During his illustrious career, Hubbard Radio COO Drew Horowitz has been in the trenches selling radio. He’s one, like many others, that was thrown the yellow pages, as an account list, when he landed his first radio sales job. Today, Horowitz is one of the industry’s most respected and successful executives. And, he’s on the cover of the current issue of Radio Ink Magazine, which also features the Best Managers in Radio. One of the questions we asked Horowitz was how he believed the radio industry is going to get revenue growing again. Here’s what he had to say about that, along with a few other things, in an excerpt from that interview.
RI: What do you think it’s going to take to get radio’s revenue growing consistently again?
Horowitz: It’s going to take a concerted effort by the industry to do a few things. One, to work with the client base to make sure we show the true value of our medium. We have always been a reach-and-frequency medium, at least since I started in the business. And we still are a phenomenally strong reach medium. We touch about 93 percent of the people in this country every week. That’s powerful. I think if we could get everybody focused on getting that story told to the people that matter, showing our viability, we certainly could see the business grow. That’s going to take a lot of effort. But to sustain the business in the future, we’re going to need to do something in that realm.
Radio has the ability to aggregate huge numbers of people, and take those ears and those eyeballs and get into other platforms to deliver audiences to clients, whether it’s podcasting, digital, or something new that we don’t even know about yet. We have to have a strategy to grow our business over multiple platforms and not look at it as a singular platform.
If we can do that, as an industry, the future is bright for radio. It may not be a high-growth industry, but it’s a sustainable-growth industry in its core business, which can then create platforms to grow in other areas that could be extremely profitable and good for the business. We are very well positioned, if we’re smart, and we’re strategic, and we approach it from the right perspective, to see radio be around for another 100 years. Again, it may not be what it was 50 years ago, or 30 years ago, but it will morph and evolve and still be relevant.
RI: You were an AE who was then moved into management. Is that a good idea
these days, to take a top biller off the streets and make that person a manager?
Horowitz: I have mixed feelings about that. You have to really look beyond the individual’s billing capabilities. Because some people are just really great salespeople, but they don’t necessarily possess the qualities that you need, which are very different, to be in a leadership position and running a department.
RI: What are your expectations of the people that work for the company?
Horowitz: We spend a lot of time, effort, and money both in investing in our assets and making sure that we’ve got great strategies. We are actually one of the few companies that does strategic planning. We have an outside strategic planner for our radio stations. Twice a year we sit down with the management teams of each station, and those teams build strategic plans for the next 90 and 120 days, six months, three years. That is an important component of what we do.
We expect our people to work hard, hire great, talented people, and empower those people to do their jobs to the best of their ability and beyond. We need creative and innovative thinking. We need great ideation. We have to have an environment that doesn’t make people fearful of experimenting and trying things. For us to keep growing and evolving and being relevant in this highly competitive world, we’ve got to make sure that we get the best thinking to the forefront, and execute the best thinking.
You have to have the ability to not be risk-averse. One thing about working for Ginny Morris and the Hubbard family is that they are broadcasters. It’s in the DNA of the family, and the DNA of what we do as a company. We will try things. We will take some risks. And if you’re going to fail, fail quickly.
Reach out to Drew Horowitz by e-mail at [email protected]
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I am obliged to acknowledge and tip my hat to any senior executives who have done well – for themselves and their organization.
In the meantime, I won’t be holding my breath, either, as I wait for someone to declare a mandate to investigate, determine and apply ways of drastically improving on-air presentations and the generation of more effective ads.