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James Winston
December 13, 2016
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Few people in radio face a bigger challenge that National Association Of Black Owned Broadcasters President James Winston. Radio's overall business climate is tough enough, but to represent a group of minority owners in a mega-corporate environment -- now in a Republican-led government - takes that challenge up a few dozen notches. While Winston acknowledges the less-than-promising situation, he mains upbeat as to his group's -- and radio's -- prospects.
What made you decide to take an executive post at NABOB?
That goes back a long ways. When I initially took on the Executive Director post in 1982, I was a young attorney who had just become a partner in a small law firm. NABOB needed an Executive Director but didn't have the resources to pay a full-time one. I offered my services while continuing to practice law. As the years went on, it worked out for the both of us.
How did your FCC experience help you in this job?
A key part of representing any media organization is to go in front of the FCC to make your case, to know how the FCC works, how the processes work and making decisions on how to approach the Commission. Having worked there as a legal advisor to a commissioner, I learned that process close up and I brought it with me to NABOB.
How has contemporary politics impacted your member stations?
It is unfortunate because no matter what happens, you should keep an eye on the business and that shouldn't be political. Unfortunately, this year almost everything has become political, so you have to be conscious of that when you speak with the FCC, as well as know how each political group would analyze every issue. You try to find those areas where even in a politically charged FCC, you can find agreement on certain issues with both sides. Granted, that's harder to do every day.
Now that the election's over, how will the election of Donald Trump and the prospect of a Republican-led FCC impact NABOB's interests?
I'd like to be optimistic and believe things are going to be better, but the early signs don't reflect that at all. This election broke the gridlock where different parties control the House, Senate and White House. Now that there's a mutuality where one party controls everything, a great deal more could be accomplished at the FCC and throughout Washington. Whether that actually helps NABOB is another question entirely.
Did the perceived political lean of NABOB station audiences encourage or inhibit political advertising in 2016?
It's very difficult to get advertisers to advertise to an audience they don't want politically. Our stations will take advertising from any entity that wants to use our airwaves, but they've got to want our audience. Unfortunately, as we saw in the political arena, there were many instances where politicians were either not interested in pursuing our audience, or were taking them for granted. I felt that was a mistake on their part, as some of them lost elections because of that.
What are the main issues facing NABOB?
The biggest issue, first and foremost, is generating more advertising revenue in the telecommunications industry. There seemingly have been so many changes every day with new media structures popping up. Previously, TV stations competed against other TV stations; the networks vs. other networks. Ditto radio stations competing against each other. Now, both of those mediums find themselves competing against a host of new technologies that deliver both audio and video content that competes for the attention of broadcaster audiences. Our members have to become much more active in online, digital and mobile activities to get their content to their listeners and viewers.
How has radio in general, and NABOB stations in particular, responded to this new challenge?
What has happened is that while smaller companies can adapt quicker than larger companies in certain circumstances, the problem is when creating and adapting to new technology issues, usually the bigger companies have the resources, the R&D arms, to better adapt to the new technology more quickly than smaller companies. Bigger broadcasting companies can afford to embrace the new technologies quicker.
Another part of the problem with new technologies is that the price point for any given advertising interaction is so much lower in digital. You have to be able to amalgamate a larger audience to be able to recover anything close to the amount of advertising dollars one can get through a broadcast transaction. Digital revenues per click are much less than viewing or listener-measured by Nielsen data.
What's NABOB's take on Nielsen and how they're servicing your broadcasters?
It's hard to have a contrary position on Nielsen, as it's the only game in town. You have to live with it as it is, yet we keep trying to improve it. To do that, you have to have a very good relationship with Nielsen, and we stay involved, working with them to improve their measurement.
The entire industry -- almost all radio station owners, large and small -- agree that they would prefer Nielsen to use a larger sample, but of course, that always get push-back from Nielsen, who will then ask radio if they're willing to pay more for the bigger sample. It's a push-and-pull that will probably continue for a long period of time.
What does NABOB think of NextRadio?
We certainly support NextRadio; we're very pleased to see the effort Jeff Smulyan has made in that area. We do think it's an important point for FM radio to be easily accessed in mobile devices. We hope that eventually Apple will decide to activate the FM chip in its iPhones, which would allow Apple users to benefit from NextRadio.
Do you believe that NABOB member stations should invest more in NTR such as concert promotion?
For many years, our members have been very active in local event marketing. For many small stations, sponsorship of events is a critical part of income. Until recently, it had pretty much been an opportunity that was only available to larger companies. We've seen bigger companies such as iHeartMedia own entire concert tours; it's nice to see our members now able to actually own our own venues. Event marketing will certainly continue to be a big part of our revenue growth.
Where are the biggest potential growth areas for NABOB stations?
Good question. I haven't thought about any one growth area, but a number of them. One of the areas that NABOB will be very active is attracting federal government advertising money. The federal government spends almost a half-billion dollars a year on paid advertising; they spend that money on everything from broadcast TV to NASCAR - but very little of it on any radio. What there is of it normally goes to major-market radio and almost none of it to African-American-owned radio. This is an area we've been trying to crack for several years because it appears -- to NABOB, at least -- that the government is getting bad advice from ad agencies on where to spend huge amounts of money. If they want to meet military recruitment goals from advertising, for instance, they could do so with more targeted advertising on NABOB stations -- and spend much less money doing so.
So what do you see for the future of radio and NABOB? Are you bullish?
It's interesting; we recently had a conference a few weeks ago; we had some key folks in the industry talking about that. We are continuing to develop relationships with advertising agencies and national advertisers, and with Erica Farber, the head of the RAB. The consensus is that radio is going to be fine for the foreseeable future, for the basic reason that in spite of all these new competitors, broadcast radio still reaches 93% of the American public every week, including millennials. We believe that as long as radio is free, local, omnipresent, and entertains the public, we're going to do better in the foreseeable future. We're still very optimistic.
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