Meet The Leaders is a special 8-week series created in partnership with Point to Point Marketing. Our fourth feature is on the Chief Programming Officer & President, National Programming Group for iHeartMedia, Tom Poleman. Follow along with the series and revisit former conversations by checking out the entire category.
Tom Poleman is a near four-decade veteran of the radio industry. He has been with iHeartMedia since 1996, starting at Z100 in New York City and now oversees programming and music strategy, talent development and artist relations for iHeartMedia’s 851 radio stations nationwide.
As the President of National Programming Platforms for iHeartMedia, Tom is responsible for curating the most culturally relevant and iconic songs for the 850+ stations belonging to the iHeart family. In addition to ensuring people like what is coming out of their speakers, Tom is also to thank for activating the radio experience through in-person events such as the iHeartRadio Music Festival, iHeartRadio Jingle Ball Tour, iHeartRadio Fiesta Latina, iHeartRadio Summer Pool Party, and the iHeartRadio Country Festival.
In this edition of “Meet The Leaders,” we dive into what the day-to-day is like for Poleman guiding iHeart’s brands. We also discuss how he works with his teams managing brands, engaging in artist relations, and what he believes are the keys to successful music selection strategy.
Poleman spoke with Barrett Media from his office in New York City.
*Editor’s Note: Answers have been edited for clarity and length.*
John Mamola: You just wrapped up Fiesta Latina in Miami. How did the event go this past weekend?
Tom Poleman: It was really good. It’s interesting. People buy tickets up until the last minute. On the day of the show, we sold 1,000 tickets. It ultimately sells out. Every market is different in the speed that it sells out. It was a party, and it was great.
John Mamola: You’ve been in this business for a long time, almost three decades with iHeartMedia. Is radio as fun as it used to be, or is radio more fun today for you?
Tom Poleman: Radio has always been fun for me, and it’s just as fun. I started in 1983 at my college radio station, so I can’t even count how many years I’ve been doing this. It’s been a fantastic journey.
I would say it is as fun as it’s always been, but it’s different challenges today versus what it was like when I started in 1983. I’ve seen so many different ebbs and flows of the business. Technology is obviously the biggest change that’s occurred since then, and also radio consolidation.
I started as a program director of a single station when I joined iHeartMedia in 1996 at Z100. We were just a bunch of kids at the time, just trying to put on the most compelling radio station we could. Since then, iHeartMedia has over 880 stations that I work with.
We have also scaled events since I arrived. I started Jingle Ball in 1996 here in New York, and now it’s a 10-market tour across the country. A lot of the principles that we always have used at a single radio station are now scaling to over 880 stations and reaching 278 million consumers monthly. It remains a lot of fun, just the way we deliver the product has evolved over the years.
John Mamola: You’re responsible for overseeing a lot of different brands across the country. What’s a typical day-to-day in your world?
Tom Poleman: It starts with a great team. We have a team of executive vice presidents of programming that ultimately are responsible for the stations in that region. We have a team of brand managers that are divided by the different formats, plus a fantastic research team with Critical Mass Media.
We’re constantly studying the consumers to make sure that we’re delivering the products that we need for the market. It’s working with that team on a daily basis, and depending on which station needs the most attention on any given day, I’ll go and focus on them with each of the teams.
It’s staying very close with Bob Pittman (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, iHeartMedia) and Rich Bressler (President, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer; CEO, Multiplatform Group, iHeartMedia), our sales team as well on the overall strategy for the company, Conal Byrne (CEO, Digital Audio Group iHeartMedia), and Will Pearson (President, iHeartPodcasts) in podcasting.
We have a fantastic executive team, as well as the program directors in the field.
I’m responsible, if we take a broad step back, for the products—the radio stations, but also the events that we produce. My partner John Sykes (President, Entertainment Enterprises, iHeartMedia) and I are in the middle of the Jingle Ball season now that we’re working on. We produce the iHeartRadio Music Awards. We do a festival in Vegas, the iHeartCountry Festival each year.
It’s the events, the programming of the radio stations, and the marketing of the stations. Anything involving the product really is what I focus on.
The thing that I love about it is it’s a little different from day to day. Artist relations are also part of my purview. Working with all the new music that’s coming out, how to best partner with artists and managers and use our platform to develop careers, supporting the music ecosystem.
So, there’s a lot.
John Mamola: When it comes to strategy with music—selecting the right tracks to mix with the correct brands with iHeartMedia—do you pay attention to other streaming platforms or social media? Also, what’s the balance of investigating what’s working nationally versus what may be working in individual markets?
Tom Poleman: It’s a blend of art and science. We do a tremendous amount of research studying every data point available to us. Certainly, streaming is the new record store. We monitor what consumers are listening to, just like we always would pay attention to what songs or albums are selling in the stores. We’ll watch it very closely and look for trends.
We do a lot of additional research the same way that we did back in the 80s. The principles are still the same; it’s just the metrics that you use, and the technology used to analyze the data has evolved.
When people talk about artificial intelligence, I think AI helps you consume more data and analyze data faster. That’s certainly a part of what we do. At the same time, the art part is still very important.
Research can’t always predict what the next wave is going to be for the consumer. We like to get together with artists long before their music comes out and hear about their strategy, then help them develop marketing campaigns to bring it to life.
The thing about radio that’s different from streaming services is that we have that human element. We’re not an algorithm. That comes from personalities setting up the music and telling a story behind the music—the interviews that artists do with our talent. That really helps the artists develop their brand to the consumer.
Taylor Swift, arguably the most successful person in music, still comes to radio first to brainstorm how to roll out a project and how radio can be part of it.
She did interviews with Elvis Duran and Ryan Seacrest that first day that her latest album dropped. We did a lot of different stunts, but she’s always been so savvy. One of the things that makes her so savvy is she recognizes the importance of radio and how that’s a part of her overall mix.
A big part of it is working with the artists on how to use our platform to best bring their music to the market.
John Mamola: How do you sell to an artist that traditional radio is still a platform that’s important to get their messaging out, especially when artists have streaming services, social media, and TikTok trends all marketing music as well?
It seems sometimes radio is a little bit behind trends because songs blow up online before hitting radio. Today, there are other ways to find instant success. When you have over 800 radio stations across the country, that’s a massive megaphone to amplify that messaging.
Tom Poleman: The thing to remember is radio can do what no other medium can do—reach and frequency. No other medium, even the streaming services, reach nearly the audience that we do in radio.
There is always going to be a passionate core for any artist, but it’s a small and passionate core. They’re early to discover music. To expand beyond that core, you need the reach of radio. The timeline of the masses becoming familiar with a project versus the avid streamers is completely different.
You can have an artist that goes up and down in streaming over the span of four weeks, while the masses are just beginning to get familiar with their music on weeks five, six, seven, and beyond.
What we remind the music community of all the time is the ultimate win is to make your songs hits with the masses. You do that by reaching far beyond the TikTok, social media, or the streaming audience to really hit that point. You hit them with repetition as well.
That’s something we’ve always done well with radio. You play the songs with high frequency. It’s more important today than it’s ever been to have radio develop songs that can be consensus hits.
If people just stay in their niche getting fed similar sounds in algorithms all day, they never really break out and discover other songs. That’s what we do well. We do it not only with the reach and frequency, but the trusted relationship that a consumer has with an Elvis Duran, Ryan Seacrest, or a Woody.
Whatever genre we’re talking about, introducing their next artist or the next song that they’re going to be into, it’s that phenomenon—the reach to the masses that radio provides, and it’s the context for the music.
It also is an understanding that all of these things need to work together. We’re in a music ecosystem where you need the social for your artist’s profile. You need the streaming and need songs to be hot on TikTok. But you also need the radio too.
The savvy music executive knows that they all work together. It’s not just one that is the most important part.
John Mamola: We mentioned Fiesta Latina, but you also have the iHeartRadio Music Awards and iHeartPodcast Awards, signature iHeart events. How important is it to build events like that which have staying power, not just for the brand, but for the overall importance that those events have in the music industry itself?
Tom Poleman: It’s incredibly important. It makes the artist more 360. It’s not just the song and the radio, but instead something you can experience in person.
Talking about iHeartRadio awards specifically, we’re not trying to be the Grammys. Everybody wants to win a Grammy, but that’s the competition show.
The iHeartRadio Awards, that’s the celebration show—the music community coming together to have a fun event together.
If you notice the way we do our iHeartRadio awards show, we don’t have a nominee package where the nominees are so and so, then you have a camera on each of the nominees. Then it’s that awkward moment when you announce the one winner’s name and everybody else is bummed out.
Our package is we just come out and announce the winner of an award. We tell the story of how they got there throughout the year. We’ll show the artist at the radio station, and on tour showing the work that they put into it. Then it’s a big celebration at that moment when they go up on stage.
You see everybody in the audience applauding each other. It’s fun.
John Mamola: Speaking of award shows. This year, the Golden Globes have introduced a best podcast award to their ceremony next year.
Sort of playing off what iHeartRadio has really stuck its flag into when it comes to awarding the best podcasts at the iHeartPodcast Awards?
Tom Poleman: Podcasting is an incredibly important part of what we do at iHeartRadio. It’s something that our listeners are engaged with.
We think it’s fantastic, and we’re the largest podcast producer and podcast publisher. We want to award those podcasters that are doing great in that space and have since 2019.
John Mamola: You brought up AI and utilizing AI to help analyze data faster. AI is becoming a little bit more a part of our everyday lives.
Bob Pittman talks a lot about companionship with the radio. I used to work for iHeartMedia and remember that messaging time and again.
Looking at how people are adapting to artificial intelligence, people are becoming more accustomed to it every day. Do you ever see a day where AI isn’t fully replacing talent on terrestrial, but could add more personalities into the individual brands themselves utilizing AI?
Tom Poleman: AI is fantastic, but you have to understand the limitations of AI. At the heart of what we do at iHeartMedia, pun intended, is we are human.
We are really 100% human and don’t have AI personalities. We know through our research that you can tell the difference between a human like Elvis Duran, Ryan Seacrest, Bobby Bones, or Charlamagne tha God.
There’s a special human connection that you can feel coming across the airwaves.
We’re not getting into AI personalities. We’re not getting into AI music. We’ve all seen bands that emerge on Spotify that pretend to be humans. Then later the consumer finds out that they’re not. They may look and sound great, but when you find out that they’re not real, you get mad.
Consumers react really poorly to AI. We know that consumers are aware of AI and they have a place for AI.
Again, it’s about understanding the limitations of it. The vast majority of our listeners will tell us that they understand that AI is an important factor. But it’s important for them to know that their entertainment is coming from a human.
As long as we are humans, we’re going to crave other humans. We’re going to crave our entertainment to come from humans. You can get stats and things. There’s convenience to certain types of information.
In a world where you feel like you’re in constant contact with other people, the more you scroll on social media, the more lonely you feel afterwards. You crave that human connection, and that is our secret sauce at iHeartRadio.
Our secret sauce on radio is that people are still craving that human connection and that companionship.
John Mamola: What’s left for Tom Poleman at iHeartRadio?
Tom Poleman: It’s an exciting time in radio. It’s how we take advantage of new technology and new capabilities while still keeping human connection at the forefront.
I think that there’s much to be done, and there’s much more fun to be had.
To learn more about Point-To-Point Marketing’s Podcast and Broadcast Audience Development Marketing strategies, contact Tim Bronsil at tim@ptpmarketing.com or 513-702-5072.
John Mamola is Barrett Media’s sports editor and daily sports columnist. He brings over two decades of experience (Chicago, Tampa/St Petersburg) in the broadcast industry with expertise in brand management, sales, promotions, producing, imaging, hosting, talent coaching, talent development, web development, social media strategy and design, video production, creative writing, partnership building, communication/networking with a long track record of growth and success. He is a five-time recognized top 20 program director in a major market via Barrett Medi’s Top 20 series and has been honored internally multiple times as station/brand of the year (Tampa, FL) and employee of the month (Tampa, FL) by iHeartMedia. Connect with John by email at John@BarrettMedia.com.
