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