The Industry According To….Susan Larkin

Thank you for checking out ‘The Industry According To’. This series runs each Tuesday, and features radio and record industry executives, managers, programmers, talent, artists, and professionals from all areas of the business world. To be considered as a future guest, email me at keithblackboxgroup@gmail.com.

Today we’re taking the elevator to the C-Suite with a highly decorated executive who most recently served as Chief Operating Officer and previously Regional President at Audacy, Susan Larkin. 

Radio and media have been her focus since she graduated college, and she quickly rose through the ranks. Susan brings the perspective of someone who has worked at the highest level and is not only bullish on radio, but who understands the pressures of Wall Street while championing innovation and smart risk-taking.

So, let’s dive in.

The 30,000 Foot View

Keith: As part of major executive restructuring at Audacy, you’ve been out of the large scale, day-to-day leadership role. What do you see more clearly now that you may not have or couldn’t see when you were in the trenches grinding every day?

Susan: When you are in the trenches, in many cases, you are solving today’s fire or issue. When you step back you see patterns and you can also look at the business completely objectively. Radio’s core strengths of trust and daily habit remain intact. The structural issue is modernization of its distribution and consumption experience. And the need for even more speed towards advanced infrastructure and revenue models, along with talent strategies that match today’s consumer preferences.

Radio’s Perception Problem

Keith: You mentioned you’ve been having conversations with people outside the industry and noticed radio’s perception may be off. What are you hearing?

Susan: Outside the industry, there are some that think that radio is smaller and weaker than it is. Others just don’t understand its impact and importance in peoples’ lives. It’s often miscast as an ‘old school’ media. There may not be an awareness of the digital transformation that has occurred, its impact on communities and marketing and experiential opportunities it delivers. The narrative has not caught up with audio’s reality. 

We need to put real energy into telling the story with data, together as an industry. The RAB and Katz Media Group have helped to bring industry leaders together to speak in one voice. There is so much great research that companies are investing in to provide the facts around radio’s efficacy. While the research is shared amongst the industry, advertisers and stakeholders, we need to be even more deliberate with speed and coverage to break through.

The Talent Pool

Keith: Where is the industry’s talent the strongest right now? Where is it on thin ice? On-air talent, leadership, sales, creativity, risk tolerance or somewhere else?

Susan: We have really strong talent throughout all elements of the business. The biggest issue is that the bench is not as strong as it should be. We are doing more with less. Where we are thin is bold creative risk taking and long-term talent development. We have become efficient operators.

However, innovation takes oxygen. When budgets compress, risk tolerance disappears. It’s understandable. We must use technology to automate low-priority tasks and create resources to solve for development. The hard truth is the only way to continue to innovate for profitable growth is to self fund, because the math doesn’t work otherwise. No one knows the businesses, cultures and economies that exist within our communities better than the teams both on the content and revenue side. If we can create the capacity and invest smartly in where those audiences are going and how to monetize effectively, we will see the returns.

Local vs. Scale

Keith: The corporate teams talk about scale. The boots on the ground talk about local connection. From your view, where does the industry get that balance right and wrong?

Susan: Scale gives us buying power, tech leverage and national opportunities across a variety of revenue streams. Local delivers relevance and loyalty. We get it right when scale enhances local execution and our teams work together. For advertisers, plans that deliver national coverage and consistency, coupled with local relevance always deliver better ROAS than other media. Reducing redundancy and making sure the teams are prioritizing and focusing on their most effective levers is really important.

Budget Realities

Keith: Market Managers and PDs often say budgets are tighter than ever — sometimes to the point where meaningful investment feels impossible. From your vantage point, how real is the budget crisis across radio right now?  Are we really at the “sell the vans” stage of the business?

Susan: Budget pressure is real. Public company debt structures and private equity returns are not theoretical. They are math. While this isn’t every single company, it affects most. I wouldn’t characterize it as selling the vans (although in cases that may be a low priority asset). The industry has become lean. The bigger issue isn’t cost cutting, it’s capital allocation. Where we choose to invest matters the most: technology, data, distribution, or new monetization channels. That should be where the most time and energy is spent.

Focal Points

Keith: Being COO or Regional President means sometimes making decisions that strengthen the parent company but may hurt a cluster or individual brand. How did you and your teams approach those tradeoff decisions where there were clear ups and downs?

Susan: The question can’t be “who wins”. It has to be “What strengthens the entire organization”. Sometimes that meant consolidating resources, sometimes that meant protecting or enabling a local brand because its long-term equity outweighed short-term savings. I believe the key is transparency. If the team understands the why, and have an opportunity to contribute to decision-making with data-informed points then tough decisions earn respect even if not everyone agrees with them.

Downsizing

Keith: Downsizing decisions are some of the hardest in the business. Can you give us some visibility into how those decisions actually get made? Is it strictly financial targets or does it become more granular at the market level and line-by-line?

Susan: Downsizing decisions are financial first. They have to be. Targets are real. But the execution is much more granular than people assume. It can be market by market, business unit by business unit and role by role. The hardest part isn’t the spreadsheet. You must weigh risk and conduct sensitivity analysis. However, knowing that talented people are impacted by forces larger than their performance, those decisions stay with you.

What’s Radio’s Super Power?

Keith: The radio industry often leads with reach as its superpower. That’s an aggregate industry number though, not what a local advertiser gets. What do you lean on that will convince a local advertiser to invest in radio today?

Susan: Radio’s superpower isn’t just reach. It’s influence coupled with frequency. A local advertiser doesn’t need “the industry’s reach”. They need trusted voices that move behavior in a market. When radio integrates personality, community presence, digital marketing and experiential, ROI becomes visible.

Digital Without Buzzwords

Keith: “Digital transformation” has been the mantra for years. Now that you’ve had some distance from the day-to-day, what has radio genuinely gotten right and where has it gone after the broader idea without seeing much real value in return yet?

Susan: Radio has improved distribution, digital access for content and ad tech, digital marketing solutions and podcasting integration. We still have a lot of work to do. Industry solutions for more unified data systems, more automated workflows and scalable monetization infrastructure. Technology can’t sit adjacent to the business. It must be embedded in how the business operates as a culture shift and often, culture moves slower than tech. That’s a challenge all industries under massive transformation face.

It’s important to note that both SiriusXM and Spotify called out their strategy to take share from AM/FM radio in their latest quarterly earnings release. Why? Because radio delivers a consistent, high-value, targetable audience with real buying power. This is a coveted audience. To deliver against this mandate, SXM will be lowering subscription pricing and Spotify will be offering more personalization levers for listeners and creators.

Who or What Guides Executives

Keith: Beyond stock price and quarterly earnings, how do executives get better, smarter, more aggressive? How do they learn? Who or what pushes their thinking forward?

Susan: Great executives are not just driven by stock price or EBITDA delivery. They are driven by legacy and stewardship. The best ones surround themselves with people that will disagree intelligently. You don’t get better by being the smartest person in the room. You get better by being curious. I would say comfort is the enemy of evolution. Financial discipline coupled with a genuine passion for the business and a vision for where it goes to meet consumers and advertisers is the winning formula.

Today’s Newcomers

Keith: A 23 year-old wanting to enter the business comes into your office and asks for some mentoring. Which skills are most important for them to learn? Which direction are you pushing them towards (programming, sales, finance, podcasting, etc.)?

Susan: I love this and have had that experience many times. I tell them that you need to understand how the money flows and the mechanics of revenue. Everyone contributes in different ways. The most successful personalities are highly engaged in how much revenue they are generating and how it’s happening: engagement, ratings, influence, etc. Audience development also matters and of course digital fluency is table stakes. If you really want to have a long term successful career in this business, be curious, seek out mentors, have some patience and above all, never take yourself too seriously.

The One Thing

Keith: You step back into an executive role tomorrow and can change one structural thing about the radio industry. What is it?

Susan: I seem to get this question at least once a week. While each situation is unique, the common theme for most companies in our industry is to align incentives around long term value creation. That of course applies to macro capital allocation and investment, but it also means compensation plans need to match outcomes and long-term performance, not just quarterly delivery.

What’s Next?

Keith:  What’s next for you? Entrepreneurship, re-joining the executive ranks, or something totally different?

Susan: I’m most energized by building and growth. That means building teams, modernizing infrastructure and revenue models with technology, and most importantly, creating environments where smart risk is encouraged. I want the opportunity to provide real value creation and impact, because that’s where meaningful work happens. Stay tuned!

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