An Interview with Rod Sherwood: Westwood One’s new CEO

Rod Sherwood

Congratulations.  You’ve got a huge job ahead of you and the management turnover at Westwood has been significant over the last few years. It’s going to be tough to turn it around.  I just wanted to get an idea of some of your plans on how to make that happen.  I also wanted to ask about hiring Susan Love, Cathy Csukas and there might even be another one coming in. Also we’d like to get an idea of how you plan to resurrect the stock price. Being from the Gores Group, you certainly have the reins. 

Well at this point clearly I’m a Westwood One employee.  I think we’ve made significant progress in the past few months including the initial re-engineering steps for the metro traffic area, the revenue initiatives and there are some other factors that we’re working on on the traffic content side.  This is all designed to further strengthen our competitive position and operational effectiveness by creating clear accountability and focus relative to each of the two key business areas--but really all of the businesses.  I think that accountability and focus will enable us to more effectively serve not only the advertising affiliate and other customers but programming partners and our other outside constituencies.  In that sense we think it’s a natural evolution but one with focus and accountability. We’re excited to move forward with that, building on the momentum over the last six months or so.  I don’t view this as a major change. 

I think with regard to Gary Schonfeld and his team he’s bringing in a core cadre of people.  These are people that he’s worked with in the past and believes that he can effectively leverage to help further build momentum in the network sales area.  I think in network sales we have gained share on a year over year basis in July, August and September so I think network sales already has some momentum but this additional focus and core team leverage will enable us to further build on that momentum and really drive things forward in the future.

Is there anything you’d like to say to the buying community?  We’re in the middle of the Upfront season--is there anything you would like to to alleviate any concerns of instability?

I think first of all Gary and his team; Steve Kalin and Mike Resniak at the local Metro Traffic teams are reaching out, interfacing with the customers on an extensive basis and are there to support and serve the customers.  I think they are doing that very proactively.  We’ve gotten lots of good customer feedback and I think the customers are excited.  At the same time we still have the corporate sales team of Andy Hersom and Steve Chessari. 

On a broader basis, in terms of synergizing and bundling assets across the various areas of the company including digital and TV, they are still very proactively involved in coordinated sales.  I think we have the best of both worlds.  I think customers are supportive and excited, but in terms of your broader question, the main thing to remember here is Westwood One is still very profitable. 

The stock price is something that we think is happening to the industry as a whole but frankly we are focus on our internal operations driving operational improvement, driving the revenue initiatives, driving our traffic content strategies and as we continue to build momentum and make a difference on those fronts then we think the stock price will take care of itself over time.  I think the important thing to remember is this is a company that’s still generating a lot of profitability and cash flow.

Okay, good.  Now we have a situation with the credit market freezing up and you’ve got to refinance $100 million in debt by February.  Is there any problem with that happening, do you have a plan in place?

Well, we’re in conversations with our lending banks and note holders and conversations to date have been constructive. We believe that we will likely be able to address the debt refinancing situation and we are carefully focused on that, so that’s moving forward.

Is there anything else you would like to say about being in charge over there and what we might expect down the road?

I think Westwood One's group of employees and customers and programming providers, affiliates and other partners are a great group of people.  I think this is a tremendous brand, a tremendous company that has continuing tremendous potential and we just want to move forward together to really support these constituencies and serve their needs and drive forward and continually improve the company.  I think we’re excited about the new focus and accountability by division but we’re also excited about the ability to leverage assets across the company in some of the traffic partnerships that we’re continuing to work on both in terms of further developing and evolving a relationship with Air Sage. But we’re working on some exciting other new things that if they get done, we’ll announce at the appropriate time over the next few months.

--Carl Marcucci