Interviews

The radio industry's top leaders do not just fall into their positions of leadership. They work harder, they work smarter, and they find ways to put themselves into positions to advance their careers. We turned to four of radio's top leaders and asked them exactly how they do it. Why are they the ones leading people? What did they do to educate themselves? Here's what they had to say.

(By Kelly Orchard) Congratulations, you’ve been named a market manager! Now what? You have a choice to make, right now. Do you want to be recognized and remembered by your team as the best manager they ever worked for — or the worst?

Steve Swick is all about local. He's about local when he's running his eight radio stations. He's about local when he's dealing with his clients at Local Radio Networks. And he's not a happy man when roadblocks are put in his way when he's trying to execute great local radio.

In our continuing search around the industry for millennials who love working in radio, it came as no surprise when we found one on the digital side of the business. Erin Nutter, 27, is the director of digital strategy for Max Media of Hampton Roads in Virginia Beach. Here's our interview with Erin.

It's been 60 days since Jay Stevens left radio -- after decades of programming success -- to take a break and recharge. When he hit the beach he had been the Senior VP at Radio One for over a decade. Is he getting the itch to come back? Is the golf scene getting old? We bugged Stevens day and night until he answered our questions. He gave in this week. Here's what he had to day...

The Free Beer & Hot Wings Show is hosted by Gregg “Free Beer” Daniels, Chris “Hot Wings” Michels, Joe, Steve, and Justin. It started out as an afternoon show at noncommercial KIWR in Omaha back in 1997, when Daniels and Michaels were roommates at Central Michigan University.  In 2017, The Free Beer & Hot Wings Show turns 20. Here’s our interview with the players who make up that syndicated team.

As Gordon Smith heads into his eighth year as president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters, many in our industry are glad that position carries no term limits for the former Senator. Smith is very popular among the NAB radio membership and his calmness, stability, and professionalism serve the radio industry very well (in addition to the great team he has working for him). Smith is among Radio's 40 Most Powerful People and has been ever since he took the NAB leadership job eight years ago. His official ranking on the list will be revealed next week when our Top 40 issue mails.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that's been in radio for longer than a month that Mary Quass was voted one of radio's 20 best leaders. She's respected by every executive in the industry and loved by her employees, as we found out during the voting. Our Top 20 Leaders list is out this week and the NRG CEO did pretty well this year. Here are just some of the comments we received from the people Quass leads...

Does the radio industry take creative seriously enough to help clients succeed? Why do many advertising agencies lack the desire to spend time on radio creative, caring mostly about a television commercial that takes so much more time to produce and costs so much more than radio? Why do radio stations allow awful-sounding advertisers to record their own commercials? We turned to a very successful creative services company to try to find the answers.

That's just one of the questions we asked Nielsen Audio Managing Director Brad Kelly in his May 22 Radio Ink cover story interview. A lot of industry revenue, and a lot of industry jobs, ride on the ratings. In the top 50 markets those ratings are determined by the Portable People Meter. What is Brad Kelly doing at Nielsen to make your radio life better?