Brad Holtz’ first PD job – at Sarkes Tarzian Triple A WTTS/Indianapolis – came in 2002 when he was still tender in years and radio was still riding high. Now Holtz, who also serves as News/Talk WGCL PD, has to deal with the radical changes that have come almost monthly as the industry, technology and the economy changed. Now with PPM rolling out in Indianapolis, Holtz talked to eQB about how those changes have altered his approach to programming and managing his staff, as well as the impact they have had on his perspective of radio.
By Jack Barton
Brad Holtz
When Brad Holtz took the programming reins at Sarkes Tarzian Triple AWTTS/Indianapolis, his first PD job in 2002, he was tender in years and radio was still riding high, with stations fully staffed and money rolling in; most programming personnel were dealing with the creative aspects of their stations and the business people handled the financials. In the last eight years much has changed, and Holtz not only had to learn how to program a station while motivating and directing a staff, but also had to deal with the radical changes that came almost monthly as the industry, technology and the economy changed. While that may have been enough to derail anyone’s passion, Holtz’ only grew as he adapted and helped his staff acclimate themselves to the new broadcasting paradigm, and WTTS continued to grow on both the audience and billing sides. With PPM rolling out in Indianapolis, Holtz (who also serves as News/Talk WGCL PD) sat down with eQB to talk about the joys of working for a local owner, the changes in the industry, what they mean to his staff and its day-to-day work, and how those changes have altered his approach to programming…or not.
How many ways have you had to re-learn your job over the course of the last eight years?
Wow, what a question. There are two sides of it, technological and fiscal changes. We’re all in different fiscal boats than we were years ago, and we’ve all picked up more work. From a technological standpoint, we are now not just programming what goes over a stick. We have a huge thing that was never even around three years into my job, which is Facebook. There is just more attention paid to digital assets.
One of the things I’ve had to do is delegate more. I’ve had to oversee more stuff that goes into the brand. The thing I’ve had to constantly focus on is just managing the new work that has to get done. You have to do more with less, and you have to more effectively delegate the pieces of the puzzle that is becoming bigger and bigger.
You mentioned fiscal, and that wasn’t PD-speak at the end of the 20th century, or even the beginning of this one. How have your fiscal responsibilities changed and has it changed how you look at the creative side of programming?
For a long, long time radio was making a lot of money. We were in a very strong cash flow position. We had profitable brands and programmers had more leeway with budgets and could go out and just do some great radio. Companies weren’t afraid to spend what it took to get a great result. Then things hit the skids at the end of 2008 for everybody and terms like “free cash flow,” and “multiples” entered our vernacular. Now we were talking about things we thought only “the suits” needed to pay attention to. We had to think about how to get a perceptual in this year, while saving the night jock, or how to try to scrape out some marketing money while not losing a producer. Those are the harsh realities we all had to face and it made a lot of programmers keener business people. At the same time, what could be problematic with that scenario is that we take our eye off the programming ball and we forget about the art and the entertainment that goes into building a great radio station.
One of the big things I’ve had to do in the last two years is sit in these budget meetings and be keenly aware of the economic reality of our business, and in a macro sense the nation as a whole, while still getting in here and working with (MD/APD) Laura Duncan, (morning host) Paul Mendenhall and the ’TTS staff to create a great, exciting radio station.
So with limited resources and more work in the new paradigm, how do you keep yourself, and therefore your staff, focused on the creative parts of the job and still creating dynamic programming?
It starts with ownership, and we’ve been very, very, very lucky, to still be independently owned. We’ve been blessed with great owners, and great upper management who’ve let us do our thing. I’ve tried, as much as I can, to shield the staff from the non-programming things I’ve had to deal with in the last couple of years. You just try to keep a fun environment, even though it’s been tough, and people know it’s been tough.
How do you keep it fun?
First of all by letting them do their thing and letting them know that I’m going to do my job best by standing aside and letting them do their jobs; not micro managing, which I’ve never been a fan of doing. I also try to get them to think about the things that made them want to come and want to work here and want to stay working here, because after all it is a radio station. It’s show business. On some of the days where things were tough, we would do something fun – go to a concert and meet a band, get access to these artists and this great music, and then step away and say “Wow, this is why we’re doing this! This still beats a 9-5 desk job.”
Continuing to do those things has made it still intriguing for my staff. Again, I’ll go back to the fact that ownership has been incredibly supportive, and they’ve never breathed down our necks, and they’ve always been big cheerleaders for what we’ve been trying to do at ‘TTS.
Talk about the Sarkes Tarzian management paradigm a little bit, because while they have been supportive, one has to think there were points in the last ten years when it would have been easier to take a quick buck and sell.
Oh yeah, without a doubt. But our chairman of the board, Tom Tarzian, always reminds us we’re here first and foremost to provide service to the community and being a successful business will allow us to do that.
The idea of service and the community are the two guiding factors for our company in every property we own. So, that’s his guiding force, and that he doesn’t want to meddle, he wants us to follow the old cliché, “run it like you own it.” We view this as our station, and we can make decisions on our own.
What does service to the community mean at WTTS?
Well we’re here to serve adult music lovers and there are a lot of options for audio entertainment and music discovery. But we have felt that if we could do positive things in the community, we’d have a brand that had a distinctive edge over competition. That edge is the fact that we’re local, we’re staffed with real people, we’re here in the community, and we care about the things they care about. It serves all of us if our community does well, and we’re in this together.
I’ve sensed in the last ten years that there’s more detachment now, and people seek to be attached. People seek to be connected. And what a local radio station like WTTS can do with a goal of serving the community is bring together a community of like-minded people. I go to our events and see our listeners. I see the things we do. I see the community we’ve built in our database, and I think we’re accomplishing our goals, slowly but surely. The audience is coming together, they’re meeting one another, they have a common thread which is WTTS, and seeing that happen is just fabulous.
You mentioned earlier that one of the biggest changes since you took this job is technology. How do you use the other platforms to connect the station to the listeners?
Our biggest piece starts with our database, and we have a very healthy database, administered and guided by Ruth Presslaffand her folks. We’ve been with them since 2003. It’s gotten ridiculously huge, and the traffic and activity we look at every month has gotten incredibly impressive. We’re very happy with the growth and want to keep it going.
In terms of social media, I’m very fortunate to have some really smart people here that have a good vision, and of course theSBR Creative folks help us craft our digital strategy. But the people here who are working on Facebook and Twitter just have a really good sense of what would be of interest. We view it as another way to have a conversation and I’m taken aback at stations that use Facebook as simply a marketing tool, or a sales tool, and blatantly plug or promote things that just sound like advertisements. That’s not the reason we have this. That’s not the reason we need to utilize this. We are using this as another way to have a conversation and get a dialogue going with the community of listeners. And if you can create some conversation and get people talking, that’s exactly what we want. We see these things as enabling a much larger conversation and dialogue between our listeners and the station.
It’s interesting you bring up dialogue, as the dialogue between industry people – whether it’s radio-to-radio or radio-to-records – seems to have waned in the last few years. How important is it to maintain that interaction?
It’s very important and one of the things I’m most proud about at WTTS is the dialogue we’ve built and maintained with a lot of people. Be it the label side or other radio stations or maybe a research company, or local concert promoters. It’s been a very healthy dialogue. It’s productive for everybody.
We all have goals, and where the goals overlap we can collectively win. Record companies, radio stations and concert promoters have to have that dialogue to spark ideas, to create plans, to develop strategy in ways that you can strengthen your radio brand, and ways artists can develop, or concerts that your name is attached to can do well. It’s in our interest at WTTS to see artists were investing time in do well. It’s in WTTS’ best interest to see a concert with the WTTS name attached to it, do well. We have to have that dialogue. One of the side effects of more work and less time, less manpower has been that the dialogue has quieted a bit, and that’s a shame. That’s why I think (the FMQB Triple A Conference in) Boulder is wonderful. It’s a chance to see people we might only see once or twice a year. The personal touch is very, very, important and we value that. That’s why I’m very proud of the Music Director we have here, Laura Duncan. She’s been able to really keep a great dialogue going with the industry. I try to as much as I can, but obviously I can’t be on the phone as much as I’d like to. I’m thankful we have such a wonderful voice doing that for us.
You’re just entering the PPM world. How will that affect WTTS programming?
It’s too early to tell. I think the agencies and the buyers don’t really know what to do. There’s going to be a shift, a readjustment, on how people look at the market, and with the market itself. So there are just a lot of questions right now.
What we have the luxury of right now is the fact that under diary we had a very consistent Arbitron position for the last five or six years and the qualitative data on the station was very good. We have other ways and other studies and reports we can point to in trying to bring in new clients. But we’re also lucky we have a heritage status within the market. We have buyers and clients that have been with the station for a long time, and we feel that a local direct business approach is very effective in growing new business on the radio station. We also have a very sharp sales staff that can sell the quality of the product. But it really comes down to if we’re moving people into stores and making cash registers ring. That’s really the bottom line when it comes to local business. We’ve been able to do that over the last number of years, and the station’s eighteen years into this format.
That covers the sales end, but will the instant minute-to-minute results that PPM will bring impact the sound of the station?
I believe that what we’ve been doing over the last seven, eight years has been the right approach. In the few pieces of research I’ve done over the last eight years, we’ve been on target. We feel like we’re reaching our target, and the things I can look at every day have been increasingly positive. PPM isn’t going to change the way we do things. We’re not going to program to PPM. We’re going to program to the target listener. We’re always going to keep the methodology in mind. You make adjustments here and there to your clocks, or you might do a few things differently as far as the elements on your clock, but it would be foolish to take a completely different approach to PPM without seeing six months-to-a-year of how it’s affected your station.
[eQB Content by Jack Barton]
