Jim Ryan Reflects on His NYC Tenure and the State of Radio

After a 15-year tenure shaping some of the biggest stations in the country, Audacy SVP of Programming and WNEW daily programmer Jim Ryan announced he will depart the company in April to focus on his consultancy, Jim Ryan Media.

In this exclusive conversation with Radio Ink, Ryan reflects on his time in New York, the challenges and opportunities facing radio talent today, and why the industry is far from fading.

Radio Ink: You’ve spent decades programming in market number one. What were some of your proudest achievements during that time, and what were the most important lessons you learned?

Jim Ryan: I was at WLTW for over 12 years in the ‘90s and early 2000s, and back then, radio could thrive on long stretches of uninterrupted music. When I went to CBS in 2010, I took that same theory.

You could see the times change. I’ll give you a very specific example. When we relaunched 102.7, relaunching always gives you an opportunity to cut the commercial load, add more commercial-free hours, and change things up a little bit.

My theory was the station could be driven by the commercial-free hours during the workday. So we did our first one at 8:00 in the morning, and I had a morning show where the 7:00 AM hour—when we did really good morning show content but played a lot of commercials—actually had more listeners than the 8:00 AM hour, when we were commercial-free with music.

Suddenly, it was that shift where, if you were passionate about music and wanted to hear the latest song from whoever the flavor of the day was, maybe that’s not what radio served anymore. The personalities had now become more important. That was a defining moment for me.

WNEW’s success is really based around the morning show with Karen Carson and her team in the morning, which is a big change when you come from 12 years of mostly number-one rating books at WLTW, where personalities were very much in the background.

I always used to tease our midday host at WLTW. I said, “If you computed your salary by the word, you were the highest-paid person in radio,” because all we said was, “Most music, less talk.” And we wrote nice bonus checks for the ratings results.

Radio Ink: Speaking of times changing, you stayed over at Audacy for an extra quarter to oversee the Nielsen three-minute PPM qualifier changes for average quarter-hour. What are your takeaways from that initial data following the first book?

Jim Ryan: It’s very exciting to see an increased audience again. Now we’ve got a bunch of stations with .3 average quarter-hour ratings, some .4s, some markets seeing .5s and .6s. It’s very refreshing.

I think New York hasn’t really reaped the rewards yet because congestion pricing has cut down so much on the traffic into the city. But as I look around the country, it’s really exciting to see the audience increases back to where they should be.

We’ve seen a lot of disruption. COVID really rocked our world. Suddenly, when people realized they could work from home, they didn’t want to come back to the office. I applaud Jamie Dimon and Chase Bank for making all those people come into the office every day.

Quite frankly, that commute—if you’re in the car or in the workplace—I think we’re going to capture more radio listening. As the times continue to change and people spend more time in the office, I think it really makes sense.

I work from home a lot, and I miss the contact with people in the office. I think it’s really important to have face-to-face meetings as opposed to seeing people on Zoom all day. Being together increases morale, and radio is a great companion for people getting to and from the office.

Radio Ink: How do you see this bump affecting the overall battle of radio’s actual results vs. advertiser perceptions?

I still very strongly believe in radio. If you look at the current weekly numbers in New York, you’ve got six stations with a weekly cume of over 2 million people. This doesn’t look dead to me.

We’re still reaching millions of people in America tuning into the radio each and every single week.

Sure, in the biggest markets, we’ve certainly had advertising hits. Years ago, if you owned three car dealerships in New Jersey, the only avenue you really had was to advertise on the radio.

Well, now, does it make sense to spend the money to advertise in an area of 18 million people when you have three car dealerships in one small area of New Jersey? People take advantage of digital marketing to reach those customers.

But I live in Traverse City, Michigan, in the summertime. Here, there’s only one Chevy dealer, so they should certainly advertise on the radio. It’s so refreshing. They did a campaign called “Shop at a Store with a Door,” and it’s like, yeah – local radio stations supporting local business.

In those smaller markets, where Meta and Google don’t have salespeople running around trying to get business, I think radio will flourish even more in the immediate future.

Radio Ink: Do you see any big programming trends or changes on the horizon from Nielsen’s shift?

Jim Ryan: I think programmers have to continue to set appointments for the audience. The reason people tune out of a radio station or stop listening is generally because they have to go do something else.

Morning shows need to be aware of that. If they have a listener, that listener is going to go brush their teeth, they’re going to get ready for work. You have to set the appointment of when you’re going to give them something special to keep them listening.

I think it’s refreshing to see some of the younger-targeted stations doing much better. When you think about the length of a song nowadays—there was a time when I programmed CBS-FM and WNEW at the same time, doing music logs for both stations. The songs from the ‘70s and ‘80s were much longer than today’s songs.

Sabrina Carpenter’s songs are under three minutes long. If you play a Sabrina Carpenter song, then a Bruno Mars song, and someone likes Sabrina Carpenter but not Bruno Mars, they’re only tuning out for three minutes, not five. Then maybe they come back for a three-minute Chappell Roan song.

So I think the three-minute rule really makes sense for the way that music has changed on the younger end. That’s why I think you’re going to see better results for contemporary radio stations than for classic hits stations. Those Hall & Oates and Fleetwood Mac songs were four, four-and-a-half minutes long. And God knows people are still playing six-minute “Hotel California.”

Radio Ink: Great news for audiences, not so good for talent bathroom breaks, is what you’re saying?

Jim Ryan: [Laughs] Exactly. You have to learn to do your business in two minutes and 45 seconds, or else.

Radio Ink: So we’re seeing more broadcast groups cut local talent in favor of regional voice-tracked or nationally syndicated talent. You’ve worked extensively on both sides. How do you see this shaping the next five years of radio, and what should both these companies and local talent be aware of?

Jim Ryan: I think you have to ride that fine line. A morning show, in many cases, needs to have a certain amount of local content. Obviously, iHeart has done a marvelous job with Elvis Duran and Bobby Bones in multiple markets, but I think that local connection needs to be there in some way when people start their day.

But, you know, if you look at television – every television program generally comes from New York or LA, and I think the audience is pretty much used to that.

I still have the pleasure of working with Delilah and have ever since she signed with Premiere. One of the things she openly talks about on the show is working in her garden. There aren’t a lot of people in New York City who have a garden, yet the audience relates to her in a big way.

So I think what talent have to do is be able to touch an emotion and relate to the audience. That’s what it comes down to at the end of the day. If you make your listeners cry, make them laugh, even make them angry… How many people got upset at what Howard Stern said back in the day and then would tune in just to see if he would aggravate them again the next day? Or Rush Limbaugh, on the other side of the scale.

We need people – talent – to work as hard and develop shows the way Howard and Rush did back in the day to become trendsetters in radio.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with a lot of local morning shows, and it’s a lot of work. Someone like Elvis Duran is lucky enough to have a full staff of people. But if you look at a morning show like Kramer & Jess – who I spent time with a couple of weeks ago doing their show in Baltimore – there are just three people involved. And to come up with fresh content every single day? That’s a major job. You have to spend many hours of the day working on it.

Jimmy Fallon has to come up with fresh content every day too, but he has a staff of 20-some writers. And he’s a very creative person himself.

So I think talent need to work hard to stand out because we desperately need great talent to keep this train rolling.

Radio Ink: You’re transitioning to full-time consultancy now. As you make the shift, what’s your main focus with Jim Ryan Media moving forward?

Jim Ryan: I would say talent.

Look, I’ve worked with a lot of successful shows, and I’ve also worked with some unsuccessful shows. I was involved in the Whoopi Goldberg morning show when I worked at Clear Channel back in the day. Whoopi was in the process of reinventing herself.

If you were in the studio with her, people would call in and say, “I love you, you’re so funny, Sister Act was my favorite movie.” But Whoopi didn’t want to do that anymore. She wanted to be the Whoopi you see today on The View.

There was a listener expectation that they were going to tune in, laugh, and hear something funny – that was supposed to be the genesis of the show. But that’s not what it was. At times, yes, she would be funny, but for the most part, she wanted to transition into the person she is now on The View.

So I want to work with programmers and radio companies to make sure their stations are on brand, fulfilling listener expectations, teaching programmers how to make the most of PPM methodology, and working with talent to make them better – to make them stand out.

You want listeners to feel that if they don’t tune in today, they’re going to miss something. That fear of missing out is very real.

I want to help create the next great morning shows in America.

Radio Ink: To end on that topic of greatness, what do you think radio still does better than any other medium, and how do we best capitalize on that?

Jim Ryan: I think radio paints the picture. I have an old t-shirt that a record company put out years ago, and it says, “Radio: Theater of the Mind.” And that’s exactly what a great personality does – they paint that picture and become a companion to the listener.

Take Karen Carson. We had a situation on her morning show where one of her co-hosts was getting married. His fiancée came into the studio during the show, and they asked Karen if she would officiate their wedding.

The listener didn’t see this happening, but they felt it. It was an emotional moment on the show, and Karen actually got choked up because she’s worked with this co-host for so many years. That connection – the fact that they wanted her to be part of such a big moment in their lives – I think listeners felt like they were a part of that, too.

Or when Delilah talks about working in her garden, she paints that picture. People feel like they’re right there with her, on her farm, working alongside her, because she’s so descriptive. That human touch – that emotional connection – is something radio conveys better than anything else.

I tell talent all the time – there’s nothing more important than great content. A song is better than mediocre content, but great content is always better than a song.

So work to make that great content. Make that human touch. Make that emotional connection with your listeners.