Transcripts For CSPAN Future Of Radio 20240622

Technology, and the changing landscape of political talk shows. This is almost an hour and a half. Thank you very much. Good morning. I was just sitting here with ryan kill me kilmeade. The long island guys are well represented here this morning. I work right down the block here, a couple blocks away so it isnt easy john job this morning to come in and say hello. I was looking through some stuff the last couple of days and everyone is talking about radio. It is amazing the amount of negativity no matter what part of the business that you are in. I have in part of wfan since 1987. I have been in the same job since 1989. Kind of warring. Same time, same station. I used had a partner, i lost him about somewhere along the way. I look up and he was gone. I think he is working. I sent out notes. He is doing fine on a different part in doing a baseball show. All you read now is consolidation leads to death clusters, which to me is a dirty word, cut tax nobody has a good word for radio anymore. I am here to tell you even now i am probably close to the finish, if back when i was pounding on the door to get in, it took me 18 interviews to get hired. I would be as bullish on radio and as gung ho about getting a career and feeding my family and radio now as it was then. I am just telling you. I will tell you why. I know you dont believe me. Because all you hear now is that company. I work for a big company now and i fight with them. Some of my executives are in the room. I have not talked to them in months. Maybe years. You can read about it. It is out there. I will not discuss that today. I would like to but i will not. The point is, it is hard now, it is much more fun and i am a big the lever although we have sean and so many people who have done so well and have built really and industries in brilliant businesses doing network radio. My has always been live in local and immediate. I have always liked this small city here as my home turf. I think of it as my home. My point is that it has changed. It is not going to change back. We know that it is going to be owned most of the time most stations will be owned by people who have a lot of stations, managers who have more than one station to run. Salespeople involved in more than one type of programming all that stuff. It does not change the dynamic of the business. Live in local, it has to go back to that no matter what part of the business you are running because eventually, it is about a guy who has a show room to sell cars or a storefront he wants people to walk into or a restaurant he wants people to eat and your job is to sell that and it works from there. Whether youre talking about a Network Empire like sean has or one station where i have been able to control things for a very long time here in new york either way, it is still the same dynamic. It gets back to the same dynamic. It has to get back to the community and get back to live in local. But he hasnt changed because you have to deal with the digital aspect of it. Digital is not going away. Digital has to be a partner in all of this. Look what it has done for sports. That is obviously what i do. Digital and let me to this, the onus owners of the baseball teams, of the football teams guys who really are given credit for being so much smarter than they are because they fell into this digital thing. They did not know what was going to happen. They owned many of these teams and bought them out of vanity. Some guy gets rich and decides i want to buy a team so i can get some publicity. That is where the jerry jones of the world come from. They fell into the digital end of this which is now producing insane amounts of money. I can give you an app, making over a billion dollars on one app. Nfl is making billions in digital revenue. The digital part of the business on the radio side has to be enhanced. There is no way around it. It has to be embraced but that is the way to success. Because we talk now about social media and we deal with it. It is something that was an intrusion than you have to learn to live with it. I have had to do that. But think about it. The first real social media was radio. The first mass media was radio. Radio was twitters father. That is what it is. They are the same relations. Facebook is a little harder to apply to radio but twitter is the most perfect and they do not know what to do with twitter. They do not know how to monetize it just like people in this room have not been able to monetize radio. You hear every day, how do you monetize twitter . They have a product they have not figured out how to monetize but twitter is immediate and it is a nonstop information source. What is radio . Immediate and a nonstop information source. The guy who marries twitter and radio will make a fortune because it is the perfect complement. They are the same, they are from the same lineage. They fit perfectly. It is a great way. We use twitter a lot. My producer is on at the entire show. We use twitter a lot. We use it to our own devices. You have to wither you are in management, and sales, you have to marry what is the live, local, base part of radio where it starts, whether it is local or network and marry the digital part of it. Because that is not going away. It is going to continue. When was the last time you carried a transistor radio . Everybody has one. You have every car that has a radio and everyone has a radio in their pocket. It could not get any better. That is an advancement from where we were 20 years ago when basically radio was in a car. It was not in the house. Dont worry about anything else now. You can touch people anywhere they are anywhere. Hopefully when they are not driving a train. You have to embrace that if youre in management. If you are in talent, you have to understand that the audience has more information than you have because a care about a certain subject they care about a certain person so they can get more information right now than you can about a single subject. Your job has to be more it used to be to inform. It is now your take. You have to have the right opinion or an opinion that stands out so you need personality and presence when you perform and then you have to figure out a way to cut through and be a brand. If youre not a brand youre not going to be that successful. There are so much noise out there, so many people out there there are more people working now than when i started. If youre not a brand you cannot do this. That is how it works. You have to understand and figure out how to utilize and monetize and figure out the value and this is essential Going Forward, of what you do with the secondary and tertiary applications of your content. What you are, what we are is content providers. My content has always been five and a half hours live every day. Later on it became where going to do the interviews, then we will cut them up and send the opening and the interviews to the website. I am like, do not do that until the show is over. They did it anyway. I said wait a second. What youre doing is wrong. Your bastardizing you are bastardizing the product. Tell me how it will make money. I never got an answer. You are content provider but not just for radio. Or just television. It goes to a podcast. My stuff everyday goes five and a half hours and it goes to cbs local sports and two player. Com and then he goes to different places from there. The other day i did an interview with the triple crown winner. That is to the ninth degree. I do not get hate for any of those. My misgiving now. If i was not and i was starting out, i would want to put a value on every one of those applications. They have to be able to monetize those. If they are not there not doing their job. You have to put a value on those because those secondary, tertiary to the ninth degree of content of what you are providing, you are a content provider. Youre not just a broadcaster anymore. That and all those different places, all are selling it to someone or they are planning to and you should be getting something for that. That is what has got to be decided. Our business and the talent have done a terrible job of monetizing the digital aspects of this. I have never gotten a straight answer in all these years. On how we monetize the website. I give you all the different places, there is more. If i am going to produce content and it will go eight places and he sold in eight different places, i have to share in the pie. If i was going to be here for 30 more years i would make sure i would share. That is the future. Youre not just a broadcaster anymore or a tv person anymore. You are a content provider across all these Different Levels that are going to be there and more will be created whether it is in podcast, or all the different ones. Look at all the ones cbs is creating. They have these other things, these cartoons that i have not approved that they say we own the content. They get it tremendous amount of hits on. They are my old interviews and my old rants. My old monologues. The one where they said i fell asleep on my yankee cohort got 1. 3 million hits on youtube as example. I was on letterman three nights in a row which is a little much. This is wind to get used, abused, and worn out and you have to, the company has to figure out a way to monetize it accurately and is talent, you have to be part of that. It is not just about whatever your hours are on the radio or even and i understand the dynamics change when you are talking Network Versus local. It all gets back to the same place. If radio forgets that it all gets back to live in local and for that guy trying to sell a car or to fill his restaurant, they will be wearing black for radio. Thanks for coming out. Have a great day and we will see you soon. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much. I always take it personally when people come to this event because it is hard to get people to go anywhere nowadays. When you think about the level of quality in terms of the quantitative nature of this crowd, i got to say i cannot believe it. 25 years ago we started talkers magazine. We made up the word. And now i see talk are being used as the generic name of a genre of performance. It is very satisfying and i cannot begin to tell you how honored i that you are here. I have to admit that talkers, even though it is 25 years old and this conference is 18, it is a minute to minute deal and people laugh at me. Ill we say this is the last time we will do it again or we are going to have to stop doing this thing talkers, has what do we represent . I do not want to have a publication about the Digital World. Even though the Digital World was the thing that we first foretold. We called this conference the new media seminar 18 years ago. People said to my why are you calling it new . Because coming up in the next 20 years, radios integration into the digital era will be the most important thing that we deal with. It turned out to be true. I look at the of session we have obsession we have. There has to be this central hub called radio or there is no need for talkers. The Digital World is so widespread. I am always living on the edge that this could be the last day not to mention we are getting older. I savor every one of these moments and i particularly savor this fireside session even though the fireplace is covered with something and it is way too warm to have a fire. It is the idea of a fireside chat is an intimate, and formal discussion between friends. I would be resumption to say my guest is my friend but i would like to hope someday he will be. It would not be a conference if it was not for john dickey. I was in a conversation with him and it was the first time we met in person and i said, i do not know if we can continue to do this conference and he looked at me and he said with the most serious look on his face, he says, you have to do this conference. And i got chills. I will never forget it and that is the only reason were doing this conference this year because after last year we were so exhausted, so blown out, and this is so hard to put together that i said, he said to my wife bernadette when it was all over, i went back to the room, i said this is the last time i ever putting myself through this. And then shortly thereafter, i have this conversation with john dickey and he says, you have to do this conference. That was so inspirational to me that this enterprise hangs his all of our enterprises do, as you get older you realize that, on a thread. Every day, you have to reinvent yourself every day. I welcome this gentleman with a tremendous amount of gratitude for all he has done for me and all that he does as a lover of radio who is in one of the toughest jobs anybody could possibly imagine. Lets see you do it. Lets you do with this guy does and what his brother does and what the people who are running these gigantic complicated businesses that is the sum result of the river of time that led to events in the year 2015. Lets see anybody do it. He is the executive Vice President of cumulus media. He has a long pedigree and radio. He comes from a broadcasting family as does my son. He is a graduate of stanford university. He is brilliant and he loves radio and i love the fact i am going to get to chat with him for the next half hour. Intimately, in front of the file fire of our minds, mr. John dickey. [applause] we were standing in the back. It is standing room only. John i i asked you how you dealt with the stress. I go crazy just running a small business. We are a small business. A handful of employees. You have Vice President s, market managers format. It comes down to the human element. People think who knows what goes on in the tower . And i said you said it is stressful. Could you tap into that for a moment, human to human . How do you run an operation this big . John i do not know that i am responsible for the conference. I am a big believer. I think all industries that are healthy have a healthy conference aspect to them and the thought of this conference going away or sunsetting did not sit well with me. If i had anything to do with it which i maybe had a small part, i appreciate the kind remarks. We are all gifted to have someone who is as passionate and devoted so much of their life to the format and the progress this format has made in the last 20, 25 years and again without turning this into a Retirement Party because we want michael to be around for years to come, thats give him one more round of applause. [applause] now, to the question of stress. I will say this off the record even though nothing is off the record. The way i deal with stress, i higher Mike Mulvaney hire mickke mcvey. Find something that you love and youd never work. I try to do the best job i can. It is a very difficult and sometimes thankless job. I try to approach it with a little bit of levity and humility. Maybe a lot more humility than most would. It is a tough job. Stress like anything else, no matter if you are programming a Radio Station in topeka kansas or in new york like craig is with 77, it is the same. In each you up if you do not do with it and you have to have outlets. It comes down to and this will tie into the genius of that question. It ties into balance and balance in life. I have a very great family. I am very fortunate. Three kids and one on the way. I started late. That is another fun thing for me. It is nice to have a balance. It is nice to come home and their kids jump in your lap and make sure they keep the dry cleaners and business. It is all good. I feel very fortunate. But we will talk about in this 30 minutes together is balance and content. And the way forward in the format. Michael is hosting so we will let him lead here. Michael one cannot ignore what a lot of people were saying is the best Panel Conference they have ever seen at a convention, the one that sean just ran. I approach Radio Ratings from the standpoint of what i see is what i think and what i see is i will ask as a question. Is it possible to ever accurately rate radio . Mike i am a recovering statistician. I studied statistics in school. It was an area that i was good at. I was a history major. I could not figure out how to make a living doing it. And still to this day i am impassioned about history. Math and statistics led me into a career that some of you know me on the research side. We had a Research Company and a consultant consulting company. I knew mike mcveigh from those days and lots of other people in the room. But to the question. Can you accurately measure consumption in radio . I think that the thing that i would say is two points. Sean and i happen to agree on almost everything on that panel. Some people would find that to be interesting and funny and ironic. There is a perception that we do not agree but that is not true. We see eye to eye on that issue but i will come at it from a different perspective. The other thing i would introduce to this authorization is this. The ratings are an estimate. Accuracy the answer is yes. The ratings are accurate. They are accurate to appoint. What we do not talk about and what arbitron does not advance and nielsen as they keep her of arbitron does not advance is to what extent are the accurate . As we are on the eve of another crazy political roller coaster here, the first vote is eight months away, we will be inundated with pollsters and polls and one thing we will get from all of that other than headaches is a margin of error on each poll published. What we do not get out of nielsen and arbitron our margins of error. I would submit that there are not going to be too many hands popping up if i asked the question, anyone know how to figure out what your margin of error is on a person average quarter hour share or rating in the month of may in a ppm market . There are some smart people, i know john can figure it out. There are people who would figure out how to get the answer and go do the math. What we are buying is a product that we are unfortunately representing as chapter and verse. The ad agencies, to their advantage, take it as chapter and verse and we unfortunately and probably unwittingly accept that. The first thing i would submit is it is accurate but it is accurate to a point. If you do not know, youre paying for something that you are misusing. I have in a staunch advocate of this 413 or 14 years. I fired arbitron and brought nielsen into radio for the first time. Six or seven years ago. Margin of error is important. We have two issues in this format. Audience that is not accounted for, regardless of weight what we think and how flawed our methodology is and we have margin of error which is a going concern and has been preppm. This goes back to the famous quote, we cant handle the truth. The margin of area is a lot greater than what we want to acknowledge. The truth of the matter is solving for that margin of error costs a lot more money than we are willing to pay. So i would almost take nielsens point of view if they would be honest about this and advance it this way and say fine, we will give you what you want. Are you going to get your check it out . And does it make sense, and if the answer is no, it does not make sense we cannot justify that. What we ought to do is work backwards from what does make sense, and that product, i promise you will look different than the product we have today. That may not make sense for nielsen from a business perspective but as we have been informed, they make former money with Procter Gamble than the ever thought about making with us. You asked why do they care about us . We allow them to monetize and represent a have listeners from home to cash register. I think they always more than that they are giving us but that could lead us into pitchforks and torches and we have to give john a head start. Im not here to bash nielsen. I am here to present the truth and the truth is we are outselling numbers that have a band on them that we do not or a bracket, plus or minus, that we do not represent. I was a proponent of putting a hover on estimates and i have been saying that repeatedly for a dozen years. Put your cursor over a number and get a margin of error. They can build it in. They know they can do this. They do not want to do this. Does it bother me . Yeah it bothers me. What bothers me is when people are misrepresenting truth. 10 years ago its a rounding error. Now its our most meaningful expense behind payroll. Audiences werent supposed to be attacked. They were supposed to give us eight will to go out and make money. Its becoming increasingly apparent that it is a tax. Thats a problem. Michael in toronto, i have a similar fireside chat with your brother. John im sorry to hear that. Michael it will be interesting to hear your answer to this question. He was extremely eloquent and detailed about the need for metric in a most any kinds of advertising sales. John i prepped him for that. Michael basically what we talked about today. The different platforms we are selling on and that agencies want metrics. They want numbers. Yet, throughout this room and throughout the industry, there are people that are selling outside the numbers. They call it nontraditional revenue, qualitative selling. Michael from k sbo is here. He says advertising is not important anymore. Selling products on the air. Qualitative selling. Does this fit into the cumulus philosophy at this point . John it does. I would say again, and this is the honest truth, i would say from us to cbs all the way down, none of us do as good a job as we should in selling the quality of the audiences we have. Thats the reality. Its far easier to go sell rank and rating than it is to take an audience and go out and talk about what percent of my audience has a disposable income that can actually do something with your product or service . If that were the case, we would be having a conversation about the relevancy of 3564. Wouldnt you like to be bonus to and measured and rewarded against that . Can i get an amen . The reality is, then you have to sit across the table and look at a stooge like me and i say, can do it. Our guys cant sell 3564. The persons 2554 is where the vast majority of the available business is placed against. It cascades down to women 1840 or persons 1840 and he goes down. Do i think thats right . No. Increasingly, as we have more millennial living on couches you would think madison avenue would wake up purity you would think people would wake up and say, you know what . With school debt and wage stagnation and increased amount of pressure on incomes visavis taxes, i felt like im running for office, and all these other things, you would think somebody would wake up and say, you are right, you are probably not in a position to why a second car, jet ski, fancy dinner. Unless you are in the absolute five standard deviations outside the norm, a whiz kid from Silicon Valley or a hedge fund person with no moral compass that didnt sound right. [laughter] then you probably have to be in her late 40s and 50s before you feel like you have something extra. The average age of the format is late 50s, 60 years of age. The old saying is dont fight city hall. We cant fight that fight. The demographics of the country are working to our favor. There are more people coming of age and waking up and finding hey, i need readers. I cant see like i used to. I just discovered the a. M. Am band. There are more people falling into that classification which is great for us. The question is, how do we get them and what are we going to do about it . Michael i always find the argument that your audience is dying off and you have to go younger illogical. 417 magazine to become for 17 magazine to become 18 and then 19. You are preprogramming for new old people. There is a cyclical nature to life. The answer is, this is the way it is. Its not a matter of what is fair, its the way it is. On a deeper moralistic, social level we can deal with it. Right now, this is the way it is. There are thousands of people whose livelihoods hang on this question. Because of the number of people that work at cumulus and the tremendous influence you have in the talk radio sphere. What is the position of talk radio at this point within the bigger cumulus plan . John thats a great question. I would answer that burst by saying you are correct, we have a very special responsibility in the format. By virtue of the stations and the markets those stations are in that we are custodians of. Thats how i view that responsibility. We are stakeholders in our company we are stakeholders and our company owns them. As a custodian of a great brand and of this format, we have a huge responsibility. I go to bed with that thought every night and i wake up with it. I dont know if it contributes to stress, but it certainly keeps me grounded and contributes to the gravity and the urgency that i approach this format and how we find a way forward in this format. Part of the answer is that. The other part is that we are heavily invested in the format. We are not running from the format we are not looking to get out of that format. We are deep in the format and are going deeper into the format. The real question is, what constitutes the format . What does that format look and feel like . I am back to branding. My brother and i ran a pretty successful market Research Company for a long time. I dont give him enough accolades. Hes a very smart guy. Not as smart as me. [laughter] he wrote the official book that was one of the nabs bestsellers for a long time called the franchise, and it was all about taking the concept of branding and applying it to radio. Back when we were kids getting into the business, film ways bill moyes was the king of research. It was a badge of honor to have a Samurai Sword from him. There was a lot of great parenting coming from bill and his company. He was to radio what frank magid was or might still be to television. When we got out of school, we were looking at that strategic framework and how people approach radio. Formats were starting to fragment. Individual attributes of a product were going to define the branding and the packaging of the product. Meaning, i am going to be a 10 in a row Radio Station and thats what i will hang my head hang my hat on. That only works until somebody becomes an 11 in a row Radio Station. That felt right to me and my brother. When he went back to school and got an mba at harvard, he did his studying around branding and applying the art of branding to radio and therefore the book came out of that. We talk about brands as if we always talked about brands. That wasnt the case. The warfare metaphor was the strategic paradigm that we all lived off of until we change that. We changed it for the better. Getting back to the concept of branding and talk and as we approach it, we have to figure out what the brand of the format is Going Forward. We all understand that the objective on reaching a younger audience or a broader audience makes sense. When i say broader, i mean an audience more inclusive psychographic late and demographically. Psychographically take a look at ratings in most markets. The stations that are really winning on bam side on the am side are new stations or sports stations. Purely talk and where the format fits has been in decline. We are not afraid to admit that we dont know what that exactly looks like. I dont know is that exactly looks like, but i know the conversation has to be broader than what it is. I know from being fortunate enough to be around a lot of interesting different people, i know what a good table feels like and i know what bad table feels like. I know what people that are 3540 years of age, 55 60 years of age, i know what they talk about. They talk about a lot of things. I can promise you that sports is part of that. Mike would agree with that. They talk about business morality philosophy kids, politics, all kinds of stuff. That tends to only be further facilitated as wine bottles are ordered. If we are going to be a reflection of those conversations, as a format, we need to start thinking about that. If we want to have a successful format moving forward, given the reality of where we find ourselves today, its incumbent upon all of us to try Different Things. To broaden our horizons and to see whats out there and to look within our talent maybe in a little bit of a different way than we have in the past. Michael maybe we should just hire drunks. [laughter] i remember when i was first breaking into radio, i would look for jobs in broadcasting magazine and they would always say drunks and drifters need not apply. And i would think, why are they saying that . That would be a good name for a book. Its interesting you mention sports. We are all assessed with sports. They say its a microcosm of life. To a certain degree, it is. We pulsate from general is him to specialty. You have a specialty and that he gets broader again and then you pulsate back to general of them. You see mcdonalds now as starbucks. These places are selling chicken and chicken places are selling beef. Do think that general talk radio blew it by losing that great sports talk guy that was on at 6 00 and gave up his franchise to become its own specialty . John hindsight is a wonderful thing. I can answer that with a categorical yes. We blew it. Thats the benefit of looking back and saying, the wjrs of the world, the mighty voice of the great lakes with the tigers and j. P. Mccarthy and all of this great talent and this wonderful place where people would meet on the radio and discussed all things important in greater detroit in the world and what have you. That was a wonderful position to be in. For some reason, something new happens and if something new is working, more of that is a good thing. We are all part of an entertainment ecosystem that is very formulaic driven. Its not a knock on our business, its just the reality. It happens in film, audio, entertainment in anything in life. It happens in the music business. If something is working, you get five or six artists and bands that are rolled out fast with the same sort of west. Twist. I think blowing it, i dont know if thats the right verb. We differently missed an opportunity. We definitely missed an opportunity. I think trying to pick the lock on getting back into a healthy position as a format has to start with that. People start people talk about a lot of things and not just politics. Politics offer a clue to what the way forward is. All politics are local is the old thing. Thats the other key i think to working our way out of this conundrum. I think these Radio Stations have to get back to a balance. I think what sean does is great. I think there are some wonderful syndicated programming and programming talent that belong and deserve to be on these great Radio Stations and will be. Its a question of how much and what do we surround it with and how do we view our responsibility as programmers in the format versus how we used to view it. When things were working, it was easy to sit back. I am fond of saying the four google was invented, we have the first sort of self driven cars as a format. We would plug in all of the talent hyped into west and sit back and watch magic happen. It was great. It worked. That, like anything else, it runs its course. It has run its course. It had a great run. It has had a great run. That run has come to an end to selfinflicted wounds and through the nature of brands and lifecycles. Its incumbent upon us now to really ask ourselves how much of the solution is premised on being more local. How much of the solution is premised on finding out how to showcase these great syndicated talents like sean in an environment that allow them to shine even more successfully than they are. How much of this is premised upon widening the aperture and saying if im at a dinner party, are we going to not talk about abc and those of the ground rules . I dont think so. If you are stacking the table successfully at a party, you are bringing all of that to the table. You are bringing a savant. You are bringing somebody who is crazy this way and that way. You are bringing all kinds of different talent to the table and through the miracle of alcohol, you are letting it all come out. [laughter] take your watches off and somebody famous says the ultimate insult is wearing a watch to a dinner party. It doesnt matter what time it is. Thats we were on the radio to be like again. We have to do that in structure and within format and context. I think we need to start broadening from that perspective. It takes courage to do that. You are going to throw noodles against the back of the stove and they are not all going to stick. You are going to try things that wont work. You need to have management supportive of that and ownership supportive of that. Everybody has to realize that we have to try some things differently or we are not going to move forward. Michael a couple more questions and then we will move on. I was going to ask you about local and national but you answered it in your answer to the other question. Lets talk about the balance of talk and music. Most of the stars in radio today are on the talk side. The radio star is usually a talker. There are some big stars and music radio, but most of them are syndicated and produced. They are not life and natural and organic. They are kind of plastic. Is there any future for the dj in radio or is that just goodbye . It does relate to people in talk radio and i do all of radio as radio. I view all of radio as radio. What is going to happen with music radio in terms of people talking . Is that over . Or is it just a temporary drought . John i dont think its over. I think back to the tail end of my last answer. I think all of us have a responsibility to go out and try to anr talent. Our biggest selling proposition across all formats is the reach of our medium. That is the one thing we can positively say that bpm has done for us is for us. I remember the pitch back when everybody was talking about changing the methodology and going into this form of measurement and the pitch was all about that it was going to make radio easier. It will open up more dollars. I looked at p. M. And said thats great, but i didnt fall off the turnip truck yesterday. I looked at pierre you have to go out and lead with, its going to give us a better opportunity to dumb it rate the expansive reach radio. Demonstrate the expansive reach of radio. Back to talent, i think any informed talent, and we have to continue to push this agenda looks at radio and broadcast radio and at the vast reach. If you are a gift of the gaba kind of fellow or woman and you want to get into the business and be a brand, where else would you go . This is the place to blow up as a brand. I think our primacy in that regard hasnt changed, it has only been advantaged under bpm. The story that i take out repeatedly to talent as much as i can is exactly that. If you are trying to build a brand and you are trying to become a nationally known person or figure, there is no better place to do that than on the radio. Back to what michael said earlier, i dont think there is a programmer here who would disagree. As some but he is truly talented, you are going to move records out of the way. You are going to move music out of the way and let them do more of what they do. A must the format is premised on something entirely different which is cool and you wouldnt be looking for talent in that regard anyway, you are going to let people do what they should do and let them connect in places that only a truly talented person can connect. Michael the greatest compliment that anybody could tame me pay me was that i asked you to have questions. You paid me that question. I would hate to sit here in front of our peers and ask you softball questions. I wouldnt ask any question i didnt think you could answer. My complement back to you is that you did a heckuva job answering some tough questions and im very grateful. Thank you, john dickey. [applause] we have already talked about the big picture. This is going to go in all different wild ways. We will do it like a tv show, really fast. Were going to start with alan combs. Post fox news host fox news radio. Karen hunter, i once did a radio show as her cohost on ww rl in new york and she taught me how to wrap on the air. Chris oliveira, talk about smart. There is a fellow that worked his way up from being an intern to being one of the most influential and important executives in all of radio. He is the evp of programming at cbs radio. And joe shaka who is new to a lot of you. Please say hello to joe and tom who are from the boston herald. They asked me for my advice and they took it. They put a Radio Station on a newspaper platform. The newspaper is the other stick. What better place to do news talk or sports radio than a big metropolitan newspaper website and platform . They are doing it and its remarkable. Joe has to be here. Craig, w abc new york. The local Program Director is sort of like the forgotten person in our industry. We are going to find one. Lets find a big one. There have been times in my career, craig, when i have sat with the Program Director of w abc. I remember rick sklar. You shipping your boots. You shook in your boots. Juli talbot who is the best marketing person i ever met in this business. I met her when she was about 19 years old. I am 21 now. Michael she is the president of premier network. Allen, what is the state of his left right political stuff . It seems to be the mainstay of news talk. But well is talk about how it is dead. Whats the state of it . Bad. You wanted a short answer. Its a great question because it is so much of what radio has been for such a long time. I thought it was very interesting what mr. Dickey said in that there is so much more that you talk about if you are at a cocktail party. Radio can and should be that. Im happy to see that there is so much more that radio is becoming and as the paradigm changes, we are doing a lot better with much more information coming in. We have much more opportunity to talk about so many Different Things on so many different platforms. I dont think the leftright thing is the future of talk. Even though i ame left. I do so much more than that. Any radio show that just does politics, i think its missing a great opportunity to get a much broader audience. Michael or perhaps the radio is much more than left versus right. Politics could be a wonderful topic. Its like sports. It used to be xs and os. Julie, you are right in the hearts of all of this. Some of your major product are steeped in the controversy of toxic radio, left versus right boycotts. What is your take . Julie listen to the shows. He have absolutely been diversifying the content. Politics is an important issue but so are the other Current Events that are happening. I really believe we have taken a much broader approach and we are certainly doing a lot of testing with a lot of other programming. Michael thank you. I have met some of the most fantastic people in this business who are clients of yours. I was the owner of a local Radio Station and i just love the smell of the turntables and the ink in the newsroom. Radio stations used to have a smell about them. Steve jones is smiling. You remember, dont you . Its like that new car smell. There is a curiosity about a hunger for and a frustration about executing more local programming for all the reasons everybody who has spoken this morning has said and what we will hear undoubtedly this afternoon. I am asked a lot about can we do local programming. I want to answer the who what and where of that. Im going to make a couple of people blush. Harry hurley in Atlantic City is the morning mayor. If you can find somebody who knows a market and has the ultimate rolodex, that is gold. Where do you find him since consolidation and syndication clobbered everything . A used to be a fighters market buyers market. Now if the seller it. If you cant sellers market. Wrko has a couple shows on the air whose Business Model ought to be instructed to you. These stations are heard on wrko and about a dozen more stations around new england. I thought that the unplowed ground in syndication is bigger than local, smaller than national. Are you potentially a statewide footprint . New england as a footprint is about the size of california. Can your show go wide enough where everybody has the same accent and embraces the same interests . I think thats the opportunity. I work with some of the state networks and the problem is they are giving stations stuff they dont really want and asking more of the stations and the stations are willing to give. They ought to start doing shows about the state. The other thing that station owners are concerned about regardless of market size is digital. From it is pressure from the whole from the home office for digital revenue. I will speak about this in the iowa broadcasters meeting. What the heck is digital . If you try to call any of your friends this weekend, you are going to get voicemail because today they just dumped orange is the new black season three. This is how People Choose to consume. If we do programming that is into the microphone and gone, we are leaving money on the table. We have to get better about using that thing in the pocket we used to call a phone as the dvr of radio. Michael how are things at cbs . Well, i have been here all morning but last time i checked it was good. Do you know something i dont know . [laughter] things are good. We do invest a lot in life and local programming. If you wear but mikes station on today, its 24 7. 880 in this town is still that way. That model is not gone. Is it more expensive . Yes. Is it difficult to find the talent to staff it 24 hours a day . Yes. Is the payoff bigger teco yes. Bigger . Yes. Michael another question for you. Personally is the stick still a good investment . Is there going to be an and fm radio in 10 years . The stick is a business equation. If youre going to talk to heritage broadcasters who bought that stick decades ago, thats a very complicated conversation to say if its still worth it. Will it still be around in . Yes. If you go to detroit and you speak to the automotive industry, the makers of cars, they have no plan to get rid of the a. M. Fm radio experience in the car. Will they add to it . Of course. Thats not in the expense of taking away am and fm. I dont know why you wouldnt believe the people who are making cars. Michael karen, you are on satellite radio. She is also a publisher and a Pulitzer Prize winning writer. An absolutely brilliant woman. You have been with sirius now. What is your view of satellite radio data we havent had much conversation about it day yet. I absolutely love it. While i agree am and fm arent going anywhere, satellite has provided the opportunity to bring different people into the mix because most of us have satellite radio automatically in our cars whether we are renting or leasing or buying. From my standpoint, before i was just here in new york doing a morning show and now i am reaching people calling from the bahamas and canada. I dont even know if thats legal. I am talking to people literally across the country. Its breathtaking every day to come in and know that your voice is reaching that far. Michael you are on a channel that is basically designated as urban, africanamerican. I would imagine i wonder about this. Is it difficult to find the boundaries in terms of general conversation of where being an africanamerican begins and ends and when it becomes general of them generalism . I somehow knew i was going to get the black question. [laughter] its interesting because i am doing a live show on mondays. They repeat the live show on insight. I dont change anything. I published kris jenners book. Everyday i wake up and i say that at some point these 15 minutes are going to be up and they just dont seem to be. People are fascinated by people. I can be interesting everything all day by just being myself and it doesnt matter what my race is and quite frankly, being on urban view is funny. Yesterday we had a collar caller that said you should make sure this goes out to the urban community. My call screener is like, you do know this is urban view, right . Its interesting to me that i dont necessarily draw those boundaries in mind. I think we have a very diverse audience. I do hang up on a lot of people. [laughter] michael julie, i am going to ask you the woman question. Since you are the reigning woman of the year. People ask me all the time, how come there arent more women on the heavy hundred . My answer is because there arent any. It is what it is. There is no answer. What is your answer . I have had a lot of conversations with women in the industry. I think the most important thing is that people ask the question how do i become that big success . I think the response i gave today was, who has defined success . If you have a great show and you are making money and there are options for distribution, whether its there is a different definition of success. Be in charge of your own life. If there are limited women on air right now look at it a different way. We can do this. Michael joe, you are in the newspaper business. You are a reporter editor, you have ink in your blood. Youre saying im a dinosaur. Michael not at all. You are part of the future. You work at a daily news deeper that has innovation you work at a daily newspaper that has innovation in it inc. Its ink. Share what you have learned. The radio has been a shot of adrenaline to our News Organization which has been traditionally a newspaper. We have these we have a website. We obviously have a website. It has expanded our reach. We are seeing some of the very best of radio the immediacy of radio, when breaking news happened, realtime. Thats really so valuable to us in terms of reporting things now. Newsmakers, public figures, the governor, the mayor, athletes, celebrities, they might be reluctant to call a print reporter and do an interview and then have that person put on a filter. But now, they can come on harold radio and they can be heard in full context. Herald radio it is not a Radio Station in isolation. It is integrated fully with everything we do in our newsroom. We break news on the radio, and then we break it simultaneously on the web. There is video embedded and sound embedded on the web. Females its sent out on social media. The next day we follow up by advancing a story in the newspaper. Today, on the front page, we have a rand paul interview saying he doesnt go after his wife the way you went saying dont go after my wife the way you went after marco rubios. We do a lot of shooting in the studio. As a news coverage, news breaking vehicle and of the way to expand our audience, it has been incredible. Michael are the powers that be there happy you did it . Absolutely. We are getting great recognition nationally. We were just named as a finalist for innovator of the year. I remember when you first came into our studio and we walk you through. Michael has been an incredible help. We need radio advice. Radio is very difficult to learn and you need experience doing it. Its a difficult thing to navigate. Michael has been helpful there. He came to the studio and our studio is not millions of dollars. Its a renovated Conference Room with for mikes set up four mics set up. It has technically been very basic. We have we do remotes. We have a bureau in city hall and broadcast live from there. Very low investment, but we are seeing advertising and crossselling as well as radio specific by inns. Buyins. Michael this is a clearcut example of the future and potential of audio media mix in a multiplatform setting. I applaud you for that. Alan, you are a friend of mine for years so i know you personally. Dont try to be funny. [laughter] alan is a very funny guy. People always say to me they get very angry at him because he is a disaster. Did you just call me up after call me a bastard . Michael you are doing some really good Experimental Work in formats that are way beyond what anybody who knows you would know. I would like to have you talk about it. Thats a great question. I wish i had thought about it before i came here. So we are speak so much to what kind of show we do and who are we on the air. Certainly people who know my work with a he is a liberal. Antiamerican, hates the country. Who are we as a great question to ask yourself and think about in terms of what part of yourself do you want to bring to the show you are doing. People who know me often will see me with bill oreilly. Six minute segments where you become a cartoon as michael saying earlier. You have a few minutes to get little soundbites out. On our show, its very collar interactive so that it becomes more than just left versus right. Its who am i . Who is my audience . We have regular callers. When they first moved me, i didnt have a big audience at first because they changed my timeslot to a much better timeslot. I would get maybe to callers an hour. Those colors became people of the show and characters on the show and we made the people who call the show one theory would be, with the same voice as it gets boring. These people, we talked about their lives, personal issues, health concerns. This is less about who i am. Inflating need to its leading me to who you are being a lot about what you bring to the table. Its not just about who i am, its who the callers are. I do a show on talkers. Com about one of my other interests which has nothing to do with leftright politics. Its about human cautiousness, cosmology. We talk to people in selfimprovement, the Human Potential movement, meditation is not leftright or politics at all. This is really one of my passions because when i am not doing radio, i am not reading political books, i am reading deepak chopra. Thats what really interests me. I have a venue now to bring that to the radio. I sometimes combine it with what i am doing on fox news radio. I think that the question you asked is who are we and what part of that can we bring to our audience. I think that is a very important question we should each ask ourselves because what part of ourselves do we want to reveal during the few hours a day we are on the air . Michael or what part of ourselves do we want to reveal two different audiences and channels. Craig, i havent forgotten that youre here. Meter. Me neither. Michael what is it like being the Program Director of wabc with this immense history behind you. Thanks for having me. It has been a great group here. Every year, i think i learn a lot and that everybody take something away from this conference. Wabc versus wpro in providence i done think the challenges are that much different. The audience is bigger. The spots sell for more. The talent are at a different level in the sense of they have to perform in a larger stage. The talent in providence were very talented. The talent in new york are very talented. That is in change. That doesnt change. You still have the concerns over marketing, you still want to sign the talent to the right agreement. You still want the talent to be productive and do them and have them do the best show they possibly can. Those battles arent different providence to new york. Or des moines to new york or whatever. You still have a transmitter that goes down in the middle of the night in des moines, you have that in new york. You still have failed concerns and Sales Managers to work with and be productive with and try to find your spot and find the things that are going to matter. Those conversations are the same in the hallways of providence as they are in new york. I think the difference for me is just that there is a different pulse in new york city. There is a different expectation in new york. Both of those stations are heritage brands. Like mr. Dickey said earlier you want to be the civilian of them. I take the heritages very seriously. Its what a lot of us listen to. We listened to 77 growing up and yankees game or cousin thursday brucie. I grew up in the midwest. Those big sticks meant a lot to me. This big stick means a lot to me. I take it its really seriously. I take our talent seriously. I take our approach to promotions and marketing seriously. Thats what it has to be. Thats what it has to be for all of us. Its exciting time. In something i hold very dear and its something that im very faithful to be a part of. Michael you bring up something very interesting. I have programmed in the biggest markets and i have also programmed in some small ones. I have found that the biggest mistake a major market radio person can do is to think just because theyre in a big market that somehow they know more or they are better than the people running small stations. Or somehow smallmarket have small people. All markets have big people with big he goes and lots of power and clicks. Its hard to Program Radio in a small town. There are amazing obstacles when you come in with your bigcity ways and you think you have all the answers. Chris, we will let you wrap up the big picture. As i have followed you over the years, here you are in 2015. You have been around the track a lot and you are not the same young fellow i knew 15 or 20 years ago. Whats your assessment of the big picture . What do we as radio broadcasters need to be concerned with Going Forward . I think what we have to be concerned now moving forward is not making the excuses that we have sort of made a habit of in the past. The point i have always made about things is that there have been Radio Stations in ppm that have been number one long before volterra. Sometimes, we tried to pick on one thing and make it all about that one thing and we lose sight of the big picture. Thats not good for any industry. The thing im most passionate about, i actually think nielsen will get it right and i actually think average quarter our rating points, not share for broadcast radio will increase. That will be great for business. Michael everyone, thank you so much. Lets have lunch. [applause] tomorrow night on cspan, New York Times chair and publisher arthur sold berger junior and executive editor dean by k talk about the times future in the digital age. About half of the newspaper subscriptions are solely for digital content. A major shift for an organization that began offering digital only subscriptions test four years ago. We are in the mode now of testing, learning, and adapting. If you dont have the courage to try new things and grow, you are going to fail. Thats just the reality of the world we are in. I actually applaud what dean and his colleagues did which is to increasingly say, lets put this story out when the story is ready. There are some people who are going to read it then and other people are going to read it later under in print. But its not about the device