Andy Bloom is a radio industry veteran with a wealth of experience and expertise. He has held key positions at some of the most successful radio stations in the country, including WYSP, Philadelphia, SportsRadio 94WIP, Talk Radio 1240 WHP, Greater Media, Emmis Communications, and Coleman Parkes Research. He’s also worked in politics.

He is known for his exceptional leadership and strategic vision. Andy has a proven track record of fostering captivating and thought-provoking content while pushing the boundaries of traditional radio.

He is also a frequent speaker at industry events and a contributing writer to Barretts Media.

While based in Minneapolis, Andy's influence extends far beyond his locale. His passion, strategic vision, and dedication to the radio industry continue to shape its future in our ever-evolving media landscape.

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You can't do four or five hours of radio a day live with no safety net five

days a week without eventually saying something that you wish it didn't say.

And I take pride in the fact I never suspended anybody in my entire career

for something they said on the air.

Never.

I, I didn't believe in it.

Welcome to BRANDwidth On Demand, your Guide to Rebooting Radio.

Well, I just want to clarify one thing.

I was never Howard Stern's boss.

I don't know that anybody's ever been Howard Stern's boss, at

least not in the last 40 years.

So the lesson that I really learned from being with Howard Stern

is that the First Amendment is.

Unconditional.

It has to be unconditional and you, you have to unconditionally

support your people

BRANDwidth On Demand.

Rebooting radio with a different take on all radio can be now your

guides through the metamorphosis.

David Martin and author of the book, bandwidth.

Media branding coach Kipper McGee.

Our guest this time around is best known as the program director

who took Howard Stern from a kind of a local one station guy to a network guy.

He did the first howard Stern Radio simulcast in Philadelphia, and

then later LA, spawning Howard's National Radio Show, and you know,

that's turned out pretty well.

He's also programmed legendary radio stations, including WIP,

WPHT, and WYSP in Philly, KLSX, Los Angeles, and WCCO Minneapolis.

He served as vice president of programming for Emison International

Greater Media, and Coleman Research.

And now he is president of Andy Bloom Communications where he

specializes in media training and political communications.

And his writings have appeared in just about every trade possible, all the ones

that matter, including a weekly column now appearing in Barett News Media BRANDwidth

On Demand is proud to welcome Andy Bloom.

Good afternoon, guys.

Thanks for having me.

So, Andy, I know you do a lot of stuff from then to now and next, but.

Let's start with some good old fashioned radio stuff.

What was it like being a boss or working with Howard Stern, and what

are some of the biggest lessons you took away from having that experience?

Well, I just want to clarify one thing.

I was never Howard Stern's boss.

I don't know that anybody's ever been Howard Stern's boss, at least

not in the last 40 years, so, okay.

So the lesson that I really learned from being with Howard Stern is, one,

the most important thing I learned from Howard Stern, aside from being a

good lack, he's essential to getting Howard Stern to to help you out, is that

the First Amendment is unconditional.

It has to be unconditional.

And number number two or number three, you, you have to

unconditionally support your people.

And I think that's one thing.

If you talk to somebody like Angelo Cataldi and Angelo by the way, if he'll

do this, would be a great subject.

Angelo next to Howard is probably the most talented radio

personality I've ever worked with.

Unbelievably smart.

And the thing that I think an Angela really rocky start because of a

really stupid incident that happened because of the Philadelphia Eagles.

But Angelo and I, I, I think we found our piece because of two things that

I learned working with Howard Stern.

Number one is give them what they need, be there, lackey.

My line to Angelo was, what do you need?

And really what I learned from Howard Stern, Howard, what do you need?

What do you need?

What do you need?

And there's a really funny bet that you can probably still find on the internet

where Howard is coming out to la.

And they're doing a phony phone call, and it's Howard just running down his

list of demands and it's, you know, they want m and ms and they want

all the brown ones taken out, and he wants kung fu movies in his room.

And, you know, they, they want, it's just a ridiculous list of demands.

But if you listen to it, I'm just taking notes and going, Uhhuh, Uhhuh.

And I never break.

I never break stride.

And at some point they just crack up because they can't

believe I'm saying Uhhuh, Uhhuh.

But my job with Howard was, okay, Howard, if you want Kung fu movies in

your room and a box of tissues on every flat surface, I'll get it for you.

No problem.

I'll take care of it.

And that's what I did with Angelo.

Angelo, you tell me what you need and I'll figure out how to get it for you.

And it was always my job to get the, the big name personalities, the things

they wanted so they could do their job.

And I would go fight those battles with management.

My job was to insulate them from management and get them what they wanted,

and I, I think they appreciated it.

The second part of my job was to protect them when they said something stupid.

And you can't do four or five hours of radio a day live with no safety net five

days a week without eventually saying something that you wish it didn't say.

Mm-hmm.

And I take pride in the fact I never suspended anybody in my entire career

for something they said on the air.

Never I, I didn't believe in it.

If what they said was truly so outrageous and bad, well, maybe

they needed to be fired for it, but they didn't need to be suspended.

Maybe they need to be taken.

I mean, look, I've had to fire people for things they said on the air usually.

Sure.

It was.

It was letting an F-bomb slide or something when they, they should have

hit delay or shouldn't have said it.

Or, uh, or in one case, being drunk on the air.

Uh, but I never suspended somebody for, for offending somebody.

Uh, I just didn't believe in it.

Okay.

You offended somebody.

Uh, it ha it happens.

You're, you're doing live radio.

You weren't trying to offend somebody.

It, it, it just happens.

So I didn't suspend people for that, and a lot of times, I took the heat instead of

letting the air talent take the heat for whatever happened, and I would argue with

management that it wasn't really that bad or that the whatever group was protesting

was overreacting, and so on and so forth.

Um, so those defense attorney, uh, yeah, yeah, I played defense attorney a lot.

That's right.

Loo for the defense.

Great

stuff.

Those are the big things that I learned.

And, you know, one of the benefits of having Howard Stern and not being there

and, and maybe Mark Chernoff wasn't equally as lucky and in New York was.

You know, having him come down the phone line and not having to see him

on a day-to-day basis or deal with whatever problems he was having in

the studio with whatever equipment didn't work was, was most of the time.

I just got to enjoy it.

I just got to sleep in a little later and didn't have to be there every day

when he was in the middle of whatever crisis, and I could just laugh at

the show and enjoy it and become a true fan, and, and I was, I think I

was the ultimate Howard Stern fan.

So this is personal for you.

Without naming names, unless you want to, uh, tell us about some of

the best and worst situations you've worked in, and what characteristics

or traits made him feel that way.

Well, the worst situation I had was the last one at W C C O,

and I'm not afraid to name names.

Uh, and what made it the worst situation was I was hired to make change.

Mm-hmm.

And they knew I, I had a, a book, I'm just looking over to see if I can see it.

I had a notebook labeled the playbook.

It was three inches thick and it went into explicit details

with what I wanted to change.

They knew what I wanted to change from, from top to bottom.

And once I, I got here, it, it was like, it was a surprise to them that

I, that I wanted to make the changes.

So I, I wasn't allowed to make any of the changes and I found myself

shifting papers from one pile to the other, wondering what I was doing here.

The best situations that I've had are the ones where I've had a great

general manager and there've been a lot of them working for Mark Rayfield.

The w i p was pleasure, Ken Stevens.

Uh, at, at W Y S P was, was a pleasure.

And that's not to say every day was was a dream day.

There was always tough days, but, but working for Ken and

Mark was, was always good because they, they supported the mission.

They did their best to get resources.

It's always been tough to get resources and radio.

Look, I loved working for Mel at Infinity.

Uh, Mel was tough, but he was fair.

Uh, I loved working for Dan Mason.

He was programmer.

I've worked for some really great people.

I liked work.

I loved working for Charlie Banta at Greater Media.

I have worked for some truly great companies and truly great people.

And if I had to tell you who was the best out of all of them, it has to be

Jeff Somalian and Rick Cummings at ms.

Absolutely the best people to work for.

Anyone who has worked for Jeff and Rick knows that they've been blessed.

Absolutely.

I totally agree with that, Amy.

You know, sometimes the best way to look at our industry is to back

up and look at another industry.

You recently had some interesting thoughts on the shakeup at cnn,

which has always been radio.

With pictures, you offered some thoughts on how you'd fix it.

Can radio people learn from that case study evolving in real

time right now?

Well, a lot of it just goes back to the positioning book and the

22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.

You have to pick something, you have to be a leader in something.

And CNN's problem is I, I don't know what they are.

They are the second place liberal network, the third place Cable News Network.

They don't lead in anything.

They are a follower.

They aren't really committed.

If you wanna be the liberal network, MSNBC is a much better liberal network.

Their premise is that they are the Cable news network, but they

stopped being a news network.

About the same time MTV stopped being a music television network.

Yeah.

When

Turner left

started did news.

Yeah.

If tomorrow I went into cnn, I would try to make it an honest news network that

followed journalism standards the way we knew them when we were growing up.

Is there an audience for it?

I don't know.

I haven't done the research to find out, but at least anecdotally talking

to people that I know, people are longing for news without opinion.

Now people think that the news that they get is, is news, but it's really

news filtered through their own common core beliefs, and I think that there

is an appetite for actual news that is unfiltered with with opinion.

I might be wrong.

I haven't done the research to know it, but from my radio experience, I certainly

see that successful news stations at least make an effort to separate news

and opinion, and that's what made C N N.

Great.

I certainly know if there's a natural disaster or if war breaks out, I

certainly know that the ratings skyrocket.

Then, whether that's enough to sustain on a daily basis, I'm not positive.

I'd love to do the research and find out.

But, but CNN is lost right now.

They're, they're nothing.

And I recently wrote a column, an open letter to, to the CEO of

Warner Discovery, David Zaslav, saying, you know, Hey, hire me.

I, and certainly I couldn't do any worse.

But, but the, the, the incident that I, that I picked on

was, was the Trump Town Hall.

The, the Trump Town Hall really proved to everybody that c n N was nothing.

The people who are currently watching C N N, the 600, 700,000 on any given

night, watched that Trump Town Hall with disgust and said, I can't trust you.

You would put this guy who lies on I, I can't trust your network.

The Trump people who actually tuned in and gave them 3.3 million viewers

for the first time in over two years, watched that town hall and said, You

are as bad as I thought you were.

I'm certainly not coming back to your network anytime soon.

And to everybody else.

What it really showed was that the people who are in charge of C N N are

the anchors to have your anchor go on and say, I wouldn't blame you if

you never watched this network again.

I, yeah.

You know, Fox just showed C N N that nobody's bigger than the network.

If they're willing to fire Tucker Carlson, for whatever reason, they fired him.

Chris Lick should have called Anderson Cooper and Jay Tapper in the next

day and fired them with cause.

Yeah, they have no business on that network.

They hurt the network more than they help the network.

I.

Wow.

So David Zoff, if you see this or anybody sees this, who knows him,

have em call me, have em hire me cuz I can't do any worse with C Nnn than

they have done for the past five years.

That's true.

And I think we can also see it with, uh, long-term news radio stations, like 10,

10 wins in the New York, or TLP in dc BBM in Chicago, I mean, If they stick

to the real news, they do pretty well,

and, and, and, and that, that just is my point.

I mean, those radio stations really don't present news with a bias.

They try to present it right down the middle.

And they consistently have great ratings.

And certainly t o p has been what the ratings leader now, I mean the revenue

leader among all radio stations.

Mm-hmm.

Nationally, absolutely.

For five or six years in a row.

Yeah.

So, so there is an appetite, at least in radio, and I, I can't tell you

that I've done any work doing research for cable television, but I have to

believe there is an appetite for cable news that just reports the facts.

As I call it the Joe Friday approach.

Just the facts, ma'am.

Indeed.

Switching gears, you've also noticed some evidence that the device

called the radio might be disappearing.

We see it in Edison's infinite dial.

We see it in the Jacobs Tech survey and other sources.

So the question for you is, What do you see as the best options right

now to keep branded audio content

relevant?

Yeah, we, we, we see it anecdotally and the Jacobs Tech surveys have

shown it that the number of people who own a device called the radio,

our radio at home has now slipped under 80% and with millennials,

uh, and Gen Z, it's under 70%.

It's in the 60% range.

As the radio disappears and people continue to consume audio or content on

smartphones, smart speakers, streaming audio radio is losing listenership.

Now, I'm not suggesting that you can fight the tides and that we can

actually get people to continue to use a device known as the radio.

And I'm certainly not suggesting that you shouldn't.

Uh, radio shouldn't.

Continue to try to get people to listen on mobile apps and smart

speakers and and on digital devices, but where radio needs to fight its

last stand is on the car dashboard.

Don't give in.

The radio industry needs to fight cohesively to keep its space on the car.

Dashboard losing there.

Is really is the end.

That's when we'll see this huge precipitous drop.

That will be unbelievable.

That will be cataclysmic.

In the meantime, my prescription for radio that has limited resources

is stop making your people.

Do ridiculous amounts of extra work to create content for podcasts and

everything else, and focus your resources on building better apps, building

better smart speaker apps, and getting people to use them as best you can as

an industry or as an individual station.

We've gotta convert more people there and stop doing stupid things.

We keep getting rid of, whether through attrition, through retirement, through

buyouts, through workforce reductions.

We keep getting rid of our most brilliant personalities, our

most brilliant programmers.

We keep.

Adding commercial units for a dollar.

If someone will give us a dollar, we'll add another minute

of commercials, no problem.

And then we wonder why the people who are choosing other options that they

know they have on their smartphones and smart speakers are listening to other

sources of audio entertainment that don't make the same stupid mistakes.

We're shooting ourselves in the foot repeatedly while

people have better options.

Andy,

how

would you suggest we approach the youth of, uh, this country in

terms of the youngest consumers?

Is there a, an idea you've got for how to reach them, doing a better job of reaching

them?

Well, at some point the industry's going to have to make it a point to

target that audience, and I don't think there's many radio stations

that are targeting younger audiences.

But besides that, Gen Z and millennials have grown up their entire lives

with, with iPhones, smartphones, and with other options that they

can listen to for audio content.

If we're not providing superior options, and by the way, our brands mean less

to them than they did to Gen X and baby boomers, if we have brands that inherently

mean less competing against brands that now mean more, and we're providing

lousier content options because we insist on running 18 minutes of commercials.

We don't invest in new personalities and we're getting rid of older personalities.

What do you think's gonna happen?

We need to do all the things that we know how to do for generations

and apply it to younger targets.

How many radio stations are actually doing their own research

anymore on a regular basis?

How many radio stations are actually marketing beyond some guerrilla marketing?

How many radio stations have full promotion teams anymore and do regular

promotions, not national contests?

Yep.

These are the.

Basic building blocks of how to create audiences, and they're not done

anymore because we're trying to figure out how to make the next quarter.

Well, we might make the next quarter, and if you're lucky, you'll make this year.

And I know there's a lot of people counting the days till their retirement

and saying The next generation can worry about it, but there won't be

anything left to worry about if we're not investing properly in the basic

building blocks of creating audiences.

Wow.

Some great stuff.

Music researcher and major market PD turned sports and news talk

leader, political operative for a while, and now writing for Barretts.

Among other things, our guest, Andy Bloom,

somebody you'd like to hear from.

We'd love to hear from you.

Email your suggestions to show at brand with on demand.com.

And coming

up, Andy shares some opportunities.

He finds hiding in plain sight.

Hi, this is Dave Tyler from Music Master with the world's leading

authority on music scheduling.

Keith Ill, you know, music Master has some real secret sauce.

First, I set up my rules.

So that every song scheduled obeys those unbreakable rules, but the goal rules

in Music Master make it so much better.

They are so correctly and intelligently crafted that I know I get higher

ratings with longer time spent listening and longer time spent exposed

on the stations that I work with.

Music Master is a big.

Part of my rating successes.

Discover how to perfect your music.

Visit music master.com today.

Hi, it's Fred Jacobs from Jacobs Media.

If you're on the air on a commercial radio station, I'd like to invite

you to take our AQ five survey.

It's radio's first research study.

Dedicated to better understanding air talent.

It's the fifth year for these studies in partnership with Morning Show

Bootcamp, and the cool thing is Don Anthony lets me kick off the entire

conference with the AQ results.

We cast a wide net for these AQ studies.

Big markets, small towns, mega companies, mom and pops, morning talent,

part-timers, music stations, and talkers.

The survey is totally confidential.

It takes just about 12 minutes to complete, and our cutoff date this year is

Wednesday, July 19th, so I hope you take the opportunity to share your opinion.

Here's the link, Jacob's.

media.com/aq five participate.

That's jacobs media.com/aq five.

The number five, participate.

If you're on the air, take the survey yourself.

If you aren't, please share the link with radio talent.

You know, and thanks so much for doing this.

I can't wait to show you the results.

Jacobs media.com/aq.

The number five hyphen participate.

Thanks.

Opportunities

hidden

on

demand.

We are with the gifted, talented one and only Andy Bloom today.

Hey Andy, what's the one opportunity for radio that you see clearly

kinda hiding in plain sight?

Uh, this is for music program directors.

All right.

One of the things that we did, especially in the diary era, was we stacked up

commercials out of one hour so we could get a commercial free hour, hour and

a half for certain number of songs.

And I think there's a lot of radio stations that are playing music that

still do that, and it's something that you should look into now.

And the piece of advice that I would give, especially regarding drive time,

especially in afternoon drive where where you're probably doing it is what

is the average commute in your city?

I'm in Minneapolis right now.

The average commute in Minneapolis is 24.4 minutes.

I can tell you there's a number of stations here who have, by the time

they're done with their traffic and weather sponsorships and spot breaks,

and spots that have breaks that are.

Over 10 minutes long.

Wow.

What do you think a 10 minute break sounds like to somebody on a 24 minute commute?

And that's the average commute.

So there's a lot of people who, from the time they get in their car to the time

they get out of their car, have never heard anything but a disc jockey talking.

Or a station promotion, the weather, the traffic, the sponsorships and commercials.

I, I just, I'll roll off a couple others.

In Kansas City, it's 20 minutes in, uh, Seattle, 28 minutes in St.

Louis.

It's 22 minutes.

You want the longer commutes.

Chicago is 36 minutes Washington.

32 minutes.

New York is 39 minutes.

Los Angeles, 32 minutes.

Know what your average commute time is in your market and build your stop sets

and your breaks with those in mind.

And I would rather do shorter breaks now and not have those 60 or 90 minute

commercial free sweeps where then somebody who gets in the car at the

wrong time has their entire ride home.

That is a commercial break.

Wow.

He is terrific, isn't he?

Kiper?

Oh heck

yeah.

That's Andy Bloom.

We've got links to his latest writings and other cool stuff.

Just scroll down your phone.

As always, we wanna thank our executive producer, Cindy Hu.

We're for getting us all straight and putting us together.

And associate Producer Hannah B for booking and coming up next,

Hey, it's Steve Allen

from the Research Director Incorporated, and on the next Bandwidth On

Demand, we are going to look deep inside the ratings game and figure it all out and

give you a few tips.

That's a wrap kicker.

The more you listen, the more you can learn.

The next one minute Martinizing is about listening.

Find it at brand with on demand com.

I'm Dave Martin.

And I'm

Kiper

McGee.