As a ten year veteran of Greater Media, Buzz Knight is a prime example of an executive immersed in a company culture and philosophy that has become blended into his management style and job scope. In his current role, Knight is responsible for overseeing programming development for all of the Greater Media properties and collaborating with the individual programming teams to build winning content and brand management strategies.
By Fred Deane
Buzz Knight
Buzz Knight is a programmer at heart, but he’s also a macro thinker when it comes to researching and recognizing courses of action that will help further his company and the people he works closely with at his company. His ability to relate to programming is a natural instinct given his background and experience as a day to day PD which includes WZLX/Boston, WNOR/Norfolk and WLVQ/Columbus. He also understands and subscribes to managerial collaborative leadership, a principle he takes very seriously and applies very adroitly. Constantly looking forward and thinking ahead, Knight is perpetually searching for competitive edges and fresh perspectives to enrich his company.
You’re an avid attendee of the CES Conference each year. What did you take away from this year’s CES event?
I love to start my year by getting away to CES to challenge my brain and to get past standard radio thinking. The CES event is this explosion of ideas and allows the senses to burst with a stream of new ideas. CES truly reinforces the need in radio for us to think big and not forget that we really are in show business and this medium is part of a much bigger picture. That’s an overriding premise I always come away with. This year the biggest buzz was about connectivity. Since the advent of the Smart Phone, we see more and more that connectivity to our friends, our co-workers, our music, our radio stations…heck, even our home appliances, is the way our lives are progressing and it truly proves that radio needs to be where our listeners are at every connected point. I was also studying the auto business and how Ford (for example) is developing more and more within the dashboard. These are really not just cars anymore. They’re social media entertainment systems on wheels. It all connects back to where radio needs to be in the equation. I wish more radio people would attend CES because radio is a consumer electronic and radio should be more visible and foreground at this event.
What are the most significant applications to problem solving and decision making (affecting radio) did the CES offer this time around?
It helps to strip the onion bare and that’s what’s kind of invigorating. The attitude is so positive there and so much in the right place, everybody doesn’t walk around and wonder if their product is going to die or not. They feel like they have a fighting shot. That’s the prevailing attitude. I would say the biggest application regarding problem solving is that the customer/listener experience should really drive us in a much bigger and different way. We’re so used to finding a way where we decide as a business that this is the way it’s going to be, this is how people are going to use us and then we try to impose that on the masses, but CES proves that the customer experience should really drive how we apply our process.
Are you finding tech choices in general more of a challenge regarding the rapid proliferation of options as they relate to radio’s paradigm?
It’s exciting that we have more tech choices than ever and it’s clearly an opportunity for our business. Having said that, because our world is changing so rapidly we do need to stop and pause and force our visionary lens to react accordingly because the rapid change is really the issue, it’s not just the amount of devices. Last year at CES, I believe there were 82 tablets that were debuted, and beside the iPad I don’t think I can name one of them. So it really is important for us to put a filter and apply a hierarchy of what’s most important as things are changing so quickly.
How would you prioritize the tech options relative to audience connectivity and enhancement?
To really boil it down, besides the on-air, mobile and online efforts, which is our content for the audience, the rest of the priority revolves around the existing relationship with our database, a critical part of how we can learn more about the audience and how we can navigate through that knowledge. In addition, obviously, where our social relationships exist with the audience, which certainly relates to the Facebook process and the way we gauge, satisfaction, engagement, and audience sharing. Those are our primary priorities.
Is Greater Media mining any new areas of exploitation regarding tech platforms and the influence on audience engagement?
We are constantly mining and that’s the beauty of the Greater Media model going back to a man I never had gotten to know, the founder of the company, Peter Bordes, Sr. Everything I’ve learned about him, he was a man with great curiosity of what was around him. The model was set certainly well before I became part of the company on a curiosity to always build a wider audience, along with customer satisfaction and engagement, which is what’s exciting about these times.
Are you learning much from other radio groups and how they are approaching the concept of audience engagement and connection?
I feel we’re in a very stimulating time right now, where our industry seems to realize that cooperation and partnerships, also another important CES premise, can benefit the sum of the parts. Friends and enemies can work to make a great business even greater, and to learn that cause and effect relationship and be open to it in that manner. That partnership openness is readily evidenced by Greater Media’s collaboration with Clear Channel on the iHeartRadio deal.
Was this a difficult choice for the company to enlist with a competitor’s hottest mobile platform, or did it just make smart practical sense?
It makes great business sense. It makes great sense in terms of where delivery systems are going. It makes great sense to acknowledge and engage the work that CC has done on the platform. It comes down to, how can we in an ever changing time, be sensitive to where delivery systems are going, and respond accordingly. It’s a very exciting time in that regard, where you a have two very different companies work together in a way to benefit their audiences. It makes a profound statement regarding what’s going on with our times on a lot of levels.
It’s all about being sensitive to delivery systems and to realize how important it is to reference the customer experience. If we look in the crystal ball and look at where customers are going, mobility is certainly a critical place to be in synch with and this places us in a nice strategic position where our brands and content can be exposed.
It’s clear that leadership at radio groups is paramount in today’s ultra competitive multi-media marketplace. Who are the primary leaders at GM and what is the philosophy inherent in this leadership?
Peter Smyth, our Chairman and CEO, sets the vision and keeps that vision as a constant ongoing philosophy that you don’t think twice about, and with Peter’s leadership it’s all about a people-first environment. The company firmly believes in the abilities of its people to lead and to be supportive of great talents and great brands. We approach this with the belief that the license we have from the FCC is a tremendous privilege and we have a responsibility as to how we use that privilege to do great things within our communities. But it all starts with Peter’s leadership. What he enables us to do, how he allows us to be creative, how he allows us to be open to ideas, and how he challenges us and allows us to challenge each other in the thought process to not just accept good, but to strive for greatness.
We also have great clusters and within each hub of the clusters there are excellent leaders, great collaborative teams of people, and a great spirit among the people. I try to take the responsibility in my role to allow them all to work autonomously within their markets and certainly approach it with an entrepreneurial attitude which allows them to lead their teams in a real hands-on sense. I try to lead with the collaborative spirit that Peter has implanted into our mindset very naturally. It’s not a forced philosophy; it’s simply a natural flow.
Who are fulfilling the leadership roles in the radio industry in general today?
I look at all of the companies that way. I look at of my counterparts in each way with much respect in terms of how they lead and work positively for the industry as thought leaders. We have some brilliant minds in our industry, but sometimes we have to stop and pause wherever we are and try to think in terms of simplifying what’s important and feeling that spirit and energy for what’s going on in 2012. I feel across all the companies we directly compete with that we see great products around us and have tremendous respect and admiration for each and every one of them. Of course, competitively speaking we want to beat their brains out along the way, but the more we can respect and admire the leadership around us, the better we could become as an industry.
Do you feel today more than ever that an outside-in perspective is essential for radio groups to expand and reshape mindsets and models in molding the vision of the company?
That’s a big part of the beauty of the CES event. The outside perspective resonates when it comes to applications in radio. It reinforces that the “This is how we’ve always done it,” mentality is really not going to allow us to have big success in the future. Consultant Fred Jacobs, who is a productive partner of ours on a lot of projects within our company, put it very well. He used the theme in Moneyball when everyone is sitting at the table and Brad Pitt is around all the old scouts who are not willing to look at the metrics differently and look at the model differently. He really challenged that group to get out of the same model of thinking, and that certainly applies to radio. It’s the ability to think strategically, but to get out of the traditional mindset and apply a fresh approach to our business. This should be an ongoing challenge to us as to how we use our process and how we truly try to manage in going from good to great.
What do you perceive to be the most challenging issues facing radio this year?
Optimism and energy towards optimism are important attitude challenges the business faces. If we can remain challenged, optimistic, process oriented, strategic and mindful of new opportunities around technology, we’ll face that challenge. The other challenge as a business we should be realizing, since radio is the original social media mechanism, is the emphasis on sharing radio. At times and in many cases, radio is not social enough, because it appears to be hard to share. If you look at newspapers or magazine articles these days they can be shared very easily and radio has a challenge to find ways, depending on the brand, to share, because it truly takes us backs to our roots and benefits us. Content that becomes viral very effectively serves the purpose of brand extension and awareness.
Is radio moving swiftly enough in keeping pace with outside media pure-play competitors attempting to invade its space, especially given the streaming options growing in auto dashboards?
There’s certainly going to be more ears that are available and maybe some ears that aren’t as loyal to radio. The good news is that it forces radio to not allow good to be good enough. If there are other opportunities for competitors to invade our space we have to be excellent in what we do and outshine them in every respect, especially regarding serving the local community.
If someone has a chance to listen to something else then it’s a reminder to radio of what radio has to be aware of. These other delivery services are different in that they don’t allow for the local living and breathing entity, and for radio to possess just that, represents a strong advantage in the face of competition.
Radio groups vary in degrees of commitment to local radio. As a rule where does GM stand on this issue?
Local and live is a foundation premise of who we are. It’s an area we’re very proud of. Just to put it in perspective. When a station like WMMR in Philadelphia can have a live overnight talent in Jackie Bam Bam, it speaks volumes. When you look at our properties across all markets, it’s really the core definition of who we are, and then when you get into where radio is so important serving local communities, whether it’s a natural disaster or opportunities to celebrate in a marketplace, local radio is there to experience it first person/first hand with the audience.
How do you read the industry implications of other radio groups that are opting for consolidation and national programming methods for talent and content?
I can’t speak to what other strategies are because it may work for them. Greater Media’s strategy has always been with great local commitment. Great content is great content regardless of the source and no one will deny that. Given today’s industry trends, it’s understandable why models for companies vary from group to group. Every company has a set of mutually exclusive priorities that comprise economic, social, product and content delivery concerns. Our model is one that passionately embraces the power of local.
Does GM do much lifestyle research regarding your audience?
We try to encourage all the programming minds to really be like sociologists with their respective audiences. It’s great to know the top testing songs in a marketplace, that’s easy. It’s harder to learn the living and breathing minds of these folks when it relates to lifestyles and habits outside of radio, so we try really hard to work the markets like active sociologists to see what truly makes these people tick.
Given GM’s general target audience of adults, what are you learning about the entertainment patterns of your core listeners, especially as it relates to technology?
At times we’re moving faster than they are. So it’s important for us to take that pause and be sensitive to that. Having said that, each year when we measure it we see leaps and bounds on how they’re growing into usage. Every market and every station is a little different, but the bottom line is their world is changing fast and we can’t change faster than them. We have to be in sync with them and be careful not to advance the “coolest premise of the moment” just because we think it’s cool.
You’re a veteran of radio programming and management. What do you still enjoy most about your job and position of responsibility?
I love the spirit of collaboration with teams, that’s always been one of the greatest joys for me. The ability to work with all of our teams, to assess, brainstorm, create and seize every opportunity possible, and try to deal with it in a people-first mindset. But it’s also essential to make sure we’re having some fun because we are in show business. It’s an exhilarating time, and it’s a privilege and a joy to be able to be in this position to take on the challenges of 2012!
[eQB Content by Fred Deane]
