Joel Hollander
In December 2005, CBS Corporation unveiled plans to re-brand its radio division, Infinity Broadcasting, as CBS Radio, adopting a new slogan: “Broadcast … HD … Streaming … On-Demand.” Just over a year later, CBS Radio has gone through more than a name modification. FMQB recently caught up with CBS Radio CEO Joel Hollander to discuss a year of change and heading into the future.
eQB presents excerpts from the February FMQBmagazine Up Close Interview with CBS Radio CEO Joel Hollander
In December 2005, CBS Corporation unveiled plans to re-brand its radio division, Infinity Broadcasting, as CBS Radio, adopting a new slogan: “Broadcast … HD … Streaming … On-Demand.” Just over a year later, CBS Radio has gone through more than a name modification. FMQB recently caught up with CBS Radio CEO Joel Hollander to discuss a year of change and heading into the future.
An assessment of CBS Radio’s past twelve months… It’s been a very interesting twelve months. We have made an incredible amount of progress and started many new initiatives. Certainly there were some failures, and there have been some successes, like anything else. We’re very pleased with the progress we’re making across the board as a whole, between Opie & Anthony and Adam Corolla and The Junkies. We have some really good stories in Philadelphia, Boston and Phoenix on some of the Free-FM formats.
On CBS Radio in 2006… Over the last year, there was an overall soft environment that got better throughout the year, advertising-wise. Put into the mix that we had some challenges on some big oceanfront property radio stations that we changed, a la the Free-FM formats. We’re very, very pleased where we are with our new Web platforms and streaming. It’s starting to be a meaningful number revenue-wise, so we’re very excited over the next two to five years where all of the new platforms and revenue are going to bring us.
On how the sell-off of the stations makes CBS Radio a more efficient company… I thought it would be better to have a leaner, meaner company and a portfolio of about 150 radio stations, and be able to take the proceeds and put it back into the company. So, we’ve spent more money on advertising, promotion and capital expenditures than we have in the past. We need to keep doing that to keep up.
On CBS Radio’s current portfolio of stations… We think it’s pretty optimal now. We don’t foresee more divestitures right now. We’d be very interested in getting bigger in San Diego, Atlanta and Houston, and we don’t operate radio stations in Miami, so we could be interested in furthering our footprint in the top 20 markets.
On the value of sports broadcast rights… We’ve been very, very aggressive in redoing our deals that are more of a win-win for the individual radio stations and the ball clubs. We’re only going to do deals that benefit the radio station financially and ratings-wise. We’ve taken the tact that we don’t believe these deals are exclusive the way they were ten years ago. That’s nobody’s fault; that’s just the advent of all the new technology. There are so many different outlets to see and hear games. There are just more choices for the consumer and more choices for advertisers, which splinter it. So, again, we love the sports business. We love having content exclusively, but unfortunately it’s not as exclusive as it used to be.
On Free-FM’s first year… We’re very pleased with Free-FM. We believe the format is a very vibrant, strong format moving forward in the spoken word genre. It takes some time to grow; it doesn’t happen overnight. We have some stations that are doing better than others in certain markets.
On the partnership with XM Satellite Radio for The Opie & Anthony Show… The relationship with XM is very strong. Opie & Anthony are doing fairly well on almost all of their radio stations, so there’s been no issue whatsoever. A lot of noise was made at the beginning, “Wow! How did you hire guys from satellite, and how are you letting them do a show on satellite too?” If you look at the media and all the convergence, it’s just not an issue. A perfect example: There was a big outcry when Opie & Anthony did the Homeless Shopping Spree. They’ve been doing it for four years. It’s interesting, the last two years nobody talked about it. Now they’re back on terrestrial and people are talking about it.
On what HD Radio needs to become fully viable… We have [had the HD Radio Alliance] for about sixteen months now. If you look back, like any other business, there are stops and starts. You get out of the box fast and then it stops for a little bit until the next accelerator comes along. What the Alliance has done, and done a good job of, is branding HD. It’s out there in retail stores, but not as much as it should be, and certainly we have an incredibly long way to go in Detroit. That’s the next start. Once that accelerates a little bit, it will change drastically. It’s going to take time. Remember, it took satellite radio ten years to get off the ground. I’ve been consistent in saying this is a three to six-year project until it’s meaningful.
On CBS Radio’s settlement with Eliot Spitzer over his payola investigation… It hasn’t affected how we deal with record companies. We’ve been very diligent as a company, always, on payola. We never admitted any wrongdoing. We had one isolated situation, and it got blown out of proportion as far as I’m concerned. It’s settled; it’s behind us and we’re moving on.
** QB Content By Michael Parrish **
