Publisher's Perspective on NAB Radio Show
How do you rebuild a quality product?
I had a group exec call me in San Diego who had attended most of the sessions. He said everything we had printed in "Naples is Calling" forecasted what's going on today in radio five months ago. "Jim," he said, "You need to collaborate this. We need this pacing. You gave us a wake-up call five months ago and nobody listened to you. But look what happened to you. Those big media moguls chastised you, they made you Christ on the cross. They nailed your ass to the slats. Now, you're right. What you said is coming true and they are scurrying to make it happen. Stern moving to the satellite. This is going to be a wake-up call, where Les Moonves has already said his radio division is starving for money. The GM has had the worst job of cut, cut, cut, slash, slash, slash."
How do you rebuild a quality product?
We spoke with former Cadillac (now GM) chief of marketing and advertising Mark LaNeve numerous times who had to rebuild the image of Cadillac. And this is what radio is actually faced with. And very soon it's coming to the television station near you as well. Radio keeps talking the rhetoric of Less is More. The super group session at NAB you could have blown a cannon shot through and nobody would have been hurt. There was nobody there. Tom Taylor is going to drill Mark Mays-the guy who signs his paycheck? Peter Smyth and Judy Ellis did have some great commentary. Ellis at Citadel was pissed, and you can bet she's going to send Howard Stern a bill for all those spots for talking about Sirius. Bottom line is pull Stern off the air.
In Naples is Calling, what did we say about indecency?
It's here, it's a fact of life. What did we say about the spot loads? They didn't take heed until just recently. The clichés of Clear Channel coming up with more attempted branding efforts to put cutsie artsy-fartsy phrases on stuff is not going to cut it with Wall Street, because Wall Street, like we said, is now going to pound you into the ground. No matter how much glimmer of hope there is, the bottom line is this move by Stern is a major shot in the arm for satellite radio. Opie and Anthony was just a little hiccup. There are only about six talk show hosts out of 125 in this country that have really established themselves, that make a difference.
Now what are the affiliates and Infinity going to do, when Stern is worth $80-$100 million in revenue? How do you replace that? What are you going to replace Stern with? Here's a rude awakening call for every radio operator out there who has packed and stacked network radio programming. You can't say radio is a local medium and not be local. This is actually going to force the smart broadcaster-public or private to really invest in the beginning of future talent. You're going to have to coddle it, you're going to have to nurture it, you're going to have to embrace it, force-feed it and watch it grow. You're going to have to make a commitment into a local talent like many, many years ago with a guy named Rush Limbaugh. I fired him, I re-hired him. He worked his way through the industry because he had a passion. Somebody saw an interest, and he did a phenomenal job in Sacramento.
Those type of talents have to be re-born again. They're not going to be found on a computer. They're human beings, they're local, they cannot all have this grandiose of an idea that if I can make it in a decent-sized market, maybe I can go national.
There's always going to be the mom and pops, but as Lew Dickey said, some stations are going to go dark. And that's what's going to happen. It's going to be its own evolution of improvement where only the strong survive. So where is that money going to go? The advertising pie is not going to get any bigger. So you're going to have to be able to invest in your product and not just with money. It's going to be time, effort and commitment. Let people makes mistakes, but not twice-they have to learn from it. And if these group heads, if every move they make is trying to protect themselves, "We are going to buy back our stock." Well why? It's very simple-because nobody else wants to buy it.
"With free cash flow, we'll buy ourselves back." Good. That really, really gives me a vote of confidence that you're growing your company. As we turn into 2005, these young operators that have been born and bred on Wall Street that are running these companies now, it's going to be the year of the operator that's going to make these things tick. These guys that were raised and weaned on Wall Street that are now CEOs of these major media companies, they're in for a very rude awakening. Because Wall Street has moved on. They've beaten the living crap out if this medium. And then there are some old horses out there that are close to retirement and planning their exit strategy and trying to find their successors. These are the guys that have taken the brunt of the burden in building radio. So maybe you ought o call upon some of their experience before they check out of this business. And you'd better take a look at what made them successful over the last quarter of a century. If you don't start heeding their advice, you're going to be putting the business into the hands of a lot of inexperienced people, and they're not going to have anybody to fall back on to say, "What do I do now? Have you ever experienced this problem somewhere in your career in our business?" They won't be there to be called upon to say, "Yes, this did happen. Yes, this is an event and history is repeating itself, but in this fashion today. A wheel is a wheel is a wheel. You cannot reinvent the wheel. It is round.
Are you reading this from a forwarded email?
