Attracting and retaining top talent remains a pressing challenge – and opportunity – for radio. As the industry adapts to changing tech, audience behaviors, and revenue models, its future hinges on how broadcasters identify, mentor, and empower tomorrow’s leaders.
Ahead of the release of Radio Ink Magazine’s 40 Most Powerful People in Radio for 2025, we asked the highest level of industry executives: How is your company mentoring and developing the leaders of the future?
“We are fortunate to have many talented employees and leaders. One of the formal programs we have developed has a sharp focus on recruiting and developing early-career employees, providing them with the coaching, support, and training necessary to succeed in the media sales industry.”
“As part of this commitment, we also proudly support industry programs like the NAB Leadership Foundation’s Broadcast Leadership Training (BLT) program, where our future leaders gain valuable experience and insights. By investing in our team today, we’re shaping a stronger, more sustainable industry for tomorrow.”
“As the industry evolves, so does the need for strong talent. We support this through a mentorship program pairing individuals across departments and markets to foster broader thinking and encourage cross-functional growth. We also invest in leadership development by offering stretch assignments on high-impact projects in partnership with senior leaders. Our culture encourages idea sharing and fresh thinking from every level of the organization. We are committed to strengthening and building the next generation who will lead radio into the future.”
Curious about who said what? Radio Ink Magazine‘s 40 Most Powerful People In Radio issue comes out on Monday, July 14. Click HERE to subscribe today.
It’s about time in this thread for the “Big A” to chime in and remind us how the past 14 years aren’t Pitchmans fault and indeed the man is probably radios Savior.
Bob Pittman is vilified at times for no reason. Jacor Communications arguably created the mess that Bob has been cleaning up. And Bob created the most dynamic, cutting-edge platform- the iHeart app- that has literally changed the landscape of the audio world. Thanks to Bob, iHeart audio content is now ubiquitous, because of the app. Totally different world now.
TheBiggerA,
Bob Pittman is arguably one of the most brilliant, charismatic, creative, insightful, amazing, accomplished executives who has ever led a radio group in the history of commercial radio. Among his many accomplishments, the iheart media app isn’t just good, it’s astonishingly good and it’s EXACTLY what the industry needed to deliver a high quality listening experience today and into the future.
However, iHeart has lost over $4 billion since 2020. (That’s annual net income reported in marketwatch.com under the ticker symbol “ihrt”)
So, there’s THAT–and that’s after he had a massive amount of debt wiped away from bankruptycy. So, there’s that too.
Let’s be rational. Is that what success looks like?
Radio isn’t a startup business. It’s a business with a century long history of highly profitable, individually owned radio stations.
You need people like Bob, Caroline, David, Kelli, Mary and others to build amazing platforms to sell, BUT then you need a successful selling process to fully monetize those platforms. That requires a rare caliber of management skill and so far, let’s admit that there’s a sizable disconnect out there when it comes to monetizing these platforms and generating sustained, long term revenue growth. Nobody seems to be hitting home runs out there today and stringing together quarter after quarter of revenue growth.
Radio should be mopping the floor with every other media right now, but as other media has put superior trained managers and sellers on the field, they have changed the ad dollar game and are dominating it today. They’re literally attracting HUNDREDS of billions of dollars right now by simply putting a superior team and a superior selling process on the field.
The industry needs every visionary it can find right now to put phenomenal platforms on the table to sell, but it also needs people who are equally skilled at preparing and training people to sell those platforms.
I come from the sales management side, so I see sales managers as dropping the ball in the industry today and failing to prepare their teams to close deals. I also see GM’s who were of no help to them whatsoever, so are sales managers fully to blame? Are the sellers on the front lines who have very little training and minimal support out there to blame? I think front line sellers today are the most innocent victims of this mess and they pay a high price for it when they barely make any money and then get fired for poor performance. The whole radio station business plan needs a reset today.
Pittman isn’t the enemy. Ignorance is the enemy. Refusing to consider better ideas is the enemy. Accepting excuses for missing revenue is the enemy. Not training and supporting your team is the enemy. Not evolving with the new media landscape and using the same tired old selling schtick is the enemy. Remaining ignorant about the strength and weakness of every other media is the enemy. Not building long term customers for life is the enemy. Not improving how you attract and maintain listeners is the enemy.
Accepting that display advertising the size of your thumb is somehow superior to the engagement of a 30 second story about your business is the enemy.
I want Bob and every other CEO to succeed out there, but the industry is getting blown off the battlefield today and it pains me to watch that happen. Every major group is sinking financially right now. It’s horrible to see and no one seems to have the solutions.
What do I know? Well, I grew revenue on every single commercial format in existence in large markets and small markets from LA to New York and generated 76 consecutive quarters of revenue growth along the way without a miss and did so in some pretty deplorable market conditions. So, it’s entirely possible.
That experience is enough for me to know something is wrong with the way these companies are doing business today, because if I can do this, anyone can.
The solution for this mess is for people to start collaborating together and really listening.
In the BigAs world it’s Jacor’s fault that Pitchman has lost over 4 BILLION since 2020. That guy must be a corporate ass kisser to the extreme.
Ha ha…I KNEW you would chime in and somehow excuse the FACT that the man has NEVER turned a profit with ANY company that he has been affiliated with.
How many decades are you going to continue to use the Jacor excuse??
BF,
Let me ask you…
Do you think any of today’s radio CEO’s ever talk to their own clients? Do they ever pick the phone up to see how their clients are doing and really LISTEN? If they did, they would get an ear full. They would get an education. They would get useful information to have more productive conversations with their teams to tighten up plenty of loose bolts out there.
Instead, there’s an enormous, persistent disconnect between the corner offices and the people who buy their services. Should we be surprised that these management teams are losing hundreds of millions and in one case, billions of dollars?
You can’t make this stuff up. This is what failure looks like. The house is on fire and these folks are standing in front of it watering the flowers.
This isn’t personal. It’s business. So, they should take some responsibility and start understanding the business they’re in and WHY people buy their services and maybe then they’ll start to understand how to prompt clients to buy more.
Until some corner offices start understanding their own clients better, they’ll still keep accepting lame excuses like “automotive was down” and “we’re pacing against a political year.” Until then, the suits in charge of sales will keep bamboozling upper management that they’re doing a “magnificent” job.
Are they?
If you’re a doctor, you know there’s a problem when the patient doesn’t have a pulse. If you’re a plumber, you know there’s a problem if the drain’s clogged. If you’re a pilot, you know there’s a problem if you’re unintentionally losing altitude.
If you run a bunch of radio stations, which have a LONG history of LOTS OF PROFITABILITY and there’s NO PROFIT, you can be sure there’s a problem. What’s baffling is how detached some CEO’s appear to be right now. It’s like they don’t understand there’s a problem until they’re asked to step down. Instead, they’re out there firing people, rearranging managers, flipping formats, talking about synergy and increases in “digital” revenue, but ignoring the elephant in the room that they haven’t made a single dollar of profit in the last half of a decade.
Is that what pristine leadership looks like? Is that addressing the real problem? You tell me. I’m not very bright, so this continues to confuse me.
You are exactly right. Except that in Pitchmans case it’s 14 years, not a half decade .
The Big A undoubtedly has his mouth secured firmly around the corporate teat. Or a total fool.
It’s incredibly hard to build strong leadership in bulk.
Leadership building is a process that requires a heavy commitment by top leadership. It’s not a job you hand off to someone else.
We can’t train the leaders of tomorrow like the badly trained sales reps of yesterday: Send them to some seminars, lock them in a room to watch sales training videos, and hope something sticks. It’s a in-house, hands-on activity.
Mentorship programs that promote a “one-on-one” structure between student and mentor seem to be the most effective. I’ll look forward to seeing if any of those “Top 40 MPP” are authentically and actively involved with their company’s training, or whether they’re just giving us some carefully crafted corporate speak for an article they were asked to comment on.
As an industry, we’ll need to do it quickly. In the next 10 years, this industry is going to shed it’s most experienced veteran corp of managers, sales reps, and air talent due to retirement. Leverage this experience before it walks out the door forever by incorporating a “retired mentoring” program that keeps the knowledge flowing to young leaders and up-and-comers in the building. It’s a great way to “hand off the baton” that will enrich everyone involved.
Bill,
You are SO RIGHT about effective training not consisting of locking reps in a conference room to watch a video or forced to listen to a seminar.
Effective training, I found, was being in the field every single day with my team engaging clients and prospects in real time in real situations. The best “classroom” is out there in the trenches, not in a conference room with a PowerPoint deck. The best way to teach someone is to “show” them and to lead by example by closing deals right in front of them. My sellers improved their closing ratios an average of 300% when they were taught this way and none of them ever missed a single quarterly budget. Ever. (And I’m “C” student on my best days…so if I could do this, a fifth grader could do this…Literally ANYONE could do this…)
Far too many sales managers and GM’s never leave the building each day and prefer to sit behind a screen instead. They much prefer to fire people for not making a budget, rather than showing then how. That’s not leadership, but it’s how they were “mentored” by the people they learned from, so bad habits die hard in radio.
Your brilliant comment about training, “It’s a in-house, hands-on activity” sums it up ABSOLUTELY perfectly. THANK YOU.
The leadership teams who don’t grasp how to train people are easy to spot. They’re losing money each quarter, in spite of most of their debt being wiped away in chapter 11 bankruptcy. Their share prices are cratering. Their revenue is sputtering and they’re offering excuses instead of solutions: “National is down, we’re pacing against a political year, agency business is down, automotive is down, the market is down, there were 5 broadcast weeks in June last year, my dog ate my homework, there was a bad rain storm, I had a stomach ache, my bike had a flat tire, somebody stole my lunchbox….”
You get the idea…
The soundtrack for failure is excuses.
Just once, I would like to hear ANYONE in upper management say, “Our goal is to form long term partnerships with our listeners and our clients and to earn that bond through brilliant programming strategies and high quality client experiences that empower them to exceed their financial goals. We want to make it easier and more seamless than ever to do business with ALL of our platforms so our clients can continue to expand their spending with us as we continue to deliver more unit sales and profit back to them. We want to be indispensable to their success and to build on the trust that we earn by setting more and more aggressive profit targets each quarter.
To do this will require preparing our teams as if preparing for combat. We want them to be the best trained, most knowledgeable, most trusted, most professional resources on every media choice imaginable and to be able to converse about those choices clearly, confidently and effectively—but always ready to circle back to radio’s unmatched value proposition with 15 different platforms to choose from. We want ALL of our managers to be out in front, leading by example, leading from the front and showing their teams the way by demonstrating proper technique in the field daily.
The war for market share will be won in the trenches, so we want every manager at every level to be out in those trenches engaging clients and prospects daily so they never lose sight of who pays our bills and what their evolving needs really are as they constantly look for ways to link another client to another one of our powerful platforms—while teaching their teams exactly how to do this.
We will be an organization that trains in the field by actively closing business in the field each and every day and by taking this unprecedented, proactive approach, we expect to take market share immediately from our competitors who are not even remotely prepared to protect it.
While others talk, we’ll do. While others sit in their office, we’ll be out on the battlefield making our own luck by asking every business in our metro area if they’re interested in making more money in the next quarter than they ever thought possible…because that’s what we do. They’s what we’ve done—and we’ll have a growing list of success stories to leverage into more success stories to create a growing frenzy to use our powerful platforms.”
The day I hear something even remotely close to this, I will probably faint. Until then, expect more quarterly losses, more excuses, more people getting fired and more management reshuffles. And, more bankruptcies…
Pitchman has NEVER had even ONE profitable quarter in 14 years. NOT ONE.
That says it all.
These are wonderful sounding concepts.
It begs the question:
Why are the industry’s “best and brightest” senior management teams, who lead the largest groups today, losing so much money each quarter?
Is it because they’re diligently preparing, training, equipping and empowering their teams for success?
There are some eleven years olds who run lemonade stands in their front yard who literally made more profit in a single summer afternoon than some of these senior management teams generated during their entire tenure.
For the record, there’s no pleasure in pointing this out. It’s not hard to be a critic. However, it’s in everyone’s best interest to admit that what passes for “training” and “preparing” people today to succeed clearly isn’t working. The results speak loudly enough for themselves. Look at your your pacing reports, your net income and radio’s overall share of media spending.
Does that paint a picture of leadership excellence, a culture of continuous improvement, effective training and a trajectory of growth and prosperity far into the future?
It’s time to admit the ship is taking on water and to make it “priority one” to reimagine how to support the people on that ship to succeed. Until somebody starts reporting consistent net income growth, share price growth and consistently hiring more people to sustain their expanding list of growing audiences and satisfied clients…they probably shouldn’t be glowing about how great their processes are to prepare their people for success.
Over the last few decades, far too many management teams have talked a good game, then led their teams to failure. Let’s start there, stop kidding ourselves, then pivot to a much better plan. If that happens, everyone wins. That’s the way it should be.
You are spot on Dave. The “leaders” (only one “leader” at iHeart- Pittman- the rest are his minions- ) of the big radio corps are focused on just 2 things- 1. Executive compensation and 2. Debt servicing.
Employees are viewed as an expense. On-air talent has largely been gutted, in favor of voice-tracking. Hard promotional dollars are now non-existent.
Most FM’s now – at least the ones owned by IHeart, AUDACY, and Beasley- run 3 or 4 songs on a row, then 15 or more commercials in a row. All to manipulate the AQH. They’re not fooling anyone!
And like Dave says, a 12 year-old kid running a lemonade stand has more business acumen and leadership now, than exists at these stations.
Right on, Roy!
Sadly, I agree. Among the largest groups in radio, it all too often has descended into a game of desperate refinancing, paying upper managers sizable bonuses regardless of performance, draining the cash reserves dry, burning investors, burning shareholders, short changing listeners, mistreating clients and kicking talented employees to the curb.
This isn’t leadership. It’s more like a hostage situation.
Every radio CEO and their entire management team should go watch the movie “F1.”
It’s the story of a racing team in last place, losing money hand over fist…and what happened when the people at the top of the organization started listening to the people on the front lines and having respect for their perspectives.
The people in the radio industry don’t need more people to “rule” over them and drain their futures away. It needs more real leaders who truly know how to grow audiences, then turn those audiences into gushing rivers of ever increasing revenue and expanding profit margins— instead of just firing people to lighten up the payroll.
Can this be done in 2025? Yes.
Spotify is doing it as I type this. Heck, locally owned independent commercial radio stations all over the nation are doing it and some of them are making their owners and staffs astonishingly wealthy.
Enough platitudes from the industry’s “mover shakers…” How about some results. Talk is cheap.
Show me the money…
Word! Very well said.
The best thing imo that could happen to radio…is that iHeart and Audacy fail. And that all the great stations and signals go back to local dedicated ownership.
Roy,
I think at the end of the day, these folks are ultimately pawns too–and when the hedge fund managers and private equity sharks grow tired of their “schtick” they eventually get broomed too. What bothers me is the damage they do until then, which impacts good, honest, hard-working folks out there who get crushed in the gears of their agenda.
It’s long past time to call them out for it. The numbers don’t lie. They didn’t add anything to the industry to help it grow. They looted it and left it in worse shape than ever before.
Look at Sears. Look at Amazon. Which company’s leadership most closely resembles the radio industry’s largest radio groups today?
HINT: One management team took a once magnificent business and decimated it. One management team did over $600 BILLION in revenue last year.
I still think it could be fixed. It may requiure different leadership altogether, but I still remain hopeful the current leaders admit to themselves this isn’t working for anyone and look for some advice from some genuinely smart people OUTSIDE of radio.
I’m rooting for every management team in radio today to step up and show the industry the way. Now would be the time, folks. This is your moment. Show us how it’s done! Dazzle us !