Cumulus Media CEO Mary Berner will appear on Radio Ink’s 2016 NAB/RAB Radio Show cover in September. She makes her debut on our 40 Most Powerful People in Radio list at number three — that’s only one notch below the spot held by previous Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey last year, before his ouster by the board in September. Dickey took the second position in both 2014 and 2015, following four years at number three.
Needless to say, Cumulus has a vast footprint across the country. That alone places its leadership in a top qualifying position. With 453 radio stations in 90 markets, as well as its Westwood One networks and numerous digital channels adding more than 8,200 radio stations as affiliates, the broadcast giant is estimated to reach 245 million people every week.
That translates to control over a lot of radio revenue and thousands of employees. But other numbers — such as $2 billion debt and sharply lower stock prices — mean Mary Berner has her work cut out for her to turn the company around. And she’s repeatedly said that all options are on the table. That means Cumulus continues to provide plenty of water cooler talk throughout the rest of the industry; all eyes are watching. Berner appears to be a highly focused, no-nonsense leader who is not afraid to roll up her sleeves and tackle issues, both internal and external. She gets high marks from within the Cumulus ranks for her quick, attentive, and responsive style with employees, and mostly steers away from the customary press circuit and outside glad-handing.
No doubt that’s indicative of what she views as her priority: Cumulus and the people she needs on board if she is to turn it around. In an early and significant move, she made staff morale a priority, returning some decisionmaking to local markets. Having assessed that the company culture lacked focus, accountability, collaboration, and investment in human capital, Berner was quick to implement some changes aimed at stopping the floodgate of disgruntled departures — some estimates pegged turnover at up to 50 percent at the time she arrived. She’s also starting to put together her own team. In December, Suzanne Grimes was brought in to take over Westwood One, and in July, John Abbot came in as EVP, CFO, and treasurer.
As part of that strategy, a major new initiative was announced in January: Cumulus program directors began to report to market managers and were given control over the day-to-day programming of their stations, something that had not been the case previously. As Berner explained, “Who knows their markets better than the people who live and work there? We believe that the injection of more local insight and more effective corporate support into our programming decisions will drive improved ratings outcomes for our stations.” And drive a better return to the bottom line. The Cumulus board is betting that a woman with more than three decades of media experience and a track record of leading media companies to deliver strong financial performance and growth — she was named one of the Top Women in Media by Folio magazine in 2014 — can do just that.
In a word, how would she define her plan for achieving the goal? “We now sum up the Cumulus script for success in one word: FORCE: focused, responsible, collaborative, empowered. These are great values to live by,” Berner says. “And to stick to, too.” As she approaches her first anniversary at Cumulus, she offers this perspective on the medium she has joined and in which she now plays a major role: “We are fortunate to be working in a truly exciting medium with great diversity of content, enormous distribution, and an audience that maintains a massive appetite for, and real engagement with, all that we offer. That said, we have to get much better at how we tell that story and improve that communication to investors and advertisers.”
To subscribe to Radio Ink magazine in time to receive our 2016 issue of The Most Powerful People in Radio, call Sue Henry today at 561-655-8778.
#1- iHeartMedia CEO Bob Pittman
#2 – CBS Radio CEO Andre Fernandez
