Scott Herman has enjoyed a long and productive media career holding key posts in several major markets at some legendary stations. One of several professional highlights occurred in November 2007 when CBS Radio named Herman EVP of Operations, working as President/CEO Dan Mason’s right hand man. Today, he and Mason pilot a radio group that is loaded with top notch executive and programming talent confronting the multiple challenges of the day and navigating the ultra competitive cross media marketplace.
Scott Herman
Today’s corporate radio executive must be game ready and battle tested practically on a daily basis. He must be committed to perpetually raising the bar for his company in strategy, planning and execution. He must also be a supreme trouble shooter and very solutions oriented. Scott Herman’s impressive media experience allows for all of these qualities to surface to the top as part of his executive make-up.
Herman’s career began in 1978 at 1010 WINS/New York, a station that plays a big role in his development as a radio executive, as in 1993 he was appointed VP/GM of America’s first All-News station. His experience includes stints at KYW-TV and KYW-AM/Philadelphia, WMAQ/Chicago, WNEW-FM/New York and as New York Market Manager for Infinity overseeing WINS, WFAN, WXRK, WCBS-AM&FM and WNEW-FM.
In April 2007, Herman was named EVP of Operations for CBS Radio where he is responsible for 68 stations in 18 markets. Herman also spends much of his time working with the arsenal of CBS Radio owned all-news and news/talk stations and assisting President/CEO Dan Mason in New York, LA, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Boston and Detroit.
The depth of your experience is extremely impressive. What tenets of business have guided you throughout your career?
First of all I love what I do, and it certainly makes it easier to come to work every day if you love what you do. From the first position I ever had, I never stopped working. I think it’s very important to constantly expand your knowledge base and learn new things. When I worked as a News Director, I was always active in sales way before it was fashionable to do that. When I did get my first GM job, I was very comfortable in sales even though I came from the programming end. It’s real important for everyone to get a working knowledge of other departments at the station and there are lots of ways to do that. You don’t need to go outside your building to find great mentors. It’s really just working on it, talking to people, making friends with people, asking for help and seeking mentorship. I don’t think enough people do that.
How important is it to the CBS Radio culture to foster mentorship experiences among its employees?
It’s always been a part of our culture. Just look at the top of our company: (CEO) Dan Mason mentored me and I mentored (SVP/Programming) Chris Olivero. I believe it does go on in our stations and markets. We have very active internship programs. We’re always looking for people who are highly promote-able, so we can move them through the system. We certainly look inside our company first. We’ve always promoted sales managers through the system and many of our Directors of Sales were GSM’s in our company. We definitely believe in looking inside first.
Given your vast experience can you identify the “turning point of your career” and what was it about the circumstance that made it so personally eventful?
The biggest turning point is when Dan Mason made me the VP/GM of 1010 WINS/New York in 1993. I had done both radio and TV in the company (Group W). I had been a PD and a News Director, but that was the first time someone had the faith in me to give me the helm of a radio station, and he gave me the biggest revenue producer in the company. It was clearly my turning point. It was the first time in my career that I was responsible for ratings and revenue. Dan showed great faith in me back then and that started this wonderful 18 year relationship, and he really didn’t know me very well at the time. He just thought I was the right guy for that job.
You’ve worked with some very accomplished radio execs along the way, who have influenced you most and what were the lasting impressions these individuals had on you?
First and foremost is Dan because he gave me that GM shot and showed great trust in me. He then once again, showed a lot of faith in me when he restructured the company several years ago and put me in charge of operations. He taught me a great deal about leadership, loyalty and decision making, and that every decision doesn’t have to be made instantaneously. Sometimes the best decision is the one you slow down on.
There was Joel Hollander, who plucked me from station management and moved me up to corporate. I had a couple of great GM’s along the way who mentored me, like Roy Shapiro, the long time GM of KYW-AM in Philadelphia. Roy taught me a lot about how important it is for people to have fun at a radio station and how sometimes the best work gets done in unstructured meetings when you’re just talking about the business. It doesn’t always have to be a structured meeting with formal presentations. Some of the best mentoring you can do is that one on one time you spend with someone just talking about the business. Roy is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.
Earlier in my career I worked with John Waugaman who was the GM of WINS and later went on to become the head of sales for Westinghouse. In the early eighties, he was one of the guys that moved me into upper management. He saw something in me and made me a News Director and also talked me up inside Group W.
As the CBS Radio executive directly under the CEO, how closely do you work with Dan on strategic and business decisions and in what areas do you find yourself taking a lead role?
Dan likes to call it a partnership. We’re in and out of each other’s offices all day long. There’s constant dialogue going on. Our management styles are very complementary. We kind of split the company. Dan likes to say there aren’t “Dan markets” and “Scott markets,” they’re all of our markets. But Dan concentrates on the Top 10 markets and I focus on the other eighteen. However, we both look over all the markets. It just depends on what needs to get done. We have a Core Four of Dan, Anton Guitano (COO of Local Media) and Michael Weiss (President of Sales). The four of us have an exceptional working relationship.
I have the lead role in dealing with our Westwood One relationship so I tend to deal with the networks. I represent the company on the iBiquity HD board. I also represent the company as the Chairman of the RAB and on the Ad Council board.
Is there more of a need today for radio groups to welcome more of an “outside/in” perspective as the competitive landscape in related fields gets increasingly more crowded?
It’s always important to hear other points of view, but as part of the CBS Corporation we have the luxury to meet with Leslie Moonves on a regular basis, and I don’t think there’s a more dynamic leader in media today than Leslie. We have that advantage where we can sit and talk to him about business in general and more specifically, about radio. He talks about other businesses that he’s involved with in the company, and I feel we get that outside perspective in our meetings with him and Joe Ianello, our CFO. I don’t feel we need to necessarily go external to get that perspective because CBS is in the television business, the syndication business, the content business, the movie business, and we’re certainly in the digital business. We’re a part of this dynamic global media company and that give us great insight to help run our business better.
What is your assessment of the financial direction of the radio industry these days, are you sensing real momentum out of the doldrums of the past two years?
I certainly think that the bottom is done and we’re moving forward now. We’ve had several positive quarters in a row, but I wouldn’t say we’re going back to the days of +15. But it’s a healthy business. The one thing that always gets my dander up is when people talk down about radio as a business. If you could start a business tomorrow that generated top end cash flow margins of 30% and more, you would kill for that – and that’s the business we work in every day. I still see radio as a very healthy business. It’s certainly a business that reinvents itself every so many years. We’ve weathered the storm against every technology that’s come against us, and we’ve always been ready to compete and move even further. We’ve shown no decline in audience. In fact, audience has grown from year to year and revenue is back in the growth mode. I believe we’re in a very good position.
You learn a lot about your company when you face extreme adversity. What were the most significant things you learned about your company during those difficult recessionary times?
The best part of being at CBS is we didn’t need to over-react. We have a very successful company where we can weather the storm better than most that have big debt. We also reviewed if our best people were doing enough and if we were structured the right way to do business. I look back ten years ago at the number of people we had when I was Market Manager in New York where we had six GM’s, six GSM’s, and PD’s at every station. When business got tough we had to reassess that model. And by the way, it was not the right model in today’s world.
Another positive is we didn’t make any cookie cutter moves. We didn’t mandate that every market had to have one of this or two of that. We strategically looked at every market, the number of stations and who our best people were and what their skill sets were, and assessed whether we had the right people in the right place. Certainly when you look at Los Angeles and look at someone like Kevin Weatherly, one of the best programmers in the country, and the opportunity for Kevin to do multiple stations was good for Kevin, good for the company and good for radio. We did that market to market. If business hadn’t gotten so tough, maybe we wouldn’t have been so quick to re-think the old model. I’d like to think that we would have done it anyway, but maybe we wouldn’t have done it as quickly as we did it.
What were the company goals during the recession and what was the vision coming out of it?
We worked very hard to make sure we didn’t lose any ‘A’ level people across the board: morning shows, air talent, sales people and management. Coming out of the recession we knew when business improved we were better positioned and poised than most because we still retained and recruited the best. We brought a lot of ‘A’ level people into the company during the recession like Jim Ryan and Dom Theodore. We recruited top talent like Nick Canon and Carson Daly. We were able to also have great shows develop during that time like Boomer & Carton. We were able to retain great talent like Mike Francesa. I wanted to see us come out of the recession and really take advantage of business being more robust, with advertising dollars coming back and the auto business coming back, because I knew we had the product and ratings to support that. We also assessed where we could get better, and the biggest area was digital. We continue to get better in digital every single year. We have two terrific executives running our digital business, Ezra Kucharz (Spoken Word) and David Goodman (Music).
Our strategy to take our News, Sports and Talk stations and combine them with our TV stations in markets and create our local media sites has been a terrific success. We had a different strategy for our music group and those two strategies have really paid off for us.
Given the various digital platforms the company has engaged in, are you seeing any substantive growth in revenue from those areas?
We’re generating a good deal of money with digital. Every year it becomes a higher percentage of our total revenue. You have to be in the digital business these days. You can’t function as just a radio company because the businesses are so complementary to each other. We have all this great talent and you want them to take full advantage of connecting with the audience via blogs, video, social networking, and you want your audiences to come online and share experiences with them. It’s such a great way to further the investment you made in the talent and to further develop the great brands you have in radio stations. You have to be in that arena and we’ve done it very well.
Has the company become more aggressive with investment in human resources in the digital areas?
You would be amazed if you saw our digital group. We’ve invested a lot of money in people. We’ve invested a lot of money on the technical side of it and we have a large group of people working behind the scenes developing software, apps and content on our music side and our news side. We’ve also added sales people. We have a digital sales manager in every market and we have people solely dedicated to selling digital in many of our markets even though it’s part of every salesperson’s job. It’s no different than having dedicated sales people selling play by play sports where we have teams. We’ve absolutely added a lot of digital jobs over the years and we will continue to add those jobs where necessary.
As radio continues its quest for digital evolution and expansion what traditional areas of radio should not be left behind?
It’s all about content and being local. I believe the one thing we do terrifically well, especially with our big News/Talk stations, is serve our communities. We’re still very big believers in our staffs and managers supporting charities and good causes. Our managers are all on boards in their markets of various non-profit groups. It’s important to get your talent into the marketplace kissing babies and shaking hands and really getting close to your audience. I believe you need to be there during times of crisis. You have to be there for your community. Radio is local, local, local. It’s what sets us apart from satellite radio and Internet radio. We do it better than anyone else.
You can’t take the relationships with your audiences for granted. We have to be reliable and consistent. There’s an expectation they have when they put on our radio stations and we never want to fail on that promise to deliver. We entertain and inform them, and provide companionship for them. There are great relationships listeners have with their radio stations. Radio is such a part of the fabric of their everyday lives and we take that promise very seriously. We spend a lot of time internally talking about how to keep our stations top of mind and what we can do better. It’s why we work so hard to find and recruit great talent. We’re always looking for the next great morning show.
Given the magnitude of the Cumulus deal this year, and as the credit market loosens do you foresee more consolidation (or divestiture) deals on the horizon?
I’m not sure how many more big deals can get done. When you look at our situation, we’ve certainly made it public that we don’t feel like we need to sell. We’re certainly not going to sell at a lower price than we believe our stations are worth and we’re perfectly happy keeping the markets and portfolio we have. These mid size markets can be very profitable when they’re well run and the more of them you have adds up to a good chunk of money. I think you’re more likely to see new regional companies in the future like the Curtis Media’s of the world, but I’m not sure how many big deals can get done.
CBS Radio has several heritage brands in all formats with great longevity. What are the key factors in keeping a heritage brand on top of its game?
It’s really about understanding what those heritage brands do well and making sure you never waiver from that promise or expectation. It doesn’t mean don’t make changes or don’t take the product to the next level. It does mean don’t screw up the things that work really well. Too often, people want to tinker. They want to put their mark on something. One of the biggest parts of my job is reminding people that you don’t need to change something that’s working. On 1010 WINS, we’ve said “You give us 22 minutes, we’ll give you the world,” for 46 years. It’s a slogan that works and defines us. It’s not a slogan we need to change. We don’t need to sit in a board room with consultants and marketing executives thinking about a new position statement.
It’s also about having the right people shepherd the product and these unique brands. I don’t think anyone understands KROQ in Los Angeles better than Kevin Weatherly, and he is the protector of that brand; the same with Marc Chernoff at WFAN or Norm Winer at WXRT. The other way you keep heritage stations on top is to make sure that the content is king, and the programmers really own that brand. They know what got them there and they know what keeps them there. We listen to those people. We’re not micro managers. We give our people playbooks, but they have a lot of room to call an audible and a lot of room to change plays. That’s what it takes. It’s why we have all these heritage brands that are still performing well.
[eQB Content by Fred Deane]
