Michael Newman
Michael Newman’s career in broadcasting has led him from programming radio stations to consulting them. His passion nowadays includes developing programmers while creating compelling radio. We recently caught up with Newman to get his read on the state of radio and the Rhythmic format today.
We last caught up with Radio Strategies President Michael Newman in 2003. Hip-Hop was booming as was his consultancy. Many feel within the last year Hip-Hop has hit a rough patch as many stations have failed to increase ratings which has caused some to flip formats to either Rhythmic AC or Mainstream Top 40, a format which now plays a fair amount of Hip-Hop and R&B. Newman who is no stranger to the Rhythmic format began his career in California as Music Director at Y97/Santa Barbara. From there he spent time at Hot 97.7/San Jose. He then landed in Houston atEnergy 96.5, where the station evolved into Mix 96.5. His next stop wasKDON/Monterey-Salinas where he programmed for over six years. Then it was on to Portland to program “The Beat.”
Eventually Newman began a radio consulting company and has been mentoring programmers ever since. During that time he also began a new business venture with NewMusicServer.com, an idea that was first intended to provide his clients with a place where they could go and easily download music. The site has since become a popular destination for programmers who want instant access to new music. But radio is and always will be Newman’s passion.
eQB presents excerpts from the April FMQB magazine Rhythm Up Close with Radio Strategies Consultant Michael Newman
On becoming a radio consultant…It was the next step. You program for years, and then you figure out “Hey, what else can I do?” I can either become a group programmer or maybe a General Manager. But I just liked the teaching aspect of it. I loved working with programmers and air talent, and then I found myself loving to fix things. That’s really my role along with [KXJM/Portland PD]Mark Adams, who works with me, to go in and fix a radio station on all different levels.
On what makes a great consultant… You have to be someone who can listen and see what the issues are. Some stations need a tremendous amount of help with vision and where they’re going. Others need to get the details put together; they’re just not all buttoned down with everything. Other stations do great off the air, but the product on-the-air doesn’t come through the speakers. It’s a mixture of all sorts of different things, but right now we’re in an age where a lot of the younger people have been elevated into programming positions, and really have not had a chance to have a mentor.
On the state of the Hip-Hop within the Rhythm format …. It’s probably in a lull and is not as hot as it was. I don’t think it’s over with. You’re going to see some icons come out in the next year. Pretty much ever since the Eminem and 50 Cent run died down it’s been quiet….Right now it’s the R&B vibe that’s coming through. Akon’s doing tremendous. T-Pain‘s song is unbelievable. Lloyd’s done very well. Bobby Valentino has an incredible new song…. Another thing that was big was the Pop artists. Justin Timberlake drops this album and everybody is like, “What the heck is ‘SexyBack?’” Nelly Furtado has done well. Interscope did a tremendous job with Black Eyed Peasin marketing them and Fergie. Top 40 has embraced all those artists, where Rhythmic early on was unsure of those artists because they were hit and miss. But midway through everybody decided: “Okay, we have to play these artists; we can’t give them up.”
On radio winning the war against the iPod… I don’t think we’re in a war with the iPod at all. The iPod is just a device that people can listen to music on. Radio’s job is to expose music. Sure lots of kids have iPods but back when we were kids we had cassette decks. You’ve always been able to record music and put it on something to play and take it with you, whether you’re recording a radio station or songs off an album. It’s just another way of doing it, but the great thing about the iPod is it’s digital and it’s very easy to transfer things back and forth and move around, and it doesn’t take up that much space. We don’t win the war with it; we work with it. It’s not something that you’re competing against. You’re competing against other formatted radio stations and other areas that are taking up your time as far as entertainment.
On the importance of radio’s online presence… If I owned a radio station I’d be all over with my Web site. Look at how many people are online. It’s enormous! You see it with MySpace. We all missed the boat on that… You’re also going to see Internet radios in cars roll out shortly, if not already. Everybody is streaming, or about to be streaming if they’re not; they’re all looking into it and doing it. That’s where radio can continue to brand itself to the online community. We have to make our sites appealing to consumers and to listeners so that they do come in and spend time. We have to have things they want on there, not just pictures of the parade we did last week. You need more things that are going to be of interest to the listener. We have to remember, there are still so many other things available that are taking up people’s time.
On HD radio…I don’t know that the model, and the way they’ve rolled it out, was right. If you don’t have anything great on the channel nobody’s going to listen… We love HD television because the picture is unbelievable. Think about the sound quality for HD radio, and who’s going to buy it. They’re marketing it towards an older demographic, which hopefully sound quality does mean something. The younger demographic does not care. They’re listening to their music using ear buds. They’re listening to songs on their cell phone…So the sound quality all these engineers are trying to drive towards, it’s great, but you’re going to spend all that money, where’s your return? I don’t see it. There are way too many choices. If you gave me an HD radio I would completely be lost, and I am in the business. Just imagine the consumer.
On the lack of young programming talent and fixing the farm system… It’s going to take work from the owners… if we are going to keep radio going there are two things we have to do: we have to develop talent and programmers, and we have to figure out what’s going on with these kids nowadays. If these kids do not listen to our radio stations, then we’re not going to have radio. News Flash: “Guys, it’s over!” The audience is getting older and unfortunately they’re dying off. These kids growing up now aren’t being branded with radio; they’re being branded with everything but. So our job better be to get these kids dialed into these stations or we’re not going to have anything.
On newmusicserver.com making an impact within the format… I had this idea about six years ago, and it took me almost a year to develop it. [Director of Operations] Benji Kurtz and I rolled it out just about five years ago. At the time, when I was talking to labels, they were like, “What’s an mp3?” Nobody had any idea what the hell I was talking about, but I saw this happening when I would see artists recording songs in the studio and making an mp3 copy and making it available. We came up with the idea to post the music on the site and make it available to our client radio stations at first. Then I felt like to save time for programmers, wouldn’t it be cool if all their CDs were all in one site and they could click on each one and listen to it and then they can click to get a broadcast quality mp3… Before you knew it, it was like wildfire. We went from 10 guys to 200 to 1,000 to 4,000 to now over 10,000 users.
On advice for young up and coming talent who aspire to become programmers…You have to learn everything you can from the people around you. Hopefully you have a great programmer in the building. I had an open door policy. Anybody who wanted to learn anything I would teach them. I would show them Selector; show them how I put a promo together; how I design a clock as far as the imaging; how we write promos and more. You have to stick your nose in and call around and see if you can get somebody on the phone and talk to them. Most everybody is so busy they don’t have time to teach anybody anything. That’s the problem. We’re so worried about what’s going to happen next, we don’t take the time to stop and enjoy the business and teach.
On the outlook for the Rhythmic format in 2007… It hasn’t been good; it obviously wasn’t good over the Fall. If you’re looking at it via ratings, it’s hard to say. Ratings with Arbitron have been very difficult because they have not been getting a good sampling of people because nobody wants to fill out a diary…period. Nobody has the time, nobody cares. That’s one of the problems we as radio programmers are up against. As far as the sales arm, you are what you are as far as delivering the product. If you have a great radio station and you can marry the advertisers to what you do, you can do really well. Radio still is the number one vehicle to get people in the door. It’s word-of-mouth. When you can go set up and broadcast live from outside of a place, and you can see the people show up right then and there. Nobody can do that but radio. We have to continue to find ways to go above what we do, to continue to get these clients what they need.
** QB Content by Bob Burke **
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