10-13-13
He was asking the "sharks" on ABC's "Shark Tank" for $75,000 to hire a dedicated affiliate sales director to help take his Sunday night "Slow Jams" syndicated program to the next level. For radio, it was ugly and painful to watch. Mark Cuban not only had to explain syndicated radio to the other four sharks in the tank, he started off his response to the R Dub pitch with, "Syndicated radio is a horrible business." Cuban is no stranger to audio, having founded audionet.com (with Todd Wagner), changing the name to broadcast.com which he sold to Yahoo! for $5.7 billion. Cuban was not impressed with R Dub, although he did like the Brian McKnight touch. McKnight sang the Slow Jams jingle live on the show.
R Dub told the sharks that his show, which is syndicated by Benztown Radio Networks, is on 60 stations and generates $350,000 in ad sales. He said his company valuation was $750,000 and it was about to explode. He's been doing the show for 20 years. None of the sharks were buying the pitch and radio was collateral road kill as Kevin Oleary, aka "Mr. Wonderful," said, "The radio market as an investment sucks. This is radioactive waste out there. It's terrible."
R Dub walked away without any money from the sharks, although he did get 10 free minutes of prime TV time on ABC which for some entrepreneurs is just as helpful as getting the money on that show. The downside is radio was portrayed as a weak and misunderstood industry.
(10/13/2013 8:52:12 PM)
here are reasons we are portrayed as "weak and misunderstood". We're lucky we weren't also portrayed as bottom-feeders, exploiters of child labor and mean to our mommies.
Which reminds me: Whatever happened to that big, hairy "story" everybody in a suit and with a suite was touting some months ago...?
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