Lee Habeeb

Salem Radio Network has done quite well with its political Talk talent, yet VP/Content Lee Habeeb hungers for something new and different - not just simply because political Talk alienates advertisers and attracts an aging demo, but something that better reflects just who we all are. That's why he helped create "the Our American Stories," a decidedly nonpartisan series of true stories about the people and events who have made this country great. A concept that Habeeb believes could evolve into its own radio format. Here's his story....

You came up with the idea of "Our American Stories" while working at Salem; what led to the inspiration behind it?

I've been at Salem for almost 12 years. We've been doing great with our political talk lineup, but there are a lot of people out there who really don't care about the daily grind of hardcore politics and are more interested in other things. There are six to seven million folks a day watching cable news, for instance. But 325 million Americans are NOT watching cable news. Many, many more millions are just sick and tired of the left and right pounding away at each other all day. I believe there is a desire -- a hunger -- among people to gain knowledge from stories about accomplished people, and about our nation's history, the innovators and leaders in our country who do great things every day ... and stories about the good things going around us every day.

Up until now, there has been no place on the radio for really good long-form storytelling, outside of NPR and shows like "This American Life." And so I wondered to myself, "What would "This American Life" sound like from a center-right perspective? People want to know more about our country's history ... its faith leaders, its artists and innovators and entrepreneurs. What about telling their stories? America is an exceptional country; no other country is quite like it. It hit me that people are now arguing so much about things that don't seem worthy, which doesn't square with how they're living their own lives. While people on cable news and Talk radio are piping mad and fighting like crazy, most Americans - black and white, left and right, old and young, gay and straight - are sitting next to each other in the cafeteria and getting along. Carrying along in families and businesses and churches.

It seems like the world of cable TV is an extreme version of American life. The hardcore political debate has little to do with how we really lead our lives. I wanted to create a place on the radio to hear beautiful stories about who and what makes our country great. A safe space for listeners to just relax and enjoy. And a safe space for advertisers and sponsors to not worry about being associated with content that divides people. And all from a viewpoint that believes free enterprise, faith, hard work, love, sacrifice, self-reliance, honor and courage are things that still matter in many people's lives. And that the American people are good, decent, smart people who love their country. They don't think their country is perfect, but they love her.

On your website and press releases, you make a point in emphasizing that "Our American Stories is "nonpartisan." Would not emphasizing that put you at risk of alienating one side or the other?

It would. It's why we have never mentioned Donald Trump or the news of the day, but still talk about the underlying values that matter to our listeners. Values that appeal to conservatives, but also many liberals, too. Values like personal responsibility, hard work and self-reliance. People of every preference enjoy hearing uplifting stories about ordinary Americans who do extraordinary things with their lives each and every day - and the amazingly generous things we do for one another.

Sadly, the news focuses on what divides us and conflict. We do the opposite. We aim to focus on what makes America great. Mario Andretti and Johnny Cash - their life stories couldn't be more different, and yet more alike, because they are quintessential American stories. We told their stories - and in ways most mainstream media outlets wouldn't. And that's why we're getting such a terrific response. We've already passed 100 affiliates and we've gotten great testimonials from station owners, GMs and the audience, too. A Country station in Amarillo added two extra hours each day because the listener response has been so good.

Moreover, I believe radio has to start thinking in different ways. We haven't seen a truly new format in ages - especially as it relates to spoken word. And a crossover show with appeal on multiple formats might be nice, too. Remember, Don Imus generated big ratings on The Fan in New York, the biggest Sports/Talk station in the area. And in Boston on a Classic Rock station. So while we always hope to get on more News/Talk stations, we feel we can do equally well on non-Talk stations such as Country - and we are already on a number of them. Because the values we explore on our show are some of the same values and virtues Country music explores - family, love, loss and faith. And always, Country music is about stories.

As its success continues to grow on radio, do you see the series expanding into other media such as TV or YouTube?

Absolutely. These are scripted pieces with actualities written by eight full-time writers who do their own stories every other week. "This American Life" was picked up by Showtime, for goodness sake. So we know we can re-purpose our radio scripts into a killer podcast, a TV series, a book tour and a traveling show. That's why I suspect we'll find a great distribution partner. We've created something that has value above and beyond mere ad sales.

One of my favorite segments of the show started when someone sent us a eulogy from Arnold Palmer's funeral made by Vince Gill: it was beautiful. Jack Nicklaus' eulogy for Arnold was spectacular. The feedback we got from that was amazing, so once a week we play a eulogy recorded by people from all walks of life -- sometimes they're famous, sometimes not. We call it "Final Thoughts." We played some of the remarkable eulogies at Billy Graham's funeral, and one by his daughter was absolutely breathtaking. Nobody else in radio is doing this or creating this kind of storytelling; and it has been a long time since there has been innovative new programming in radio.

I might add that we have some very new ways of thinking about revenue, too. We certainly need to do more than have computers dictate our revenue. And transactional buying. It is killing the industry. At "Our American Stories," we are creating content that big national brands will want to be associated with, and use our influence to drive sales. So, too, will the local car dealer and local florist.

Moreover, as the limits to search - and dependency on Google and Facebook - reveal their limitations, you will see companies and businesses return to branding alongside great content in TV and radio. Because branding matters. The referral power of spoken word is something we must sell better, especially in this age of so-called "influencer marketing." We were the original influencer marketers, for goodness sake! It is the real power of radio. Radio's reach, intimacy, and the nature of the relationship between our audience and our content needs to be sold hard to the C-Suites of American businesses. We need to sell the efficacy of radio, and stop relying on others to do it for us.

And having a great new product to sell - and not merely points and numbers - is essential. Qualitative selling must be the order of the day. Order takers and sales forces that simply lower the price at the smallest bit of resistance must go. And we need to think long and hard about selling less inventory. And charging more for what we sell. And putting it next to - as close as possible - great content that rings the bell for advertisers. Crazy idea!

Who chooses the subjects ... who decides what makes the cut?

We make them as a team. The team then sends it to our post-production team. Then we record, and I just introduce each segment, and toss to the team member who did the piece. It's like watching 60 Minutes; you never saw Don Hewitt. My storytellers are the stars. Better still, the subjects they cover are the stars. Each writer has a specialty area, be it sports, the arts, leadership, or history. For "This Day In History," for instance, we recently did something on the battle of Shiloh, using the book written by Winston Groom (who also wrote a book called "Forrest Gump"), with Groom doing the talking. It was a terrific 12-minute story. We also did a segment on the day Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in one game. That was a "This Day in History," too, and just as good. These are great stories no one is telling - anywhere. We tell the rest of the story, as the great Paul Harvey liked to say. The story behind the story.

Each writer has to create an air-ready story every two weeks. We do two hours a night, every night - and I do a piece a week myself because I love doing it. I really don't care who or what the stories are about ... as long as they're good. And redeeming. And compelling. We don't want things that are too dark, because there is plenty of that on TV and elsewhere. We do want it to be safe for the family.

We recently did an hour on the Wright brothers. They were bicycle mechanics who never went to college, who figured out how to do something no one else had done in world history. Not even the very best scientists, engineers and experts. Fly! It's a uniquely American story, the Wright brothers story. You can't stop listening until the story ends. And we got a great assist from a great speech at the Air and Space Museum from David McCullough, who wrote a #1 NY Times bestseller about them.

When you did someone like Henry Ford, did you also present his less-than-flattering side?

We give the full picture, which came from the top Ford biographers and the Ford Museum. He had an anti-Semitic streak -- everyone knew that and it was pointed out in our story, but more important was the fact that Ford essentially catapulted an industrial revolution that helped America defeat the Nazis. Ford also managed to build cars that transformed them from a product only the rich could afford, to one that was affordable to almost everyone. And he raised wages so his workers could afford to buy the cars they made. So we balance Ford's anti-Semitism with his many good characteristics. And what we really focused on was what made him great. And what drove him to do what he did (he desperately wanted to escape his dad's farm), and what he actually accomplished. Which was change the way we all live. And - for the better. The fact is, not-very-perfect men and women do great things in this world. Ford was one of them.

You're already on over 100 affiliates. What's your next challenge - getting on bigger stations and better timeslots? Or are you mulling branching out to new media platforms?

We're working on that now. It's like when I started with Laura Ingraham. We got her on one market, started to get good word of mouth, and went from there. It was different and sounded different than anything in radio. And we want to do the same with "Our American Stories." We want to create a major property, brand it properly, and then push it into other formats. Not just podcasts, but book tours, TV and YouTube videos, which are marvelous. Look what it did for Dennis Prager and his Prager University, which has generated 1.2 billion YouTube hits for his five-minute videos. And it has been great for his Salem show - bringing all kinds of new listeners to his terrestrial show. New media can and must drive old media, just as old media must drive new. That's just the way we must think. Or die.

"Our American Stories" is a nonprofit 501 C-3, just as Prager University is, and our donors and founders are interested in seeing the show go very wide, and as the show is heard by more people in the industry, and folks see the revenue opportunities, we will continue to grow. Radio needs a new breakout show, and a new kind of show. And a new way of thinking about how to drive revenue. That was our goal when we started this project.

As a longtime executive at Salem, what's your take on the state of Talk radio?

We're in a time of very heavy partisanship, which has certainly been good for the ratings of Fox ... and MSNBC's ratings may have never been higher than they are now. We are killing it with listeners at Salem. And our lineup has never been better. Hugh Hewitt is doing a great job in the mornings. No one has his knowledge in the political space. Mike Gallagher is a great entertainer and broadcaster, and does what he does as well as anyone. Dennis Prager and Michael Medved are brilliant guys - and Larry Elder and Eric Metaxas are great new additions to our team. But the problem with the current Talk radio playbook is that a lot of companies don't want to advertise with us. That is, the big U.S. corporations. That's just the way it is. They don't want to advertise in a heavy political setting. That's another reason why I wanted to tell stories that stay away from issues such as the gun debate and gay marriage and immigration ...because advertisers don't want to get near them. I think audiences and advertisers/sponsors will be thrilled to get a break from all of that and get to know more about what we're up to, hearing good stories that make the listener feel better about the world. And learn a few things, too.

Radio also has to think about creating content that people can listen to weeks, months and years after it is made. That's a real problem for political talk: it has no shelf life. It's old after just 24 hours. We want everything we do here at "Our American Stories" to be evergreen material that stands the test of time. Our 10-minute story on the making of "The Little Drummer Boy" with David Bowie and Bing Crosby is a classic you can play every year. It's funny, and quirky, and beautiful - like the song itself. And that content can be repurposed and rerun many times, just as TV does so adeptly. Who knows how many Judge Judy reruns I've watched over the years! The content we are creating will have real shelf life, and can be turned into other things, from podcasts to short and longer videos (like ESPN's 30For30 does so well) to print.

Are you also concerned about the demo challenge, of Talk radio's target listeners growing too old?

The correction for that can be podcasts. NPR is teaching everybody how to do it as a nonprofit. They have dominated with "This American Life" and other shows. They've had 20 million downloads of product this past month, which is staggering. Young people don't want to be forced to sit and wait for content at a certain time. They want to consume it whenever they want, 24 hours a day - and they want stories! Interestingly enough, all of this new media can drive folks to discover our terrestrial products, as Dennis Prager has proven with Prager University.

Again, the problem with the radio business is that it hasn't invested enough in content development. In product. Look at the budgets of our radio companies, and you'll see very little sunk into substantive talent development or content, which is intellectual property. It should be created with multiple streams of revenue in mind. With staying power in mind. We have been spending all of our time rearranging the chairs on a sinking ship, doing what we have always done with less money -- and letting accounting and sales drive the bus, but what we really need is breakout talent locally and nationally. That costs money, and it is why we started this as a non-profit. To greenfield a great show that's built to last, and can move the needle in new and bold ways.

Again, we need to rethink how we think about revenue. Simply selling spots and dots won't fly in the next three to five years. We need to be bolder. Smarter. And better. "Our American Stories" is very sales friendly, and we have innovative approaches to selling that I suspect will interest radio station owners and GMs.

Where do you see the future of radio?

When someone like John Malone makes a big play for radio, he's seeing a tremendous asset that really hasn't innovated in two decades. One that is vastly undervalued by Wall Street. But what he sees is opportunity. And he's right!

Look at TV, which has been a haven for sitcoms and hour-long police procedural shows, but now has cooking channels, reality shows such as "Deadliest Catch" and serial dramas such as "The Sopranos," which was a six-year story. All of this innovation in TV programming started when cable and now Netflix came in and disrupted everything.

In radio, we still have Classic Rock, Country and News/Talk, the same old formats. I'm trying to push in here with what could be a new format, a storytelling format. What a crazy idea! Something maybe the audience didn't even imagine coming from radio. Something new that they'd love. And get excited about. Let's face it: Most of the best TV programming is basically stories -- and a lot of them are scripted. When was the last time anyone invested money in scripted, produced radio? In on-air talent, but more important, production talent?

I'm bullish as can be on radio, especially when someone like John Malone wants in. That's fabulous news. We may just need an outsider or two like him to really shake the business up. When Laura Ingraham and I started in radio together after graduating from the University of Virginia Law School, we both knew nothing about the business. That was an advantage for us, actually. People would tell us, "You can't do this. You have no experience. A woman will never be taken seriously as a political talk show host." And we said, "Why not?" We had a huge hit with the show five years later. And now she's hosting her own show on Fox News, and women are proving they can do anything and everything in our business.

With "Our American Stories," we are breaking new ground - and maybe a new format - for our industry. It's time for some changes, don't you think?