A Legacy Of Reach: One-On-One With David Kantor

Last month, Urban One’s Radio Division CEO David Kantor announced he is retiring at the end of 2024. His career has seen grand achievements throughout his time as President of ABC Radio Networks, Senior Vice President for Network Operations at AMFM Inc., the co-founder of Reach Media, and, ultimately, the CEO of Radio One.

With eleven years on our 40 Most Powerful People In Radio list, Radio Ink talked with Kantor about his observations after decades in the industry, recollections and lessons learned, and his thoughts on radio’s future.

Radio Ink: Let’s open with a unique achievement: you’re the only person on this year’s 40 Most Powerful People in Radio list who was on our very first ranking back in 1996.

David Kantor: And I’ve been on for three different companies.

Radio Ink: We’ll certainly miss you on the list come next July. Since that first list, so much of the industry has changed, to say the absolute least. How has your perspective changed? 

David Kantor: Well, the industry is nothing like it was back then. Consolidation and the economic situation that radio has gone through over that time has changed the business. We’ve survived 2008, COVID, et cetera, and that has changed the whole outlook of the radio industry. The biggest players consolidating have brought the cost structure of the business down. It all led me to focus on syndicated and group-run programming. 

Radio Ink: In that time, what’s something that you think the radio industry has forgotten in that time that you think is important to return to? 

David Kantor: I think we’ve forgotten to super-serve our audiences. In the old days, we used to do a lot more community service than I think we do now. We [at Radio One] still do quite a bit, and I think a lot of the other operators do, but nothing like what we used to. Some of that is tied to cost cutting, but some is symptomatic of the changing times. During COVID, remotes and a lot of events that we used to do for the community went away, and a lot of them did not come back. 

We have to remember, at the end of the day, radio is a vehicle to entertain and bring in as many listeners as we can. That includes super-serving select communities, whether they be Urban, Hispanic, or Conservative – those are all subsegments that each need different voices and care.

Radio Ink: Throughout your career, is there one achievement in particular that you are most proud of? 

David Kantor: I think the biggest would be the national rollout of The Tom Joyner Show. The Tom Joyner Show ultimately, in my opinion, elected a President, with Barrack Obama and brought together the African American community like it had never been brought together before. Tom’s show led to The Steve Harvey Show, led to The Breakfast Club, led to Ricky [Smiley]’s show, led to D.L. [Hughley]’s show. In Urban, Tom led to a syndication takeover of that format.

When I presented it to ABC Radio, we owned no Urban radio stations and we had no other Urban network programming. I told them that if the show didn’t work, they could get rid of me. That’s how much I believed in it. And it paid off.

Second to that would probably be the launching of Disney Radio and ESPN Radio because neither of those things had been done in terms of syndication networks at that time. They were significantly different than anything being offered at the time. 

Radio Ink: On the flip side of the accomplishment coin, no one likes failure, but it’s a great teacher. What’s a risk you took that didn’t pan out, but taught you a valuable lesson? 

David Kantor: We looked at liberal talk at length when I was at ABC, but that never went anywhere and most of that talent – like Rachel Maddow – ended up at MSNBC.

Programming in radio in particular is like drilling an oil well, you do all your work, and you lower your risks as much as you can, but there is no guarantee any program is going to be successful, but you got to try it. And some work and some don’t. 

I remember we tested a show with Ted Nugent for Rock stations. The testing was through the roof because he is a polarizing personality, but we just found out that it was too risky in what he was advocating for. Maybe in today’s Talk radio, it wouldn’t be, but at that time, that was my decision.

In baseball, you’re an all-star if you bat .300. In radio if you bat .500, I would say you’re more than an all-star. So I think failure is part of the road that ultimately leads to better products. If something falls short, see why it doesn’t work, then either you find an alternative or a variation.

Radio Ink: Earlier you mentioned how you launched ESPN Radio during your time leading ABC Radio Networks. Look at women’s sports, look at the Olympics – the media opportunities for sports entertainment are growing as the media around those spaces drastically evolve. How can radio make the most of this moment and be in the middle of that growth? 

David Kantor: Sports is always difficult for radio because we’re a secondary service. We don’t own the programming. The leagues the individual teams do. So the difficulty in sports programming is you’re always just leasing the program, so to speak. That tends to lead to a competitive environment where your margins are very low.

It’s getting tougher with talent, too. We used to have very tight exclusivity on everything for radio. Talent, whether it be sports or talk or music, wasn’t really allowed to do other projects besides the radio show. Now talent have a much broader platform of opportunities to expand their brand. Whether it be through social, TV, cable, streaming, or podcasts, there are numerous ways for people to try to monetize their brand. 

We have to allow that freedom exclusivity to radio to let talent expand on other platforms and take an active role in that expansion. Radio brands are always more local-oriented, but now a talent can bring that brand with them to a national audience.

Radio Ink: SiriusXM and other audio businesses have launched massive ad campaigns talking about the emotional connection to audio. How can radio better present itself as a medium in your eyes? 

David Kantor: I think one of the benefits when radio was regulated on the number of properties we own, was there was a lot more of a sales presence at every level. You didn’t have three or four major owners in a marketplace, you had ten major owners in a marketplace. So there was much more canvassing for developmental and new business than there is now.

One of the things we’ve gotten away from is developing new business and educating people on the role advertising plays in a campaign. Resources, like anything else, are less amazing because there are less people, less money, less everything. That’s one area where radio is really dropping the bucket. There’s always going to be attrition, but we haven’t done a good job of filling that attrition with new entries into the pipeline. 

Radio Ink: So talking about major owners in major markets, you were essential in Urban One’s purchase of Cox Media Group’s Houston cluster last year. With that being one of the biggest deals of the past few years, how do you see industry growth at the on-air level and at digital? 

David Kantor: There continues to be compression for over-the-air because radio stations are in a flat or slightly declining situation in revenue now. Even while digital is growing, that has slowed too. 

[Urban One CEO] Alfred [Liggins] has said this publicly several times: there’s still room for more consolidation in this business. The way we’ve looked at it is that we pretty much dominate in our markets and nationally in the Urban arena. 

For us to grow or expand going forward, what we needed to do was become more competitive both locally and nationally in the general market. We couldn’t live on dollars for the African American segment, a single segment, alone. We made a conscientious effort to expand looking at expansion in different ways. 

The first would be growing Urban signals that we already operate, because of the cost benefits to doing so and economy at scale.

The second would be to branch out into non-Urban stations in markets where we operate. In Indianapolis and Houston, we were the dominant Urban player in both of those, but we were not a top three player in terms of the general market. Now we’re number one in Indianapolis and number two in Houston. That was critical for us to be able to compete because most local buys are more in the general market.

Radio Ink: How do you see the syndication marketplace right now with stations and advertisers? How has that changed and evolved? 

David Kantor: Syndication is an acceptable alternative for almost every operator now, and 25 years ago, it was not. When I first got into the network business back in the early ‘90s, people would say, “We’re not gonna syndicate, we’re doing all of our programming locally.” Then over time, syndication – both because of necessity and also because of its ratings success – has become much more acceptable. 

Look across most formats now; there are a lot of successful national shows. Ultimately that’s resulted in more network inventory for the marketplace, and the marketplace for network advertisers hasn’t necessarily grown with that inventory growth. So that’s put pressure on pricing.

Radio Ink: Let’s zoom all the way out again. What do you see as a green flag on the horizon for the industry and what’s a red flag that’s a cause for concern?

David Kantor: There are a lot of things we should be concerned about. Probably the biggest risk out there is that the pie is shifting and it’s not shifting in our favor.

The biggest opportunity is audio will always exist. And I agree with the people who look long-term that audio is no longer just over the radio, it’s the streaming, podcasts, social, and everything else that’s out there.

Proliferation of media and media outlets is a concern because that takes people’s time, whether it’s listening, viewing, or whatever, and diminishes it for other media. For traditional media like radio it spreads the advertiser pie further and the less revenue you have, the less you can plan to provide that programming.

Advertisers clearly no longer want just reach and broad reach. They want to know who they’re listening to specifically. They’d much rather reach a smaller audience where they know who they’re getting. With new media, there is this big green light opportunity in data or addressability operating and we don’t know how yet to do that in radio. We can sort of do it in streaming, but nowhere near the point TV has gotten to in streaming, where they can deliver a one-on-one ad. 

Radio, primarily, is still a single point to a huge population, whereas every other medium, whether it be the internet, television, or anything else, has moved much more toward being a one-to-one or one to a small group point. I think as streaming grows and we get the ability to break down signals geographically, you may see more of this ability. 

Radio Ink: As someone who’s been a long-time Top 40 List resident, what leadership advice would you give right now to the person who’s going to be in your position a decade from now? 

David Kantor: It’s all about your team. I’ve been fortunate. People have worked for me back to ABC, so that’s more than 30 years for several of them. And then they joined me at AMFM, and then they joined me at Reach and Urban One. You can’t do everything yourself, but you should understand how everything gets done, and then find a team who can implement what you want to do. And get in there and do it with them every chance you can.

Ultimately, we’re an industry of people. Our assets are a relatively small base of what we do. We don’t have to spend a lot of money on capital. We don’t even spend a lot of money on programming. But we’re selling an intangible. 

What we need is people who can be creative in their programming and people who can be creative in their selling. Look for that person who you can teach them what to do, that fits the type of person that will be the best fit within your organization.