The Spirit of Radio: Content is still king in the digital age
Posted On October 9, 2019
What does it take to run a successful radio station in the digital age?
Even with a wealth of technological advances and a growing variety of platforms, one successful local station owner says the answer is the same it’s always been: Content is king.
I like to think our content at “What’s Working With Cam Marston” is part of that equation, because our guest on the show this week is the owner and operations director of the station that airs it: Sean Sullivan of FMTalk 1065.
Sullivan will tell anyone who listens – and a lot of people listen to him – that the key to surviving and thriving as a radio station is producing “good radio.” Sometimes that can be achieved through preparation – he wakes up every weekday morning at 3:45 to ensure he has time to sift through and digest the latest news – and sometimes it just happens. However he gets there, Sullivan’s goal is to engage his listeners and make it difficult for them to turn the radio off.
“Radio is a campfire,” he says. “What we do in talk radio has been going on over the history of mankind, it has just changed the platform it’s on, and it’ll continue to change.”
Sullivan, who took control of the station just as a national recession began in 2007, says a big part of his formula is an emphasis on local programming like our show. FMTalk 1065 produces 45 hours of local programming each week.
“There were people that had those tiny hourglasses with very few grains of sand that flipped them over and they were counting the minutes until I went out of business,” Sullivan says of his beginnings at the station in 2007. “Guess what? It’s 2019 and we’re here and stronger than ever.”
Sullivan shares with us some of what goes on behind the scenes at a radio station – and the wisdom and/or risk of sharing it on the air. He discusses how some of the biggest names in radio – Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern – made those names. And he shares how he judges success, and what drives him to get up every morning before the sun and set out to make more “good radio.”
Join us for an engaging discussion about radio and what keeps listeners tuning in.