With the FCC signaling that broadcast ownership caps may finally be on the table for change in the 2022 Quadrennial Review, few voices in radio have been more persistent in calling for deregulation than Connoisseur Media CEO Jeff Warshaw.
In a conversation with Radio Ink, Warshaw outlined why he believes ownership reform is critical for the industry’s future, how the Alpha Media acquisition fits into his strategy, and why deregulation, in his view, would strengthen, not weaken, local radio.
Radio Ink: FCC Chairman Brendan Carr seems more poised to reduce radio’s ownership caps than any FCC leader in recent memory. You’ve long been a supporter of this deregulation. With the opening of the NPRM, this has to be a promising moment for you.
Jeff Warshaw: Yeah. As you know, I’ve filed many comments about it over the years. Obviously, I think that the industry has been hamstrung. There’s been a boot on our throat competing with other media at a huge disadvantage. We need to be permitted to expand in our markets so that we can better serve our listeners, have more diverse programming, do more public affairs programming, more news, cover emergencies, elections – all things that having scale is very helpful to be able to do.
Also, the more products and formats our salespeople can sell, the greater the chance we have of retaining them. It’s very difficult to keep quality people when we’re at such a huge competitive disadvantage, and they can go into digital media and make much more money if we’re not able to compete effectively.
Radio Ink: As someone who’s had such a rapid expansion here in the past six months with the acquisition of Alpha Media. Where do you believe regulatory relief is most urgently needed for operators like you?
Jeff Warshaw: We need the ability to increase in our markets. I don’t think there are too many markets where a radio station or one operator does more than one or two percent of the entire advertising pie. For us to be regulated and not be able to expand; that is just crippling.
Radio Ink: Connoisseur Media’s mission statement is very focused on staying true to your local communities. To those who argue that deregulation will hurt that localism in radio, how do you respond?
Jeff Warshaw: Some folks say investing more money in a market to have more radio stations will make it less local?
Radio Ink: There are some who worry that deregulation would lead to larger radio players squeezing out smaller operators.
Jeff Warshaw: So, you know, if you have local operators that aren’t prepared to get more committed to their markets, then they’re free not to. But we have a situation where these artificial constraints have been put on us, and it gives us a competitive disadvantage to other media. It’s been a very bad thing for the industry. Digital and other media have expanded around us, and we’ve been hamstrung.
The idea that we are siloed and we aren’t competing with Spotify or YouTube; it’s just a completely ridiculous point of view. Anyone that has a phone knows that you have lots of different ways of listening to audio. Lots of different ways of getting media. Our advertisers know there are lots of different choices they have. To pick a number that says we’re not allowed to have more than a certain number in a market, with rules that were established before the proliferation of the internet, is just ridiculous.
