Carl Butrum taking Bayliss Foundation up a notch

Last week after the 19th annual John Bayliss Foundation Radio Roast of Jefferson-Pilot's retiring President Clarke Brown, RBR talked with recently-appointed foundation President Carl Butrum about his plans and goals for Bayliss' future.

"I was in the rep business for basically 32 years, and from 1988-2000 I ran Eastman Radio, which [Detroit Radio Advertising Group President] Bill Burton was President of. He hired me in 1972 to work for Eastman. I was going to pack it in last year, about 13 months ago, and Gary Fries and Stu Olds approached me and said they would like to try and take the Bayliss Foundation to the next level. It had given out almost 300 scholarships in 19 years, but they weren't endowed. So I agreed to take on the project to create a program that would allow us to endow the scholarships within five years."

He adds, "Right now, 80 schools receive those scholarships. I'm helping to create a program where I get 10 top communications schools to agree to work with the Bayliss Foundation and we make a commitment to try to give them two scholarships per year, and 10 internships that would be paid. That would mean that each school would have 12 things that they could give to their radio students. And I currently have 16 corporations who are paying Bayliss a fee for us to find the best and brightest students from 10 great schools."

Those schools include: Northwestern Univ., Monmouth Univ., Emerson College, Syracuse Univ., Ithaca College, U of Georgia, Howard Univ., Southern Illinois Univ., Michigan State and Univ. of Southern California.

Butrum also says the presidents of the radio groups are agreeing to pay the fee for each student; they will give Bayliss a list of markets where they want to take an intern. That list will be sent to each of the 10 schools and they will plug in where they want their schools to go. He's coordinating meetings with the groups to set up paid internships as well.

"What's going to happen is the corporations are going to realize they've got some great, great students they wouldn't have found otherwise," says Butrum. "And I think the intern program is going to take on a life of its own and continue to grow, as a thought, of reaching 120 students a year instead of just 12, 15 or 20. That is going to plug us into their network of friends, because sharp people tend to have sharp friends. It's going to put radio at the forefront of recruiting at the American university system...You know Bill Burton gave me a shot in 1972. If he hadn't, my career would never have happened. So what we're going to do is give 120 kids a shot each year."