In the spirit of today’s industry environment of wearing multiple hats, Jimmy Steal is a willing participant for Emmis in a variety of roles. VP of Programming, Digital National PD and PD of POWER 106/LA would more than fill most peoples’ daily agenda, and for Steal he would have it no other way. His pure passion for radio and music has driven him since his early days on-air, and the multiple challenges he faces weekly in all of the above areas suits his intellect focus for all things moving forward.
By Fred Deane
Jimmy Steal
“From my earliest memories I was a real music geek. Music has always been a very important part of my life and I realized at the time that I didn’t have the talent or focus to play a musical instrument. The only way to be around music all the time, while simultaneously meet the hundreds of people that I otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to meet was to be in radio.” And a fine choice at that as Jimmy Steal has crafted quite the industry career for himself.
Steal began his radio run at WXXL in Orlando as APD/MD/air talent, and was part of helping the station achieve its highest 12+ ratings ever at the time. He moved on to KEGL/Dallas in a similar role and achieved the highest ratings in the history of his day-part while helping to lead a team that scored the station’s highest 12+ share ever. Then it was off to WKRQ/Cincinnati as PD to guide the station to its highest 12+ ratings in five years. Are you detecting a trend here? Steal returned to Dallas as Clear Channel rewarded him with a Director of Programming & Ops gig overseeing KEGL (highest 12+ share since the mid-nineties) and KDMX (highest ratings in its 25 year history).
Someone else took notice as well, and in 1999 Rick Cummings and Emmis lured Steal to LA to take control of POWER106 where he led KPWR to its highest ratings ever across all demos. He was awarded VP/Programming stripes and given company wide digital responsibilities where he focuses his efforts on helping to create and implement national digital strategies and partnerships for Emmis.
In your role as VP of Programming and Digital PD for all of Emmis’ diverse properties, what do most of your discussions with your programmers gravitate towards?
Most of our conversations are based on optimizing our brand driving top tier terrestrial programming across all platforms. We understand that refining a limited number of our proven terrestrial assets for cross platform ratings/metrics performance makes a heck of a lot more sense than trying to reinvent the wheel for our digital content. We are extremely aware of the fact that we now live in a world where there is a wealth of content which has created a poverty of attention! As Futurist Gerd Leonhard is so fond of saying “We are living in an era where people need to re-imagine their companies!” An external digital disrupter can have their way with you unless you do it to yourself first!
Are you integrally involved with the PD’s regarding how they operate their respective stations?
At Emmis we have great PDs who don’t need Rick Cummings, our President of Programming, or I picking the hits for them. Our discussions are more strategic than tactical. We will discuss everything from meter counts to rotations to effective deployment of daily digital content, exceeding our heaviest listeners expectations, as well as dispersing the latest fun morning show execution ideas, etc.
Given the depth of variety of these stations, what concepts are universally applied across all formats?
It seems in PPM that keeping all of our stations as mass appeal as possible without violating our listeners’ expectations is certainly a popular topic we think is extremely important. Those formats who could not win in the PPM cume game such as Smooth Jazz or Urban Contemporary have seen the consequences of just relying upon TSL from a much smaller cume. Also as Jon Colemanpointed out very early on in the launch of PPM, we need to understand the balance between executing to win in the moment in PPM and tactics you may execute for your brand long term that can also be detrimental to your in the moment in PPM performance.
You’re a big proponent of digital application and implementation, how do prioritize the various digital platforms relative to audience engagement?
We don’t actually prioritize digital platforms that we deploy our content to, our audiences choose the platforms for us and their preference is our priority. We simply need to be wherever they are! Social Media expert Jason Falls, author of the book Nobody wants to Engage with your Silly Brand, recently said at the Toronto Digital Media Summit that engagement is not a goal it is a result, so build something that is timely, topical, funny, and is easily shared and I guarantee the engagement level goes way up. We’ve found that to be true.
Regarding the value of digital involvement, is it safe to say that programming and digital application are inseparable in terms of day to day/hour to hour thinking and strategy of radio these days?
Yes that is exactly right. We are in the content generation business across all the digital channels. Recycling usage across the platforms is a fine science. I think the ultimate deployment of our products in real time across all platforms (audio, video, text, and pictures) is the ultimate incarnation of our “radio” brands. We have come a very long way from just pushing out audio over one terrestrial channel to being close to having the seamless ability to deploy our brands across all channels in real time. This is a very exciting period for both content creators and content managers.
We have learned as we go how to best create, manage and distribute our digital content. It’s our goal to entertain our audiences wherever they are, on any device, whenever they are ready, in whatever format they want to consume our products. The goal of our brands is to positively impact consumer behavior by being ubiquitous across all platforms, and by the quality and timeliness of our content. In other words we need to always be ready to deliver their favorite content whenever they are ready to consume it in a seamless interface. The COO of J Walter Thompson recently said that we need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and become what people are interested in! Yes, much easier said than done, ha! Broadcasters have tons of quality content/personalities that drive a built in demand, and thankfully we’re not in the same boat as innumerable new digital music startups whose funny name, pile of mp3’s and no business model or brand equity don’t serve them so well!
What do you feel have been the more significant industry events of the past year and a half and how have they affected the direction and focus of the industry at large?
I think Nielsen’s purchase of Arbitron could have significant ramifications. Time will tell us if the resulting integration will be a net positive for broadcasters or not, like everyone else I sincerely hope it’s a great thing for all parties. Also I think a lot of digital music providers have finally reassessed their initial thinking on radio. I think they have revised their take recently by figuring out that radio, despite the fact that it is perceived as a “traditional” media, has nothing routine about the amazing relationships we have with our audiences and our ability to impact behavior both digitally and in the real world. I think they were quite surprised at our innate ability to time and time again come up with original content, curated by unduplicatable personalities who drive user behavior which positively impacts both metrics and revenue generation. It took them a long time to really see how radio, the original social media, is still as vital as it ever was!
Is it necessary for radio as a medium to compete with the massive audience scale and number of uniques of cross media companies in the digital world like Google, Amazon and AOL?
Google and AOL are pipe lines and don’t produce content. Amazon is a digital retail brand. While all of these iconic companies are gargantuan success stories, and we do compete with every one of them for user eyeballs and ears, I do not see them in the same exact lane as entertaining radio brands, we’re in show business!
Given the new-found collaborative initiatives among radio groups, do you feel the industry has made strides in collectively leveraging itself as a stronger competitor in the vast digital arena?
It is not my place to comment on other companies digital initiatives because all I’m privy to is their consumer facing exteriors and not their business models or long term thought processes. I can speak for Emmis and can honestly say since bringing in the brilliant Angie May as our VP of Digital that our Emmis Digital strategy, focus and execution has never been better. It is a very exciting time for us! We have been absorbing a lot of digital input and tracking an abundance of data that has informed our products with these behavioral insights. James McQuivey of Forrester Research suggests the CBSP approach (customer, benefits, strategy and product). Notice he starts with customer first and ends in product! Too often we are focused internally on what we think should be our next priority, when more realistically we should be asking our end users what it is they need next? I think we’ve been doing pretty well when you consider that last year we were #1 nine out of twelve books , won Radio Ink’s Best Radio Station Website Award, and were recognized as Radioscopes #1 brand for social media influence.
Do you find value in this more collaborative radio group approach going forward?
Absolutely, we all need each other to evolve our people and organizations as rapidly as possible in the new digital economy. While we are all familiar with the challenges of trading in our analog dollars for digital dimes, it is great to be at Emmis where our leaders create and change cultures, as opposed to some of our competitors who simply manage and administrate within the withering old cultures. The job our corporate staff has done, led by Jeff Smulyan and Pat Walsh, has been truly transformative. Pat and Jeff have massively reduced our debt and have returned our agility in responding to the needs of our rapidly changing marketplaces. It has given us the freedom to once again make intelligent investments in emerging technologies as well as other broadcast properties should the right deals come along. Jeff Smulyan’s work on getting FM chips into cell phones has been a huge plus for our entire industry. Imagine free radio entertainment without the worry of data charges! Our amazing CTO Paul Brenner has come up with Tagstation which is a beautiful hybrid radio data service interface enhancing the value proposition of radio listening over your smartphone.
KPWR has been a dominant force in the LA market. What do you attribute your success to?
A staff that has an amazing amount of passion, and naturally thinks like the fans of the music that they absolutely are! We are constantly asking ourselves in all the critical execution areas how can we be better? How can we evolve without compromising our brands core values? What do people expect in our content? What do they expect from our voice? How can we improve the presentation of our tent-pole events every year like Powerhouse and Cali Christmas?
On air Big Boy is absolutely the most amazing morning talent ever, he just exudes both funny and compassion (when appropriate). Big’s crew is headed up by super producer Jason Ryan, and support crew Rikki Martinez, Krystal B and Louie G. Also our newest Power personality, night jock J Cruz is just killing it. We have an amazing team of pros in marketing such asDianna Jason our VP of Marketing and Fernando Lujan our Promotions Director. They are both charged with refreshing our iconic event brands year after year and do a wonderful job of it!
On the programming side we are stacked deep with great talent such as E Man our APD/MD, Felli Fell our Afternoons/Mix Show Coordinator (and platinum selling artist of his own), Yesi our Midday/AMD personality, Jeff Garcia our multi-hat wearing Program Coordinator, our overnight personality Mando is also a MTV personality, Juice our Imaging Expert/Mixer, and Maat Pappour Power Digital Media Director, are all part of an exceptional team of pros who understand that great content quickly created and deployed on a daily basis is a real difference maker.
How closely do you work with your Hip-Hop counterpart in NYC at Hot 97 and how much of the East/West cultural differences still exist between both coasts?
E Bro is a terrific PD and a great on air personality! While Power 106 and Hot 97 are both Hip Hop stations truthfully a lot of the similarities end there. Hot targets African American listeners, and Power 106 targets English speaking Latinos. So some things may work on one coast but not the other, not just because of geography, but due to differences in target demographics. That being said sound PPM programming strategies are pan-formatic so there is always cause to discuss our latest execution insights or mishaps!
The Pop music cycle has been exceptionally strong for a long period of time. Has this affected your programming strategy at all, and can Hip Hop ever regain the strong influence in Mainstream it held during the course of last decade?
Hip Hop popularity, just like any musical genre, is cyclical. When any genre of music hits the doldrums you have to adjust accordingly the breadth and depth of your radio station which usually means a bunch of tactical short term decisions that can hold you up when the music is not going your way. Of course when the music is great we’re all geniuses! Thank you Guy Zapoleon for your original music cycles theory!
How do you relate to the music industry these days and are you doing anything differently that further engages new music with the station?
We probably break more new music than any other station in the country. Way before the term “music discovery” became the buzz word of the digital music IP set Power 106 was simply playing an hour of all new music in the middle of the day, yup, not buried on Sunday night at midnight, every day Monday-Friday at 2PM. Now of course it is done in a well packaged show and branded across all platforms as the place for new music. We’ve also done a national “Who’s Next on New @ 2” contest looking for the best new rapper in tandem with Hot 97 our sister station. This competition has become a valuable brand extension of our shows and has impacted our digital metrics in a significant way.
How does being a more intimate company, regarding the station, management and personnel sides, play to Emmis’ advantage?
I truly love our Emmis culture, starting in LA with our VP/GM Val Maki. Val sets the tone for a fun, learning culture where everyone is encouraged to better themselves, help others, and in turn increase their value to the company. This culture I believe has been responsible for our long list of wins. It is easier to be a change agent in an environment like ours since there are no layers of management to get through. Everyone is pushing in the same direction, trying to do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reason, all to simply improve our performance. I’m a big believer in the Japanese word “Kaizen” and use it a lot at Power. Kaizen is the Japanese word for the relentless quest for a better way, constant improvement!
You work closely with Emmis President of Programming Rick Cummings. How much has Rick influenced you as a programmer?
Rick Cummings, amongst many other things, is a master at moving the whole enterprise forward even under the most challenging of circumstances. It comes down to the person he is as well as the knowledge he possesses. Rick is truly a leader’s leader! This interview could not possibly be long enough to share with you everything I’ve learned from Rick. Every day I realize just how lucky I am to be in such great company, at such a great company!
[eQB Content By Fred Deane]
