I read too much stuff, oops, I mean “content”, which can at times cause brain overload. However, occasional pieces catch my eye and bring up questions or thoughts that can be applied to the radio business.
Perhaps you read Evan Shapiro’s Media War and Peace Substack. I only see the free version, but his column of March 9 on DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) had an interesting finding.
We’re not going to discuss DEI here, but rather his take on the disconnect between the top people in media and their audiences.
Here’s the interesting part: Evan’s own survey of what he calls “the media elite’s” education and where they went to school compared to the general public (he does some excellent graphics):
His data on the “media elite” comes from his 2022 study of 300 media execs at the SVP level or higher at Alphabet, Amazon, Comcast, Discovery, EA, ESPN, Facebook, Fox Corp., Hearst, Hulu, iHeart, Lionsgate, Microsoft, NBCU, Netflix, Paramount, Roku, Snapchat, Sony, Spotify, Twitter, Disney, Warner Media, and YouTube. Note only two audio companies, iHeart and Spotify. The general public results are from the Pew Research Center.
Evan pointed out that US media executives are 56 times more likely to have attended an Ivy League school than the average American television viewer (note: I think that’s an underestimate…28% versus 0.2% is a multiple of 140!). At the end of last year, I wrote a column suggesting that you not overestimate the intellectual capabilities of your audiences based on a multi-country study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Evan’s point was that media execs are out of touch with their audiences.
“If you want to know how the American Media Industrial Complex wound up such a shit show, the statistics above tell a very compelling story,” he wrote. “The most powerful people in Big Media all come from the same clubs. The people running these companies have no idea what real people want, because their offices have become bubbles. In Media and Tech, exposure to ‘real people’ is exclusively limited to focus groups in Tampa.”
Evan’s column triggered a search to check the educational backgrounds of commercial radio’s top executives, and the Ivy League plays just a minor role. Here’s what I found:
Bob Pittman, iHeart: a year at Millsaps College but no degree. Despite not finishing college, Bob has done very well for himself.
Kelli Turner, freshly-minted Audacy CEO: Bachelor’s in business administration and J.D. from the University of Michigan. As a two-time Michigan State alum, I’m required to inform you that U-M is a fourth-rate school. Her predecessor, long-time Audacy CEO David Field, earned his undergrad degree from Amherst College and an MBA from Wharton, which is the business school at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school.
Mary Berner, Cumulus: Bachelors from the College of Holy Cross
Bill Wilson, Townsquare: Undergrad from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and an MBA from Rutgers, also known as the State College of New Jersey.
Alfred Liggins, Urban One: Alfred holds an MBA from Wharton, so one for the Ivy League. It’s not clear that he ever finished an undergrad degree, but he attended UCLA and the University of the District of Columbia.
Caroline Beasley, Beasley: Bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina
Ginny Morris, Hubbard: It’s not clear that she finished college, but she attended different colleges in Minnesota. FYI: the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota shows the company’s support for higher education.
Daniel York, Cox Broadcasting: He has a bachelor’s and master’s from Michigan State. I haven’t met him, but now he’s right up there in my estimation!
Tanya Vea, Bonneville Communications: Two B.A.s from the University of Utah (double major).
I couldn’t find any publicly available educational background on Chris Forgy, CEO of Saga, but my guess is he didn’t attend Harvard, Yale, or any other Ivy or we’d know about it.
That’s one Ivy League school among this crew of CEOs and that’s for an MBA, which typically lasts just two years.
Now let’s drop down to the local folks. It’s been my experience that most of the people working at the station level, regardless of what they do, have either undergrad degrees from state (public) schools, didn’t finish, or even start college. Some attended community colleges. In other words, radio people — both those at the top and those who work at the cluster level — are not of the “media elite” but look more like the Pew pie chart.
On this one variable, radio folks should understand their audiences better than the people leading some of the major companies in other parts of media. Of course, radio people are closer to the public, too, living in the same communities. Even at the top, many of the leaders worked their way up and lived in smaller markets along the way.
Full disclosure: as noted, I have a B.A. and Ph.D. from Michigan State and an M.B.A. from the University of South Carolina. And I worked over five years in Spartanburg, South Carolina (WSPA-FM), not exactly one of America’s coastal enclaves, especially in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s when I was there.
All this raises the question that if we understand our audiences better than other media, at least based on our backgrounds, why doesn’t radio do better? What will it take?
Let’s meet again next week.
State school guy here to Ed!