When Jeff Dinetz took a top executive position at NextMedia in 2000 he was more than battle tested as a radio exec. After all, he had spent most of his career in the competitive New York City market slugging it out with the heavyweights. With NextMedia came a set of smaller markets and new challenges, but his formula for success didn’t change much at all.
Jeff Dinetz
Jeff Dinetz has a storied radio background that revolves around the country’s #1 market. After beginning his career at WHN/New York in 1981, he shifted to WHTZ/Z100 and was in on one of the most famous launches in radio history. In 1983 Z100 signed on as a Top 40 station and Dinetz was National Sales Manager. After a six year run at Z, Dinetz headed across the street to Emmis where he was appointed Local Sales Manager at WQHT/HOT 97, soon to be General Sales Manager.
In 1996 Jeff returned to Z100, now owned by Chancellor. Steven Dinetz was one of the co-founders of Chancellor and as Jeff relates, “Steven came to me and said it had been sixteen years and it was time for us to work together.” Jeff adds, “My response was that if I were to come and work with him at Z it would have to be as GM because I had trained my entire career for that job. I had either worked for or competed against Z for the past dozen years. No one was more qualified than me to run that station at the time.” Jeff was appointed VP/GM.
In September of 1997 Jeff had left Z100 when Evergreen had merged with Chancellor and the Evergreen management team was put in place. Jeff took a Regional VP position with Connoisseur Media, giving him exposure to managing radio in small and medium markets. In January 2000, Jeff was appointed EVP/co-Chief Operating Officer at NextMedia Group and six years later was named President/COO.
eQB presents excerpts from the June FMQB magazine Cover Story with
Jeff Dinetz, President & COO, NextMedia Group
“The first time I was at Z100/New York was history making. I went to a station that signed on the air on August 2, 1983 with no ratings, no anything for that matter, and I was coming in as National Sales Manager, an unenviable position when you don’t have any ratings.”
“Handing out a Z100 business card was better than having an American Express platinum card. It opened doors. It was theAmerican Idol of radio at that time. Everybody listened to it across all demographics. It broke color barriers.”
“The biggest difference the second time was getting Z100 back to the prominent position it owned in the eighties and early nineties. When I returned in 1996, I inherited a station that was Pop/Alternative and it was amazing that people stayed with Z for so long not hearing any of the type of music they were accustomed to.”
“Joining NextMedia in 2000 was a chance to be partners with two people I highly admire in the industry. Carl Hirsch is by far the best executive motivator I’ve known, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity too learn more from someone like Steven (Dinetz). Working with these two guys has been real exciting and has helped shape my career.”
“One of my staunch philosophies is to be honest with people. Your integrity is so important. My staffs know I would never ask anyone to do something I couldn’t get done. We have always been a company that knows all of our employees on a first name basis.”
“I speak to the GM’s every other day, but it’s not a problem if I pick up the phone and call a PD or Sales Manager at one of my stations. It’s not a problem if Steven (Dinetz) calls someone at a station, and managers call up the chain too. We all check our titles at the door. We don’t have a lot of layers and it plays to our direct approach philosophy.”
“We have a lot of ex-owners that are our GM’s and when we hire them we expect them to operate their clusters as if they owned them, but I want to be involved and I don’t want to be surprised. My people know I don’t mine dancing as long as I know the steps, but it’s not micro managing. It’s hands-on without being hands around your neck.”
“I believe being local is important, so is being compelling. If you can put on the Ryan Seacrest show, and if you have a great PD using today’s technology, you can make the show sound local like we do at WERO. Our PD Chris “Hollywood” Mann does a great job there. If you didn’t know better you’d think Seacrest was sitting in New Bern, North Carolina doing his show everyday.”
“There’s not a broadcaster out there that doesn’t want to be live and local in every day-part. The economy is dictating a lot of what we’re seeing today and people are fighting to keep their doors open. So you have to make a decision. It hurts having to part with people who have been with you for years. We are not the only industry losing two to three people in an effort to save 30.”
“Anything that’s preventing you from touching hands with your listeners will be the first jobs to come back whether it’s bigger promotion teams or more talent in the field allowing you to cover the community better than you’re doing now.”
“The big buzzword in our world is interactive and NextMedia is being interactive-smart. We hired one person to oversee that whole initiative for us. Unlike a lot of companies that dove in head first and all they did was hire, hire, hire, and took losses, we were real smart to dip our toe in. We had it set up where we weren’t going to lose a dime in this area and we’ve been very successful and it’s in been real dollars.”
“One of the things I’m concerned about in general, and in the advertising world especially, is that we’re in danger of talking out both sides of our mouth. Finally we have the People Meter in place in a lot of the top 25 markets and we’re answering the clients’ needs of immediacy in providing real time information. Yet in markets 25 and up we’re still pitching our stations on archaic methodology.”
** QB Content by Fred Deane **
