Entertain people, engage with people, make a difference in their lives. It was a radio station that just absolutely pulled you in. And I think that's what we have not done enough of.
Welcome to BRANDwidth On Demand, your guide to rebooting radio. If you can make a difference in somebody's community, and make a difference in their life, that's when you have a chance to really create a special relationship. Bandwidth on demand. Rebooting radio with a different take on all radio can be. Now your guides through the metamorphosis. David Martin and author of the book, BRANDwidth Media Branding, coach Kipper McGee.
This time, our guest really needs no introduction, so we'll keep it brief. Jeff Smulyan is a radio broadcasting pioneer who has helped to shape the industry for over 40 years. Founder and CEO of Emmis Communications, a diversified media company, often regarded... As one of the best operators in the history of radio,
...Not to mention, he's got a great book for any broadcaster. It's called Never Ride A Rollercoaster Upside Down.. It's the Ups, Downs, and Reinvention of an Entrepreneur.
We can't wait to learn more. BRANDwidth on Demand is proud to welcome Jeff Smulyan
Thank you. Thanks guys. So Emmis was founded on the Hebrew word for truth. So we're going to start with a truthy hardball. Mr. Smulyan, what's your favorite radio station of all time, and in your opinion, what made it great? Well, it's funny. Obviously I should say some of ours. Power 106, K-SHE 95, our first station, WENS. When I was a kid, my favorite radio station was KHJ Los Angeles.
Okay. My friend Dick Ferguson sent me an air check of CKLW, and I was on a plane the other day, and then I was listening to KHJ, and I remembered how big an impact that had on my life when I was in college. Robert W. Morgan, and the Real Don Steele, and Scotty Brink, and it was just, it was a magical radio station. Of the ones I never owned, that was the one I was the most excited about.
Yeah, and obviously that was the Drake format and Ron Jacobs and all those guys. But in your opinion, Jeff, what could radio today learn from what KHJ was doing back then?
Entertain people, engage with people, make a difference in their lives. When I thought about it, it was a radio station that just absolutely pulled you in. and I think that's what we have not done enough of. You, if you can make a difference in somebody's community and make a difference in their life, that's when you have a chance to really create a special relationship.
You know, Jeff, you've created and maintained some tremendous radio brands, and, Emmes is often thought to be one of the best operators in the business. What are some of the traits that make a great radio company, and how do you see those traits evolving in the coming years?
I think it's always about the culture. I really do. I think that it's about the relationship you have with your people. That's the most important thing, a culture where everybody collaborates, a culture where everybody has a stake in the outcome, a culture where everybody respects one another, I think is the single most important thing.
So looking at the entire world of media right now, you've seen a lot of things come and go. You've seen evolution from probably records to carts, to CD, to MP3s, to WAV files and all of that kind of stuff. But we're just in the middle of it. In fact, people have said we encountered the slowest change last year that we'll ever see in our lifetimes.
So I guess my question is from your vantage point, what do you think is one of the most important things that a radio broadcaster can do today to really be ready for what's down the pike?
Again, I think fragmentation has changed all of our lives. It's changed the radio business dramatically that, when I grew up, you had five or six radio stations in a market. Today you may have 25 and you have podcast and you have streaming, and you have Sirius XM. So they have so many more choices. Again, I go back to providing content that matters to people. If you're an air talent, relate to your audience, be involved in their lives. Nothing substitutes for that.
The localism, the ability to be engaged makes all the difference in the world.
And what do you see as the role of local radio in the years ahead, Jeff?
I think as a practical matter, everything is probably going to diminish a bit. Because there are so many more choices, and because we have a generation of kids who have not grown up with it this much. It was a, when I grew up, radio was a major part of our lives. That's not quite the case, but I still think there'll be a place for stations that are doing content, that resonates with people. And I think radio's unique selling point is it is local.
none of the streaming services are, none of the satellite services are, whether local podcasts or just as many that are, universal. So I think if you can be the place in the community where, I sound like a broken record here, but that's how you resonate with people.
We absolutely agree. But one of the things that we keep hearing from our client stations, and I'm sure you've encountered in your markets as well, is there's that kind of push between maintaining budget. The budgetary needs versus the reality needs and so many stations are just cutting staff and really past cutting fat.
They're cutting the bone and in many cases, they just aren't able or don't choose to have local people, and in some cases, even local salespeople there, how would you recommend that that be balanced?
Well, the problem is companies took on too much debt. And when they took on too much debt, they did two things that I think are very, very harmful to the industry. One, they added a lot of inventory because they said we got to make our numbers in an industry which isn't growing, five or seven percent a year like it did forever. They said, okay, the only way to make that up is add inventory. That harmed the relationship with audiences.
And then they said, you know what we can pipe in music from a thousand miles away, cut the local air staff, cut the local sales staff and while those things may be necessary for companies that have leverage ratios that are sky high, I find it hard to believe that those enterprises could succeed. And I think the proof's in the pudding. I think the excess inventory and the decline of local air status. I have a friend who runs two markets for a major company.
I think there are less than, I don't know, 12 people on the staff in each market for four or five radio stations. I don't have the problem with their balance sheets. One of the things if you read the book is how we tackled the debt of the industry, but we were fortunate. We paid it all off. We have no debt but when you have that kind of debt, it's just, it's a death spiral. And I think that's what you're seeing with a lot of the companies in the industry.
Yeah, no doubt about it, Jeff. Now, you've done some amazing things in your career from heading up a media company to owning a major league baseball team. Yeah. What's been the most challenging job?
The most challenging job, I think, was the one I just alluded to when your company is awash in debt and the economy's collapsed and all of a sudden one day you think you have a manageable debt level and the next thing you find out you're technically bankrupt. We were fortunate. I'm surrounded by a bunch of great people and we rolled up our sleeves and we solved it.
Now I've also said when you own a major league baseball team, instead of making your mistakes in private, you make your mistakes some days in front of 35, 000 people. So that's a little bit of a problem, but I think surviving the economic crises, which every human being is going to go through. My favorite saying is, I think that's why I titled the book, Never Ride a Rollercoaster Upside Down because life's a rollercoaster. And nobody has a straight line to go from success to success.
So if you were to offer one key lesson from the book that every radio person should really take to heart, what would be the big moral to the story?
I think the big moral, I'll give you two. One, my late mother used to say, and I believe it and we practice it here every day, in life you gotta laugh. Have fun and laugh all the time. And the other thing is never jeopardize your integrity. I have a favorite saying that if your word is good, nothing else matters. And if your word isn't good, nothing else matters. So be somebody that people believe.
So As Dave mentioned, you have done just a lot of amazing things in your career. So are there any moments that really just made you realize that, boy, I am in the sightline of a lot of people?
Well, we've done so many crazy things. I talked about David Letterman was my first midday guy at the first station I ran before I started Emmis and of course, learning with David. And you know, I always tell the story about. David was a talk station and you were appealing to an older audience. And I'll never forget. I came back from lunch one day and a listener called and said. Letterman's a communist. And I said, why do you say that?
He said, well, I called him and I said, they're definitely communists in Carmel, Indiana. And you know what he told me? And I said, gee, I don't know. And he said, he told me you got to give them Carmel. The football team's lousy and there's never a good place to park and they're tearing the roads up. So give the communist Carmel. That was the kind of stuff Dave did. I mean, we had ever, we had Don Imus, we, yeah, K-SHE, we started the world's first all sports station at WFAN.
And they called it Smullyan's Folly. Jim Lampley called it the Vietnam War of Emmis. And I have another favorite saying that's in the book. The line between being a genius and an idiot is very fine. And, I have a chapter idiot to genius, which is the birth of all sports radio that nobody thought would work. People have asked me did you think someday there'd be 700 all sports radio stations when you started this? And I said, I didn't think there'd be one. Cause I didn't think he'd take it.
But it worked. So I went from idiot to genius. And then the next chapter is genius to idiot. Where I bought the Seattle Mariners. And I was kind of the boy wonder. And one of my friends came to the ballpark one night. He watched me sign autographs for 30 minutes after a game. And he said, any society that wants your autograph is a society which is doomed. Which may have been fair. But I, I became the boy wonder. And then and then.
The roof fell in and we didn't, we lost lots of money and we put the team for sale. So I went from genius to idiot on that project. So that's life, that's what makes life fun.
That's terrific.
So looking at it, you've surrounded yourself with some really great people. Rick Cummings, and down the road, you mentioned a lot of them in the book, but just clicking back a notch, we know there's truth, but are there other traits or characteristics that you look for in people that you want for positions of responsibility, whether it's a GM or a PD group guy, whatever, what do you look for?
You look for number one, you want smart people. You want people who are self starters. You want people who are collaborative, who work well with others, what people that are upbeat, happy. you want people that are not political. We have a culture where I always say one of the commandments of Emmis is commit your mistakes. I found that if I can say to people, hey, I screwed up, I was wrong, it empowers everybody else.
Companies where everybody says it's not my fault, it's the other guy's fault are usually companies that are destined to fail. So I take great pride in the fact that at Emmis, it's very collaborative and if people screw up, they say, I screw it up.
We're with the CEO of Emmis Communications, Jeff Smulyan. Hey, somebody you'd love to hear from. We'd love to hear your suggestions. Just email show at brandwithondemand. com or reach out to us on social. BRANDwidthPlus on Insta, Facebook, and Twitter. That's BRANDwidth P l u s BRANDwidth- plus.
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Coming up, Jeff offers advice, an opportunity that may be hiding in plain sight.
Musicmaster, less stress, more. Yes. Hey, this is Dave Tyler. And maybe it's just me, but I love uptempo songs coming out of the legal ID at the top of the hour, as well as out of my stop sets, it's kind of like saying, all right, we're done with business. Let's get back to the party to do this. I use clock filters in these positions that only choose medium up or uptempo songs. Sounds great every time. And it's. Easy to set up.
If you have any questions, just shoot me an email at Dave@Musicmaster.com. Musicmaster. Music Scheduling the way it should be.
Opportunities...hidden in plain sight. BRANDwidth On Demand
We're with the CEO of Emmis Communications, Jeff Smulyan. Jeff, what's the one opportunity. That you think station people can take advantage of. It's maybe something that's hiding in plain sight.
Well, I'm not sure if there was something that was hiding in plain sight. I would have, I wouldn't have already found it. So maybe that doesn't exist, but again, I think it's creating a culture, uh, where you have fun and you, and you relate to the people you deal with. I've said it before, but creating an environment that resonates with people. That's out of the ordinary, that's sometimes, you know, out of the box thinking, but that resonates with your listeners and your advertisers.
It's as simple as that. I'm not sure that's not always been there. It's harder to find in fragmented times, but the reality is you know, that's still a secret.
You bet. Great stuff.
Thanks guys. Thank you.
Wow. It's great to spend time with Jeff Smulyan. Links to Jeff's book, the Emmis corporate site, and more, all in the show notes. Just scroll down on your phone.
As always, thanks to exec producer Cindy Huber for making this all come together. And to our associate producer, Hannah B for booking and coming up next.
Hi, I'm Erica Mandy with The Newsworthy podcast. I'm going to be sharing how you can make your newscast more objective and gain more trust from your audience. That's coming up next on BRANDwidth On Demand.
That's a wrap, kipper. Patience is important. We'll talk about that in the one minute. Martinizing. Find it in the show notes at brandwithondemand.com. I'm Dave Martin.
And I'm Kipper McGee. May all your BRANDwidth be Wide.