Radio groups across the board have been empowering programmers with more national oversight and multi-market responsibilities at an increasing rate these days presenting unique opportunities for PDs to expand the depth of their profession. Jeremy Rice has been one such programmer wearing the bi-lateral hat of local and national for close to a dozen years for Cox and he’s been doing it quite adroitly. We tap into a multitude of issues affecting both areas in this week’s central piece.
Jeremy Rice
As if programming in the shadow of market #1 isn’t enough, Jeremy Rice has been balancing a pivotal dual role at Cox Media Group that requires dedication, imagination, energy and authority. As PD of WBLI/Long Island, JJ deals with the challenges the New York City radio market routinely presents. He also runs much of the digital initiatives for the local station. As Cox’s Top 40 Format Leader he oversees the radio group’s CHR’s: WAPE/Jacksonville, WPOI/Tampa (Hot 101.5), WHTI/Richmond, KCCN/Honolulu, KPHW/Honolulu, WHZT/Greenville-Spartanburg, WPUP/Athens, and the more Rhythmic leaning WPYO/Orlando.
Rice has been with Cox since 1999, joining as PD of WBLI. A year later, Cox promoted JJ to National Top 40 Coordinator, a position that eventually morphed into Format Leader. It’s been a productive decade long run for Rice in a format that has tweaked and modified itself several times over that period, and he has stayed on course with the dynamic landscape every step of the way.
You started your bi-lateral duties with Cox in 2000 as Top 40 Coordinator and you are currently the Top 40 Format Leader. How have you grown in this multi-faceted position of responsibility?
Like anyone, when you’re in your twenties you’re more high-strung and have less patience, whereas I feel I have grown to a point where I have much more patience now. I feel I’m a better leader today, and my delegating is a lot better too. You have to give people confidence to do their jobs and acknowledge them when they’re doing a good job. Patience goes a long way in all of these areas and I think I’m a lot more patient today. My pals reading this will probably be laughing right now. I also feel that my experiences over the years have definitely made me a better programmer and manager in general.
What do you favor most about your national position?
I absolutely love this part of my job! I love traveling and visiting the different markets, not because they’re warm weather Cox markets, but mainly because I’ve learned so much from the experiences in these Top 40 markets over the past twelve years. I like to take the best things that work in each market and share them with all the other stations and avoid the things I don’t see working and have failed for some of our competitors. I make sure we don’t make those mistakes. We have some awesome programmers at these stations and I’m really proud of both the individual and collective accomplishments.
Do you feel it’s an important progression in general for programmers today to have the opportunity, at all radio groups, to take on more responsibility via SVP, Format Captain and Leader positions?
Absolutely. When I started in radio in the eighties it was one PD for one station and your responsibilities didn’t go much further than that. Today you have the opportunity to expand your role within the context of being a programmer and get to experience other markets and relationships with your PD’s on a routine basis. That just didn’t exist much in the past. Now most radio companies have some sort of chain of command within the programming ranks allowing individuals room to grow and expand their depth of knowledge in the business through the various experiences, relationships and expanded responsibilities.
There are other advantages as well, where today you can hit a button and put a new release on twenty radio stations simultaneously in one click and not have to be concerned as a company whether a station didn’t receive service on a key release. The technology alone works hand in hand within this context and makes it easier for us to put everything on Facebook, twiiter, our website and our radio stations instantly. It’s just the way things have evolved.
How involved do you get regarding programming issues with the individual PD’s at each of the eight CHR’s you oversee?
I’m there for whatever and whenever they need me. They can call me, text me or email anytime they want, 24 hours a day and I can help them with any issues, whether it’s their morning show, music, strategy, the promotions, I’m there for those guys. Am I in their face all the time telling them how to program their stations 24 hours a day? No. It’s their radio station. They program their radio station. I’m here to help them win.
Do you try to balance your approach to managing between delegation and hands-on decision making?
I think there’s a time for each and my philosophy has been to pick and choose those opportunities appropriately. Our PDs run their stations and (again) I’m there for full support. Obviously, whether it’s a music call or a strategic decision and when I firmly believe in something, of course I’m going to speak out and voice my opinion. Cox doesn’t pay me to sit on the bench and not get involved. That said, we’ve hired some excellent PD’s and they come up with some great ideas. I learn a lot from these guys as they learn for me. On the music front if there’s a record I strongly believe in, I’ll mention it on the call. If there’s a promotion I strongly believe in I’ll absolutely let them know about it, and on the flip side I’ll let them know if I don’t like something. But our teams mesh pretty well and I trust the PD’s enough to allow them the freedom to make decisions that are productive for their stations.
We have millions and millions of dollars of revenue on the line here and most recently we’re making some pretty good cash in Tampa and I want to take as much money away from our competitors in Tampa as I can. Therefore I’ll help those guys however I can whether it’s audience targeting or general strategies. We’re talking about a lot of money on the table so of course you get involved and want to help your company win there and all of our markets for that matter.
How much autonomy do your programmers have over the music decisions that are made at each respective station?
I always say that the PD’s at our stations, whether it’s Tim Clarke, Kobe, or Supa Dave, run their music calls. I want the programmer to run their music call and have confidence in what they want to add. Having said that, Cox is a well respected, conservative company, but we do break new music as well as play the hits. However, we do have tight playlists and our stations consistently win. I’m not going to tell the PD that they can or can’t add a song. If a PD is adding a bunch of stiffs, their ratings are going to stink and they’re probably not going to be employed by Cox too long. I’m not going to hire a PD that plays a bunch of stiffs. We play hits and I believe we have a pretty good track record.
What is your feeling about radio groups that use national music programming strategies across like kind properties?
I believe every station should be programmed locally, which is why I am so dead against chain music adds, especially in markets where there is a local PD. I think chain adds are wrong for companies for many reasons. It’s not the way we should program. It makes the Top 40 chart less credible. And burying records with light overnight spins is wrong as well. A good PD should look at a custom chart for every single respectable radio station, and when you look at a chart from 15-20 respectable radio stations you will see true hits. If you’re looking at a national chart you better make sure you’re looking at overnight spins, the quality of the radio stations reporting, and the amount of syndicated programming accepted by that chart, before you make a valid decision. If not, it’s just a lot of fluff.
For companies like Clear Channel that use Premium Choice, it’s a business decision and for their financial model it probably makes sense at their smaller stations. But I don’t know to what extent I would do it regarding market size and competitive situations. I would be concerned about my stations losing local identity.
You’ve long been an advocate for live and local…
Being live and local is very important. I know major market stations (not ours) where the jocks come in and voice-track their entire show an hour before the airshift begins and then go home. I think that’s wrong. A good example is when Amy Winehouse died over the summer. It was about 1pm EST on a Saturday. I called my jocks, who were live on the air, and we played the Jay Z remix of “Rehab” right away, and played it several times throughout the day. I also remember having a pretty good PPM weekend that weekend. That was real live and local radio. I remember calling the CHR in Rochester in 1983 when I was a kid when Marvin Gaye died asking him if he could play “Sexual Healing.” As he was trying to find the cart, I didn’t realize I was a Program Director even back then!
My point is, some of these stations are automated and voice-tracked so what are you going to do when Michael Jacksondies or any of these big name music celebrities, and you have no one to talk about it on the air and play the music and give them local emotional response. We were on twitter, Facebook and on-air instantly when this happened. I don’t know that other stations at other companies were as well.
Do you feel the industry has drifted too far away from cultivating the next generation of air personalities?
Absolutely! If on most of your stations you have a syndicated morning show, a syndicated mid-day show and if you’re voicetracking afternoons, and maybe you have a live jock at nights but you don’t have any part-timers, you cannot complain that you can’t find talent. That’s a real shame. I can tell you at WBLI alone we have seven part-timers and we grow our people. My midday jock Astor used to be a part-timer and she’s a star! My night jock Syke used to be a part-timer and he’s a star. As an industry, we have to nurture and grow talent. If you look at your budget, it’s not going to kill you to throw some young talent on the air at 3 a.m. Abandoning this concept is a mistake a lot of radio groups have made, and I’m very proud that we’ve grown both talent and programmers from within Cox.
Does Cox use any voice-tracking at all?
At our smaller stations we do at times. At our larger stations we try not to. I rarely do it at WBLI, only if I really have to. We love being live and local. Long Island is such a vibrant local market and when you’re right in the face of NYC you want to be live and local and the ratings back it up. We’ve been #1 6+ and #1 25-54 several times over the past couple of months and we’re very proud of that.
In the spirit of technology and cost effectiveness do feel the industry has ceded too much on the digital front at the expense of live talent or is it an equitable trade-off?
If it’s cost effective and that’s the reasoning, then there may be some justification. On the digital front, it’s where the investment has to be. The industry is doing a good job in the digital areas and with social media initiatives. They’re all part of the brand. But let’s not forget the actual radio station. That thing is still freaking important the last time I checked! I look at WBLI this way. I program three radio stations: social media, on-air and our website. If we’re not updating something on twitter or Facebook or posting something on our website at midnight or 1a.m., I treat it as dead air. We should always be talking to people on social media 24 hours a day and hiring jocks that are on twitter and Facebook and talking with their listeners.
If your jocks aren’t talking to and connecting with their listeners on these platforms, they’re not doing their jobs. It’s so important. I can’t tell you how many major market stations have 50-60,000 Facebook followers and they never answer their listeners and that’s a mistake. Social media is word of mouth on steroids and I love it. I love talking to our listeners, and your jocks have to follow suit as well. I was shocked as to how many people still don’t get social media or don’t use it to its fullest extent. I’m someone who didn’t like it for the first couple years and now I am very passionate about it and love it.
How has Cox assimilated to the digital platforms and what do see as the most effective digital platform for your outlets?
It’s the fastest growing part of our company right now and we’re working very closely with them. One of my key goals currently is to get more and more listeners to listen to our stream whether it’s online or via smart phones and just take us pretty much anywhere they go. We want to be top of mind with them and make sure they are taking advantage of the opportunities to listen to our stations on the stream. That is so important, and it’s just not having the access it’s making sure the stream sounds good.
How vital is the streaming apps option given the proliferation of smart phones?
There are different ways to go at it. Two of the larger companies have their own platforms and I don’t know if they’re doing well or not, I haven’t seen the stats, but I don’t think we have to go that way. Doing your own singular brand may be more successful. Getting WBLI as its own app may be more successful for example than mixing BLI with our Country station in San Antonio on the same app.
What are the biggest challenges for radio in the digital arenas?
It’s capturing the audience on those platforms and making sure you are one of their primary options when they’re searching for news, information and events. If there’s a breaking Lindsay Lohan entertainment story are people going to go to my website or TMZ.com? That’s pretty big competition. Why are people going to our websites? Should we focus on entertainment news, should we own that? Or should we focus on stuff going on locally and create local content?
Obviously you need to focus on both and you need to have people that are creative and passionate working in these areas. Think of the word Google or Yahoo, somebody might have laughed at the person in the meeting who came up with that. “What, that’s not going to work. It’s too weird of a word, why don’t you just call it search.com.” Well search.com didn’t work, but Google.com did. That’s why you need creative people to do fun and out-of-the-box stuff on your website and your social media to get people to listen. Keep hiring creative people because you never want to be cookie cutter.
Jeremy with Coldplay
Consumers are getting their information on demand from a variety of sources and it’s so easily acquired. What is radio’s primary role in listeners’ lives today regarding immediacy?
It’s to be a part of the lifestyle of your listeners. Sure if there’s a new Lady Gaga single released radio should be a primary source to turn to first. But it’s more than that for radio. It’s having a life, having a vibe, having your station sound local and fun, and hiring live jocks and doing real local radio. It’s so important. There are radio stations that import a lot of programming and talent and utilize a lot of national programming and it just doesn’t cut through the right way and the listeners do react to that.
In a market like Long Island there are so many great references we put on the air or in our social media and the listeners really bond with that. Hurricane Irene was pretty hardcore in Long Island. We never get these kinds of storms, we get blizzards. Well during Irene we actually went to 80-90% talk programming during that weekend because the majority of the market was without power. We’re a CHR and there are a lot of stations that can’t do that because they don’t have the staff or spontaneity to do it locally. When I pulled the ratings several weeks after Irene we had a surge in PPM and also in our social media numbers as well. The people that said radio was dead ten years were a bunch of morons. Radio is freaking awesome. You just have to have a pulse and a staff that really care and want it to be fun, live and local.
Do you promote networking among your PD’s at your various stations?
I’m sit at home with my triplets and every Friday morning I email about thirty people in my company who I consider really creative and we all brainstorm. They can be jocks and programmers or even sales people, and we all come up with social media content ideas. We create some great questions and our goal is to ask questions on social media that get the most responses. We brainstorm all morning and I come up with the best content for the weekend. I program a lot of the social media content myself. I think it’s important for the PD to do that, not just the jocks or the webmaster, because you really do want to know what’s going on.
In general, I’m a big music guy and I always ask my programmers their opinions of songs. We network a lot, all the time on many topics.
What are the hottest CHR battles going on right now among the Cox CHR outlets in the various markets?
The one everyone is talking about is the Tampa market between Hot 101.5 and WFLZ. We’re really proud that we beat FLZ in our first full month on the air. That was just amazing and we continue to pull some strong demos. We were #1 Persons 18-49 yesterday (11/15), and the Media Monitors I pulled for last week had Hot 101.5 beating WFLZ soundly for six straight weekdays. I’m very proud of Tim Clarke and his team in Tampa. They’ve done an excellent job.
Orlando is very unique because our Rhythmic CHR (Power 95.3) goes against WXXL, a Clear Channel mainstream CHR, Jamz the CBS Urban, and there’s a new Latino station on the air too. So it’s a fascinating battle among all these 18-34 formats. Long Island continues to be such a unique challenge battling market #1. If you go against Z100 in your market it’s all easy after that, right? And we consistently beat Z100 in persons 6+ and persons 25-54, and WKTU isn’t even a factor in Long Island. So we’re very proud of that.
What do feel are the most effective research tools at your disposal today?
Internet and traditional callout research, and auditorium tests are great. Research rules and I love using it, but you can’t get too carried away with it. Programming with callout is great but having the new Mscores and playing with media monitors is a lot of fun and a good PD in a PPM market is looking at all these factors, not just the Mscores. You need to look at the minute by minute numbers and comparing it to your competition and understanding what’s a spike and also looking at consistencies and not overreacting. I can go on all day about media monitors; those guys do an excellent job. It’s a really good tool to have.
Given the instant access to research results, is there a tendency to overly rely on research?
We’re not hired to be robots. It’s like a commander in the field in a war, sometimes you have to use your instincts and common sense. You can go by the book, but the people that always go by the book are likely to get shot at some point and that’s what leaders are for and it’s why a good PD should see beyond the Mscores. If the hot new song from Adele or Rihanna has a negative Mscore in its first week, don’t freak out because how many times have you seen the negative Mscore turn into a positive one only a few weeks later? If your most extreme Country or Hip Hop record has a negative Mscore, and you’re a Pop station, then maybe that makes sense because it’s not the perfect fit. You have to use common sense as well.
You work in markets that utilize both PPM and diary measurement. What have you learned about differences and similarities between the two methodologies?
The instant results with PPM versus the “waiting game” with diary is a huge difference, but the consistency lies in the fact that you have to stay on top of Arbitron about your sample. We’ve seen some very poor sampling recently in two of our markets and if the sample’s not right how are you going to have reliable results and credible ratings? That’s something we have to work with Arbitron on so there are more PPM participants and more diaries.
If you’re a heritage station and have stayed in your format for past 20-30 years, that’s great for diary, and conversely it’s harder for a new brand in diary. You’ve also seen heritage stations in PPM lose their numbers quickly. So you better have your act together when you convert to PPM. PPM is a good lesson for everyone. It keeps your stations more honest, and makes them cleaner and tighter. It works very well for tight CHR stations playing hit after hit after hit. They love that cume and even if they tune out they’re coming back to hear another hit.
What have been your biggest challenges in programming WBLI for over a decade in the shadow of the Big Apple and the quality of radio that emanates from that market?
I enjoy the underdog role. But honestly, things have been great for us. We’re winning where we need to win, and the people on my staff are the best! They just come in and do their jobs. The people of Long Island are tough and they almost come in with this “I can do anything” attitude. When you grow up in Long Island and NYC is right there, it’s really not intimidating at all because it’s basically been part of your life. Plus, Long Island has its fair share of cache when you consider the amount of famous people and celebrities who are from Long Island. There are a lot of talented people who come from LI and still live here. My staff is exceptionally talented. We have a winning team with a positive attitude who love what they do. That’s the Long Island spirit!
As far as the biggest challenge…When it comes to the artists, if an artist does something in NYC and it’s an artist we play they’re going to call or visit our radio station as well. I’ve developed good relationships with the folks at the labels to make sure we’re involved with the artists and we don’t get cheated in this area. Bottom line is when you’re going up against market #1 it makes you a better radio station.
How much of an emphasis do you place on maintaining relationships with the labels?
I’m a big lover of music and it’s essential to maintain good relationships with the labels. We’re not going to play every song out, and not all of their songs are going to be hits. I believe we have a good track record of playing hits and I’m proud of the relationships we have. We’re doing some really good things with them including some awesome promotions with our core artists.
What is the most misunderstood thing about Jeremy Rice regarding the labels?
Cox is a conservative company and I know there’s a reputation that our radio stations are “late” on everything. But realize that if a song comes out at 12 noon and I’m not playing it by 12:05, I guess I’m late. But we’ve broken a lot of records in this market and I’m proud of that too. We were quite early on the second Adele smash and I like to find songs by core artists that I know are coming out and move on them quickly. We picked “You and I” by Lady Gaga early. You have to be aggressive on the right records.
[eQB Content by Fred Deane]
