30 RADIOINK•COM MAY 6, 2019
takes care of itself. Sometimes what is
going on with the public companies is not
a good reflection of what is going on with
radio everywhere.Goldsen: The great thing about our mar-
ket is that, in the 21 years we’ve owned
the cluster, we haven’t had booms or
busts. The recession affected us slightly,
and the market has come back quite
nicely since 2009. Our year-to-year rev-
enue has generally increased 3 percent to
7 percent since then. We’re fortunate that
we haven’t had to subscribe to the “flat
is the new up” philosophy. I credit a lot
of our success to a great team, led by our
general manager, Jamie McKibbin.Radio Ink: How important is creating
new revenue streams, and how do you
do that without taking your eye off the
main money generator, spots?
Goldsen: Obviously, traditional spot rev-
enue remains the bread and butter of our
operation, but we are very lucky to havea great, forward-thinking team of profes-
sionals who are constantly looking for fun
new ways to expand our audience and
footprint. We’ve sold spots on our stream
for several years, and package social
media with our spot buys whenever we
can. We have a text club with thousands
of listeners who have agreed to receive
special offers from our advertisers in the
form of sponsored “text blasts.”
We tried the half-price bargain board
for a few years, but didn’t find that to be
worth the effort. One thing I’m proud of
is our willingness to try new things, and
ability to build them up, or bail on them if
we need to. We’ve also had a good deal of
success working with advertisers on video
segments.Becker: You have to continue to be cre-
ative in most businesses today. We try to
focus on what we do best, which is radio,
and then make partnerships with other
individuals or companies to handle other
revenue streams. In markets as smallas some of our markets, there are not
enough people or finances to add more to
their plates.Fuss: We’re cautiously venturing into new
revenue streams, primarily digital, but
we’re looking at other opportunities as well.Davenport: New revenue streams are
very important. We have created new
revenue streams through interactive
products, podcasts, multimedia, and non-
traditional revenue. We have determined
the best way to handle non-spot sales is
to have staff that are specialized in this
area assist our radio sales staff. In other
words, we use these specialists to assist
our radio sales staff who have the estab-
lished relationships with our customers.Patrick: Finding new revenue streams
while still maintaining our core business
is challenging but critical to our long-
term growth. We constantly are looking
to add AEs and prospect for new clients.