Radio Ink Magazine – August 12, 2019

20 RADIOINK•COM AUGUST 12, 2019

of new music, it is, most importantly, the

connection between the community and the

on-air talent and sales team.

When I talked to Steven about joining

the company, he said, “Before you say yes,

come to our markets like Missoula and

Lafayette.” I had not been to those places.

He said, “You’ve been working in huge

international companies with tens of thou-

sands of employees, and I want to make

sure you know what working in small, mid-

market America is like.”

I went on a trip with Steven and Stu

Rosenstein for a week to their markets

before I joined. In Lafayette we went out

with the DJs after the morning show. As we

were sitting in a diner, what amazed me

was all the people, when they heard the

DJs’ voices, would come over and interact

with them. They were truly celebrities in

town. When they said something, they were

transparent and credible. The power that

they have in a community of a quarter

million people really struck me as a great

opportunity.

Steven said to me, “Can you name

another traditional media company that

has transformed for the digital age?” and

I mentioned the Wall Street Journal was

doing some progressive things. He said,

“What about TV or radio companies?” I

could not name one, and he asked me,

“Wouldn’t you like to be the first person to

do that? We can have a vibrant, growing

radio business, but at the same time have a

digital business superserving our communi-

ties and clients.” That struck me, and it felt

like a calling. I joined in 2010, in September.

Radio Ink: When you first came on, was

your focus just digital or the whole slew

of things?

Wilson: It was primarily digital initially.

Other than having a one-page website, there

was no digital infrastructure or strategy.

They had zero personnel focused on digital.

Yet they had tremendous assets. The over-

the-air product was reaching 50 percent of

the adult population, which is astounding

and powerful.

The first 100 days was traveling and talk-

ing to people, making sure I understood

the company and the assets, then building

the strategy for digital. After a little while

I took over all content, including on-air. It

was quickly evident we should look at con-

tent agnostic to its distribution platform.

There is an AM/FM broadcast through the

transmitter, but that same broadcast was

streaming on laptops and desktops. Today

it’s streaming through Alexa and smart

speakers.

My perspective was that our greatest

asset is on-air talent and local sales teams

— not only from a broadcast perspective,

but creating content for all the numerous

platforms, our websites, and later on, our

social and video channels. Steven recog-

nized my perspective of looking at it holisti-

cally and he agreed, so I became the head

of all content.

Radio Ink: It’s hard to get the radio

industry to try new things. How hard a

sell job was it when our main focus is

spots, selling inventory?

Wilson: It was incredibly challenging. It

took a lot of face time. My mode of operat-

ing is spending a lot of time in our markets.

It’s how to get digital to become part of the

fabric of the company, and not replacing

but complementing radio. Radio is our DNA;

it’s the heartbeat of the company. Digital

was a huge culture shock and change.

Here I am, coming in from AOL and say-

ing, “I want to take what you’re doing over

the air, which is powerful, and make sure

that power is relevant for the next 20-30

years, across all platforms. That means

you’re going to need to do some work that

you may not be familiar with” — which ini-

tially meant creating content for our web-

sites.

We had our on-air talent creating con-

tent, blogging for each and every shift they

do. There was pushback because they were

not comfortable with that. They had gotten

into the format for the spoken word, and

now we’re telling them we want them to

create written content and add pictures and

video to our digital platforms. We went to

every market and walked through the strat-

egy of why it was important, not only for

the company, but their careers as well.

I appealed to why they got into the busi-

ness, which, for most of the on-air talent,

was excitement when they walked into

the studio and turned on the mic because

they’re connecting with the community.

I would say to the on-air talent, “Don’t

you want to make that same connection

through our websites?” One of the first

things we did in our markets was hire digi-

tal managing editors, and their sole focus

was to work with the on-air talent to take

Bill Wilson with the company’s top sales executives, winners of the Townsquare Presidents Award