Sam Bush, Senior Vice President, Treasurer, and CFO of Saga Communications, has been selected to receive the Media Financial Management Association’s (MFM) Chairman’s Award. He’ll be honored at Media Finance Focus 2011, MFM’s 51st annual conference next month in Atlanta.
Bush served as Chairman of MFM’s Board of Directors when the Association was combined with INFE (Interactive & Newsmedia Financial Executives, formerly a newspaper-oriented media finance group) under MFM’s leadership. The veteran broadcaster will be recognized at the conference as someone who has made a lasting contribution to the growth and expansion of MFM by providing ongoing support and leadership.
“The MFM Board of Directors will be recognizing Sam Bush with one of the Association’s most prestigious honors; when you examine his service to the organization it’s easy to see why,” said Mary M. Collins, President & CEO of MFM and its BCCA subsidiary. “In addition to guiding our combination with INFE, and chairing our Annual Conference, Sam served on the MFM board for a total of nine years, helping to shape our emergence as the premiere professional resource for financial executives in the media industry.”
Bush joined Saga in 1997 as Vice President, CFO and Treasurer and was promoted to Sr. VP in 2002. Before becoming a broadcast CFO he was a lender to broadcasters, serving from 1988 until 1997 as Vice President and subsequently Senior Vice President and Manager of AT&T Capital Corporation’s Media Finance Group. Before that he worked for several companies in the commercial finance and banking industries, including General Electric Capital Corporation and Sanwa Bank.
RBR-TVBR observation: If you’ve been in radio for any length of time you no doubt know Sam Bush, which is pretty amazing when you figure that he is the low-key counterpart to Saga CEO Ed Christian. Many broadcasters knew Sam from his days as a lender and that perspective has no doubt contributed to the tight financial ship that he manages today for Saga.
