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John Kesler
February 12, 2019
Have an opinion? Add your comment below. It really isn't a new business plan. It's just viewing the business from a slightly different paradigm. Syndicated radio has a lot of stakeholders. The stakeholders are basically two groups ... advertisers and affiliates. I noticed that in the business of radio syndication, no one -- with the exception of Dave Ramsey -- was paying much attention to how the stations made money with the show locally. We now have an increased focus on helping our affiliates to better sell the show in their markets, which sets us apart and provides real value to our stations and helps them to succeed
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One could safely say that John Kesler got into syndicated radio at a rather inopportune time. Oh sure, he was signing on to one of the most popular, heritage morning shows in the country in Bob & Tom, but just as he was about to start, Bob announced his imminent retirement and the show's News Director also took a leave of absence. Nevertheless, Kesler soldered on with Tom Griswold and a changing cast of characters and together, they have generated sustained success on a national level, by knowing their audience -- and by focusing on enhancing local ad sales. Here, Kesler details how they've accomplished all that and more...
How did you start and eventually get to oversee the Bob & Tom Radio Network?
I started my career in a little radio station in my hometown of Danville, IL. After a short stint in Charleston, SC, I got a job at WIBC/Indianapolis in 1987. WIBC was eventually purchased by Emmis, where I stayed until approximately 11:03a on January 6th, 2016, when I got downsized. I was literally on the beach in South Carolina (living off a generous severance) when I got a phone call, asking me if I would be interested in being the GM of the Bob & Tom Show. The idea of being able to oversee a national radio show based in Indianapolis was very interesting. I got together with Tom Griswold and I officially started as GM in March 2016.
Was it an easy transition?
Anything but. Right before I started, Bob & Tom got inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in September of 2015, and at the ceremony, Bob announced his retirement at the end of the year. At the same time Bob left, News Director Kristi Lee had to take some time off, too. So I started in a time of turmoil. I sat down with Tom and told him, "It's going to be painful for a while, but it'll turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you. You just have to rethink everything. Let's put together a plan with a 10-year horizon."
With Bob gone and Tom as the show's focal point, did you ever consider changing the name of the show?
It was decided not to change the name. We talked with the guys at Kidd Kraddick's show, who went through something similar -- and they still call it the Kidd Kraddick show even though he passed five to six years ago. So we thought it would be better to keep the name "Bob & Tom" instead of developing a new name. Westwood One agreed. Maybe someday, if Tom retires, it'll merge into something else. But law firms keep the names of partners forever, long after a partner is not active. The name doesn't necessarily have to reflect everything about the show.
What we are doing is raising the awareness of our brand in trade advertising. We went to the NAB in Orlando to do the show live to dispel the preconceived notions of people based on something they first learned 20 years ago. We have a very funny and diverse ensemble cast on Bob & Tom and we wanted to let people at the Radio Show see and hear first-hand what the show is today. The response was beyond our expectations. Everyone had a great time.
What makes Tom still relevant to the audience?
What keeps him relevant is his personal life, which is pretty complicated. He's got seven kids, some out of college already, one in middle school and two under six years of age, so he can relate to a 50-some-year-old listener as well as a 32-year-old guy with a three-year-old.
Was it difficult to come up with a new business plan for Bob & Tom?
It really isn't a new business plan. It's just viewing the business from a slightly different paradigm. Syndicated radio has a lot of stakeholders. The stakeholders are basically two groups ... advertisers and affiliates. I noticed that in the business of radio syndication, no one -- with the exception of Dave Ramsey -- was paying much attention to how the stations made money with the show locally. We now have an increased focus on helping our affiliates to better sell the show in their markets, which sets us apart and provides real value to our stations and helps them to succeed.
How do you focus on building more local ad sales growth in your affiliates' markets?
We spend a lot of time working with our 100-plus affiliates on a first-name basis via the phone and in-person trips, whether the affiliate is in Peoria, IL, or Savannah, GA. We try to see what these stations face in their local markets, in terms of challenges and opportunities, along with the unique dynamics of each market. One thing we see consistently is that, with the exception of very few stations, almost all of the affiliates have combined sale staffs. Account executives are selling all five to six stations in the cluster, and they are tasked with other corporate sales initiatives such as digital and local events. We work to bring a local ad focus to our show and hopefully, to use some of our personalities in local markets as a marketing platform for local advertisers that can use the station's online and potentially, onsite offerings.
We do that by basically siphoning ideas from market A to market B through a portal on our website. That way, the salesperson in Boise, ID, gets an idea from a guy in Charleston, WV, or from what we're doing in Indianapolis. As we all know in the radio business, the best ideas are generally stolen. Something that works for a car dealer in Lebanon, OH, could work just as well for a car dealer in Bakersfield, CA. We work to make sure our affiliates' sales staffs know this portal exists, and then we identify the champions inside each cluster, and work with them to advance our show everywhere. It's been a very successful formula for us and for our affiliates.
How do you find the time to provide local service to all these affiliates?
We make the time. It's that important. We've been doing it for two to three years now; we have more dedicated people on our team who work with affiliates, so it's a lot easier to give everyone the attention they deserve.
Do you concentrate on specific formats, or do you feel Bob & Tom can work in multiple formats?
Our bread-and-butter format is Classic Rock. We're finding that some affiliates and stations have a more difficult time making money when they're more Active Rock-focused because their advertisers believe that the younger, hard rock audience has no money to spend on local merchants. So, they think the best bang for their bucks is with true Classic Rock stations. We do best with markets #50-150 and as you decrease in market size, those other formats are less and less likely to be around. That's why we look for Classic Rock stations in rated markets; after that we probably make a play for a station that can do significantly better than what the second-rated Sports station is doing in the local marketplace. We might be able to help that kind of station in a new market with our history of being able go up against an ESPN competitor.
You're target demo, mostly older males, are most likely Sports fans. Do you tailor the show to appeal to Sports fans and compete against Sport stations?
We've always had some sports in our show, but that's not our main focus, which is comedy. We do things of interest to men 25-54. Chick McGee, our sports director, covers the big sports stories, but we don't need to do scores anymore. We're a pretty good choice for a Sports station that's struggling and there's no other network show available in the morning.
What kind of comedy works best for the show?
We see ourselves like the monologue of the Tonight Show, only our monologue is four hours long. We're generally very current in terms of what is going on in world news, except we're basically taking strange stories from current news and then doing improv around them, be they news or sports. Tom's son Sam and about eight other writers do a lot of work behind the scenes, writing jokes and producing bits overnight. The other show cast members haven't heard any of those stories when they're reading them, so they can do actual improv and react at the spur of the moment.
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The other difference between late-night monologues and what we do is that is we do not talk about politics in any sense of the word. We never talk about President Trump or anything that's going on in D.C. What we've learned from research is that politics nowadays is just too divisive. You take one side, you make the other side mad.Everything doesn't have to be funny, but most of our research tells us that our listeners like to hear the interaction between our four core performers.
When you were going through new members of the show, how did that impact the chemistry?
When we were going through the six-month period after Bob's retirement, Pat Carlini sat in for Kristi as we started looking for a full-time replacement host for Bob. Pat was a familiar voice for both the audience and cast. Kristi came back in July of 2016; then Chick and Tom looked at each other and decided that Josh Arnold seemed to be the right guy with the right chemistry to fit in that with entire cast.
Josh had been on the show before as a standup comedian who regularly toured the Midwest. One thing he had going for him is that he grew up in St. Louis while listening to Bob & Tom on KSHE, so in that respect, he was already a part of the family.
How has consolidation impacted your business? Are you now working more with the Format Captains or Brand Managers of the big radio groups, or are you still reaching out mainly to local programmers?
It depends on the group. In addition to the Format Captains and Brand Managers, we're working with the Directors of Sales, Market Managers and others to show how this show can perform for their cluster in terms of revenue.
There are a number of shows out there to choose from, so we've got to find the right mix to work with not only the individual radio station, but with the cluster's sales staff.
How do you balance maintaining the morning show with efforts to build its NTR and digital platforms?
The morning show is the "mothership." Our NTR programs and brand extensions cannot take away from production of the show. Our affiliates count on it as do all the advertisers, be they network or local. The incremental revenue provided by digital platforms is certainly interesting, but we have to be careful of the opportunity costs associated with developing them. There's power in focus, and Tom and I want our primary focus to be the morning radio show.
What's your take on podcasts?
We're working with Westwood One on them. Looking at the podcast industry, everyone's seeing the story of the long tail. Very few podcasts are making tons of money and lots of podcasts are making zero money. It's kind of like blogging, where so many of them are read by a handful of people. We've got to figure out what we're be able to do to make podcasts profitable and not a drain on the mothership and our stakeholders.
What really irks me about the podcasting business model is: advertisers are not willing to pay much attention to re-purposed material. We produce four hours of content daily. Our audience basically consumes about 20-30 minutes of it daily; the remainder would be "new" if they heard it later in a podcast. This doesn't even account for the people who might hear a replay of our material, who never listen to us live. Yet advertisers, or their agencies, are hesitant to invest in re-purposed content.
So what of the future, not only for the show, but for radio?
Radio isn't going to disappear anytime soon. There are too many receivers out there for it to vanish. Now that's not to say some radio stations might go silent along the way ... scarcity was radio's friend. Scarcity vanished with the creation of the internet.
There's always going to be a place for audio-only entertainment, and a need for localized information and content. Our show will evolve, we'll bring in new cast members ... just like Saturday Night Live has done. As long as we can provide our stakeholders with a way to make money, we will be around. When that stops, we'll stop.
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