Episode 190

Jeff Smulyan’s Secret Sauce: Steering Emmis Through the Media Rollercoaster

Get an exclusive peek into the media industry's behind-the-scenes, lessons from the journey of Emmis Communications Founder/Chairman Jeff Smulyan, In this episode he shares his journey, with a reminder of the power of fun and meaningful connections.

Grab your front-row seat to the behind-the-scenes action and dive into this podcast for a rollercoaster of stories, wisdom, and a front-row seat to the magic of media!

In this episode, he shares priceless insights from his journey, straight out of his book, 'Never Ride a Rollercoaster Upside Down.' Hit the ‘play’ button to hear a rollercoaster ride of stories, wisdom, and a firsthand look at the magic of media...Smulyan style.

This time, BRANDwidth on Demand is not just a podcast; it's a thrilling adventure into the heart of the industry. Buckle up, and let one of radio's most respected operators, Jeff Smulyan be your guide.

Get your copy: Never Ride A Rollercoaster Upside Down by Jeff Smulyan

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Transcript
Jeff:

Entertain people, engage with people, make a difference in their lives.

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It was a radio station that

just absolutely pulled you in.

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And I think that's what we

have not done enough of.

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VO: Welcome to BRANDwidth On Demand,

your guide to rebooting radio.

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If you can make a difference in somebody's

community, and make a difference in their

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life, that's when you have a chance to

really create a special relationship.

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Bandwidth on demand.

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Rebooting radio with a different

take on all radio can be.

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Now your guides through the metamorphosis.

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David Martin and author of

the book, BRANDwidth Media

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Branding, coach Kipper McGee.

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Dave: This time, our guest really needs

no introduction, so we'll keep it brief.

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Jeff Smulyan is a radio broadcasting

pioneer who has helped to shape

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the industry for over 40 years.

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Founder and CEO of Emmis

Communications, a diversified

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media company, often regarded...

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As one of the best operators

in the history of radio,

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Kipper: ...Not to mention, he's got

a great book for any broadcaster.

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It's called Never Ride A

Rollercoaster Upside Down..

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It's the Ups, Downs, and

Reinvention of an Entrepreneur.

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Dave: We can't wait to learn more.

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BRANDwidth on Demand is

proud to welcome Jeff Smulyan

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Jeff: Thank you.

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Thanks guys.

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So Emmis was founded on

the Hebrew word for truth.

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So we're going to start

with a truthy hardball.

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Mr.

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Smulyan, what's your favorite

radio station of all time, and in

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your opinion, what made it great?

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Well, it's funny.

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Obviously I should say some of ours.

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Power 106, K-SHE 95,

our first station, WENS.

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When I was a kid, my favorite

radio station was KHJ Los Angeles.

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Okay.

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My friend Dick Ferguson sent me an air

check of CKLW, and I was on a plane the

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other day, and then I was listening to

KHJ, and I remembered how big an impact

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that had on my life when I was in college.

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, Robert W.

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Morgan, and the Real Don Steele,

and Scotty Brink, and it was just,

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it was a magical radio station.

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Of the ones I never owned, that was

the one I was the most excited about.

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Kipper: Yeah, and obviously

that was the Drake format and

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Ron Jacobs and all those guys.

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But in your opinion, Jeff, what

could radio today learn from

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what KHJ was doing back then?

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Jeff: Entertain people, engage with

people, make a difference in their lives.

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When I thought about it, it

was a radio station that just

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absolutely pulled you in.

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, and I think that's what we

have not done enough of.

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You, if you can make a difference

in somebody's community and make

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a difference in their life, that's

when you have a chance to really

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create a special relationship.

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Dave: You know, Jeff, you've created and

maintained some tremendous radio brands,

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and, Emmes is often thought to be one

of the best operators in the business.

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What are some of the traits that make a

great radio company, and how do you see

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those traits evolving in the coming years?

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Jeff: I think it's

always about the culture.

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I really do.

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I think that it's about the

relationship you have with your people.

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That's the most important thing, a

culture where everybody collaborates,

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a culture where everybody has a

stake in the outcome, a culture where

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everybody respects one another, I think

is the single most important thing.

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Kipper: So looking at the entire

world of media right now, you've

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seen a lot of things come and go.

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You've seen evolution from probably

records to carts, to CD, to MP3s, to

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WAV files and all of that kind of stuff.

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But we're just in the middle of it.

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In fact, people have said we encountered

the slowest change last year that

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we'll ever see in our lifetimes.

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So I guess my question is from your

vantage point, what do you think is

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one of the most important things that

a radio broadcaster can do today to

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really be ready for what's down the pike?

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Jeff: Again, I think fragmentation

has changed all of our lives.

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It's changed the radio business

dramatically that, when I grew up, you had

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five or six radio stations in a market.

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, Today you may have 25 and

you have podcast and you have

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streaming, and you have Sirius XM.

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So they have so many more choices.

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Again, I go back to providing

content that matters to people.

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If you're an air talent, relate to your

audience, be involved in their lives.

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Nothing substitutes for that.

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The localism, the ability to be engaged

makes all the difference in the world.

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Dave: And what do you see as the role

of local radio in the years ahead, Jeff?

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, Jeff: I think as a practical

matter, everything is probably

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going to diminish a bit.

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Because there are so many more choices,

and because we have a generation of kids

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who have not grown up with it this much.

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It was a, when I grew up, radio

was a major part of our lives.

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That's not quite the case, but I

still think there'll be a place

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for stations that are doing

content, that resonates with people.

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And I think radio's unique

selling point is it is local.

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, none of the streaming services

are, none of the satellite services

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are, whether local podcasts or

just as many that are, universal.

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So I think if you can be the place

in the community where, , I sound

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like a broken record here, but

that's how you resonate with people.

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Kipper: We absolutely agree.

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But one of the things that we keep

hearing from our client stations, and

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I'm sure you've encountered in your

markets as well, is there's that kind

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of push between maintaining budget.

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The budgetary needs versus the reality

needs and so many stations are just

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cutting staff and really past cutting fat.

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They're cutting the bone and in many

cases, they just aren't able or don't

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choose to have local people, and in some

cases, even local salespeople there, how

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would you recommend that that be balanced?

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Jeff: Well, the problem is

companies took on too much debt.

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And when they took on too much debt,

they did two things that I think are

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very, very harmful to the industry.

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One, they added a lot of inventory because

they said we got to make our numbers in

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an industry which isn't growing, five or

seven percent a year like it did forever.

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They said, okay, the only way to

make that up is add inventory.

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That harmed the

relationship with audiences.

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And then they said, you know what , we

can pipe in music from a thousand miles

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away, cut the local air staff, cut

the local sales staff and while those

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things may be necessary for companies

that have leverage ratios that are

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sky high, I find it hard to believe

that those enterprises could succeed.

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And I think the proof's in the pudding.

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I think the excess inventory and

the decline of local air status.

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I have a friend who runs two

markets for a major company.

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I think there are less than, I don't

know, 12 people on the staff in each

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market for four or five radio stations.

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I don't have the problem

with their balance sheets.

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, One of the things if you read the

book is how we tackled the debt of

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the industry, but we were fortunate.

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We paid it all off.

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We have no debt , but when you

have that kind of debt, it's

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just, it's a death spiral.

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And I think that's what you're seeing with

a lot of the companies in the industry.

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Dave: Yeah, no doubt about it, Jeff.

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Now, you've done some amazing

things in your career from heading

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up a media company to owning

a major league baseball team.

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Yeah.

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What's been the most challenging job?

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Jeff: The most challenging job, I think,

was the one I just alluded to when

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your company is awash in debt and the

economy's collapsed and all of a sudden

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one day you think you have a manageable

debt level and the next thing you

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find out you're technically bankrupt.

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We were fortunate.

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I'm surrounded by a bunch of

great people and we rolled up

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our sleeves and we solved it.

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Now I've also said when you own a

major league baseball team, instead

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of making your mistakes in private,

you make your mistakes some

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days in front of 35, 000 people.

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So that's a little bit of a

problem, but I think surviving

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the economic crises, which every

human being is going to go through.

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My favorite saying is, I think

that's why I titled the book, Never

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Ride a Rollercoaster Upside Down

because life's a rollercoaster.

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And nobody has a straight line

to go from success to success.

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Kipper: So if you were to offer one key

lesson from the book that every radio

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person should really take to heart, what

would be the big moral to the story?

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Jeff: I think the big

moral, I'll give you two.

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One, my late mother used to say, and

I believe it and we practice it here

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every day, in life you gotta laugh.

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Have fun and laugh all the time.

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And the other thing is never

jeopardize your integrity.

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I have a favorite saying that if your

word is good, nothing else matters.

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And if your word isn't

good, nothing else matters.

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So be somebody that people believe.

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Kipper: So As Dave mentioned,

you have done just a lot of

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amazing things in your career.

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So are there any moments that really

just made you realize that, boy, I am

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in the sightline of a lot of people?

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Jeff: Well, we've done

so many crazy things.

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I talked about David Letterman was

my first midday guy at the first

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station I ran before I started Emmis

and of course, learning with David.

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And you know, I always

tell the story about.

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David was a talk station and you

were appealing to an older audience.

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And I'll never forget.

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I came back from lunch one day

and a listener called and said.

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Letterman's a communist.

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And I said, why do you say that?

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He said, well, I called him

and I said, they're definitely

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communists in Carmel, Indiana.

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And you know what he told me?

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And I said, gee, I don't know.

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And he said, he told me you

got to give them Carmel.

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The football team's lousy and

there's never a good place to park

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and they're tearing the roads up.

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So give the communist Carmel.

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That was the kind of stuff Dave did.

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I mean, we had ever, we had Don Imus,

we, yeah, K-SHE, we started the world's

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first all sports station at WFAN.

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And they called it Smullyan's Folly.

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Jim Lampley called it

the Vietnam War of Emmis.

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And I have another favorite

saying that's in the book.

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The line between being a genius

and an idiot is very fine.

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And, , I have a chapter idiot to

genius, which is the birth of all sports

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radio that nobody thought would work.

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People have asked me , did you think

someday there'd be 700 all sports

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radio stations when you started this?

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And I said, I didn't think there'd be one.

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Cause I didn't think he'd take it.

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But it worked.

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So I went from idiot to genius.

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And then the next chapter

is genius to idiot.

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Where I bought the Seattle Mariners.

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And I was kind of the boy wonder.

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And one of my friends came

to the ballpark one night.

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He watched me sign autographs

for 30 minutes after a game.

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And he said, any society that wants your

autograph is a society which is doomed.

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Which may have been fair.

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But I, I became the boy wonder.

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And then and then.

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The roof fell in and we

didn't, we lost lots of money

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and we put the team for sale.

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So I went from genius to

idiot on that project.

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So that's life, that's

what makes life fun.

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Dave: That's terrific.

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Kipper: So looking at it, , you've

surrounded yourself with

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some really great people.

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Rick Cummings, and down the road, you

mentioned a lot of them in the book,

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but just clicking back a notch, we know

there's truth, but are there other traits

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or characteristics that you look for in

people that you want for positions of

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responsibility, whether it's a GM or a PD

group guy, whatever, what do you look for?

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Jeff: You look for number

one, you want smart people.

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You want people who are self starters.

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You want people who are collaborative,

who work well with others, what

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people that are upbeat, happy.

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, you want people that are not political.

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We have a culture where I always

say one of the commandments of

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Emmis is commit your mistakes.

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I found that if I can say to

people, hey, I screwed up, I was

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wrong, it empowers everybody else.

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Companies where everybody says

it's not my fault, it's the other

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guy's fault are usually companies

that are destined to fail.

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So I take great pride in the fact that

at Emmis, it's very collaborative and if

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people screw up, they say, I screw it up.

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Dave: We're with the CEO of Emmis

Communications, Jeff Smulyan.

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Hey, somebody you'd love to hear from.

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We'd love to hear your suggestions.

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Just email show at brandwithondemand.

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com or reach out to us on social.

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BRANDwidthPlus on Insta,

Facebook, and Twitter.

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That's BRANDwidth P l

u s BRANDwidth- plus.

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Kipper: Hey, if you're new to the

podcast, we'd love to say welcome

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and please be sure to hit the

follow button wherever you get this

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Dave: Coming up, Jeff offers

advice, an opportunity that

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may be hiding in plain sight.

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Spot: Musicmaster, less stress, more.

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Yes.

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Hey, this is Dave Tyler.

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And maybe it's just me, but I love uptempo

songs coming out of the legal ID at the

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top of the hour, as well as out of my

stop sets, it's kind of like saying,

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all right, we're done with business.

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Let's get back to the party to do this.

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I use clock filters in these

positions that only choose

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medium up or uptempo songs.

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Sounds great every time.

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And it's.

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Easy to set up.

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If you have any questions, just shoot

me an email at Dave@Musicmaster.com.

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Musicmaster.

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Music Scheduling the way it should be.

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VO: Opportunities...hidden in plain sight.

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BRANDwidth On Demand

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Dave: We're with the CEO of Emmis

Communications, Jeff Smulyan.

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Jeff, what's the one opportunity.

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That you think station

people can take advantage of.

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It's maybe something that's

hiding in plain sight.

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Jeff: Well, I'm not sure if there was

something that was hiding in plain sight.

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I would have, I wouldn't

have already found it.

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So maybe that doesn't exist, but again,

I think it's creating a culture, uh,

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where you have fun and you, and you

relate to the people you deal with.

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I've said it before, but , creating an

environment , that resonates with people.

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That's out of the ordinary, that's

sometimes, you know, out of the box

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thinking, but that resonates with

your listeners and your advertisers.

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It's as simple as that.

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, I'm not sure that's not always been there.

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It's harder to find in fragmented

times, but the reality is you

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know, that's still a secret.

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Dave: You bet.

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Great stuff.

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Jeff: Thanks guys.

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Thank you.

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Dave: Wow.

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It's great to spend

time with Jeff Smulyan.

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Links to Jeff's book, the Emmis corporate

site, and more, all in the show notes.

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Just scroll down on your phone.

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Kipper: As always, thanks to

exec producer Cindy Huber for

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making this all come together.

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And to our associate producer, Hannah

B for booking and coming up next.

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Erica: Hi, I'm Erica Mandy

with The Newsworthy podcast.

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I'm going to be sharing how you can

make your newscast more objective and

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gain more trust from your audience.

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That's coming up next

on BRANDwidth On Demand.

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Dave: That's a wrap, kipper.

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Patience is important.

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We'll talk about that in the one minute.

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Martinizing.

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Find it in the show notes

at brandwithondemand.com.

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I'm Dave Martin.

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Kipper: And I'm Kipper McGee.

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May all your BRANDwidth be Wide.

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