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NICK CANNON EXPLAINS WHY HE LOVES RADIO HOW GREAT MANAGERS OVERCOME CHALLENGES 8 TIPS TO BE IN THE TOP 1% OF SALES WHY MENTORS MATTER

BOB PITTMAN R A DIO EXECUTIVE THE YEAR

of RADIO INK’S BEST MANAGERS OPENS PODCAST STUDIO

LEARN. GROW. PROSPER.

Platinum sponsor:

Bronze sponsor:

Medallas de Cortez Sponsor:

Participating sponsor:

Media Partners:

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2020 HISPANIC RADIO CONFERENCE AGENDA 25-MARCH 8:00-12:00

Exhibit set-up

12:30-2:00

Registration (Exhibit Area}

2:10 - 2:30

Opening Video Opening Remarks: Deborah Parenti, Publisher, Radio Ink

2:30 - 3:10

Keynote

3:10 –3:50

2020 Election: What’s at Stake for Hispanics and Hispanic Radio The stakes couldn’t be higher or the battle more intense or divisive. And the potential revenue windfall could not be greater. What’s at stake for Hispanic radio and for its listeners.

This is a session you cannot afford to miss.

This is election countdown and your stations need to be prepared and ready for action.

3:50 – 4:00

Información Romper

4:00 0 – 4:45

Live and On the Air: “ What’s Hot, What’s on the Way, and Where We Draw the Line?”

What’s the newest format on the horizon for Hispanic radio? Which formats are delivering the most revenues and why? Some of the top minds in Hispanic radio programming weigh in on the biggest programming opportunities and initiatives facing Hispanic formats today, offering a window of perspective on where the product is headed on multiple levels. They’ll also discuss managing personalities in an age of hyper sensitivities and “pc” whether on air or in a social post.

4:45

Hispanic Radio Executive Leadership Roundtable Hispanic radio’s leaders have always been a dynamic and creative group of strategists and innovators. What’s on their minds in the new decade? Where do they see Hispanic radio platforms growing, expanding, and prime for the biggest revenue opportunities? All this and more when Hispanic radio leaders sit down and share their thoughts and educated perspectives.

5:15– 5:45

"Medallas de Cortez" Awards Presentation – sponsored by vcreative

6:00-7:30

Cocktail Reception sponsored by Spanish Broadcasting System

26-MARCH 7:45-8:30

Continental Breakfast

8:30-9:15

Decision Makers: The Secret to Securing Appointments Whether it’s an owner, a marketing director, or a CMO, connecting with decision makers is tough! Getting past gate-keepers or even finding contact info can be a challenge. Matt Sunshine, Managing Partner, The Center for Sales Strategy and LeadG2, will not only help you connect with decision makers, but more importantly will help get a quality appointment by focusing on what they really want to know.

9:15-10:00

Washington Update on Dereg & Other Issues: Impact on Hispanic Radio With the future of further ownership deregulation now in doubt, what’s the future for radio

groups who are struggling in markets saturated not only with traditional competitors but a slate of digital ones as well? And what about other issues that are of special concern to Hispanic and minority broadcasters like foreign ownership, tax certificates and music licensing? Will the FCC continue to grant more foreign ownership waivers in radio and will the House move on legislation that could impact broadcasters and is currently sitting in Congress? Or will everything grind to a halt pending the November election.

Issues that matter most are on tap in a session that will gaze into the crystal ball and try to answer a few questions.

10:00-10:20 Break sponsored by Triton Digital 10:20-11:00

Growing Sales: Why Door to Door Still Works Our panel of sales gurus from Hispanic and non-Hispanic stations will present 10 easy to execute sales ideas that can translate into more revenue for your station tomorrow. You’ll hear lots of innovative ways to combine your digital and radio assets into creative client opportunities that can lead to bigger shares and stronger marketing ties. This is one session you can’t afford to miss.

11:00-11:45

Advertiser Roundtable Hispanic advertising agency executives and clients offer their perspective on Hispanic radio and what it needs to do to grow and enhance its marketing partnerships with clients.

11:45-11:55

Información Romper

12:00-1:30

Lunch

1:45-2:30

Keynote

2:30-3:15

Podcasting – What’s the Revenue Potential & Can It Help Grow Radio Audiences?

It’s been years since anything captured the attention and the imagination of radio broadcasters like podcasting. Hear discussion and debate from pure podcast players who will cover today’s podcast landscape and the outlook for the future. They’ll share insights about talent development, brand building, and revenue strategies - and they’ll discuss how and why podcasting and radio are so closely aligned.

3:15-3:35

Break sponsored by Triton Digital

3:35-4:15

Multicultural Marketing to Millennials According to the Pew Research Center Center, Latinos are the nation’s youngest major racial or ethnic group, with an average age of 28. Furthermore, Latinos accounted for 25% of the nation’s 54 million K-12 students in 2016, up from 16% in 2000.That means the future of brands, including radio brands, is in the hands of these young Hispanic consumers. Understanding how they use radio, digital and social media is critical to anyone who wants to grow and expand market share in the 21st century. And this session will give you at least 5 crucial insights you absolutely need to know to do just that!

4:15-4:30

TBA

4:30

Closing Remarks

IN THE ISSUE

EVP/PUBLISHER Deborah Parenti dparenti@streamlinepublishing.com EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Ed Ryan

J A N U A R Y 6 , 2 0 2 0 | V O L U M E X X X V, N O . 1

edryantheeditor@gmail.com

MANAGING EDITOR Brida Connolly bconnolly@streamlinepublishing.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Rob Dumke rdumke@streamlinepublishing.com COPY EDITOR Adrian Zupp

azstreamlinepub@gmail.com

DESIGN DIRECTOR Alfonso Jones alfonso.streamline@gmail.com CREATIVE DIRECTOR Kenneth Whitney kenneth.whitney@gmail.com PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Nicolynn Kuper nkuper@streamlinepublishing.com DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS April McLynn amclynn@streamlinepublishing.com NATIONAL ACCOUNT MANAGER Tracey Homberg 248-330-4595 thomberg@streamlinepublishing.com NATIONAL MARKETING EXECUTIVE Carl Marcucci 703-670-2860 cmarcucci@streamlinepublishing.com ADVERTISING/MARKETING CONSULTANT George Wymer 937-609-6778 gwymer@streamlinepublishing.com I H E A RTM E D I A C H A I R M A N/C EO BO B PIT TM A N

06 PUBLISHER’S BEAT

By EVP/Publisher Deborah Parenti Why Mentors Matter

07 WIZARD OF ADS

By Roy Williams KPIs, Channel Alignment, And Lead Generation

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ADVERTISING

By Brandi Jackson The Best Radio Reps Do These 7 Things

SALES

By Barry Cohen Turning January Green

y William Taylor and Brian McHale How To Defend Against Ransomware

ADVERTISER SUCCESS STORY

By Associate Editor Rob Dumke Radio Helps Eyecare Business See Success

08 SALES

By Lisa Thal Be In The Top 1% Of Sales

SECURITY

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MANAGERS ROUNDTABLE

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SPECIAL FEATURE

One Of Radio’s Best Managers Opens A Podcast Studio Gary Spurgeon

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COVER STORY

By Editor-In-Chief Ed Ryan Radio Executive Of The Year Bob Pittman

EXEC. VP/COO Tom Elmo

BOOKS

CONTROLLER Jaime Osetek

My Crazy Radio Life by Adam Cox

SPECIAL FEATURE Nick Cannon: Radio Is The Best Way To Connect With People

BLAST FROM THE PAST

FEEDBACK: Send e-mail to edryantheeditor@gmail.com. Submission of a letter constitutes permission to publish that letter in any form or medium. Letters may be edited for space or other reasons. You can also leave comments on all of our online stories at www. radioink.com. Become a Radio Ink fan on Facebook at facebook.com/radioink; follow us on Twitter @radio_ink.

Copyright © 2020 by Streamline Publishing, Inc. and Radio Ink. All rights reserved. ® Radio Inkk is a registered trademark of Streamline Publishing, Inc. Radio Central,™ RadioCentral.com, and QuickRead are registered trademarks of Streamline Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Why Mentors Matter DPARENTI@STREAMLINEPUBLISHING.COM

STREAMLINE PUBLISHING

EVP/PUBLISHER

DEBORAH PARENTI

Last month’s focus on tomorrow’s radio superstars included a roundtable discussion with managers about mentors who had influenced their careers. That feature reminded me of some of the professionals who have left a lasting impression on me and impacted my career. A few you may know, some you won’t. Some have been bosses, others associates and peers.

Learning comes from many people who collectively write your personal book of wisdom.

A smile will open doors. Home from college for the summer, I was looking for an internship at a radio station. Someone put me in contact with the late Ray Spahr, who at that time was the sales manager for WHIO radio in Dayton. They didn’t have any openings, but I will never forget his parting words: “Keep your smile. A smile opens doors.” And Ray was right. A sincere, warm smile helps open not only doors, but minds, almost every time.

I believe you can do it. From my first day in radio, the late Jim Bennett, general manager of WING in Dayton and my first mentor, encouraged, nudged, and inspired me to develop and grow my career. In doing so, however, he didn’t just say, “You can do it.” He took it one important step beyond, telling me he believed I could do it. There’s nothing like someone you

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respect telling you they believe in you. It changes everything.

Don’t take no from someone who can’t say yes. I’m not sure if he coined the phrase, but this was a mantra of the late Bill “Be Fabulous” Burton. And it dovetailed with another saying of his: always “Sell at the top.” Getting to the ultimate decisionmaker is not always easy, and in some cases, seemingly impossible — but you have to try. The more deeply and broadly you are engaged up and down a client’s chain of command, the better the chance of not only establishing a strong partnership, but maintaining it in the years to come.

Make the numbers dance. Shortly after being appointed to a newly created station post of research director, I was sent to our national rep firm, Eastman Radio, for a crash course in everything from calculating GRPs (before computers) to reach and frequency (before the slide rules). Maddie Schreiber told me something I never forgot and always incorporated in every subsequent presentation. “Make the numbers dance.” In other words, bring them to life with examples that create pictures in the mind of the audience.

When magic walks in — make room for it. Glenn Bell, president of Stoner Broadcasting (later part of American

JANUARY 6, 2020

Radio Systems), counseled, “I never regretted paying someone too much. I did regret not being willing to pay them enough.” Glenn was right. The best organizations have the best talent pool — people who can help drive success.

Like many things in life, some come in by chance. Out of nowhere, someone walks through the door whom you instinctively know can add a new dimension or take the company to the next level. It may mean stretching and even going out on a limb, but if your gut says it’s right, do it.

By and large, people in this business are good people. This was something else Glenn Bell told me, on a drive to the airport one sunny afternoon. Again, he was right. Most people in radio are good people. They are compassionate, decent, and giving. They care about their communities, their people, and their peers. Be that kind of person, and set an example for others to do the same. Take a minute and encourage that new rep or air talent. Offer an ear to the one who just lost a job or found out they have a medical condition. Give to the Broadcasters Foundation. Plug that local charity or community event on your station platforms.

You’ll not only feel better for it — you’ll be better.

TH WI AR

OF A S

KPIs, Channel Alignment, and Lead Generation

Key Performance Indicators are used for measuring departmental performance within a company. The goal of KPIs is continual improvement. The subtle danger of KPIs is that they can lead to prioritizing efficiency over effectiveness, and short-term objectives over long-term.

In a successful company, it takes every department working together to increase top line revenues. But when departments are held individually accountable for department-specific criteria, teamwork goes out the window.

A business owner recently asked me, “Who is responsible for lead generation?”

Before I could answer, one of his branch managers said, “Selling is a numbers game.

Double my sales opportunities and I’ll make twice as many sales.”

I asked, “Who is responsible for lead generation in a restaurant?”

“The marketing department,” said the branch manager.

Looking across that group of 20 branch managers from different cities, I said, “Think of the best restaurant in your city, the one where you’ve got to have a reservation because there is never an open table. That restaurant hasn’t advertised in 30 years.

Their happy customers are their only marketing.”

Looking at their faces, I could tell they had seen the truth in what I had said, so I told them another truth: “Advertising is a tax we pay for not being remarkable.” I let that soak in a minute.

“When our customer contacts us, they encounter the maître d’ of our restaurant.

Sometimes it’s a customer service representative in our call center. Other times it’s a team member who responded to an e-mail inquiry, or who interacted with our customer in a live chat. If those people do well, they hand the baton to one of our waiters, a salesperson, or a service technician. But wait, we’re not done. Now

ROY H. WILLIAMS

PRESIDENT WIZARD OF ADS INC. ROY@WIZARDOFADS. COM

we have to deliver the food. Will the chef live up to his reputation? Will the product be as good as our customer hoped it would be?”

I waited a moment, then said, “Today’s close rate determines tomorrow’s sales leads. Good advertising is merely the beginning of a conversation with the customer. If they visit our website, they’re reading our menu. If they check our online reviews, they’re asking their friends about us. But here’s where things get serious: when that customer encounters our maître d’, our waiters, and our chef, she is expecting to meet the company she was promised in our ads. We will be the company we promised her? Or will we be guilty of bait-and-switch?

“Every member of our team is responsible for lead generation. We win together and we lose together. Any one of us can drop the baton in this never-ending relay race where the final runner hands it back to the first runner as a referral from a happy customer.

You and I have to make every customer glad they chose us.

“Every one of us is a point of contact with our customer, a channel of communication.

When each of us uses the same brandable chunks — signature phrases — that were introduced in our mass-media ads and reinforced on our website, when each of us delivers the personality that we promised in our ads, we have achieved channel alignment. When we fall short of this, we are guilty of bait-and-switch.

“In a growing company, the KPI that matters most is top line revenue. To grow, we have to say remarkable things in our ads. To grow, we have to do remarkable things for our customers. Today’s close rate determines tomorrow’s sales leads. And channel alignment increases the close rate.”

“Any other questions?”

JANUARY 6, 2020

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Be In The Top 1% Of Sales LISA THAL

GENERAL SALES MANAGER, HUBBARD INTERACTIVE CINCINNATI

Are you the top revenue producer on your team? How about in the market? Here are eight tips that can help you produce more income for yourself.

Everyone wants to be a winner. In business and sales, it’s all about stringing wins together. It can be a small victory, such as picking up the phone and having the courage to make the call, or it can be securing a new business meeting to help a client solve one of their pain points.

Perhaps you asked for a referral from a satisfied client to find a win, or you sold a service contract or another product to a current client. I believe all these small successes lead to big wins! It’s the energy and excitement you feel when you have accomplished a goal you set for yourself.

In sports and sales, you’re competing against other individuals. But understand that you are also competing against yourself. Sure, each day someone wins the business, and someone falls short.

I believe, deep down, each of us has a competitive spirit. So how do we find a way to win more? We focus on what steps we need to take to earn the business. We focus on those small wins and find ways to achieve more of them each day. To have a successful year, you must start by winning the day.

Eight traits the top 1% do every day: Own their day. The top 1% of sellers spend their time being productive. They create a daily schedule of action items

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they know will convert to sales. They delegate non-sales tasks to others to stay focused on meeting with current prospects and growing new customers.

The top 1% learn from their losses. Winners know that if they fall short in winning the business, they will learn why they fell short. They do this by asking their prospect something like, “I know I didn’t earn your business this time. Can I ask you a question? What kept us from working together?” If you get that answer, then you win valuable information that can help you moving forward. You understand that earning the sale is a process.

The best sellers believe in themselves. They have a confident attitude. You get to decide the attitude you bring to the office and your clients.

Great salespeople think they can do anything. They create a mental advantage over others. They look for solutions to clients’ needs and, in most cases, deliver on them. Winners always persevere!

Top sellers influence others. They can persuade people in a positive manner and position situations in their favor. They work to understand what their customers are saying and communicate in ways that lead them to the sale.

Top sellers ask great questions. The first question they ask is “How much time do you have allocated for us?” They understand time is everything. They ask the client to explain their customer

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journey to gain a better understanding of their customer’s needs. They ask more effective questions to help the client with their biggest challenge. Asking more effective questions helps them provide better solutions.

Top sellers are team players. Winning salespeople have a competitive spirit!

They excel in a culture that supports each other, understanding that each has a role on the team. They notice when other team members may be down and find a way to pick them up.

The top 1% are results-oriented. The best salespeople are proactive, not reactive. They identify and then act to remove obstacles in their way. They always have a strategy and then follow through on it. This process comes naturally to them. They have a mental toughness and a will to win.

The top producers schedule time for themselves. Top sellers understand that it is critical to schedule time for themselves. They know that to have the energy needed to perform at a high level, they need plenty of sleep, exercise, and nutrition to have the power needed each day. They thrive on participating in other activities like golf, biking, yoga, or meditation.

For more sales tips and to hear the latest Three Word Meetings podcast, visit www. threewordmeetings.com.

ADV RTISING

BRANDI JACKSON

MEDIA DIRECTOR O’BRIEN ET AL. ADVERTISING

The Best Radio Reps Do These 7 Things

After 20 years in the agency business, I’ve come to realize that when it comes to client service, some of our very best media sales reps are radio reps! For the past 20 years, our agency has bought radio in well over 75 markets, and here are some of the things the best and brightest radio sales reps always do (or never do): 1. Always go above and beyond.

Whether it’s submitting a radio proposal that meets cost/CPP goal parameters or coming up with a great promotional idea, the reps that take it upon themselves to go that extra step are the ones we enjoy working with most, and the ones we view as our “go to” station partners in a given market. If we ask for a cool promotional idea for a client and the station takes the time to really think of a great idea, put it into a nice presentation/format for us to send the client, and really seems to be excited about the opportunity (as opposed to sending over a cookie-cutter promotion, not fleshed

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out and just stuck into the body of an e-mail), it makes all the difference in the world. If the station can get excited about a cool promotion, it makes it so much easier to sell to one of our clients!

2. Come up with compelling opportunities for our clients without being asked. Just because we haven’t sent an official avail for a buy or haven’t let you know our client has budget for radio doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be open to finding budget for a relevant or cool station promotion. If something comes across the rep’s desk, take a moment and consider which clients may really benefit from the idea. It doesn’t always happen, but often, if the idea really makes sense, the client will find the budget to participate. Then we all — station, agency, and client — win! If it works out, great, if not, we (the station and the agency) are still showing the client we are thinking about their business.

3. Be an agency champion. We realize that station managers always encourage developing a relationship

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with the client; we get it. However, our best sales reps do respect that the client has hired us for a reason. If the station and agency have a solid relationship, the station reps should feel confident that the agency will at the very least review any proposal and, if it makes sense for the client, show it to them. In our experience, rarely will a client sign off on a specific station buy or promotion without running it by the agency. Our best station reps understand and respect the client/agency relationship and as long as they are given fair consideration, make it a point not to go around us. And we do appreciate that, and certainly don’t take that fact lightly.

4. Show our clients and the agency that you appreciate the business.

Quite often, our station partners will send us an e-mail that they’ve given us/our clients some additional bonus spots, or a plug on social, or some other value add that maybe wasn’t part of the original buy. This shows us that they

appreciate our clients and are always looking out for their (and the agency’s) best interest. If the opportunity arises and you can give someone a little extra something, I assure you, it will be remembered!

5. Keep us up to date on new media, new station offerings, new opportunities. With digital and social, our business changes by the day. Make sure the agency is aware of everything your station has to offer in terms of digital, streaming, social, ROI/lead generation, etc. As a full-service agency, it’s likely we already handle much of this in-house, but it helps us to know that you all have certain capabilities as well.

Don’t assume a full-service agency with a digital department wouldn’t be interested in what you have to offer.

You never know when a buyer may be strapped for time, and to know there is a station group who can help is pretty

valuable. Also, your station group may offer a new technology that no one else does. Make sure the agency knows about it right away!

6. Help us show the client the value/ROI of your medium. Now more than ever, our clients are focused on lead generation, attribution, and ROI. We are deeply involved in helping our clients understand how radio fits in with the media mix, and when there is any way that we can show them what a valuable medium radio is, we want to do so. If your station has lead attribution capabilities, make sure the agency is aware of these. Offer to help put together reports that show the value of radio. We all know it works; help us let the client see that!

7. Be excited about our clients’ business and agency partnership, no matter how big or small. As a fullservice agency that handles national,

regional, and small local clients, we value all of those relationships and the trust our clients put in us to spend their money efficiently and effectively. Our most trusted reps always put their best foot forward, whether the available budget is $300,000 or $3,000. It truly makes all the difference, as it shows the agency that you are focused on client success and not just how much of a budget you can get. In the end, we want the campaigns to work and be successful, and the best reps realize this and help us (and the client) shine no matter the budget.

We continue to be impressed at how strong most of our radio partners are and how important they are to our clients’ media mix and success.

COMMITTED TO YOUR SUCCESS Workflow software that solves the unique challenges of radio, tv and digital. We empower your entire team to work more efficiently, which means less mistakes, more profit, and better radio!

JANUARY 6, 2020

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SA S

Turning January Green BARRY COHEN

MANAGING MEMBER ADLAB MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS

If you’re like most salespeople and managers in radio, you probably experience a good deal of “the blues” in January as your clients and prospects are slowly dragging themselves back from the madness of the holidays. You are just waiting for them to wake up, get in gear, and pay attention to your perfect, discounted deal. After all, they put you off until after the holidays, so now they should listen to you, right? Maybe not.

Let’s rethink that approach. First, January can and should be anything but a “dead time.” Since business is most likely quiet for your clients and your prospects as well as it is for you, it’s the best time to get their attention. They’re probably as eager as you are to start seeing customers and orders walking in the door. So what’s your plan? Not another one-day sale, please!

Get them out of the office or the shop — preferably as early in the day as you can. Break bread with them. We humans bond over food. (Yeah, we’re really still cavemen and -women at heart.) Now is the best time to have them take that station tour. (We take it for granted; to them, it’s show biz!) Stop. Don’t call them. Have the talent invite them. (He or she isn’t selling them anything.)

SHOW INTEREST Above all, show your genuine, sincere interest in your client’s or prospect’s success. Find out what they need to sell this year. New products? Excess inventory? Remember, your job is to sell their inventory. You will sell yours in

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the process. (Not the other way around, folks.) Research their industry, their competitors, their local marketplace.

Demonstrate that you understand their business, but don’t pretend to know it better than they do. Listen first. And keep learning.

THEIR INITIATIVES, NOT YOURS Learn what their goals are for the year.

Do they need to: Open new locations or expand their trading area?

Fend off a competitive invasion?

Reach out to a new demographic?

Increase pricing?

Overcome a difficult location problem/ handicap?

Create more repeat customers?

THE PROMISE Craft a plan and a proposal that directly addresses the hot button issues they identified. (No “off the shelf” packages.)

Demonstrate how you will solve their problem. For example, if they have a difficult location to access, find out what compelling incentive they can offer customers to find their way to them. If they are going head-to-head with a formidable competitor, help them devise a killer value proposition.

If they are inviting a new demographic group to try them, demonstrate what motivates that specific audience and how well engaged they are with your station — and make sure the client has an offer that resonates with that audience. (Alaskans don’t usually buy ice.)

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Help the client create a customer loyalty program to encourage repeat and referral business.

Make sure they don’t sell themselves or your medium short. How? By explaining that you are in essence “priming the pump” by delivering traffic. They in turn need to provide a satisfying experience. The client needs to understand the importance of the lifetime value of each customer you bring them. Which brings us to the most important item: work out a formula to prove your plan has ROI potential for them. Show them how many transactions they would need to cover the cost of the campaign. The repeat business is where they will earn their profit.

DELIVER Get management, programming, promotions, and sales buy-in to make the campaign rock. Pull out the stops. Put the full weight of your medium behind it. Take full responsibility for producing results for the client. Remain accessible throughout the campaign, and be accountable.

Barry Cohen is the managing member of AdLab Media Communications, LLC (www.adlabcreative.com). He has served as both a major-market and a suburban sales rep as well as a station manager and has conducted RAB workshops and webinars. He is the author of the book 10 Ways to Screw Up an Ad Campaign.

S CURITY

How To Defend Against Ransomware

WILLIAM TAYLOR

BRIAN MCHALE

Ransomware is one of the fastest-growing threats to the commercial broadcast industry.

Ransomware targets businesses and government networks, as well as home users. An attack can lead to disruption of business operations, temporary or permanent loss of sensitive data, and financial loss due to the cost of restoring business operations and critical data — along with potential reputation damage.

Ransomware may direct a user to click on a link to pay the demanded “ransom,” but the link itself may be malicious and could lead to additional malware infections. Some ransomware displays intimidating messages, such as: “Your computer was used to visit websites with illegal content. To unlock your computer, you must pay a $100 fine.”

“You only have 48 hours to submit the payment. If you do not send money within provided time, all your files will be permanently encrypted and no one will be able to recover them.”

There are several effective prevention and response actions you can take to improve your defenses against ransomware attacks: Implement an awareness and training program. Because end users are targets, employees and individuals should be aware of the threat of ransomware and understand how it is delivered.

Enable strong spam filters to prevent phishing e-mails from reaching end users.

Configure firewalls to block access to known malicious IP addresses.

Patch operating systems, software, and firmware to minimize weaknesses that can be attacked.

Set anti-virus and anti-malware programs to conduct regular scans automatically.

Manage and minimize privilegeduser accounts, based on the principle of least privilege. No users should be assigned administrative access unless absolutely necessary, and those who

have administrator accounts should use them only when absolutely necessary.

Back up data regularly. Verify the integrity of those backups and test the restoration process to ensure it is working.

Conduct an annual penetration test and vulnerability assessment.

Although this isn’t a comprehensive checklist of all possible safeguards and preventive measures to defend against ransomware, it will give you a good start.

CyberSurance is a leader in the cybersecurity industry and has served many top companies in the communications, financial, healthcare, defense, transportation, entertainment, and e-commerce industries. Reach the authors via 855.5.CYBER-2 or cybersurance.net.

JANUARY 6, 2020

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Radio Helps Eyecare Business See Success

By Rob Dumke

Fichte, Endl & Elmer Eyecare has three locations in the Greater Buffalo area

“Grace Slick says ‘We built this city on rock and roll’ — well, we built this business on radio.” Fichte, Endl & Elmer Eyecare Refractive Service Director Kevin OBrien, who handles radio and TV marketing, says radio is the perfect medium for this Western New York business. With three locations throughout the Greater Buffalo area and a payroll of about 100, the business is in the top 10% nationwide in terms of volume for vision correction surgery. This 35-yearold business uses a mix of seven radio stations year-round, but it all started with one station, back when OBrien joined the practice about 30 years ago.

OBrien: Back in the day the only player in town was WGRF (97 Rock), a Classic Rock station, and Larry Norton became my voice on the radio. He had the procedure done himself, and he would say

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that he had been here and the people were like family to him. Now, to me, that’s the draw of radio, to have that personality vested in the commercials. I write the copy, he reads the words, but you can tell it’s from his heart.

In the years to follow we branched out to other formats — Alternative, Urban, Country, and public radio. We added News and Sports/Talk for the males and then added female-demographic stations because women are usually the primary medical decisionmakers in families.

About five years ago I saw we were really missing a huge segment of the population, the older audience that may be looking for ophthalmological solutions, including cataract surgery. That’s when I met Buddy Shula, now the owner of WECK Radio, an Oldies station. We are close friends, and his format is perfect for the older demographic that would

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benefit from cataract surgery. Buddy has been brilliant to hire on a lot of the DJs that the older demographic grew up with, playing the music they grew up with.

Our message on WECK is that we can help you. I host a monthly lunch-andlearn program that we promote on the station. We serve people lunch and we can educate them about cataract surgery. A lot of the attendees sign up for an exam. It is a very win-win situation.

Radio Ink: What type of ads do you run?

OBrien: I come right up to the fence on testimonials. I once was taken before someone from the FTC and they asked me to demonstrate how I don’t promise results in my testimonial ads. I’m always careful that people don’t say “I’m perfect, and I see great,” or “These guys

are the best.” There are certain things you can’t do. So I get around that by just being truthful, with the person saying, “I went there, my family went there, we are seeing great.”

About half the ads are testimonial, and then the other half are more informational, saying come to our next open house event. I hold one every month; I’ve been doing that for about 20 years.

We get about 100 or so people each time. Those spots are customized for the month and time of the year. It’s a call to action: “They have an open house on this date, come in, sign up, call, space is limited.”

Now on WECK specifically, I do spots to draw folks to our afternoon luncheon.

Those are the folks that listen to that radio station because of the Oldies format. They are targeted specifically to the older demographic.

Radio Ink: What is it about radio you like?

OBrien: Oh, that’s easy, I could talk two hours on that. Radio to me is the way, in this specific market, to immediately, passionately get a call to action unlike any other form of media. You read a print ad, it can look beautiful, but there is no emotion to it. You can do a TV commercial, I’ve written a few and used them — I just did one with drone footage that looked like a Hollywood production, it was beautiful. But radio is different.

People identify with people on the radio.

Like family, like they belong to that person’s family. When they say something, it’s like a family member telling you that you should do this.

On top of that you get the ability to change things so rapidly. I mean if I want to change something on Monday to run on Wednesday, there is no better medium than radio. Because I can write something, they can voice it, and it’s on the same day or the next day. It’s effective. It’s the medium of my choice because in this market it works best — it reaches a lot of people, it reaches them with great frequency, and it reaches into their hearts.

Radio Ink: How do you know radio is working for you?

Kevin OBrien

OBrien: Well, between Google Analytics and our own personal method — every single person that comes through those doors or calls is asked how they found us. You know, ad mediums support each other. Radio can plant the seed. Every time I do an event, I ask on intake forms: “How did you hear about us? What radio station did you hear about us on? What radio stations do you listen to? Where should we spend our marketing dollars?

Which stations do you like?”

Now most recently, what has been exciting is Google Analytics. It can show me when people are going to our website, when they are calling us, when our spots are running on radio. That’s been a great armament in our ability to determine where money should go.

Radio Ink: What advice do you have for those considering radio?

OBrien: You have to partner with someone who will not only promote your business, but promote your business like it is their business and they come here.

I recently did a LASIK procedure on the mayor of one of our local communities at one of our events. Now that of course is going to be picked up by the

local press and media, but I’m also going to use it in our radio ads. Here is a person who is known in the community having this done by us.

Having professional sports franchises like the NFL Bills and the NHL Sabres in your community is good. I’ve done procedures on a number of professional athletes. We have partnered with a number of athletes and local media personalities who have come here and they have attested to that in our ads.

The formula for success for us in this market, and it may not transfer to other markets, is to do a six-month or year campaign. Not to invest as much as you do in print or television, but be bold. I think if you want to dip your toe in, you can’t jump in with just $25,000 in one year and expect that you are going to get any results. You are going to have to go through a few dollars and keep the frequency up to see results.

Thanks to Kevin OBrien, Fichte, Endl & Elmer Eyecare kevin.obrien@fichte.com Thanks to Buddy Shula, Owner/ President, Radio One Buffalo, LLC buddyshula@gmail.com

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M A N A G E R S

R O U N D T A B L E

OVE RCOM I NG MANAGE M E NT C HALLE NGE S We asked some top managers “What is the number one challenge you face every day as a manager, and how are you overcoming it?”

The biggest challenge is having the time to strategize versus react. One of the things I love most about radio is the speed and dynamics of each and every day. There is such energy in all that we deal with in any typical workday. Unfortunately, that daily pace sometimes consumes me and prevents me from being able to work on bigger, forward-looking projects that are important but not urgent. I guess that is a long way of saying “time management”!

Stephanie Prince Market Manager Good Karma Brands West Palm Beach

There is so much “noise” that consumers experience on a daily basis, cutting through that noise is more critical today than ever. Yes, audio is experiencing boom times. But there are more choices in consuming that audio than ever. And at Seven Mountains Media the solution is the same as it ever was; local,local,local.

James Stuart Hewson Regional Vice President Bell Media Vancouver, BC, Canada

Charlie Morgan Senior Vice President Emmis Communications New York

At the moment, the biggest challenge is prioritizing my time among my various responsibilities and teammates. I’m overcoming that by not reacting immediately to everything that comes my way, even if I can solve it immediately.

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Staying ahead of my competition.

Everyone is good, so to win, you need to be consistently better. All details matter, and everyone on the team has to play to their highest level. The choice people have now is not only the traditional broadcaster on another frequency, it is also the many digital and social platforms that permeate the marketplace. To effectively compete, you need to be proactively agile and anticipate what might be coming at you next. You can never be complacent and must always be looking forward. Never show up unprepared to battle.

Jim Loftus Chief Operating Officer 7 Mountains Media

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How to make something out of next to nothing. Which, when you think about it, is actually a metaphor for what we do anyway — manipulation of electromagnetic waves to reach masses of people with something that entertains, informs, comforts, and delights. Years ago on my morning show, I once took a pencil and, with the help of listeners, traded my way

up to a motorcycle that we then auctioned for $8,000, with proceeds going to a local charity.

John Fox Station Manager KPRI/Pala, California The Pala Band of Mission Indians

Recruiting and retention for sales and on air talent. It is under the “Not Urgent but Important” quadrant in my everyday tasks. The sales role is especially difficult because it is hard to get new people in the industry. Traditional compensation plans require a leap of faith.

Debra Jones General Manager WCCO (The Roar 105.5) Serving Upstate South Carolina

My number one challenge, always, is the well-being of my team. From conversations with colleagues who work in commercial media, it’s clear that this is a challenge many managers are facing.

In an era where everyone is asked to do more without additional resources, the

stress workers feel is significant. Add to that the broader societal pressures that exist in 2019, and the people we manage are not always feeling good about themselves and the world around them. That impacts their effectiveness and creativity.

Putting systems in place to support the well-being of the people you manage provides a dramatic return on investment. Staff events at WSOU cultivate a culture of camaraderie that helps promote staff happiness and cohesion. Just last week, our staff representative, the student manager on the management board who is the voice of our rank-andfile student staff members, held a painting party for the staff. She had been given a bunch of old vinyl records that were too scratched to be playable, so she had staff members paint the vinyl however they wanted. The fun activity created an opportunity for peer-to-peer conversation that made the event a success. Creating a space where we can talk openly about challenges and stresses and build friendships helps strengthen our team. It makes a difference.

in the audience-delivery business, and there are now more ways than ever we can deliver audience to the doorsteps of our advertisers.

Digital, in particular, is very exciting to me. With more and more companies entering the digital space seemingly by the day, we need to stay aggressive in getting in front of business owners to show them why working with us is in their best interest. I firmly believe that our digital offerings will become a bigger and bigger piece of our revenue pie, but radio in this market is still alive and well and remains critical to our success.

Our director of sales, Vince Gambino, is very well versed in digital marketing/ advertising, and we have successfully transitioned from being a radio company to a marketing company that happens to own radio stations. I’d put our digital assets, programs, and capabilities up against any pure digital company in the market. We can also do many things they can’t, like live events with well-known personalities and, of course, radio.

Most clients are still being educated on what digital is and what it can do.

Who better to teach them about it than AEs they already trust to help with their marketing decisions? If your radio company is not competing in the digital space, you’re being left behind.

Mark Maben General Manager WSOU-FM Seton Hall University South Orange, New Jersey

Our biggest challenge is to continue to grow our market share both in terms of radio audience and advertising dollars in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

Radio companies like ours need to be more than radio stations. We need to be problem-solvers for our clients. We are

Paul Kelly President/GM Longport Media Atlantic City–Cape May

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ONE OF RADIO’S BEST MANAGERS OPENS A PODCAST STUDIO Gary Spurgeon

Gary Spurgeon spent 40 years in the radio business, working for Renda Broadcasting, Radio One, and, most recently, Salem. From 2014 to 2016, he was voted one of Radio Ink’s Best Managers in Radio. In late 2019, after leaving Salem, where he’d been working on special projects, Spurgeon jumped over to podcasting: he opened a brand new podcasting studio in Jacksonville called Studio Podcast Suites.

Spurgeon rented a 12-by-12 room from Regis, invested about $12,000 in new equipment, and now sells studio time for $68 per hour.

Radio Ink: What’s your plan to get the word out about your new studio?

Spurgeon: I’ve had seven customers in my studio in the first three weeks, and I had an additional 10 lined up in week four. I’m marketing with Google

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Ads, some Facebook, and I’ve done Instagram. In addition, I have a LinkedIn strategy that I’m doing — it’s proprietary, and it’s been very fruitful. I’ve been doing mini tours, where we meet and have a conversation. Nobody else is doing it, so I have a unique niche here in Jacksonville.

I see two studios happening soon. The business model I’ve written up is almost like broadcast radio, but it’s not minutes, it’s hours — I sell by the hour. I do batch studios, so if they want to do more than one hour, there are discounts based on what they want to do. I think there’s an opportunity to open more studios here, then expand.

Radio Ink: What types of businesses are coming to you?

Spurgeon: I’ve had a wide variety. I’ve had ad agencies come to me — they said

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they have a whole host of clients that need this. Here they have a studio to go into and be comfortable.

From an affordability standpoint, it’s more cost-effective than some of the broadcast facilities in town. I’ve had real estate people, financial people, and investment firms come in. Who knows where it goes from here?

Radio Ink: Once people record, do they know what to do with the audio?

Spurgeon: I ask them that question before they come in: “What level of experience do you have?” I had someone come in the other day and ask me how to go from A to Z. I said, “Yes, come in, and we’ll record your podcast.” I then get them on a hosting site, which is the most important thing.

Once you get on a site, you have to make sure you have a quality broadcast.

The show has to be edited so you have an open and a close with strong content. I provide them with checklists and planning guides to show them what’s important.

I’ll be tapping into a friend of mine on the programming side of the business who may help me out, and I will offer additional services if people need consultation on how to make their product sound better.

A lot of the things we do on the radio from a broadcasting standpoint are what these people have to understand — how to talk, and say things, maybe using an aircheck. There’s a need for that, and a few people have already asked. I help them get hosted, explain how to do it, get it distributed to all the major outlets.

It doesn’t take as long as most people think once you get into it.

Spurgeon: I also offer video and live video streaming. I run all my audio through the streaming mechanism — it’s broadcast quality. A group of four guys came in, and they had never done a podcast before. They had some prior radio experience, so I showed them how to run the board. They wanted to take a call, so I connected their cell phone to the board via Bluetooth. I said, “Slide these up, hit the record button, and go to it.”

One great thing about the RodeCaster Pro board is that it has hotkeys on it, so you can put sound effects on it. About an hour later I walked in and asked how it went, and they said it was amazingly easy. I explain the process so everyone is comfortable doing their first podcast.

coming in. I then go down and pick them up. They also have conference rooms, they have phones, I can use their WiFi and computers — it’s turnkey. All of it’s included in their price. Instead of my trying to find 1,200 square feet, this is a better option.

PBJ: What worries you most?

Spurgeon: I can’t tell you that at this point. It’s an interesting model. The podcasters own their content; I only have to be concerned about whether they hit the record button.

The worry initially is whether the average Joe wants to invest $65-$70 in an hour. The person trying to do this from home has the challenges of the phone ringing, kids yelling, dogs bark-

Radio Ink: Who do you use to host?

Spurgeon: I’m using Buzzsprout. There are so many out there; I like Buzzsprout because it’s relatively inexpensive and easy to use.

Radio Ink: What’s the most common question you get?

Spurgeon: “Can I get advertisers on my podcast?” I say it doesn’t work that way, because you have to get critical mass first. Hosting services like Buzzsprout have affiliate programs, and once you get approved, you can run ads, and do them live or prerecorded. They give you your own 1-800 number so if someone buys the product, you get a percentage — they offer seven or eight of these companies. You can get advertisers tomorrow. But can you make money? That’s a different question.

Radio Ink: Is podcasting more exciting than radio right now?

Spurgeon: What it’s coming down to is that you can pick and choose your content. You can find a decent podcast about anything you’re interested in. I bought all my studio equipment from BWS, but everything was on back order.

The company said the demand is very high, and it’s not just from broadcasters. There’s an explosion out there.

Radio Ink: What else are you offering?

Inside the Podcast Suites studio

Radio Ink: How do you see things progressing over the next six months?

Spurgeon: Once I get to 35%-40% of my time filled in this studio, another studio will be built. My first month was November 2019, and I hit my budget.

I’ve done a conservative budget for the next 15 months — conservative in the fact that I know where I want to go. It’s all based on inventory. I’m charging $68 an hour, but with additional services, it goes higher. I’m coming in low and think the number will be $75-$100. Businesses seem to have no problem with the numbers I’m throwing out.

PBJ: Is the rent expensive through Regis?

Spurgeon: The reason I like Regis is that it’s in a very nice facility with a reception area. It has a beautiful lobby where their people greet my customers

ing, etc. It messes up their podcast.

The biggest concern is companies that offer cheap podcasting services: “Here’s a microphone, go ahead and do it.” You can buy a package now for $400 or $500, but the quality is not there, nor is the ability to coach people.

I don’t think podcasting is a fad. I don’t think we have tapped into how explosive this will be with businesses. I talked to a company owner the other day who wants to do two podcasts a week — one for his business, and one for his internal people, which he will do as the CEO, to keep the employees informed. They don’t want to put a studio in their office, they don’t know about audio, etc.

I’m tracking everything right now. I have a CRM, I do drip e-mail campaigns.

How long my lifetime value to the customer is, I can’t tell you now. I’ll know more in six months to a year.

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Radio Executive of The Year

BOB PITTMAN

By Editor in Chief Ed Ryan

Bob Pittman joined iHeartMedia (then Clear Channel) in 2010 as an investor. One year later, he was named chief executive officer and took a seat on the board. When Pittman took the top spot at radio’s largest company, he had two major tasks to tackle: to transform a very old radio company into a modern-day multi-platform media company, and to address the company’s massive debt.

Goal No. 1: Transform The Company Since Pittman became CEO, Clear Channel has changed its name to iHeartMedia (2014), added big national events like the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas, the iHeartCountry festival in Austin, Fiesta Latina in Miami, AlterEgo in Los Angeles, and the iHeartRadio Music Awards. The iHeartRadio app, which includes every one of the company’s 850 radio stations and hundreds of podcasts, is available to consumers for free, and the service is available on more than 250 platforms and 2,000 devices including smart speakers, digital dashes, tablets, wearables, smartphones, virtual assistants, TVs, and gaming consoles. iHeart

now has over a quarter of a billion monthly listeners in the United States and the largest reach of any radio and television outlet in America.

Goal No. 2: Reduce The $20 Billion In Debt When Pittman joined the company he inherited $20 billion in debt, thanks to a leveraged buyout of Clear Channel. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2018, and when the proceeding was complete, in early 2019, it separated from Clear Channel Outdoor and total debt was reduced to $5.75 billion. While in bankruptcy iHeart was still able to make two major purchases to keep transforming: Stuff Media (for podcasts) and Jelli (for its technology).

With a transformed company and a much cleaner balance sheet, iHeart was ready for its next phase of growth under Pittman’s leadership.

Since joining the radio industry Bob Pittman has been named Radio Ink’s Most Powerful Person in Radio every year. This is the first time Pittman has been named Radio Ink’s Radio Executive of the Year.

iHeartMedia Chairman/CEO Bob Pittman with Maurice Lévy, chairman of the Supervisory Board of Publicis Groupe

Radio Ink: Describe the kind of year iHeartMedia had.

Pittman: We had a spectacular year. When I took over as CEO in 2011, we really had two missions — one I was in control of and one I wasn’t. The first was to transform the company to be the company of the future. The second was to fix the capital structure, which was overleveraged. We made progress almost immediately on transforming the company, and last year we finally finished restructuring the capital structure. We have a capital structure that matches the operating success of the business.

I have never gone through one of those before, but I learned a lot. I’m not sure I would want to learn it again. It’s wonderful to be out. The company really, for the most part, didn’t miss much going through that process. There’s always a fear of a negative impact, but we didn’t have that.

You’ve seen the quarterly earnings, and we’re pleased with the performance of the company, especially in light of the fact this is a non-political year.

Radio Ink: Talk about the team that took the company through the restructuring.

Pittman: We had an internal and an external team. The external folks are experts on this; they guided us through it. Bain and Lee, who were the controlling shareholders before, were great getting us through, and the new shareholders, who are the debt holders, starting with Pimco and all the way down, were terrific. Everyone took the time to understand the game plan and mission to evaluate the opportunity for themselves and were supportive.

Internally, our entire operating committee made the focus on our work, and the extra time we had was to make sure we got through the process without missing a beat.

What’s very unusual, we had such support that the creditors allowed us to go buy two companies while we were still officially in bankruptcy. I have been told it’s very unusual. They saw the plan, understood clearly how these two acquisitions fit into that plan, understood that

we didn’t want to wait until we got out of bankruptcy to start growing again. We wanted to keep the momentum growing, which we did.

The first was Jelli, which is an important part of our tech stack to enable our smart audio capabilities so advertisers can buy our broadcast inventory like they buy digital, with the same kind of audience components, targeting, and ultimately attribution. It also powers our dashboard as we deal with the enterprise buyers — agencies — and powers our self-serve product, which we are rolling out now.

The second acquisition was HowStuffWorks [Stuff Media]. If you asked me what went right this year, podcasting was an extraordinary growth opportunity for us. We were able to buy a company that doubled our size and organically doubled again. Anybody can buy a company and add that revenue and those new users. We bought a company that was almost our size, which sort of doubled us, and then we added as many users from the organic growth thereafter

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“Bob leads by example.

He is a true visionary and thought leader on behalf of the radio industry. Under his direction, iHeart has been able to extend its audio brands onto multiple platforms and diversify its revenue streams, while at the same time maintaining a special connection with the company’s audiences across the country.”

Caroline Beasley CEO Beasley Media Group

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Bob Pittman, Macy's Chief Marketing Officer Richard Lennox, and iHeartMedia President/CFO/COO Rich Bressler at the 2019 iHeartRadio Music Festival

as we had from both iHeart and the Stuff Media acquisition. It doubled our size in podcasting; we went from about 11 million to over 22 million users.

Radio Ink: You started in 2011. Can you believe it’s coming up on a decade?

Pittman: I have never been at a job this long in my life. I was at AOL for seven years, MTV for seven years. If you count the predecessor company it would be eight years. If I add up all of my incarnations of Time Warner, I was there longer, but that was three different periods.

I came here because I felt audio had been underappreciated and we had a tremendous upside in audio. I didn’t foresee mobile being so big, and I didn’t understand podcasting was going to be anything other than I had heard about it. Some things came out of nowhere.

The decision was absolutely right that audio was underappreciated. It had enormous value to marketers. Consumers loved it, and it has great resilience. We’ve seen we are the last of the mass-market media out there, and we don’t show signs of that abating.

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Radio Ink: Is radio still underappreciated by advertisers?

Pittman: With some yes, and others not.

Some people are now beginning to appreciate it, and they’re in the mode of “What do I do about it? How do I figure out how to get involved?”

The world has changed. When I first got here, people would see me as a savior because they knew me from another life, and today people are eager to hear what we can tell them about audio, and of course the things that are in the headlines, like podcasting and smart speakers. There are people who are thinking, “What do I do?” because TV might be reaching the tipping point.

Ad-supported TV is being stripped of the high-quality shows, which are moving to pay services that don’t carry advertising.

For an advertiser, you see lower and lower reach, higher and higher CPMs, so what’s the breaking point? It’s when they really have to redo their media campaigns and reallocate their spending differently to get the right mix to maximize that reach and impact.

Everybody is thinking about it. Some have already decided radio is the answer,

Congratulations to an iconic disruptor who continues to amaze us all.

From all your friends at Horizon.

“Bob is a terrific leader and a true champion for growth and innovation in our industry. He has been a powerful force for elevating radio in the media landscape. I have greatly enjoyed working with him on industry issues and appreciate all of his outstanding work to enhance our collective future.”

Revolution CEO (and former AOL CEO) Steve Case and Bob Pittman

some are thinking radio is the answer, and some people have not made that decision, but I’m certain they will. Intellectually, I can’t find another way for them to get to their goals. This is the right place to be in the media business today, and I’m certainly happy with the hand we’ve been dealt.

I’m glad we’ve cleaned up the capital structure and built out all of these platforms. We have 210 million social followers. We have the number one digital radio app. We are the number one commercial podcaster. Our events are huge.

They’re better known than Coachella or Lollapalooza. We’ve developed this suite of smart audio that allows us to provide the kind of analytics, attribution, and targeting that are important today.

We’ve gone to impressions — we can talk to advertisers about impressions and CPMs now. We put the $100 million-plus expenditure into building out our technology infrastructure to allow us to operate as a company in 2020. It was a bit of

catch-up, but we’re through all of that now and you see all the products we’re enabling with that kind of technology support.

Radio Ink: Does radio do a good enough job promoting itself and getting the word out that big advertisers are doing big things with us?

Pittman: I think we are all getting the message out. We are doing a lot in oneon-ones. The reality is there’s little mass media left. Name a publication that talks to everybody — there isn’t one anymore.

You talk to radio, somebody else talks to a different kind of advertiser, etc. It becomes harder and harder to get any message out to a broad group of people.

That’s one of the reasons radio is so critical right now: we’re the last of the media that can do that. We’re pushing hard. I spend a lot of time doing public appearances, speeches, and one-on-one meetings. It’s a lot of long nights and elbow grease.

David Field CEO Entercom

“Bob is a total rock star with a passion for this business that is contagious and energizing. He is a tireless advocate for radio — constantly innovating and pushing the industry forward, which I both admire and appreciate.”

Mary Berner CEO Cumulus Media

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“Bob Pittman is truly a visionary and a change agent. He is also a dynamic leader with a pragmatic approach who has pushed the radio envelope into creative new vistas of opportunity over the past nine years. The industry would not be the same had Bob Pittman not arrived on the scene.”

Deborah Parenti EVP/Publisher Radio Ink

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Pittman poses with iHeartMedia President/Entertainment Enterprises John Sykes and Global Citizen CEO Hugh Evans

Radio Ink: Why will 2020 be a good year for iHeart and radio? Can radio use political revenue as a springboard for years after that?

Pittman: With the launch of Disney+ and the coming launch of the HBO Max and NBC Peacock products, and the fight with Netflix, it may be the tipping point in syphoning enough audience out of TV that fundamentally changes the game.

Because TV inventory will have some scarcity because of the pressure of political and Olympics, it’s possible the CPMs of TV will go even higher. Today TV is about three times the CPM of radio. Some people say next year it might go to four times. If it does, there has to be a breaking point where people will say it’s insane to pay that much.

Most studies show radio and TV deliver about the same impact at the same weight level. When you have that kind of pricing disparity, even if someone says, “I think TV performs three times better than radio” —

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now four times — it’s hard to imagine that.

We are beginning to push the skeptics against the wall because of the sheer numbers.

That sets the stage: if TV has that problem, what’s the solution? If you look at the light TV viewers — which is about 40%, doing less than three hours a week — you will have a hard time reaching them no matter how much you spend. If you look at online video, it only reaches 50% of those light TV viewers. Radio reaches 90% of them.

Now you say, what are the other platforms that were important for a while.

Maybe the music streaming services would replace radio. It turns out, first of all, it’s a completely different function.

People are listening to that like they did CDs. A small group of people do most of the listening — 10% of the listeners do 75% of the listening, as opposed to us, where 35% of our listeners do 75% of the listening.

The second point is, it turns out that the streaming music services are being eclipsed by podcasting. There’s a study just out that with most key demos, the second-highest share of listening is podcasts. Podcast now outreaches the streaming music services.

For us, that’s great, because whereas the streaming music services are the mirror image of what we do on radio — sort of escape the world, versus the companionship, the join-the-world appeal of radio. Podcasting does what radio does.

Fundamentally, it’s companionship. It’s host-driven. People bond with the host and they’re interested in the story. It allows us to continue to push the boundaries.

First we pushed ourselves onto other devices besides a radio, and that was successful. Now we push the content in a derivative form, which is podcasting, and it’s successful. Rich Bressler and I talked, and I’m not sure we have the wind at our back, but it feels like we have a breeze at our back.

Radio Ink: When Pandora was the hot thing, you rightly said it wasn’t a sustainable business model. What convinced you that podcasting was?

Pittman: We started doing it. We saw the economics that are possible. We have been very careful as a company. We don’t do sales-rep deals or stuff where other people own the content. We have podcasting, and it’s profitable. The margins are accretive to the overall margin. We are not doing it hoping it makes money. It already is.

We began to understand its relationship to radio and understand we can help build podcasts. The biggest asset we have as a company is this huge reach — 91% of Americans every month through our broadcast assets. With that kind of reach, we are able to figure out how to entice people into listening to podcasts.

By the way, every Sunday night we run podcasts on all our stations, just to get our audiences understanding what the product is and to bring new people into

podcasts. Once we realized that power, we theorized — and have now proven — it’s the next strategic platform. We have AM/FM, digital, and now we have the podcast platform. Unlike our talk programming, which tends to skew a little older, podcasting skews young.

Radio Ink: Do you worry at all about the technology changes affecting radio in the car?

Pittman: I always worry someone will come up with a great idea about something other than AM/FM radio and might spook the audio guys. All the research shows no consumer wants to buy a car without an AM/FM radio in it. The greatest share of use of any entertainment in the car is to AM/FM. Ultimately, the automakers follow the consumers. If they don’t, they do so at their peril.

Might we offer some new services so when I go outside the coverage area of an FM station it switches to my IP stream of the station? Those things will enhance it,

JANUARY 6, 2020

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29

but anybody that wants to get rid of FM and replace it is looking at some research I have never seen.

Radio Ink: What can all radio managers do to make radio stronger?

Pittman: This year I think may be the only non-political year in recent history where the three largest broadcast radio players all had revenue growth. In the UK, radio is growing 5%-6%. The most important thing is to continue to push radio, have highquality radio, and continue to go out and sell it with passion and conďŹ dence.

We have the greatest advertising medium in the country now. We should have some swagger about it. We should stay committed to quality, creativity, and working hard.

Radio Ink: What is radio’s biggest challenge?

Pittman: It’s us. Radio got into this trouble because we didn’t develop relationships with advertisers. We were out selling

spots instead of working with our partners for marketing solutions. If you take a page out of somebody like the newspapers, I don’t know many people who read a paper, yet newspaper advertising is almost the same size as radio advertising. That’s because they have strong relationships with clients, and when people started to look for where to cut, they didn’t cut the people they knew and had deep relationships with. We got cut.

I look at the other radio companies, I think they’re doing a good job now of building pretty deep relationships, and building them on research and facts. I think Cumulus is doing a good job building a body of research, as we are too.

Entercom and Beasley are doing it. That’s what the industry needs, to perform and act. I see us going in that direction.

should be here. When you look at the other radio companies, ďŹ nally there’s enough audio opportunities out there for investors who want to invest in media but are beginning to see the problems on the horizon for TV. This will be a growth opportunity and a safe haven.

Radio Ink: Are investors going to come back to radio at some point?

Pittman: I would never predict investors. There are a lot of good reasons they

Radio Ink: Do you think ownership caps need to be lifted?

Pittman: I don’t know what purpose it serves. If I own more radio stations, how

Radio Ink: Do you think the podcasting industry has a problem with radio?

Pittman: I don’t know that that’s true, because the two top podcasters by a mile are us and NPR. We’ve almost a threeto-one lead on the next podcasts in the commercial podcast space. I think radio is leading the charge. If you look at the growth, an extraordinary amount of that growth has been NPR and iHeart. If there are people who don’t think radio is a part of it, they may not really be in podcasting.

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JANUARY 6, 2020

Bob Pittman, recording artist Camilla Cabello, and iHeartMedia's John Sykes at the iHeartRadio Music Festival

JANUARY 6, 2020

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31

“As the podcasting medium explodes, Bob Pittman is the best business partner I could hope for: I’ve never met anyone with both the depth of experience and the cutting-edge vision that he has.”

Conal Byrne President iHeartPodcast Network

“The American audio landscape is better because of Bob’s leadership and transformation of iHeart over the past decade.

The positive effects reach far beyond the walls of iHeartMedia.”

Darren Davis President iHeartRadio iHeartMedia Networks Group

32

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Pittman with SB Projects founder and record executive Scooter Braun

does that help my business? If I merely bought Stuff Media and it nearly doubled our size, I only got what I paid for. Where is the growth? If I put four radio stations together and I had two before, will they turn into the value of eight? If they remain at the value of the four I have, there’s no value. I don’t see that kind of growth, because I’ve put something together creating the growth.

I did see it in podcasting — put 5 million listeners with 5 million listeners, and suddenly I have 22 million listeners. That’s what you look for when you consolidate something and put it together. I have talked to everybody and asked them to explain it to me and show me the numbers. Nobody has been able to do that.

I think it’s a false hope. The history of radio is littered with false hope that distracts people from the mission they’re on.

What we really need to do as an industry is develop data that can rival the digital players. Anything we do that is a distraction from that holds us back in the old

JANUARY 6, 2020

days instead of bringing us into the new days.

I respect my colleagues who think we should own more stations — I just don’t see how it helps, other than we move the ownership from one company to another.

If we didn’t get any additional value other than buying another one and combining it, we didn’t create value.

Radio Ink: Is one of the ways to compete with Google and Facebook to make buying easier for small businesses?

Pittman: There are two levels. One is, if you think of it as a barbell, on one end there’s the long-tail advertisers that Facebook and Google are doing well with. The majority of Facebook’s revenue comes from the long tail — probably smaller advertisers than are even on the radio. We need solutions for that. It’s clear in the smaller markets that a lot of that little business has gone to Facebook or Google.

On the high end, the biggest advertisers have looked to Facebook and Google because of their rich data sets and the ability to use the data. I have a podcast called Math & Magic because I think all marketing is the math and the magic.

Facebook and Google have done really well on the math side. They found those people, but having a couple of lines of copy doesn’t persuade people the way having a personality talking about the product on the radio does. We win by a mile on the magic part. They won by a mile on the math part.

The important part for the industry is for us to catch up on the math part. I don’t see any way Google and Facebook can create the magic we can.

THE DIRECT QUESTION Radio Ink: Do you think radio should be paying artists directly?

Pittman: I think we have a relationship that’s worked over the years. When I first

came here, Katy Perry had just broken, and the year before nobody had heard of her. I went back and added up how much advertising we had given Katy Perry, and it was over a billion dollars. If we put a billion dollars into any product, it would be wildly successful. The ability for an artist to get a billion dollars of advertising for free is pretty darn good.

If you look at movie companies, they pay people to carry their trailers because they want to promote movies. We want to be fair, so we are always looking at it and revisiting it.

It’s more than just airplay. It’s a matter of supporting the artists through on-air interviews and special programs. Whether we like it or not, radio and the music industry have a hugely strategic relationship. We have to treat each other that way.

We enable a unique business model they have — they’re the only consumer packaged goods business that has no ad budget to speak of. We enable that, and they enable us by giving us great music that

we build our music programming around.

Twenty-five percent of our stations play no music, so this is only applicable to the 75% that do.

It’s a partnership. We’ve always looked to figure out what’s fair. We’ve done some direct deals with record companies where we deal with the issue of how to trade economic value in both digital and broadcast.

I’m optimistic at the end of the day that strategic partners always figure out how to continue the relationship and improve it. I think we will.

Radio Ink: What can people expect from iHeart next year?

Pittman: They can continue to see us build out our data analytics capabilities and deal with advertisers in a scientific way. We are going to stress technology to make this company look and operate as a company that started in this era, instead of 50 years ago. We want to find how to use technology to reduce the administrative loads of our sellers so they can spend

NIELSEN CONGRATULATES

BOB PITTMAN

ON BEING NAMED AS RADIO INK’S RADIO EXECUTIVE OF THE YEAR

JANUARY 6, 2020

.

33

RADIO INK RADIO EXECUTIVE OF THE YEAR RECIPIENTS 1993 Gary Fries 1994 Mel Karmazin 1995 Eddie Fritts 1996 James de Castro and Scott K. Ginsburg 1997 Bob Sillerman 1998 Steven Hicks 1999 Lowry Mays 2000 Randall and Mark Mays 2001 Jeff Smulyan 2002 Larry Wilson 2003 Lew Dickey 2004 Bob Neil 2005 John Hogan 2006 David Field 2007 Peter Smyth 2008 Jerry Lee 2009 Charles Warfield 2010 Bruce Reese 2011 Dan Mason 2012 Ed Christian 2013 Jose Valle 2014 Steven Price 2015 Don Benson 2016 Larry Wilson 2017 Caroline Beasley 2018 David Field 2019 Gordon Smith

34

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Pittman with Premiere Networks personality Bobby Bones

more time selling, how our talent can be more productive using all the information we have about the consumer, all the information we have about the segmentation and the technology to help get the product out to the consumer.

We made an acquisition last year of a company called Radio Jar, which has new cloud technology. This will help us a lot.

Across our multiple platforms we want to continue our leadership in audio, again, supported by technology. We are beginning to put AI into a lot of things we do, including figuring out the consumer, where we have raw data coming in and are trying to understand what to do with it. That sometimes exceeds the capability of the human brain, and using AI to assist us improves the quality even more.

Radio Ink: What are your three favorite podcasts, not including your own?

Pittman: Stuff You Should Know is spectacular. Disgraceland is great. Jake Brennan does an amazing job telling these music stories. He has such great knowledge and is a fantastic storyteller. I would be in big trouble if I didn’t say The Ron Burgundy Podcast.

Radio Ink: What’s it like to go to Burning Man? Pittman (laughing): I just recorded a podcast with Marian Goodell, who is the CEO of Burning Man. In the second season of Math & Magic you will be able to hear all about it.

Radio Ink: Can you picture yourself doing this for two decades?

Pittman: I’m an old man. I started in radio in 1969, so this will be my 50th year. That is a long time. I’m committed to staying as long as I’m having fun and creating value.

JANUARY 6, 2020

A RADIO LIFE, STRANGER THAN FICTION It’s a good bet that if you talk with anyone who has been in the radio biz for any amount of time, the adjective crazy will eventually creep into the conversation. Adam Cox paints a somewhat familiar face on the trials and tribulations of the business in his self-published book, My Crazy Radio Life. From California to New York City and everywhere in between, Cox details his crisscross career from his start in 1988, driving a promotions van for a SoCal station at 8 bucks an hour, to his present unemployed status in Wichita, Kansas.

“The toughest thing about working in radio is the insecurity, being unsure of what management is going to decide,” Cox says. “You know people who work in radio just love working in radio. They like entertaining, they’ve developed their craft, and they love to be part of communities. The downside, though, is that you can’t control ratings and how management will react. For me the biggest thing is relying on people to do their job right, and then if they don’t do their job right, that can reflect on me.”

Cox, talking with Radio Ink while trying to firm up his next job, says writing the book was a step in the process of healing from a life- and career-altering event that happened in January of 2007.

While he hosted the morning show, as Lukas, at KDND-FM in Sacramento, a promotional contest went tragically wrong, resulting in the death of a contestant. Called “Hold Your Wee for a Wii,” the contest promised the popular video game system to the contestant who could drink the most water without urinating or vomiting. A 28-year-old mom of three, who came in second in the contest, died a few hours later from water intoxication.

“I know the woman who came in to do the contest was a loyal listener who loved our show,” Cox says. “As a mom with kids, for her to come in to win a Wii and then die doing it — it devastated me.

It hurt really bad.

“I found out, about six weeks later, from the people who worked with her, that she was the very first person to qualify for the contest on a Monday, with the contest set for that following Monday. Her co-workers told me that for the entire week leading up

to the contest, they watched her drink a ton of water to stretch her stomach to get ready. While doing that, she never realized that she was flushing all of the electrolytes out of her body. After the contest she didn’t feel good and went home to take a nap, and never woke up.”

Cox was one of 10 station employees who were fired after the incident. He maintains he and the others weren’t responsible for the death from a contest that was okayed by station management.

“When this happened, I never felt we did something wrong,” he says. “All we did was run a contest that was approved by management. We just did what we were told to do. When we got let go, I was shocked, I was saying, ‘No way.’

Everybody turned on me. The only person who didn’t was the PD, and we are

still friends to this day. He got fired as well.”

Cox gives readers a very personal and close-to-the-heart account of what it’s like to be in radio limbo for about two years before finally getting a chance to crack the mic again — in his case at an independently owned station in Phoenix.

Thirty-plus years in the business gives Cox radio vet status, and the ability to look at how the industry has changed.

“Oh, it’s completely different,” he says.

“When you used to walk into a station there was a ton of energy, you had DJs on 24/7, you had a sales staff, a promotion staff. You would battle other stations in your market, show up at the same events and see who had the bigger presence. It was competition, and it was exciting.

“These days, when you walk into a radio station, as most people who have been in the business for a while will tell you, it’s a skeleton. There are maybe two shifts that are live; there is no energy in the building.

Everything is computerized, almost sterile.

Everything is being voicetracked, and it takes away a lot of local. You know I like being part of the community and being able to talk about things that are going on. It seems like there is hardly any of that anymore.”

So would someone be crazy to get into the business today? Cox says no, but be prepared, and go with your gut.

“Trust your instincts and look for something you feel comfortable with doing on the radio,” he says. “I know in my career I took a few jobs that I didn’t really feel comfortable with in my skin. I learned from it. Be ready to perform in multiple formats. These days when you get hired there is a good chance you are not going to be on just one radio station with the same format. You might be called on to voicetrack two or three other stations with different formats. You have to be versatile in all different type of music and formats.”

You can learn more about Adam Cox and My Crazy Radio Life at mycrazyradiolife. com.

JANUARY 6, 2020 RADIOINK•COM 35

Cannon: Radio Is The Best Way To Connect With People Nick Cannon, who took over mornings at Meruelo Media’s Power 106 in Los Angeles in June of 2019, is already being syndicated. Together, Skyview Networks and Meruelo have partnered to push out Nick Cannon Radio for afternoons, as well as Nick Cannon Weekends.

Nick Cannon is already a superstar.

He’s an actor, comedian, rapper, director, writer, producer, and television host.

On TV, Cannon began as a teenager on All That before going on to host The Nick Cannon Show, Wild ’n Out, America’s Got Talent, Lip Sync Battle Shorties, and The Masked Singer. So, why radio? He tells Radio Ink that it’s all about the connection.

Radio Ink: It’s such a battle for the consumer’s time these days. Why do you believe radio can still fight hard against the smartphone, YouTube, Instagram, etc.?

Cannon: Again, radio is all about the community. There isn’t a community that does not have a radio station or radio personality connected to it. Every community has a radio station or personality that they have grown up with. I wish to recreate that on a national level.

Radio Ink: You returned to radio this year after being away from the mic since 2012. First, and most importantly, how is your health?

Cannon: My health is amazing. I am well and grateful. One of the reasons why I wanted to come back to radio is because it is a part of my testimony. I want people to see that no matter what’s going on, you can overcome any obstacles and push through like I did.

Radio Ink: Explain how radio is different from TV. What is the relationship like with the listener compared to the viewer?

Cannon: Radio is a more intimate connection than TV. The audience in radio feels like they have a more personal relationship.

Radio Ink: How easy was it to get right back behind the microphone and pick up where you left off?

Cannon: It felt natural, only because that is the beauty of radio. You don’t have to pretend or act. You get to be yourself.

Radio Ink: You have said getting on the radio is a dream come true. Why? Cannon: I feel like it’s the best way to connect with the community and control my own narrative.

Radio Ink: Who did you listen to on the radio when you were growing up?

Cannon: I listened to Howard Stern, and Big Boy on Power 106.

Radio Ink: You’re about to launch into syndication. How will the afternoon syndicated show be different from the morning show?

Cannon: There will be tighter bites, more upbeat energy to keep your day going. In the morning you get to have a cup of coffee to get your day going. By midday you are moving at a faster pace.

Radio Ink: How big can you see your radio career getting?

Cannon: It’s not about how big my career will get. I feel like I’ve been blessed to do everything in my career, and radio is just another platform to add to the overall empire.

36 RADIOINK•COM .COM JANUARY 6, 2020

C O M I N G

J A N U A R Y

NICK CANNON RADIO Weekday Afternoons — 5 Hours Launching January 27, 2020

NICK CANNON RADIO WEEKENDS Weekends — 3 Hours Launching February, 2020

For affiliation contact Ken Johnson at 404.694.2404 or email Affiliation@Skyviewsat.com

2 0 2 0

BLAST FROM THE PAST

WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENED This is Maxx Myrick circa 1989 at WPLZ (Magic 99) in Petersburg-Richmond — which combined with WPLC to become the first satellite stations in the U.S., heard down to the North Carolina line.

Myrick, at age 32, was programming and doing p.m. drive at the Urban AC station. The offices were in a converted furniture store, and Maxx tells us they were “the largest, most luxurious offices I ever had.” He writes, “We did some amazing things at that station, including the time we took 10 buses and 500 listeners to see Janet Jackson’s first tour (the one with the live black panther) at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.” Myrick is now GM of DC Radio 96.3 HD4/DCRADIO.GOV in Washington, D.C.

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