‘CRS Heads Of State’ just added a couple industry heavyweights. David Field, Chairman/President/CEO, Audacy; and Bob Pittman CEO, iHeartMedia will be part of the series at CRS’22 February 23 – 25, 2022.
Also slated to appear: Caroline Beasley (CEO/Beasley), Ginny Morris (CEO/Hubbard), Bob Profitt (CEO/Alpha Media), and Bill Wilson (CEO/Townsquare) representing radio; Scott Borchetta (President/CEO, BMLG), Mike Dungan (Chairman/CEO, UMG), John Esposito (Chairman/CEO, WMN), Randy Goodman (Chairman/CEO, Sony), and Jon Loba (President, BMG) representing record label. The moderators include: Joel Denver (All Access Media Group), Erica Farber (RAB), Lon Helton (Country Aircheck/Country Countdown USA), and Mike McVay (McVay Media).
Registration and Information can be found Here.
Maybe Pitchman will run down the list of profitable companies that he has headed up over his many years in business.
I’ll update the list for him. Here is the complete list dating back for the past 40 years:
Sorry, but “same old, same old” names here, that have held their management positions over the last 10 years or more, while their stations continue to lose revenue and relevance.
These folks have nothing new or cutting edge to say. Most FM stations now owned by the big corps like iHeart are voice tracked, with long music sweeps followed by intolerably long commercial clusters, with a low paid announcer (not a personality) saying something mundane every once in awhile. Rinse, wash, repeat.
Where are the new dynamic leaders of radio? In the day, radio was programmed by young people in their late 20’s and 30’s, with innovative ideas and risk taking. And radio ruled.Sadly, now radio is mostly controlled by old “executives” focused on debt service and executive compensation. And just increasing your platforms (streaming) to just distribute the same plain vanilla, mundane content that is on FM, does not count.
FYI there are a lot of programmers in their 20s and 30s, and they too will be speaking at CRS. If you attend, you can hear them offer innovative ideas. The two people in this article are CEOs, not programmers. If you go back in the day, the CEOs of radio companies, whether we’re talking about John Kluge of Metromedia or Leonard Goldenson of ABC, were a lot older. That’s just how it is.