On November 12, The Library of American Broadcasting Foundation inducted the 2024 Giants of Broadcasting & Electronic Arts at New York City’s Gotham Hall. Among those honorees is Skyview Networks President and CEO Steve Jones. Radio Ink spoke with Jones about his career and being named a giant of radio.
Radio Ink: As a lifelong radio talent, manager, and executive what does this honor mean to you?
Steve Jones: On every level, it’s an enormous honor. An incredible list of luminaries has already been honored, acknowledging people across the business in all aspects of television and radio. Fundamentally, it’s a celebration of the medium that we’re in, that we love, that we back so much.
I appreciate that it’s an opportunity to recognize the wonderful organization that the Library is. This institution is committed to memorializing and also making available to the public all of this incredible content that has been generated on radio and TV for decades. I think the most exciting thing is to be able to participate in an organization and support an organization that is doing so much for our industry. I’m proud to be associated with it.
Radio Ink: You’ve had an amazing and wide-ranging career in so many genres of radio, from news to sports to music. Is there a particular part of your career that you’re most proud of in terms of its impact on the industry or the audiences you’ve served?
Steve Jones: I appreciate that. Every one of those chapters has had its own distinct rewards and achievements. Every success I’ve enjoyed has been the result of team effort results.
I just feel so gratified and grateful for all of the people I’ve worked with. In the news part of my career, I was in different roles. At one point, I was a writer and a producer and that’s a much more unilateral sort of focus, particularly when you’re a writer. In my time at ABC, most of what I wrote was read by others, and that takes collaboration to bring that to life.
Being in charge of breaking news was an incredible responsibility, but also deeply satisfying intellectually and emotionally, because radio provides a public service. It was never lost on me when I was running newsrooms, producing news coverage, or writing news copy that ultimately I was there to serve the listeners. I was there to ensure that there was objectivity and accuracy. It was never about being first if it wasn’t correct.
When I was a disc jockey, it was a different relationship, much more focused on creating companionship, being entertaining, and celebrating the music. Even then, the formats and the artists superseded everything we did as on-air personalities. We were all aligned with that, and it was an incredible thrill for me. I never had a radio job where I didn’t have a direct connection to the music that I was playing.
I’ve been fortunate for the last several years to be in a role leading Skyview and being involved at a 360-degree level. That creates a deep understanding of the roles I didn’t have real visibility into when I was working in a newsroom or as a disc jockey. From the sales organization to engineering, traffic, and production, I see how important each of them is to create the necessary and expected output for both our affiliates and the audience.
Radio Ink: Since you first joined Skyview, you’ve grown from 5,000 to over 12,000 affiliates. You mentioned your 360 perspective, but I imagine that extends beyond the walls of Skyview with the work you do between companies. Sometimes the industry focuses too much on the differences – what do you see in common between radio companies that makes the industry stronger?
Well, Skyview provides a very specific role in the radio ecosystem. We unlock the revenue that is available and being invested into the network radio space. Our role is to help the radio groups, ownership groups, publishers, and personalities that we do business with focus on their crafts, while we provide business outcomes they wouldn’t be able to achieve on their own.
On a larger level, I think the radio industry has been combating so many business realities for so long. If you’re in the radio business right now, congratulations. You should have a “survivor and thriver” badge that you’re able to wear every day because you truly have earned that. We’ve been combating the disaggregation of audiences for several years. I think that all of us in the radio business and my colleagues at these companies have really shown that they have incredible entrepreneurial spirit and skill.
We’re all about how to solve problems, how to meet customer expectations, and do it most economically. That is a core skill set necessary for success in any business, but radio broadcasters are uniquely talented at it among media platforms.
Radio Ink: You talked about the Library of American Broadcasting Foundation and the Library’s mission of preserving radio history. As someone who’s worked on the news side, how is preserving radio’s news history specifically important?
Steve Jones: Well, it is often the first draft of history. Anyone who, from a scholarly perspective, wants to go back and understand what Americans were learning about when the news broke is going to be able to do that by re-listening to radio coverage.
And radio’s immediacy is undisputed. Having previously worked in an organization that had television as one of its platforms and from running the digital business for a few years, I can tell you that there was nobody within the ABC News business that could get on the air as quickly and as effectively as the radio team could. That’s what they’re trained to do.
To go back and listen to how radio has provided this essential service to Americans, I think is a fascinating part of what the Library offers. Radio is still, from my perspective, an incredibly effective and efficient way to consume information when it comes to news. It is the ultimate curation format. If you listen to an all-news station, you will get incredibly concise, accurate information on international news, national news, local news, sports, traffic, and weather.
This has been a skill that has existed in our medium for decades. It is interesting to hear the differences in what constituted news coverage or didn’t in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. The presentation and performance styles were different then, but in general, I think there’s a consistency in radio news. It’s about getting the facts, being correct, and being an authoritative source for your listeners.
Radio Ink: Maybe they haven’t been recognized by the Library yet, but who are your personal giants of broadcasting?
Steve Jones: There have been so many people who have supported me personally and helped me learn. It started when I was a 16-year-old who showed up at a radio station in New York. I was invited because I called the newsroom at WPIX-FM and a man named John Ogle answered the phone, talked to me for a few minutes, and then invited me down to the station.
It was Christmas break week and I was a junior. I went up to the 28th floor in the Daily News building, met John Ogle and the disc jockey Alex Hayes on this largely classic rock format and I was amazed. You get paid to do this? This is a job? I explained to him that I was interested in journalism and writing for the local school newspaper. He told me he was thinking of starting an intern program and asked if I would like to be intern number one. And that’s how this career started for me.
I then learned a lot about writing news copy, editing, and being factually accurate. Writing for news radio is different than writing for print news and news TV. That was a skill that John taught me.
As I went on, I had a series of people that were meaningful to me. John McConnell was running the ABC newsroom in 1994 and he gave me a big break there. Bernie Gershon, who went on to run different ABC News and Walt Disney Company business units, was incredibly supportive. Chris Berry, who’s still very active in this business, was a mentor.
Triton President John Rosso, Kate O’Brian, who went on to head Scripps. Former ABC and ESPN executive Traug Keller. And, Andrew Kalb has supported me as an executive both at ABC and Skyview. There are many people who along the way have helped me.
On-air, Paul Harvey was certainly an inspiration. Getting to work with him was incredibly exciting and educational, as was working with Peter Jennings and Robin Roberts at ABC. The people at ABC, whether it was Gil Gross, Aaron Katersky, or Alex Stone, all of those individuals were incredibly impressive to me. Those are just some of the folks that have meant so much to me.
Radio Ink: So to close, being named a giant of broadcasting is an acknowledgment of your lasting impact on the field. Looking ahead, how do you hope to continue influencing and shaping the broadcast world?
Steve Jones: I’ll tie that to the previous question and mention Ken Thiele, the founder and Chairman of the Board of Skyview. He brought me here in 2019 from ABC and he’s somebody who I have tremendous admiration and respect for. He started as an independent operator, spun up one business that he sold to Westwood One in the ’90s, started all over again, and launched Skyview.
He’s given me tremendous support, authority, and resources to continue growing the Skyview business and is an example of what broadcasters can accomplish by simply continuing to adhere to our core principles, serving our customers, being committed to innovation, and being committed to flexibility as circumstances change.
Our job is to think, solve problems, and make sure that the audiences and the listeners are always served to the best of our ability. If we continue focusing on those core deliverables, I think we, as an industry, will succeed. At Skyview, we’ll continue to thrive and I will work with my team as we reach new heights together.
The Giants of Broadcasting & Electronic Arts ceremony, presented by the LABF, supports the preservation and expansion of the Library of American Broadcasting’s collection at the University of Maryland. The library, one of the largest of its kind, plays a crucial role in preserving and providing access to broadcast archives that showcase the industry’s profound impact on global culture and history.
Additionally, proceeds from the 2024 Giants of Broadcasting luncheon will assist the Broadcast Education Association in funding research, creative grants, and academic publications related to broadcast media.
