evan Chung]

I mean, there isn't a thing about him that I don't love. The exposure was nice, but Janny wanted to be more than talk show fodder.

[George Varis]

The frustration was he was hitting like a glass ceiling. But we believed in the music. We saw that it could be used in a lot of other areas than just in elevators. And that was the challenge. We had to get it out there and let the public decide.

[Evan Chung]

But what options did Jani have? His music wasn't really radio friendly. And MTV wasn't exactly making a lot of room for instrumental New Age composers. And then. Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti performed their first concert together in 1990 as part of the World cup in Italy. But the Three Tenors made their biggest mark during another major week long event, the March PBS pledge drive. Now is your chance to do your part, not for us, that you call.

[John Tesh]

In and pledge your support to help me out.

[Willa Paskin]

It is very important to get all the telephones in the studio busy.

[Evan Chung]

A quick refresher on what the deal with PBS pledge drives is. They started in the early 70s. PBS stations needed money and they couldn't make it the normal TV way because.

[Pat Callahan]

We couldn't air commercials. Commercials fund commercial television. We were not allowed to do that.

[Evan Chung]

Pat Callahan is director of membership at Arizona Public Media. She's been fundraising for PBS stations since before they really figured out the whole pledge drive thing.

[Pat Callahan]

In the old days, we'd just put a slide up after Masterpiece Theater and then sit there for five or 10 minutes while the announcer would be making a pitch over the slide.

[Evan Chung]

Soon enough, they adopted the familiar pledge drive format. The point was to get donations from people watching at home, which is to say from viewers like you. During a pledge drive, stations block off a week or two where they periodically interrupt their programming to make direct appeals to their viewers.

[Pat Callahan]

You just finished watching a marvelous program. Why wouldn't you stand up, call the number on your screen and become a member?

[Evan Chung]

The problem is, unlike most public radio shows, normal PBS shows don't actually work that well for raising money, in part because they're hard to chop up for pledge breaks.

[Pat Callahan]

Look at Frontline, you can't interrupt that. Look at Nova, you can't interrupt that. There's a long story arc there. You can't slice and dice it. But pledge shows successful Pledge shows have little story arcs so that they build for 15 or 20 minutes and then you go to a break. 15 to 20 minutes, then you go to a break.

[Evan Chung]

That structure is perfect though for concert films. So PBS stations often fill their pledge drives with one off musical specials, even if they're completely unrelated to their usual programming.

[Pat Callahan]

When you build a music pledge show, you come out on a high. I mean, I can remember big band specials where people would get up and dance in their own homes. They were telling us the Three Tenors.

[Evan Chung]

Concert special wasn't made for pbs. ABC had actually aired it the year before. It just got repackaged for the March 91 pledge drive where it defied all expectations. A.

[Pat Callahan]

Never saw anything like was just amazing to be on the studio floor and watch those funds just keep ringing and ringing and ringing.

[Evan Chung]

The Three Tenors concert promises to be.

[John Tesh]

One of the most popular events that.

[Evan Chung]

Public television has to offer.

[Willa Paskin]

We're going to send you the VHS copy of the program and you can.

[Pat Callahan]

Have that for your gift of $180. We made a ton of money, made a ton of money on that and then it just spilled over and spilled.

[Evan Chung]

Out, out into the mainstream. The Three Tenors became household names. Yanni and his producer, George Verris, they saw what was happening. They saw the PBS pledged drive as a platform, or better yet, they saw it as a catapult. A catapult that they could really launch Yanni's career from.

[George Varis]

We just knew that if we could get on public television, once you saw it, you would get absorbed by it and come back for more. We had nowhere else to go. We weren't with a big record company, we weren't with a big management team. We were the unknown guys on the block. Nobody believed in us, nobody.

[Evan Chung]

So Janni set out to prove everybody wrong by making his own concert special with George Varis as director. Janni and Linda Evans personally footed much of the bill, which was somewhere around $2 million, all with the specific purpose of licensing it to PBS. Pledge drives. Even though they had no idea if it was actually going to get serious.

[George Varis]

Airtime, the question was how much and how many stations. That was a big risk. We didn't have any guarantee on that. I mean, that definitely was a big risk.

[Evan Chung]

If you're going to take a gamble, you might as well go all in. They concocted an audacious spectacle.

[George Varis]

We needed to create something that would make what the bigness of his music was a of part appropriate to the imagery on television.

[Evan Chung]

They hired the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to lend an unexpected majesty to Yanni's keyboard compositions. And they booked an epic outdoor venue.

[Pat Callahan]

The Acropolis, the apogee of all that is good and noble in modern man.

[Evan Chung]

And to be clear, Jani was not already going to be performing at a second century Athenian theater. This was not a big in Japan type situation. In fact, he'd grown up in Greece, but he had never played in Greece in his career. He wasn't a superstar there. He wasn't a superstar, period. But he played one on tv, dressed head to toe in all white, snapping his fingers and punching the air to the music.

[George Varis]

It was like doing an Olympic opening ceremony.

[Evan Chung]

George Veres background as a director, was in sports. And that's the approach he took to the concert.

[George Varis]

First of all, you need the spectacular scene set wide shot. We lit the Parthenon, we lit the audience not in white, but in violet rose pastel coloring. It was like painting a picture.

[Evan Chung]

There weren't even that many people at the concert really. But George Varis made it all seem bigger with wide angle lenses and skillful camera work.

[George Varis]

What I call power shots. Tight shots on the hands of the celloists. Pan up to the face of the celloist. Let's find the faces that emote emotion. There's an incredible overhead shot from a high angle jib that comes down to the keyboards in a rush to the crescendo of the music. And now you're getting finally Tiana.

[Pat Callahan]

Yanni at the Acropolis. I'll never forget that I had never heard music like that. And the beauty of the production itself, I mean, it was glorious. The camera loves some people and you know, they loved yawning.

[Evan Chung]

After PBS stations saw the finished product, they started airing it during their March 1994 pledge drive. And over the course of the drive, it just gathered more and more momentum. Stations scheduled it again and again and again, sometimes back to back in a single night. It just kept raking in money.

[Pat Callahan]

I mean, you had to just get up from your couch or your chair and go over to the phone. It was fascinating. Fabulous.

[Evan Chung]

Yanni's good looks didn't hurt either. Considering the Target demo of PBS pledge drives.

[Pat Callahan]

55 year old women had never seen anything like this. I think I may have been 55. No, I'm.

[Evan Chung]

The CD version of the concert was released at the same time. Within three weeks of the start of the pledge drive, it shot to number five on the Billboard album charts for an instrumental New age live album. It was unheard of. Janny had never come close to that before. Now even his Back catalog started to chart.

[George Varis]

You look at Yanni's tour numbers, they were just off the charts. I mean, he was worldwide. I don't believe without the PBS special it would have happened. Absolutely not.

[Evan Chung]

Janni's two million dollar bet paid off. The Three Tenors might have seemed like kind of a fluke, but Janni's meteoric rise showed that a PBS pledge drive, of all things, could launch a career. And one person who took notice was another struggling New age composer.

[John Tesh]

You could see what PBS was doing and that it was really the Discovery Channel, Three Tenors and Yanni. Right. Nobody knew who these guys were.

[Evan Chung]

People actually did know who John Tesh was, but it wasn't for his music.

[John Tesh]

Hi, everybody. Welcome to Entertainment Tonight. I'm John Tesh. Home Alone made Macaulay Culkin the hottest child star today. Now the Million Dollar Kid is starring in a new movie. It's called My Girl. I was at Entertainment Tonight and I had been hosting for eight years. I was at that moment and had been for the last five or six years trying to get a record deal. And I could not get record companies interested in me.

[Evan Chung]

John Tash did manage to get some of his compositions used in sports broadcasts.

[Pat Callahan]

This is the NBA on NBC.

[Evan Chung]

But to the public, he was eternally the ET guy.

[John Tesh]

Yeah, I was playing in front of about 50 people at a time, basically back then. In fact, I remember getting hired my band and I, like four of us, there was a special event at Nordstrom's in the shoe section. We played background music, but they had to keep telling us to turn it down. I, you know, I realized that if I was going to have a real full time music career, that it was going to have to be some, you know, some big events. What I needed was something like a PBS special to make a whole bunch of loud noise.

[Evan Chung]

But even after Yanni's Acropolis success, John Tesh had to convince pbs.

[John Tesh]

You know, I mean, they joked like, we didn't know you were a musician. Are you going to read the celebrity birthdays with the orchestra? You know, celebrating a birthday this Thursday, July 28th. Actress Elizabeth Berkley is 22, which I didn't think was very funny at the time. So they basically said, well, we'll take a look at it if you record it, but we can't guarantee that we'll put it on the air.

[Evan Chung]

So with no guarantee that anybody would ever see it, John Tesh ponied up his own money for a pledge drive special.

[John Tesh]

And we basically took our savings and ended up having to Take what amounted to a, you know, a second dollar house and invested in this thing, and we reached about 1.2 million. By the time we were, you know, we were done, which was ridiculous.

[Evan Chung]

He followed Yanni's fake it till you make it formula pretty closely. Instead of the Acropolis as a backdrop, he chose the ancient sandstone monoliths of the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. And how do you go from annoying the Nordstrom's shoe department to packing the seats at Red Rocks?

[John Tesh]

You give away the tickets. We paid a company to give away the tickets. And I was shocked that 12,000 people showed up. I don't know if you folks know it, but each and every one of you are at this moment sitting right side, smack dab in the middle of my biggest dream, being here, doing this.

[Evan Chung]

And John Tash made sure they got their non money's worth by putting on a spectacle.

[John Tesh]

Maybe, you know, some pyro would work here. Or let's put Charlie the violin player up on this precarious rock. Or let's have a hydraulic shoot the guitar player up in the air.

[Evan Chung]

He even had Olympic gymnasts Nadia Comanic and Bart Connor on stage doing routines to the music.

[John Tesh]

I just realized that I needed to pull out every stop I had for this special because I just didn't have any guarantee that they were going to take it.

[Evan Chung]

One programmer in Maryland did agree to test it out in the March 1995 pledge drive.

[John Tesh]

She said, well, I've got a slot at midnight on Sunday night. And her people stayed up and pledged it. And it was doing better than Three Tenors. And so they all started faxing each other at pbs. And within a couple of days, it was on the March schedule, and it was on the march schedule. I mean, it was huge.

[Willa Paskin]

If you like Yanni in concert, you'll love John Tesh Live at Red Rocks.

[John Tesh]

I realized from watching the people who were hosting the pledge drives that it was really an infomercial.

[Willa Paskin]

The music is lush, the setting is gorgeous.

[John Tesh]

If you have a chance to have somebody evangelize about it, it's so much better than just having a song played on the radio.

[George Varis]

And, John, you're generating a lot of excitement for public television.

[John Tesh]

That's really why we're here. If we don't make the phones ring, then it's, we might as well go do something else. I mean, I've heard them say anywhere between 15 and $20 million, ultimately, that it raised for. For PBS. The Live @ Red Rocks special, it changed everything for me. I mean, it was Red Rocks was that was that seminal change in my life for.

[Evan Chung]

Sure. Exactly one year after Live at the Acropolis, John Tesh proved that Janni's model for achieving stardom could be replicated. And so began the era of the unlikely blockbuster PBS pledge special. And you are watching Riverdance, the.

[George Varis]

Show, the phenomenon that has swept the.

[Pat Callahan]

World. I remember when I first heard about that program, I mean, Irish clog dancing. My last name is Callahan. I couldn't believe that they were going to give us this pledge show. And I just blown away. I mean, it was nothing like I used to see at my.

[Evan Chung]

Church. And there was Sarah Brightman, Andrea Bocelli, Andre.

[Pat Callahan]

Rayoux. Yeah, I guess you'd have to say we were really rolling in the.

[John Tesh]

1990S. They were inundated with ideas from people after things like Three Tenors, Yanni, Riverdance, and certainly me. Right? Because it was like, well, listen, if this guy can do it, I can definitely do.

[Evan Chung]

This. Only now they weren't all self funded. Major labels caught on and started putting money behind pledge specials that managed to break new artists like Josh Groban and Charlotte Church. The group Celtic Woman didn't even exist before their pledge drive special. They were assembled by a producer for the purpose of debuting there. These shows were inescapable. PBS stations get the rights to air a special not just once, but in some cases six, seven, eight times a week. That adds up to a whole lot of potential.

[John Tesh]

Eyeballs. For about a year and a half, two years, you couldn't get away from it. And people would run it back to.

[Pat Callahan]

Back. If you look at the role that pledge plays and how much money it needs to bring in, it was very difficult to not play that show over and over.

[Willa Paskin]

Again. It's something that you viewers of public television want to see our programs a second and a third.

[Pat Callahan]

Time. The regular heavy core viewers were very upset by this constant. But we brought in a lot of new audiences, I think, that liked our music special. So, you know, it was a trade.

[Evan Chung]

Off. Yes, the constant pledge drive airings had succeeded in turning Yanni and John Tesh into unlikely household names. But for a lot of people, those names became shorthand for bad.

[George Varis]

Music. So you name one woman that.

[Pat Callahan]

You broke up with for an actual real.

[Evan Chung]

Reason. Maureen Rosilla. Cause she doesn't hate Yanny. Is not a real reason. Oh, no, this is Yanni. This guy is the biggest butthole I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna do that disclaimer about the John Tesh album. You got that.

[Willa Paskin]

Sure. Not suitable for any living.

[John Tesh]

Thing. That Red Rocks thing is awful. Moving on. I think the reason it never got to me and never will is, is that I'm just as surprised as anybody else, you know, that anything great has ever happened to me. When Triumph the Insult Dog made fun of me, it was like, well, I feel like I've been recognized for all this crazy stuff that I've done live at Red Rocks. I listened to it last.

[Evan Chung]

Night. I haven't had so much fun since the doctor chopped my nad's off. It still seems pretty crazy putting everything you have into a pledge drive special in the hopes it'll make you a star. And it's probably even crazier. Today, though, there are still artists trying to launch themselves with a PBS pledge drive. Even with the single name and the outdoor Greek venue nestled in the.

[John Tesh]

Mountains of northern Greece, Kastoria comes alive with the sounds of Pavlo's Mediterranean guitar.

[Evan Chung]

Music. But crossover success on the magnitude of the Yanni phenomenon, that's impossible today. The world is just so different. Pledge drives don't work how they used to, and aspiring musicians have better, less risky, if also less reliable platforms like TikTok to use instead. But Janny and John Tesh, they didn't have those opportunities at the time. Whatever you think of their music, their strategy was brilliant. They came across an ingenious quasi DIY way to find an audience, and they were willing to gamble big to achieve their.

[John Tesh]

Dreams. You know, Conan o' Brien said, if the guy who used to read the celebrity birthdays on Entertainment Tonight is now playing piano and millions of people are coming to see that, then we all need to go to our closet right now and get our clarinets out, because anything can happen. And it's true. So I think that I was sort of the poster boy for quit your job and follow your.

[Evan Chung]

Dream. For Decoder Ring. I'm Evan.

[Willa Paskin]

Chung. And I'm Willa Paskin. You can find me on Twitter illapaskin. And if you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, you can email us@decoder ringlate.com an earlier version of the story appeared on Studio360, and a big thank you to PRX for letting us re air it. This episode was written by Evan Chung. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepard. Derek John is Slate's executive producer of narrative podcasts, and Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. If you haven't yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Even better. Tell your friends. If you're a fan of the show, I'd also love for you to sign up for Slate plus. Slate plus members get to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads and and their support is crucial to our work. So please go to slate.com decoder+ to join Slate+ today. See you next.