David Santrella and I have a few things in common. In other areas, we lack any similarities at all.
We’re both from Chicago and very close in age. Santrella graduated from Columbia College in Chicago, and I took a few classes there. We’ve both been married to incredible women for about three decades. That’s where the similarities end. Today, Santerella is CEO of Salem Media Group; I live in a van down by the river and write pieces like this.
Oh, and we both like red wine. My bottles cost about $10 bucks; he has a wine cellar.
Not just any wine cellar; it’s a piece of art. Santrella is doing some remodeling around the house and has commissioned a wine cellar from an artist and metal fabricator.
“He’s creating an incredible piece of utilitarian art,” Santrella said. “From wrought iron. It’s a wine cellar with doors, but it’s something to see.”
The artist/wine cellar builder has to figure out a way to keep the compartment at 57 degrees at all times. With an aesthetic eye, he has to figure out how to keep his art mechanical.
“When you hear that wine should be served at room temperature, that’s a rule that comes from Medieval Times,” Santrella said. “Seriously. They didn’t have furnaces, so the room temperature was 57 degrees. That was room temperature in those days.”
While he said he doesn’t have a favorite wine, he definitely prefers reds to whites.
“The cellar will hold 250 bottles, with 200 of those being red. I have friends that have wine cellars, and some collect wines. I select some of them, but knowledgeable friends help me pick some and suggest must-have wines for a rounded selection.”
When you are C.EO. of a large media company, there are other things on your mind besides wine.
“I used to have a bad habit of waking up at 5:00, grabbing my phone off the nightstand, and start reading emails,” Santrella explained. “After years of doing that, I felt conflicted. I decided to change that habit and start my day reading the Bible. Absorbing the word of God, not merely listening to the radio.”
Now his day begins when he takes the Bible off the nightstand.
“I read the Bible once a year,” Santrella said. “I don’t use the readings in the Bible for directions on a particular day. Whatever my plan is for the day, sometimes the readings will speak to that.”
It’s not like he’s reading a horoscope. He said that reading Matthew 5:16 each year may mean something the next time he reads it. Nothing is cast in stone.
“It’s like staring at a photograph,” Santrella said. “The more you look, the more it unfolds. You may not have noticed the butterfly in the photo the first time you saw it. It’s always a little different.”
Santrealla was born near Chicago in Niles, Illinois. His father owned a Conoco gas station at the triangle of Milwaukee and Touhy in Niles. He said he spent a lot of time there filling cars, wiping windshields, checking the air pressure in the tires, and changing oil.
At Maine Township High School in Park Ridge, the proverbial light went on for him. The school had a radio station, WMTH, powered with a hair-curling 16 watts.
Santrella walked into WMTH when he was 14 years old and immediately knew radio was what he wanted to do.
“I knew so early that it puzzles me how so many kids today have no idea what they want,” he explained. “They seem directionless, and they’re 24 years old. I’m not passing judgment. I know it’s harder to grow up today than when I was a kid.”
Living in Niles, he grew up a Cubs Fan. His wife, Barbara, was a vehement Cubs fan.
“When the Cubs won the World Series, I don’t think she sobbed more at our wedding or when our kids were born,” Santrella said.
In the infamous Steve Bartman incident, he said you could feel the oxygen leave the city. Santrella agreed that anyone else in Bartman’s seat would have done the same thing. Bartman was a fall guy because he had an unfortunate seat under the ball.
He thought he wanted to make his living on the air at Columbia College. While dating Barbara, who was in the insurance business, he realized he wanted to marry and have kids with her.
“I also knew radio could be a tough life,” Santrella explained. “When you’re moving around all the time from job to job, it’s not conducive to having a family. Not good for kids.”
At WCRX, Columbia’s radio station, Santrella snatched a copy of Radio and Records magazine off a coffee table and saw a job ad in the Springfield, Illinois market.
“I figured Springfield wasn’t that far away and could lead to a job in Chicago eventually. I might get discovered. It was for a morning guy, and I thought that would be amazing. The next line, I read the compensation. It was $8,000 a year plus Burger King coupons.”
They basically told the person who took the job that they would earn enough to eat or live. Not both. You just had to pick one.
“If the job included Wendy’s coupons and Frosty’s, things might have turned out differently,” Santrella jokes.
While in school, he said he had the greatest possible college job in the world.
He was working in marketing at the powerhouse WMAQ in Chicago. He was assigned to drive the WMAQ White Sox van for station VIPs.
“All I had to do was take clients and advertisers, then take them to Comiskey Park,” Santrella said.
He was told all he had to do was pick them up, drive them to the park, be nice, and not take tips. That’s when he had a Eureka moment.
“All these executives and sales representatives lived in nice houses, seemed to have good lives, and didn’t have to move around the country as much as a radio personality would. That’s when I decided to go into that side of the business.”
While at WMAQ, Santrella said he constantly approached the station’s sales manager to speak with him.
“Haunted him is more like it,” Santrella said. “I wanted to be in sales, and since I had no experience, he wasn’t paying any attention to me. So, I talked my way into a sales job at WEAW. Plus it was close to my house. I started there and was doing pretty well.”
After a while, he summoned the courage to call the sales manager at WMAQ, the same guy he haunted.
On the phone, he said, ‘Jimmy, this is Dave Santrella. I’m working up here at WEAW in sales and wondered if I could get your advice on something.’
All of a sudden, Jimmy found himself helping Santrella, a guy who wasn’t even working for him. A month later, Jimmy called Santrella and said he was creating a job for him.
“I think he just saw me as a driven kid or just took pity on me. Either way, I got the job.”
Change is one of the many constants in life. Of course, some changes are easier than others, especially when you’re the CEO of a large company.
“It’s always about where we’re going as people,” Santrella said. “We need to understand what the important things are and how we get there. How we are accomplishing that goal, particularly now, going through a real metamorphosis as a company.”
Santrella said to stick to the parts of leadership you handle well and don’t delve into areas where you’re not as strong.
“If you need brain surgery, would you rather have the hospital CEO do your surgery, or would you rather it be the best brain surgeon in the place?”
I took that to mean that just because you’re CEO of a large media company or hospital doesn’t mean you should be involved in the nuts and bolts of all operations.
Jesus Christ said, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s. Those are words to live by; they also make good business sense.
“That’s the reality,” Santrella said. “When you go to a restaurant, the owner may not be a chef or know the first thing about food preparation. I have been blessed with Phil Boyce, our senior vice president of spoken word format. He works with all of our talent. I just couldn’t be as good as Phil with what he does. I’m a sales guy. My background is sales. If you want me to look at your sales presentation, address how to make it better, I’m qualified to do that. If you want to know how to work with talent, talk with Phil.”
Santrella said people in his organization approach him all the time when they’re planning to make a big change.
“I ultimately have to sign off on larger issues. At the end of the day, I’ve got to trust their recommendations and ideas. If we are not going to renew a contract or if we’re going to replace someone on-air, I will ask if there is some reason for those moves, ask why it’s happening. But I’m not going to interfere unless I think it’s a horrible mistake.”
While money is necessary for any company to survive, to Santrella and Salem, it’s not everything.
“We have a mantra that says we want to do well, but we also want to do well while we’re doing good. Money to Salem is simply the fuel for what we do; it provides for the mission.”
In one word, impact.
“We want to do things to make people’s lives better,” Santrella said. “Whether it’s coming to the aid of a family in need or providing assistance through other avenues. In the programming we carry. For Salem, the result of doing good for others is doing well financially.”
On the broadcasting side of things, Santrella likes to keep things civilized.
“When we have people that oppose us on the air, it’s never a ‘you’re an idiot’ kind of conversation,” he explained. “We may disagree with a stance, but we treat them with dignity. We form our own opinions based on fact. We’re not making stuff up. We produce our news through the research we’ve done. That research allows us to form a certain opinion.”
Santrella said he and Salem have a deep desire to help others.
“You start with an honest desire to do that and keep that as an undercurrent in your life; you now give people something that will help. It makes things so much easier.”
Keeping a nicely stocked wine cellar doesn’t hurt either.
Jim Cryns writes features for Barrett News Media. He has spent time in radio as a reporter for WTMJ, and has served as an author and former writer for the Milwaukee Brewers. To touch base or pick up a copy of his new book: Talk To Me – Profiles on News Talkers and Media Leaders From Top 50 Markets, log on to Amazon or shoot Jim an email at jimcryns3_zhd@indeedemail.com.
