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BILL FIGENSHU CREDITS SABO MEDIA
Source: FMQB -- Nov 18, 2005
FMQB Cover Story - 11/18/05
Word Association With Fig
Up Close With FigMedia1 President/CEO Bill Figenshu
By Mike Boyle
Bill Figenshu exited Citadel Broadcasting as President/West Region just this past July to open a
management consulting company called FigMedia1, offering help/insight in the areas of talent
development, station operations, revenue generation, and more. In his 30+-year career, Figenshu has
also held senior executive positions at Viacom/Infinity and Chancellor Media.
Recently, FMQB phoned the outspoken (and more often than not) "spot-on" Figenshu at FigMedia1's
secret "World Headquarters" in Skytop, Pennsylvania to mostly play a game of word association, as it
pertains to today's hottest radio topics.
Let's start with: satellite radio.
Risky. They should be as nervous as we are. The satellite guys know that it's a content race, just like we
do in broadcast radio. The content, whether it's through satellite, or whether it's through AM or FM or HD
or two-cups-and-a-string, is going to be the single most important issue today. That's why they're
spending so much money to aggregate talent. Here is the problem: there's at least one guy who could
spoil the party, and his name is [Apple's] Steve Jobs. The reason is, as we recently saw, was the
announcement on the video iPod. Remember, there are 27 million i-Pods out there now. (Imagine if they
were HD radios?). If you can control content through the telephone, whether it's the V-phone from
Verizon or iPods, you can control the software and how it's distributed. So, with the satellite guys loosing
so much money, if they don't get their content out there to a mass audience as quickly as possible, there
could be other competitors that take their place.
So, is it a risk? Yes. We all see all the hype on satellite, with people saying, "Wow! Those guys
really got it going on!" But, other than the spoken word formats, you really don't see a lot of the
competition for the music channels. You can get music on broadband now. You want to hear the all-
Reggae channel? It's out there; and you don't have to get it from satellite. When Wi-Fi comes in, when
you can get the Internet in your car, and you'll be able to drive down the street and hear a streamed radio
station from Europe or a streamed station from Canada or anywhere in the U.S., you're now competing
with satellite.
There's also the component of pay radio. People will suggest to you: "Yes, jeez look what it did
for cable." Nobody said they would pay for cable, and look they're paying for it. Well, let's remember,
there are 250-million current radio listeners and there's five- or six- or seven-million (even if they get 25-
million) satellite subscribers, that's still a fraction of the current weekly listening of radio. And they're
paying a lot of money for content because they've got to get the radios out there. So, the race is going to
be for distribution of the content. Radio AM and FM has one hundred percent distribution right now; it's in
every home and every car.
The only people who come close to commercial radio mass distribution are the cell phone guys.
Would Howard Stern love to be available on every cell phone? I don't mean like the phone up-to-your-
ear -- listening like that. I mean if the cell phone has iPod-like qualities to it, and if you can download or
stream the Howard Stern Show that is broadcast over your cell phone (because everybody's got one),
that's the scary part for the satellite guys. It's also the scary part for the radio guys. Remember, we're
already scared -- we were scared first.
OK, you brought him up: Howard Stern.
How exciting is it that you know that you're literally creating an industry? Howard is an industry; he was
an industry in broadcast radio. He really kind of created the genre. Usually the first one in, like Rush
Limbaugh and Howard, really kind of define the genre. A lot of the radio people look at current local radio
and they're worried about the stop-sets and they're worried about the songs they play. That's not where
the attention should be paid. Howard really is a comedian. He's an entertainer who just happens to know
a lot about radio. Howard is going to make a lot of noise for satellite. Will it cause subscriptions to go
up? You bet it will! Anybody who thinks that Howard is just babes and boobs is crazy. Howard's an
entertainer. And they've got the biggest name in radio going over there because they know it's not just
about the satellite; it's not just about 100 stations commercial free in your car. It's about putting exciting
content on and making it available by subscription in this case.
As you and I conduct this interview today, we learned a new term: Free FM.
I can't comment on it. In fairness to Infinity, until we hear the context to which they present Free FM with
the personalities, it's premature. It's like, if I had said to you: "Hey, I got this music format. Its name is
Jack." You'd say: "What? Jack? What the hell's Jack?" I know they are going to spend a ton of money
on it. That's good for radio. We are in dire need of marketing. Too many stations are invisible.
Fair enough... Next is: FM Talk.
There have been people talking about FM Talk for the last ten years. As a matter of fact, consultant Walt
Sabo has been talking about this for fifteen-plus years now. When I was at Infinity we launched FM Talk
stations in Detroit and Dallas seven years ago. Why not? Now that we've fully saturated the music
portion of the band, not only have we, but now the concept of music on the radio -- has become
diminished over time because the songs are so readily available. If I want to hear the latest Green Day
record, I can get it from a heck of a lot more sources today than I could ten years ago, or even five years
ago. I can download it; it can come on my cell phone. I can get it legally or illegally, so why would I have
to listen to the radio?
If you talk to 18-34-year-olds, and I have, radio on their Richter scale is so low it's not even
relevant. That's the scary part -- with certain exceptions like Hispanic and ethnic programming, for 18-34-
year-olds, radio is a very, very small part of their entertainment time. As a result, spoken word is the
natural extension for radio. It's proprietary programming. If I have a Talk show or if I have Mancow or if I
have the Frank Show on my radio station, I know nobody else does. If radio, in the future, is going to
survive it's going to have to have more proprietary programming. Not everybody can have the NFL. Not
everybody can have Howard Stern (now nobody can, unless Sirius decides to syndicate him back to
broadcast). So two things are going to happen: The price of talent is going to go through the roof, and
the second thing is, FM Talk (and let's call it Spoken Word formats) in many forms, is going to explode in
2006. Do you want to be the second or third AC or Country in the market? There's going to be Spoken
Word formats that are going to target women in addition to the now male heavy stations. And, by the
way, there's going to be a lot of crap that will come out. Filling 24 hours of Talk radio is not as easy as it
looks; it's a lot easier to put songs on the air. It takes patience, promotion, and show prep. Prepare for a
long, steady climb if you do it right. It's not totally about the station; it's about the shows.
You already briefly mentioned this: Spanish.
The numbers are on your side. Let's think about the US. The world's not getting any whiter. Hispanics
are the fastest growing part of the population. There are fewer radio stations that appeal to them per
market. If you think about it, in a market the size of Los Angeles or New York City, how many stations
are Hispanic? Four, six? No wonder their time spent listening is 15-hours-a-week. You can expect that
Hispanic broadcasters are going to have more competition from Clear Channel and Infinity. Remember,
in this industry if you're a Hispanic broadcaster you're in a growing revenue base. There are no problems
with growth in Hispanic media. And smart consumer companies, whether it's Proctor & Gamble or the
local car dealer, are marketing to Hispanics. They just happen to be a huge part of the population that
has been under-served. And Clear Channel and Infinity and any other smart broadcasters cannot
consider a format without looking at Spanish, and that's why you're seeing Clear Channel rolling them out
pretty quick.
Jack-FM.
I've had so many questions on this. As with any format, I always ask, "Is this a format or a weekend?"
Jammin' Oldies was probably a weekend. Jack is a format as long as you nurture it, research it, and
market it -- like any format that started out as a trend. If you look at the top-rated radio stations in most
markets, whether it's KISS- FM in Los Angles or LITE-FM in New York City, they all started with a format
trend. I remember when everybody ran around the country flipping when Z100 was hot and everybody
was going Top 40. Then came Lite-FM, and everybody was going Soft AC. If you continue to market and
research and understand who your audience is, you will continue to perform well. You can't stay top-
rated five years or more without putting something back into a radio station. If you think that you're just
sticking a jock-free music format rotation in a computer, pushing it through 50,000 or 100,000 watts of FM
and walking away from it without researching it, marketing it or understanding why it works, you will surely
be out of business in 18-months to two years and on to the next "trend". We've seen it with '70s (Arrow),
'80s (The Point) we've seen it with Jammin' Oldies now we'll see it with Jack, Bob, Jose, whatever.
There will be failures and there will be successes, and it just depends on the company's commitment to
excellence in the execution of the plan.
"Less Is More."
It's funny; I go both ways on "Less Is More." First of all, I always question: Who gave them more to begin
with? We made a mistake if we assumed that, when the industry was growing, and huge amounts of
money were paid for these radio stations, that the audience was going to sit through 15, 16, 17 spots an
hour. And I'll admit it; I did it along with everybody else. Everybody took the money; everybody took the
ride. Now we have to come up with a way of reducing spotloads because, two things changed the world:
9/11, which caused the economy to contract and this convergence of broadband and of streaming and
satellite. All these guys showed up at the same time within the past three to five years. So frankly, did we
abuse our audience to a degree? Yep, and "Less Is More" is a response to that.
Is "Less Is More" working in one hundred percent of the places? I can tell you it's not; I'll show
you where it's not. At the same time, I know stations that are running more spots and doing great
because they have fabulous programming. I know stations that are running fewer commercials, and if
they ran even less they would still stink because their programming sucks. It's not so much a corporate
dictate as it is being in touch with your market place. The whole game here is to run an appropriate
amount of spots to make the numbers that you need to make and still score big on the ratings. That's
only going to happen if the content is good and the spots are non-abusive.
One more thing that bears discussion here that no one has ever talked about, and I can't help but
think this is part of it. I don't care if you run five spots an hour, the production on some of the
commercials is horrendous. We all took the penis pump spots; we all took those spots that are so
annoying that you wouldn't listen to them in the privacy of your own home, let alone expect an audience
to listen to them. So when the ratings come out -- and we've taken those spots that just have terrible
production, awful spots, that we beat to death 24-hours-a-day -- and the time spent listening goes down,
the first thing we do is we blame it on ratings, we blame in on the programming. "Oh, our music was bad!
Oh, we didn't have enough promotion. Oh, jeez, we ran too many commercials." We used to spend a lot
more time being critical of the type of commercials we put on the air. That has to be a part of the
equation of "less annoying is more too" and could lead to more time spent listening.
Payola.
Every smart company out there has a policy that's been restated time and time and time again. We've all
signed the forms that said we wouldn't. Unfortunately, like any business, you have bad apples that are
going to abuse. That's what [New York Attorney General] Eliot Spitzer is going after. I can tell you it's
not wide spread. But when you dangle money or toys in front of some people, they're going to take it! It's
human nature. The companies can do the best to play cover-your-ass, but at the end of the day if you've
got a man or woman who is prone to take the stuff, they're going to take it. I don't want to blame it all on
low salaries, but I do think if you've got some poor person who's programming four radio stations making
just above minimum wage, totally over worked, they look at it as a perk. I'm not suggesting they should
do it, and I'm not saying it's right, but I can see where some people might say: "I'll take the TV. What's a
trip to Vegas? It's nothing'!" Then they're in trouble. I don't think they fully understand. It would be a
shame to ruin a career over some stupid plasma TV. Unfortunately, it's been done.
And for Spitzer, and guys like him, it's an easy issue. It's like flag burning. Who's going to be
"for" payola? You want to discuss abortion? You've got a problem. You want to discuss payola? You're
not going to find anybody in this country that's going to say they're for it, so it's an easy issue for
politicians. Unfortunately, if you put yourself in a position to take it, you risk losing your career over it.
PPM.
I've talked to [Arbitron's] Pierre Bouvard about this; I've talked to a lot of industry leaders about it. I
really think we're going to have to get serious about upgrading this Diary thing. Advertising agencies
really find that radio has not kept up with the times. The Diary is the most outdated method in research.
Arbitron admits it. It's a flawed system. It's costing us hundreds of millions of dollars because advertising
today has to be more accountable. Clients are demanding it. Companies cannot compete today and
afford to throw money at radio stations that don't perform. The Diary method is flawed -- it's aged, it's not
working, it's not accurate anymore.
I've seen the PPM presentation, it is not perfect -- but neither was the Diary when it first came in.
Between Arbitron and the broadcasters, they have to sit down, tie themselves to each other, lock
themselves in a room and come out with something that's acceptable. If they don't, radio's perception
(and we're dealing with perception here) in the minds of the people who spend hundreds of millions of
dollars in advertising, will look at radio and say: "Typical... There are those typical radio people again.
They can't even agree on a rating system, why should we put our hundreds of millions in there?" There
are great alternatives today; there's the Internet, there's cable TV. There is a breach of trust between
major advertisers and the business of radio today. They feel like we have not kept up with the times
when it comes to this stuff.
And by the way, we have made radio so difficult to buy. You try buying 300 stations in selected
markets. Let's say you have 300 different locations for a store. You try and buy radio. It's easier to buy
an entire network than it is to get 300 pieces of paper. And that's why, when you talk to major
advertisers, who spend a lot of money in print, who spend a lot of money in television and cable, they'll
look at radio, but it's almost an afterthought. We look at it and say: "Wow! It's a 20 billion dollar industry!"
But if you look at the advertising industry as a whole, we haven't even touched the surface because we're
too busy fighting over Diaries that are forty-years too old. If we don't get real when it comes to being able
to portray an accurate representation of our audience (and again, I realize it's not perfect), and if it's
about the cost (and believe me it is), nobody wants to spend sixty-percent more financing somebody
else's technology. There are innovative companies addressing accountability. Soft Wave Media, run by
Chuck Omphalius and Josh Wexler have a great product rolling out soon (www.remnantradio.com).
There's a place, and I've suggested it to Pierre, that can be in the middle, where we can reap the
benefits of PPM without taking a sixty-percent increase. I believe there's another way to do this. It
maybe incentive based; more money that comes into the market, the more you pay. There's got to be
another way. If broadcasters don't focus on it, I'm afraid the business is going to continue to flat line. If it
does you'll see more cuts; you'll see less salaries for people. You're going to see this business drop in
half in terms of the number of qualified jobs over the next few years.
HD Radio.
Here's the reality of HD (this one's pretty easy). First of all, according to iBiquity, and I spoke to them,
they basically told me: "We have two years to get our sh*t in one sock." What I mean by that is...
remember, we brought up AM stereo; we brought up RDS; and now we're bringing radio manufactures
this thing called HD. Pardon me if they're not all jumpin' through roofs to want to do this. In case
anybody hasn't noticed, the first job is going to have to be to get radios out there. Now, the number of
radios... there's no real demand because we haven't created any. Why? We haven't put any content on
it that would make people go out and buy these radios.
We can argue the technical side of it for a second. All the research I've done, and I've done a
significant amount of it over the past couple of years, no one has ever complained to me about the
technical quality of a good-sounding FM station. Assuming the signal you can pick up sounds good,
nobody's ever said the quality's terrible. For AM, we understand. I'm not sure if I was an AM station
owner, why I would want to put a digital signal on the air -- daytime only. The second thing is, if we don't
come up with compelling programming for HD they won't move them off the shelf. Manufacturers care
about one thing, selling radios. The only thing that's going to sell radios is content, and putting on
aggregated content or watered down content from your original signal certainly isn't the way to go. Let's
say we have the big Country station in town, and we put another two or three kinds of Country stations on
the HD signal, First of all, where does that take your listeners from? And number two, I don't think by
extending the brand of your original Country station that it's going to be compelling enough to get people
to go buy these radios.
There's going to have to be a different kind of sensibility. How would you do it? I don't think that
AM and FM broadcasters should be the ones developing content for HD. HD should have it's own
division in these big companies. If you let the AM guys do FM, you'll end up with AM stations on FM. If
you let the FM guys do HD, you'll end up with an FM mentality on HD. I would hire a bunch of people
whose job it is to grow HD and look for programming, much like when AM went to FM. FM was not built
on AM's success. You didn't see WABC-FM; you didn't see KHJ-FM. You saw a different kind of thinking
about FM radio when it first came in: Progressive Rock and formats that didn't exist on AM. The same
thing is going to have to happen to HD. We have seen the history with cable. Name one successful cable
channel that was created by the existing television networks? ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox (and Fox is really
the late comer)? The answer is none. It's not ESPN, not MTV, not the Discovery Channel, not HBO.
The original networks created none of them. So it's unlikely that we (as AM & FM broadcasters) are going
to create the programming that's going to be appealing on HD. It's best left to people whose sole job it is
to create programming for HD. That means a separate division.
We also haven't done a lick of research. It costs somewhere between $50,000 and $150,000 to
convert these radio stations to HD. You'd think we would do just a little research to find out what to call
the band. You'd think we would do a little research to find out, and to talk to consumers about what is
really important if they had a free digital channel they could pick up. HD is going to be very, very risky.
Unless broadcasters get it together right now, they have a very good chance of this becoming AM stereo.
I've lumped all of these into one category: Podcasting/Streaming/Wi-Fi.
That's aggregation of content in other places, so if you're doing compelling content, why not? I've had a
lot of broadcasters call me over the last couple of months and ask: "Should I be podcasting? Should I be
streaming? Should I be...?" And the answer is: "Hell yeah!" You should be doing everything you can to
move your brand to another platform. If we don't take our local brands and make them available to
podcasting or any other distribution beyond AM/FM, we're going to lose an opportunity. If you have a
News/Talk station or a Country station you should be.
I realize the issues with the licensing of music and stuff. I'm telling you that's a small price to pay
to get your brand out there. Look at it as marketing. Nobody would think twice about spending a lot of
money on TV. (Well, today I guess they do!) But if we don't solve these problems and get our brands out
there and distributed where the people are... Remember, you can't ignore 27-million iPods. You just
can't! You also can't ignore all these computers that are sitting around with the ability to listen to audio.
And if you're not on there -- don't worry -- your competitors will be. All you have to do is turn on the
computer and start downloading these products and you'll realize that if you're not there, your competitors
will be. So, yes, the answer is get your brand, in some form or fashion, on these platforms. Right Now!
Lastly in our game of word association is: Talent Development.
That's where the rubber meets the road. Over the next one-two years, formats such as FM Talk are going
to explode, but there's also going to be a lot of crap. Programmers' number one job over the next couple
of years is going to be talent recognition and development. You've got to be able to recognize talent and
bring out the best in them. Not everybody can hire Howard Stern. Not everybody can afford to hire
Mancow. (Although I believe TRN has made it easier.) There's going to have to be talent developed or
else... songs-in-a-row, back-to-back, with less talk. I'm not sure that's going to save the day. My client,
"The Frank Show" (www.figmedia1.com) will break out next year. The production of Ray Avila (from KFI
and another client of FigMedia1) will also be available next year. Dave Michaels is doing great graphics.
(www.davemichaelsradioart.com) This is all content that will be developed in the next few years. I'm really
excited to be a part of the development.
Prior to your corporate days, in your early radio career, you did Progressive Rock, Top 40, you
were a Country jock, and a program director. You know firsthand what it's like to be knee deep in
radio's front lines. Knowing what you know now, what, if anything would you have done
differently at the beginning of your career?
That's a really good question. I don't know that I would have done anything differently. I'm very proud of
the way I came up; I started at the bottom, although one could argue the bottom is corporate. (That's a
joke, maybe.) I guess if I had to do it all over again, or take a different tact, I probably would have learned
the business of the business sooner, which is how a P&L works and the sales side. I probably would
have tucked a couple of sales gigs into my career just because I want to be well rounded. I never set out
to be a Country jock or a Rock guy. I like the business of broadcasting. I like the concept of being able to
paint an audio picture for people that you've never seen, and build something from really nothing.
I did, however, have the opportunity to go into TV. When Viacom sold the radio company, I was
offered a job over on the TV side. I was 40-years-old at the time, and I don't regret not going, although it
probably would have been better monetarily for me to develop a television career. I just like the business
of radio, and there's no way I can see myself doing anything else. I could have done worse. I've been
fortunate.
What's been the biggest adjustment you've had to make since leaving corporate radio life to
running your own shop?
It's funny, when you're running a company and you basically say: "Hi, I'm Bill Figenshu, I work for Citadel
or I work for Infinity or I work for Viacom," you kind of have this backing of a company and the image
becomes you with the company. When you work for yourself, every move is you. If I recommend
something or somebody, for instance, like the Frank Show, it's my client. My job is to make the most of
the talent that Frank is. I recommended the Frank Show, and I've been very fortunate to have a lot of
very senior people be very excited about the show; they want to bring the show on. And I'm talking about
a combination of networks and individual major market stations. The interest is extremely high because
the show is very good. I realized that if that show was lousy or crappy it would have been directly
reflected on me -- where: "Bill Figenshu brought me a crappy product. Why is he wasting my time?" It's
really about, if I bring a company or a show to other companies, I realize it's my reputation. There's
nobody else. So, that's number one.
Number two: It's a little bit scary when you realize that there's no backup plan here. If you call in
sick, there's no replacement. You're paying your own medical bills and you're paying your own
expenses, the company is not bailing you out. There's no back up here. It requires one-hundred-percent
of your skills. The response to FigMedia1 has been tremendous! My client makeup looks like the Star
Wars bar. Wall Street and Main Street, they're all here! I love that!
Tell me the one issue that bugs you the most about terrestrial radio's future.
That there is not enough attention being paid to the people who are operating these stations locally.
There is becoming somewhat of a lack of respect at the corporate level for the talent and the abilities of
the people at the station level. If the people running these companies don't look back and see that these
people at the stations can actually help them, if they don't start listening to their listeners, meaning their
consumers, their employees, and more importantly their advertisers, I'm afraid we're going to lose good
people.
But there seems to be too much of a "top-down" mentality today. We're cutting ourselves off from
the very people that have the ability to make us. We all learned early on that if you listen to your
consumer, listen to the customer (and that means your advertisers), they'll tell you that you can't run 18
commercials an hour. They'll tell you that you can't just make unilateral decisions 3,000 miles away and
expect people to buy it. If they don't understand that that's really the most important thing, I'm afraid that
we're making too many excuses for our under-performance today. We're being too defensive -- we're not
playing offense. We're not being smart about this. It's an arrogance that is being noticed by Wall Street
and advertisers. Look at the stock and the pacing. They are telling us something.
We need to start taking care of our employees better than we are -- and that means primarily
managers. There will always be a demand for killer talent, but if we don't start developing these local
radio stations, because that's where our revenue is coming from, and start putting the time and effort into
marketing local, local, local radio, we're going to have a huge problem -- because we're going to try and
compete on a national basis, and that's where the other guys are fighting. We have an advantage, we're
local, and that's the very place we're cutting. 80 percent of our revenue is local, but 80 percent of the
local decisions in radio companies are national. Companies are denying it, but it's true. Ask any GM. I get
the calls every week about it. I could earn a living just doing therapy with station managers.
Mike Boyle is VP/Executive Director, overseeing all of FMQB's editorial and Rock initiatives. Prior to
originally joining FMQB in 1988, he held programming/on-air positions at several radio stations, including
WDHA/Dover, WMGM/Atlantic City, WAYV/Atlantic City, and WYSP/Philadelphia. Reach him at
mboyle@fmqb.com.
(Photo Credit: Frank Tunis)
(Blow-up Quote #1)
"HD is going to be very, very risky. Unless broadcasters get it together right now, they have a
very good chance of this becoming AM stereo."
(Blow-up Quote #2)
"You're going to see this business drop in half in terms of the number of qualified jobs over the
next few years."
(Blow-up Quote #3)
"Over the next one-two years, formats such as FM Talk are going to explode, but there's also
going to be a lot of crap."
(Blow-up Quote #4)
"There's becoming somewhat of a lack of respect at the corporate level for the talent and the
abilities of the people at the station level."
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