Aggregator

.

.

With Christmas right around the corner, we’re pleased to offer our readers this Classic Media Information Bureau installment from longtime Adult Contemporary programming consultant Gary Berkowitz. 

Happy holidays, and best wishes on a successful “Holiday” ratings book.

By Gary Berkowitz

Christmas is less than two weeks away. If your company has stations that are presently airing all-Christmas music, making sure they sound great throughout the holiday season is of utmost importance. Here is a 10-point programming checklist to keep the holiday tunes sound fresh through December 25.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

Talk about “a case of the Mondays.”

Entercom Communications lost some 13.1% of its value on December 14, largely due to one big midday trade that send ETM’s average volume doubling while its share price fell hard.

At 11:44am Eastern, ETM dipped from $2.54 to $2.24, likely triggered by a single sell.

At day’s end, volume was 3.527 million, compared to an average of 1.893 million. The downward activity continued in early after-hours trading, falling to $2.32 as of 4:19pm Eastern — off 1 cent from the $2.33 closing price on Monday.

The close negated an upward trend for Entercom that began November 19, and ETM on December 9 reached $2.86 — the highest closing price seen since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, a negative investor report surfaced, and shareholders seem to have responded.

 

Take a look at the latest Media Monitors Spot Ten TV report, and you’ll immediately notice one big difference from the Spot Ten Radio report for the week ending December 13.

Big retail stores are present at spot TV; they’re absent at radio.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

In October 2009, a veteran radio programming executive joined AT&T Entertainment Group as its Operations Director, a role that saw him “monitor technology acquisition responsibilities and optimize talent training responsibilities.”

This most recently included activity with the DirecTV/AT&T U-Verse channel Audience Network, which ceased operations on May 23.

With Audience Network sunsetting, Ken Kohl has opted to do the same for his career, which spans 50 years.

Kohl’s role at AT&T was far bigger than running an exclusive commercial-free channel. “On behalf of The Dan Patrick Show and The Rich Eisen Show I maintained a 500-station radio network,” he says, in addition to NBC Sports Network, AT&T Regional Sports Networks, two podcasts and a branded SiriusXM channel with an emphasis on business expansion.

Kohl arrived at AT&T following a two-year run as VP/Content Development and Broadcast Operations for The Content Factory/Acquaint Media, where he built out the Dan Patrick network.

That role was Kohl’s first outside day-to-day radio station activity — a career that began on New York’s Long Island, with an overnight shift at WBLI-FM and a Program Director slot, in the early 1970s, at beloved Progressive Rocker WLIR-FM. In June 1974, he joined the air staff of KBPI-FM in Denver, a legendary AOR station.

The 1981 year-in-review for Adult Contemporary radio from R&R

But, like many who started in free-form rock, Kohl rolled into a successful career in the News/Talk arena. His resume includes stints at KOMO-AM in Seattle, which he joined in February 1981 when it was still Adult Contemporary; KFBK-AM in Sacramento; and, most notably, KFI/Los Angeles, where he shifted to Talk upon joining in early 1987.

“It’s been an amazing 50-year career,” he tells Streamline Publishing, which also produces Radio Ink. “I’ve been blessed with fantastic staffs, amazing talk talent and exceptional ownership but there are a handful of folks who championed my career to whom I am eternally grateful: Mike Harrison (who reported on his WLIR departure as a Radio & Records Rock Editor long before launching Talkers Magazine), Monty Grau, Jim Donahoe, Jimmy De Castro, Chris Long, and the best of the best, Gerryann Agovino.”

What’s next for Kohl? “We’ve moved back to Seattle for our FINAL move, fishing and cruising the San Juan Islands, making new friends, and reconnecting with old Seattle pals top the list. For the first time in 50 years, I don’t have a morning show to get up for.”

Kohl remains available for a limited number of consulting clients in between bites of fresh
salmon and can be reached at kenkohl@acquaintmedia.com 

For more than a month, yuletide tunes, jolly jams and perhaps even “Puppy for Hanukkah” have been easily accessible — via YouTube, Pandora, Spotify and radio stations across nearly every city in the U.S.

Yet, SiriusXM, which offered a plethora of holiday-themed channels to its subscribers in years past, has seemingly skimped on its satellite-delivered offerings.

That’s not the case, the satcaster says. However, there’s an app for that explanation.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

Christmas may less than two weeks away, but that doesn’t mean key retailers are putting their dollars at CHR … or any other radio formats.

The latest Media Monitors Spot Ten Radio report shows no retailers present for the week ending December 13 — no Macys, no Walmart, no Target or Kohls.

In fact, the big categories are financial, with Bank of America and its Merrill arm in the top 5, while pharmaceutical brand Bristol Myers Squibb-Pfizer slips to No. 2.

Softer this past week were auto insurers, while Indeed.com is No. 10.

 

A sign directs residents to a COVID-19 test site in Aurora, Ill, in November, as cases spiked in the state. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Millions of jobs lost. Close to 300,000 perished. Over 16 million sick.

You know the facts because you’re living them. One thing most of us can agree on is that the science of this COVID-19 thing hasn’t changed and it remains highly contagious.

Being isolated for so long, it’s human nature that we are all past ready to return to normal activity. What’s constantly in play is the public’s attitude.

A friend of mine in Florida recently declared that she was “so done with COVID” and took a road trip to Key West with three friends, sharing a hotel room and reveling in the food and atmosphere of their favorite hot spots.

In touch with listeners

Understanding attitudes is the tricky part of being on-air during the virus. It’s the one discussion point your local team needs to update constantly so you can properly adjust what you’re doing on-air, online and with your social channels.

Nobody knows when this nightmare will end. Even once the vaccine deployment ramps up, it will be months before all public activity can safely resume in a normal way.

It’s super easy to be unintentionally tone-deaf about this tragedy, but doing so can damage your personalities and your brand, perhaps permanently.

In the beginning of the outbreak, from his yacht in the Caribbean, recording industry billionaire David Geffen posted a picture of a beautiful sunset for his 80,000+ Instagram followers. Seemed innocent enough, even with the caption that said , Sunset last night… Isolated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus. I hope everyone is safe.”

He got roasted first by his followers and then by the media. This is a guy who’s been involved in raising millions of dollars for clinics, charities for the homeless, and even has a school of medicine named after him in California. None of that matters to the people who perceive him as a privileged jerk.

They’re thinking, Yeah, you’re isolated all right … from the risk and uncertainty the rest of us face every day!

The lesson is that we can’t let our guard down as the seasons change and we need to be ultra-aware of what we are saying to our listeners.

Community-mindedness

You’ve had to be living in a cave not to know that the act of staying home when possible, wearing a mas, and social distancing — and the extent to which any should be mandated or voluntary — has become a political sore spot. Therefore, unless your product is a specifically conservative or liberal talk format, it’s risky to take a position.

A transparent way to talk about masks is to have the voices of your listeners express their opinion. Stay calm and have your best tension-easing methods of diplomacy ready to roll.

As the recent election shows, the country is split on so many issues that your personalities or station will inevitably alienate many listeners if you go all-in on one point of view.

However, because the relentless contagion of this devastating virus hasn’t changed, all stations should encourage sick people to stay home, to be careful around the elderly or others of compromised health, and to remember that we are all in this together.

There is one scientifically proven fact that your station staff could highlight:  wearing a cloth mask (even a bandanna over nose and mouth) may not do much to protect yourself, but it is enormously helpful in protecting others.

It is a community-minded action, and local radio culture is, or should be, all about community. Imparting this information via PSA or to a genuinely interested caller is an important public service.

That said, if your community is overwhelmingly in favor of full-time masks while in public, you could also give out or sell masks or hand sanitizer with your logo to benefit a charity, as some stations have been doing for months now.

Offer resources

Most importantly, every station in America should continue doing their best to generate funds, food and supplies for those in need.

With unprecedented unemployment, we must create more avenues to offer support. This may be more-frequent PSAs urging both monetary and non-perishable donations to food banks; airing announcements about volunteer opportunities; and supporting loans for those in need.

Adams Radio Group of Delmarva broadcast the “Radio Cares: Feeding America Emergency Radiothon” fundraising event last spring to benefit the hunger relief organization Feeding America. Credit: Salisbury Business Journal

If you haven’t done it already, I urge you also to create a resource page on your website with links to such things as local employment search ideas and help in navigating loss of income; food security advice and dollar-smart recipes; articles on coping with disruption of family life and other relationships; and, of course, how to stay safe and healthy in the face of COVID-19. Enlist a member of your staff who is good at research to compile these resources and review it with your talent so they’re in the loop of what’s available to their listeners on the website and what’s being constantly updated.

During times of crisis, people have long turned to radio personalities as virtual friends. And just as a friend is genuinely warm and approachable, it’s more important than ever that talent express a desire to share in their listeners’ lives.

Most of this comes in the form of morning shows; many who expanded hours in April continue to stay on for longer, while others have already scaled back. The situation is so fluid that if your area goes into lockdown again, you should take a hard look at your schedule.

There was a piece of optimistic news in a Radio Advertising Bureau article in October from Pierre Bouvard, chief insights officer at Cumulus: “The growth of workplace commuting combined with the return of children to school has caused time spent in the car to surge. This is good news for both the outdoor advertising and U.S. AM/FM radio industries. From May to October, Nielsen finds daily time spent in the car has grown +81% from 36 minutes in May to 65 minutes in October. Among heavy AM/FM radio listeners, daily time spent in the car has doubled from an hour and six minutes a day to two hours and 11 minutes.”

Even if this goes sideways due to renewed school closings and new restrictions, the beautiful part is that we can rest assured that in-car will come roaring back.

Many of us have more questions. At the top of my list: Do you continue to respond to the times in your local community?

Reach the author at marklapidus1@gmail.com. Read more great promotion, content and management articles from Mark Lapidus at www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/promo-power.

Comment on this or any article to radioworld@futurenet.com with “Letter to the Editor” in the subject line.

The post What’s the Right Tone on COVID-19? appeared first on Radio World.

He’s been the acting Chief Revenue Officer since January 2020.

Now, he has officially gained the title at the Comcast Advertising arm known as FreeWheel.

Mark McKee is responsible for FreeWheel’s sales revenue and execution across all
U.S. lines of business with a strategic focus on customer experience and account strategy.

“Mark is an industry leader with a finger on the pulse of today’s dynamic advertising industry,” said FreeWheel GM Dave Clark. “He has been able to combine his visibility into areas of challenge with prioritization of areas with greater opportunity to deliver results and value for our customers.”

Until the start of 2020, McKee was a VP of Marketing at FreeWheel.

Prior to joining FreeWheel in 2018, McKee was a Sr. VP at Videology, where he oversaw
North American commercial functions. He also held sales strategy and development leadership roles at Joost and Massive Incorporated.

Local Now, a subsidiary of Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group, is a streaming service delivering real-time, local news, weather, sports, traffic, television shows, movies, and lifestyle information through technology that provides localized information to more than 225 markets across the United States.

It is available across a portfolio of OTT, CTV mobile, and TV platforms. As of today, it is also available on one of the nation’s biggest MVPDs.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

NEW YORK — Independent audio ad sales network AdLarge has signed a renewal agreement with Nielsen Audio.

With this agreement, AdLarge continues its participation in RADAR, the Nielsen audio service that provides commercial ratings.

Speaking of the new accord, AdLarge Media Co-Founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer Cathy Csukas says, “RADAR is the gold standard in network radio measurement. What sets it apart are the strict guidelines it requires from its subscribers, so they can provide agencies with highly accountable audience measurement. These are exactly the characteristics that make RADAR extremely valuable to advertisers and marketers as they make their purchasing decisions.”

Bruce Supovitz, SVP/National Audio Services at Nielsen Audio, adds, “AdLarge is an industry leader and a top independent audio sales network, and we are extremely pleased they have chosen to continue our relationship. We applaud AdLarge for continuing to be champions of audio advertising and investing in accountability and transparency for their advertisers and marketers.”

RADAR radio networks provide Nielsen with commercial clearance records from affiliated radio stations, which are merged with listening information from a database of nearly 400,000 respondents. “This added accountability allows RADAR to provide the best available forecast of a network’s future audience delivery and a high standard of reliable metrics for buying network radio,” Nielsen says.

The founder and chief executive officer of America’s United Financial Partnerships and the Auto Masters Automobile Dealership Group, located in Middle Tennessee, considers himself to be an accomplished entrepreneur.

Among the businesses he’s controlled is a company owning Spanish-language radio stations that were once a part of the now-defunct Davidson Media Group, led by Chris McMurray. 

However, radio hasn’t been so kind to Mark Janbakhsh. Earlier this month, he divested properties in one North Carolina market. Now, he’s done so in the Triangle region.

 BE SURE TO ‘LIKE’ RBR+TVBR ON FACEBOOK!

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

On Monday morning, the legacy of President Trump in Washington, D.C., was imprinted on the Federal Communications Commission.

Thanks to a spat over Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and the unwillingness of a Republican Commissioner who openly spoke out about his views as a strict Constitutionalist, the White House schemed to get a man who’d go along with the president’s quest to change the rule.

That individual on Monday was formally sworn in as the newest FCC Commissioner.

Nathan Simington has now been officially welcomed as one of five legislative leaders for the agency. The Commission notified all via a mid-morning Twitter post.

Simington takes the seat, previously held by Mike O’Rielly, after narrowly winning U.S. Senate approval — thanks to unanimous GOP support. Despite the controversy surrounding his nomination by the White House, the alternative would have been potentially worse for those seeking to further Republican “light touch” legislation — having the expectedly incoming Biden Administration get to select not one, but two, Commissioners.

Thus, for Roger Wicker & Co., it was a no-choice vote.

No matter how high Simington’s profile becomes in Washington, he can never be elected President.

Simington is from Saskatchewan, Canada, and became a U.S. citizen. That said, he is steeped in knowledge of many aspects of the telecommunications regulatory world. The University of Michigan law school graduate may have been a Senior Advisor at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) for just months, but in the role he worked on many aspects of telecommunications policy, including spectrum allocation and planning, broadband access, and the U.S. Government’s role in the Internet.

He’s also said to have authored the White House’s Section 230 plea, seeking it be discarded — thus holding social media platform owners accountable for what users post.

Prior to joining the Commission, Simington was a senior counsel to Brightstar Corp., the international mobile device services company. In this capacity, he led and negotiated telecommunications equipment and services transactions with leading providers in over twenty countries.

Prior to joining Brightstar, he worked as an attorney in private practice.

With Simington seated, he will be present at Ajit Pai’s swan song — the Jan. 13, 2021 Open Meeting for the Commission.

At this time, an agenda has not yet been released.

A wholly owned subsidiary of The E.W. Scripps Company has launched an offering of $700 million of new senior secured notes and $500 million of new senior unsecured notes.

The secured notes from Scripps Escrow II are expected to mature in 2029, and the unsecured notes are expected to mature in 2031.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

A rendering of the new satellite

A new satellite serving SiriusXM is in orbit and “performing properly” after a Sunday launch.

That announcement was made by the company along with Maxar Technologies, which built the satellite, and SpaceX, which launched it.

The SXM-7 ready for launch in an image from SpaceX.

The satellite is SXM-7 and it has an expected service life of 15 years. There are five other active satellites in the company’s constellation, but SXM-7 and SXM-8 — which is scheduled to launch next year — will replace XM-3 and XM-4.

“SXM-7, a high-powered digital audio radio satellite, was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla.,” the companies announced.

“Shortly afterward, SXM-7 deployed its solar arrays and began receiving and sending signals. Next, SXM-7 will begin firing its thrusters to commence its journey to its final geostationary orbit.”

“SXM-7 will deliver the highest power density of any commercial satellite on-orbit, sending more than 8,000 watts of content to the continental U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, increasing the power and reach of the signal for SiriusXM,” they stated.

The announcement was made by Megan Fitzgerald, Maxar’s senior vice president of space programs delivery;

Bridget Neville, SiriusXM’s senior vice president of satellite and repeater systems engineering and operations; and Lee Rosen, SpaceX’s vice president of customer operations and integration.

 

 

The post SiriusXM’s New Satellite Is in Orbit appeared first on Radio World.

It’s now eleven days and counting for a major “blackout,” as required by Federal law, of all Nexstar Media Group-owned over-the-air channels and the nationally distributed WGN America cable network on Dish, due to the absence of a new retransmission consent agreement.

Could it be months before they return? It just took Cox Media Group, controlled by Apollo Global Management, nearly five months to ink a new deal with the direct broadcast satellite TV services provider.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

He began his career as a news anchor and director for a large group of radio stations. Then, he jumped to television, becoming a prime-time news anchor for some of North America’s biggest media companies.

This culminated in being named a lead news anchor in New York City for one of its top stations, in October 2018. Sadly, cancer has claimed Edgardo del Villar.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

The author is president of Nova Electronics in Dallas, Texas.

A serious consideration for AM revitalization is being overlooked. Rather than promoting digital, which is still not ready for prime time, how about making changes in facilities a little more friendly?

One way is to get rid of the three-channel rule, which has outlived its usefulness. Many stations are going dark, but the band is still too crowded for most stations to move within that range. In order to reduce interference and improve coverage (which the FCC claims is of high importance, but doesn’t seem to practice), a station may have a frequency available that accomplishes all the above but is outside the range; and waivers are nearly impossible to receive. 

At present you have to wait for an AM filing window, which may not happen for years to decades (the last one was over 20 years ago), in order to make a move outside the three channels. 

There is no good reason for this, with the number of stations recently going dark, whereby a struggling station could improve their coverage and reduce current interference if such a move were allowed. 

Another factor would be to allow more stations into the expanded band. There are only 52 stations across the nation in the entire expanded band, making it an additional resource that is being vastly underutilized. 

Keep adequate protections between stations so as not to overcrowd the band, and allow this underpopulated territory to be used for improving the AM band, which was the primary motivation for its creation. 

These simple changes can be made with no real costs or changes in regulatory structure required. Unfortunately that seems to be the exact opposite of what government does. 

 

The post Letter: Drop the Three-Channel Rule appeared first on Radio World.

Jerry Del Colliano, rear, with NYU students. “Go to any college campus,” he said. “To them Spotify is the new radio.”

Perhaps nothing spreads through the U.S. commercial radio industry’s C-suites faster than some juicy water cooler talk from Jerry Del Colliano.

Clippings from Del Colliano’s online newsletter often bash the corporate strategies of iHeartMedia and Entercom. But the publisher of Inside Music Media doesn’t see himself as a critic of the leadership at those companies.

“I don’t do it to be critical. I do it because I love the radio industry,” Del Colliano said.

Nevertheless he has called iHeartMedia a “zombie” company that exists simply to keep up with debt payments. He believes Entercom is on a path toward voluntary reorganization or bankruptcy in 2022 unless it quickly recovers from the economic chaos of COVID-19. He says Cumulus is living on a “hall pass” from the financial markets due to the pandemic.

Del Colliano also has been critical of the NAB, calling the group “National Assassination of Broadcasting,” and has castigated the Federal Communications Commission for radio deregulation that he feels has allowed major broadcast groups to shed countless jobs.

“Think about this: Radio broadcasters no longer need a local presence in their market of license. What a wonderful thing for radio broadcasters,” Del Colliano says sarcastically. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Making a mess of it”

It’s clear to followers that Del Colliano speaks with a passion about an industry he grew up in.

He began his broadcast career working on air for the campus radio station while a student at Temple University. He worked in radio and TV programming and management in Philadelphia for years and is the former owner and publisher of trade publication Inside Radio.

Now he is a professor at NYU Steinhardt Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions Music Business Program. He also has taught at the University of Southern California.

The New Jersey native often writes in his newsletter with a particular focus on the actions of major broadcast groups that he believes have doomed the radio business.

“iHeartMedia, Entercom and Cumulus are making a mess of it right now. This is not the radio industry we are capable of being. It’s not a radio industry that’s going to survive,” Del Colliano said.

“It’s an industry that has been hijacked by a bunch of carpetbagger private equity people who have gone in and wrecked it.”

Sweeping programming changes introduced recently by iHeartMedia and Entercom to use out-of-market voicetracking to replace local on-air talent in many markets have been a frequent target of his ire.

“It’s the assassination of live shows in just about any daypart. These groups claim they are improving the local product by using regional or national syndicated talent and centralizing operations, but being local wins every time,” he said.

He says the beginnings of the radio industry’s troubles can be traced to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed for mass radio consolidation.

“I don’t think radio has been a business that has done well with consolidation,” he said. “Just look at it. Who can say that consolidation has been good for the industry?”

He feels he can point directly to why radio began to fail.

“The thing that made radio bulletproof is the exact thing these big groups have eliminated: being live and local. iHeartMedia and Entercom run up billions of dollars in debt, they cut back, they eliminate talent and they do programmatic selling. It’s as if they are looking for ways to destroy themselves.”

In fact, Del Colliano isn’t afraid to name names when it comes to the management of radio portfolios.

“David Field at Entercom is about as qualified to run a radio group as I am to be in private equity. He botched the CBS Radio merger. I mean everyone wanted CBS Radio. How do you screw that up? And that was before COVID-19 so he can’t blame that,” he said.

Going around the horn, Del Colliano says of Mary Berner at Cumulus: “She’s a very nice person, but she is from a private equity background. She is at Cumulus because she knew how to get them through bankruptcy, not operate them as a successful radio group.”

As for iHeartMedia, Del Colliano says he believes the cost-cutting by Chairman and CEO Bob Pittman only invited John Malone of Liberty Media to come in and position himself to “steal the company for pennies on the dollar. And (Malone) will run it on the cheap like we have never seen before.”

Liberty Media Corp, which already controls Sirius XM and Pandora, has a 5 percent stake in iHeartMedia, but in July the U.S. Department of Justice gave its permission for Liberty Media to increase its shares in iHeartMedia up to 50 percent.

“And you know how this is going to go. Do I have to spell this out to you? Liberty Media buys distressed properties. Pandora was distressed. Sirius XM was distressed. They get a few board seats and boom they will have their own people running iHeartMedia.

“Then he will gut it. It will operate with so few people you can’t believe. And he’ll use a lot of the programming strategies of satellite radio to program a terrestrial group of stations. No local staff and national formats piped into all the 800 and some radio stations. There will be further homogenization of radio,” he said.

“It was never personal”

Del Colliano teaches media, music discovery, streaming and immersive technologies at NYU, mostly via Zoom these days. In his class “Music in the Media Business,” he says young students tell him they have no need for radio.

“Go to any college campus. To them Spotify is the new radio. In fact, just look at people under 30 years old. Look at the next new car when you buy it. People are more worried about getting the Apple CarPlay to work than finding the radio in the dash.”

And AM radio has been left to die, Del Colliano said, despite recent “revitalization” actions by the FCC.

“(AM) is not sustainable. You have major broadcast groups now turning off their stations. I don’t think all-digital is a way forward when you render all analog radios obsolete.”

Del Colliano thinks AM could have become a podcast platform.

“Radio really missed an opportunity. All of these different shows featuring only the spoken voice. It would have been perfect for AM, but instead the big radio groups wanted Premiere’s Rush Limbaugh on their AM stations coast to coast. It’s exactly that type of programming on AM that caused podcasting.

“And I don’t buy the sound quality argument that AM just doesn’t sound good enough. Most people listen to podcasts through tiny earbuds.”

The internet pool that entertainment platforms are playing in now is so huge and so fragmented, Del Colliano says, Gen Z might not miss radio if it went away entirely.

“Young people would never trade Spotify or Apple Music for radio. They would sooner have playlists and the systems that are in place today. Over-the-air radio is still so antiquated,” he said.

Del Colliano says he often receives anonymous tips with information on the dealings of the major radio groups.

“But you might be surprised that I get a lot of the information from the people I write about. CEOs are fascinating people. They like to talk about themselves and each other. I have built a lot of trust with them. They know I will vet the information they give me,” Del Colliano said.

In fact, he calls Cumulus’ Berner “a friend” and even remains friendly with former Cumulus Media CEO Lew Dickey, who was often a target of Del Colliano’s scorn until he left the company five years ago.

“I skewered him bad, but it was never personal. Lew has spoken to my class at NYU. I use his book ‘The New Modern Media’ in my class. I just disagreed with the way he ran Cumulus.”

Del Colliano predicts radio groups that maintain a local presence will eventually enjoy better ratings and increased revenue compared to those who centralize operations. He mentioned Hubbard, Saga, Beasley and Alpha Media as examples.

“And that’s because those stations will continue to do what radio does best: be live and local. They’ll have programmers in the local markets. They’ll have sales people in the local markets.”

But he insists it will take an industrywide effort for radio to survive.

“It’s going to be a big lift. It’s going to take more than one person to turn the industry around. It’ll take a number of people who decide the right way to move forward is decentralizing the corporate structure of programming and sales and making radio local again,” Del Colliano said.

He concluded: “Then perhaps the greed of the consolidators might end and help radio save itself from private equity mismanagement.”

RW welcomes comment on this or any story. Email radioworld@futurenet.com with “Letter to the Editor” in the subject field.

The post No Soft Edges From Jerry Del Colliano appeared first on Radio World.