Mike McVay, President, McVay Media
January 15, 2021
by Fred Deane
Mike McVay
Long-time consultant Mike McVay has returned to the business he spent 37 years building, his full-service consulting firm, McVay Media.
His entrepreneurial streak hit a detour in 2011 when he joined Cumulus Media as Executive Vice President of Content & Programming where he also had the same oversight of Westwood One, the company’s national syndication arm. In his role at Cumulus, McVay augmented the depth of his already expansive experience working with 425 radio stations.
Before he launched McVay Media in 1984, Mike had also been involved in management, ownership, sales, major market programming, major market on-air work, and also has owned and operated radio stations in multiple markets.
What factors prompted your return to consulting as opposed to seeking another corporate radio position?
The main reason I made the shift back in July 2019 was more personal than anything else. I traveled Monday thru Friday, 48 weeks a year, almost every year since we launched McVay Media. I didn’t have that travel load at Cumulus, but usually three or four days a week. The administrative part of being the Executive VP of Content & Programming for Cumulus and Westwood One was VERY rewarding, but it was also farther from creative programming than I really wanted to be as I entered the fall of my career. I love creating. I love programming. I love coaching talent. I want to be in-the-trenches.
Another key factor was my entrepreneurial spirit, which has always been part of my DNA, and given the opportunity to revive that spirit was an exciting idea. In addition to the domestic clients the original McVay Media had, I had clients in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America and Mexico. I was doing project work in Europe. I had my own small syndication company. We had our own digital company. Those businesses were all global. I really wanted to have a global focus back then, and that’s my passion this time around as well, to expand back into that area once again.
Can you quickly review the programmers who have been involved over the years with McVay Media?
McVay Media really never went away. My wife (Doris) and I started McVay Media Consulting in 1984 and it’s continued ever since, even during my tenure with Cumulus Media. There were other consultants inside of McVay Media that kept the company operating when I departed for Cumulus in 2011.
I’m proud of the amazing programmers who worked for us over the years. For many years Charlie Cook was my partner and he also consulted all of our Country stations. Jerry King handled AC and Hot AC. Harv Blaine, who is now with Vallie-Richards-Donovan, handled CHR. Also on board were: Greg Gillespie and Dave Lang (Rock), Holland Cooke (News/Talk), Jim Glass (Sports/Talk), as well as Val Garris who oversaw research while also programming Rock and Classic Rock for the company. Chris Elliott consulted our Classic Hits clients. I focused mainly on AC and on operating the company.
You had a remarkable near-decade stint at Cumulus…
It was a very pleasant and rewarding experience. I truly enjoyed my time at Cumulus, especially working with Mary Berner as CEO. Mary offered me more responsibility and allowed me more control and involvement in programming, both for Cumulus Media and Westwood One. But it was nine years living in a condo in Atlanta while my family was at home in northeastern Ohio.
How smoothly did the actual transition go from Cumulus during your last few months there?
They were very cooperative and they made it very seamless for me. My original contract was due to end December 31, 2018, and Mary agreed to sign me on as a consultant as I departed, providing I would extend my agreement to the end of June of 2019.
Essentially, I couldn’t ask for a better situation because it allowed me time to get my feet on the ground and revitalize the consultancy, while making sure all things were organized in the office of programming as I was in the process of exiting Cumulus.
I also collaborated with Mary to find my replacement, who wound up being Brian Philips. So, the timing was very good all around. I enjoyed working with Brian, and it’s fun to see how he has changed the company and taken it forward.
What differentiates McVay Media from other consultants?
First and foremost, my experience, and (quite frankly) my bedside manner. When you consider I’ve worked with every format there is both during my former time as a consultant, and during my tenure at Cumulus where I was involved at a very high-level and worked within a multi-layered programming structure, there haven’t been many scenarios I didn’t experience through those two chapters of my career. The experience allows me to maintain a high degree of confidence, and a well-balanced temperament in dealing with problem solving issues.
Through your tenure at Cumulus, did you adopt a new-model edition to your overall business philosophy?
I would say during my collective experience over the decades, I have always updated my programming, marketing and management philosophies to suit the needs of the client base and the changing trends. In the early days of my consultancy, we were much more formulaic in our approach because of deregulation. Things were changing quickly in every U.S. market and it was a time that called for providing discipline, structure, and teaching people how to do radio in highly competitive markets at a very rapid pace. It meant encouraging creativity en masse.
As time and trends progressed, I was able to go beyond the “one size fits all” approach in favor of focusing on each unique station in each individual market. That was particularly helpful during my time at Cumulus where I gathered the experience of working in markets from #1 to market #200. You’re concurrently working in both PPM and diary markets and the differing methodologies call for different approaches and strategies.
Additionally, I have experience in streaming, digital and podcasts, as well as in consulting artists and their managers. I’ve also had extensive exposure in marketing, and have coached talent at multiple levels in both network and local radio and television.
I believe my entire portfolio of diverse experiences places me in a very unique position to offer a variety of best practices suitable to a wide range of clients.
What are the biggest challenges for you in dealing with your clients today?
The playing field is so much more level these days. You have to focus on the differentiation of the product to ensure you resonate on several levels like content, imaging, branding and digital. You have to look at unique ways to make individual audio products stand out, and you have to be very strong and very tactical in your marketing.
We are competing against all audio and not just radio. If it’s audio, then it’s a competitor. Getting many, not all, radio broadcasters to change from their old ways is difficult. Too many are doing what radio has done since the advent of PPM in 2001. A lot has changed in the past twenty years. Radio, has to adjust to compete.
In what areas of the wide umbrella of services you offer do you derive the most enjoyment from?
There are two areas where I find great joy. One is training Program Directors, whether it’s helping individuals who are entering that first programming job, or they’re going from a small/medium market to a major market. Helping that individual to understand the intricacies of being a modern-day programmer who handles talent that is suitable for today and very much unlike the old days.
The second area is coaching talent. I love the mentoring aspects of coaching and helping the talent to hone their skills, finding their sweet spot and what they do best. It’s almost therapy in that you’re pulling out of them what they really want to do and helping them do it to achieve the goal.
What do feel radio’s biggest challenges are going forward?
Radio’s challenges (and problems) center around creating better content and improving the listening experience. The greatest challenge is in how we are financed as an industry. Many broadcasters have significant debt as the result of the mad buying spree that followed the Telecom Bill of 1996 which dramatically changed the laws regarding consolidation.
The bottom-line goals are still the same though. We need to respect the value of contemporary talent and give them the tools to entertain, we need to invest in research, we need to recapture the benefit of providing music discovery and we need to present entertainment with less interruptions.
Are you concerned about other issues like the erosion of the younger demo and competition from DSP’s?
When I talk to younger people, they say to me, “Well radio’s pretty much over, isn’t it?” They’ve been saying that for a long time. I remember about ten years ago, I was on a plane and someone sitting by me said, “Well what’s radio going to do now?” That was a decade ago.
The level of competition is greater today and the world has changed to where we’re having to fight to stay front-and-center on the priority stack of your auto audio system. It is not radio’s birthright to have an audience. We have to earn it every day, especially with the younger demos.
The reality is that radio itself is not the problem. We have great distribution. Everyone else including SiriusXM, Apple Radio, and the various DSP’s, all wish they had the amazing distribution we have. The problem is the product. These other competitors are focused on creating great content. Radio needs to take their attacks seriously.
However, I don’t know if many owners have the stomach to do what needs to be done. We need to play fewer commercials, play more music, and get back to innovating more musically. Win back the benefit of providing music discovery. No one needs to own five stations in a market with a lot of format overlap. Make your cluster more diverse in the programming it offers. More than anything else, we have to improve the listening experience.
Given the aforementioned debt-load issues of most of the major radio groups, do you feel the listening experience has taken a backseat to these fiscal issues?
When I listen to a radio station online, those people who are not doing 100% simulcast, (total line reporting), just don’t sound as good as those who do. You hear the commercials upcut, the jingles cut off, music interrupted or an on-air personality’s conversation ended abruptly. The real misfortune is that it seems as if some companies don’t make the listener experience a priority. They’re not focused on making it as good as it can be, which is not favorable for the medium’s growth.
My suggestion is for owners of clusters in various markets to take some of their underperforming stations and run four sixty-second commercials an hour. They could then focus on playing more music. A listener will sit thru a sixty-second message to hear the music they like on the other side. These are strategies that are very obvious but they are not being discussed in boardrooms.
Do you feel a schism exists between the boardroom and the frontline programmers/talent to the extent that it breeds insecurity among the rank-and-file local staffers?
I don’t fault the big companies for having to make really tough decisions and eliminate people. I know, having lived that corporate life. If you’re not able to be in business then a lot more people lose their jobs. You have to do what you have to do in order to survive if you’re leading a company.
My frustrations are more along the lines of people who are focused on trying to cut costs versus improving the product. The concept in my mind is, if you have a better product, then you’ll take money from the other competitors. My philosophy has always been to create the absolute best product in order to take money off the table from internal and external competitors, therefore, you are delivering a better product, while also doing well financially.
What is the most optimistic advice you can give the industry about the future of terrestrial radio from your vantage point?
There’s plenty of life in the medium and we need to consider strategic options to ensure its vibrancy. The industry needs to fully take advantage of its amazingly large distribution platform and focus on improving the listening experience. We need to deliver the very best product, because the growth we can enjoy is directly correlated to the quality of the product and the financial rewards that will ensue.
We continue to look at DSP’s and other music and spoken word services like podcasting, as the greatest competitors we have, but those one-to-one experiences won’t have the depth of our mass media experience. We have this enormous volume of people consuming our radio products daily whether they’re picking it up on an AM/FM receiver, streaming, on any kind of SmartSpeaker, or any other digital device. Radio is everywhere and much bigger than our other audio competitors.
The problem is we’ve allowed the product quality to erode and that must stop. Radio needs to be pointed in the right direction to return to growth mode. I’ve sat in meetings where people talk about how radio is an “eroding business.” We are not print! Print was an eroding business. The technology changed which turned their model upside down. The technology has changed in the radio business and we have to adapt and adjust to those changes.
If McVay Media had a motto, what would it be?
Always make your best move first…instead of last.
