In today's focus on small market radio, we go to Atlantic City, New Jersey where we found Gary Fisher doing quite well. Early on in his career Fisher, a self proclaimed radio geek, was getting lessons from some of the great minds in the industry. "I had spent my formative years in the 70's at WABC Music Radio, working with Rick Sklar. Then, I was fortunate to move to Z100 in the 80's, working with Scott Shannon. In the 90's, I was running a cluster in Detroit, WNIC and WKQI, with Jim Harper. I was soaking up what these guys were spewing." Fisher says he's always been a retail sales guy at heart. "I shared my vision for combining a sophisticated large market, polished sounding operation, with a small market retail sales. The "find a parade and get in front of it culture." I shared this vision with a venture capital guy by the name of Steve Gormley, who became my partner. Then, I went hunting for stations. Today, Fisher is the President/Partner Equity Communications. He started the company in 1996 with the purchase of WAYV, a 50,000 watt heritage CHR. The company owns 7 FM's and 2 AM's in and around Atlantic City. Here's Gary Fisher's story.
RI: What's it like for you to compete in Atlantic City with the bigger operators around you?
Fisher: I kind of modeled the company after that early Mel Karmazin model of separate and competitive but compatible. I certainly didn't want to encourage the so-called silo mentalities. My idea is to keep my stations fiercely competitive with each other in both sales and programming. That is really the best way to keep them fiercely competitive against the rest of the world and against the rest of the other companies. Yes, we have had a number of companies that have come and gone here in Atlantic City. Because we're doing very well, they tend to paint a target on my back, as I would if I was coming into a nice market like Atlantic City and I didn't see any big consolidators. Over my run in Atlantic City, we've seen Beasley come and go. We've seen Spring Broadcasting come and go. We've seen Nassau come and go. Citadel. Access One. Millennium. They have all come and gone. It has helped us sharpen our saw, basically.
RI: What does it take to win in that market?
Fisher: I'm very fortunate. We have some wonderful resources here in market 141. We have Jacobs Media, Valley/Richards, Larry Rosen at Edison Research all working with us. As you know, they are great teachers, great mentors. We have been repped by Katz right from the start, which has always been a great resource. What it takes to compete is a combination of high tech and high touch. I think for the first 15 or 16 years, we were very high touch and kind of low tech. Certainly in a small market, high touch and bedside manner is very important. I've never understood why the bedside manner approach isn't more prevalent in the larger markets. Whether you are in a large market or a small market, the money is green. The dynamic is the same in all the markets. I think the reason why you see some smaller market entrepreneurial types still operating very successfully is that in a smaller market there is less margin for error. You screw up one client, one negotiation, or one promotion, there are not a bunch of new clients coming up right behind them to bail you out. You screw up one day's music, or one rotation, or one music set, there are not a bunch of new listeners coming in to let you try to get it right tomorrow. Small market listeners and clients tend to have much longer memories than the large market consumers. You really have to be right a greater percentage of the time in a small market because there is less margin for error. I think that is what makes us better.
RI: What specifically do you want your stations and people doing to be high touch?
Fisher: Scott Shannon was always saying, "When you have a 2 share, act like you've got a 20 share. When you have a 20 share, act like you have a 2 share." Meaning: high tech, high touch. We've tried to embrace that. We are blessed with great signals and great stations and a great staff. We fan out in the community more than ever, especially since the great storm of last fall. My motto is, "Find a parade and get in front of it." It's worked out beautifully for us. Because we have a staff of homegrown South Jersey people, that have been with us for a long time, the community outreach is second nature to them. Five of our salespeople have been here for 14-15 years. Our program directors have been with me for 11 to 12 years. We have two traffic directors to handle nine stations. They have been here for 13 years. Just wonderful people. Wonderful job of serving up great radio here in South Jersey. They know the company is successful. That success has been kind of addictive for the staff. Amazingly, they are every bit as proud of the company as I am. I couldn't be prouder of our people.
RI: In your opinion is radio in a good place?
Fisher: Well, I really think it is. People have blamed consolidation for everything from global warming to the war in Afghanistan. Consolidation, if it is done properly, allows you to run a very efficiently managed company. I think it's certainly much more efficiently organized. Even though radio companies are kind of in the doghouse now as an investment, I don't think it was always that way and it won't be that way in the future. I think there has been a tremendous amount of inventory clearing and a tremendous amount of flushing out the waste in the business. I think the business is much more orderly now. We are moving out of the entrenchment period as an industry. We have survived. We have survived so much better than newspapers, TV, direct mail, phone books. None of the other legacy media are going to win in the next 5 to 10 years, but radio will. I am just so proud of the fact that radio as a medium had really kind of held it's own, in what is such a fractionalized media world. We are fortunate. It is not quite that fractionalized in Atlantic City yet. We know it's coming. For the most part, good old-fashioned, over-the-air, local radio is a valuable resource in Atlantic City. Particularly, given the economy, the fact that it is free, is very valuable.
Reach out and congratulate Gary Fisher for a job well done gfequity@aol.com
(7/25/2013 3:03:53 PM)
Gary Fisher has always been the congenital winner in building sucessful teams that win in combat. Probably Gary will be best known for- before his Atlantic City Ownership days-was his driving the Local & National Sales teams for Malrite's Z100-when it went from Worst to First in New York.
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