Day 2 of the 2025 BNM Summit Presented by Newsmax is taking place inside the Alvin Ailey Theater in New York City. Key takeaways from this year’s sessions and speakers are being passed along by Barrett Media News Editor Garrett Searight.
Check back throughout the day to find out what you’ve missed.
10:00-10:10 AM: Welcome to the 2025 BNM Summit Presented By Newsmax
- Jason Barrett (Barrett Media)
Barrett opened the show by discussing the need to tackle issues in the revenue and advertising businesses inside the media industry. Radio drives the most conversions of any media channel at 47%, and yet radio was in the middile of what advertisers expected to increase this year. Radio’s revenue has decreased by roughly $5 billion over the course of the past few years as a whole.
Barrett added that companies aren’t going to be able to cut their way to prosperity. The utilization of AI has increased. He noted that there are now powerful tools that can create videos, music, generated voices, or any other idea can be formed by the technology.
The conversation continued by showcasing comments from Savannah Bananas owner and founder Jesse Cole that talked about how the brand has never spent any money on traditional advertising because they’ve created amazing experiences for their fans, which their word of mouth reputation driving their sales. Barrett equated that to the media business. If you’re not creating great experiences for advertisers, you’re going to struggle continuing to receive their marketing dollars.
10:10-10:50 AM: Dollars and Sense Presented by Mr. Master
- John Vitti (Direct Results)
- Chad Brown (Katz Radio Group)
- Gary Sarner (ROI360+)
- Mike Hulvey (RAB)
Hulvey led the discussion with the assembled marketers. He asked a simple question: “Why radio?”
“It works. And people listen. And people love it. It’s part of your community,” said Sarner. “Each individual brand has a meaning to the market and has people who passionately love it. Radio works.”
“Radio absolutely works,” added Brown. “I do think every station has a purpose. It’s ubiquotious. It follos you everywhere you go. It has immediacy. And it works from the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel, which we don’t get enough credit for. I don’t think there’s any better testamant to how radio works.”
“I’ve been buying radio for five years now, and what I think is that radio is the most authentic form of marketing advertising out there,” said Vitti. “You’re gonna focus on an actual endorser who connects with the audience every single day. It’s not interrupted. It’s while you’re driving, while you’re at home, while you’re working out. It doesn’t interrupt you at all.”
Hulvey then asked how the news/talk format fits into the marketing community.
“This isn’t going to be a popular answer, but it’s too old and too wealthy,” said Sarner. “In the area that I’m in, we’re looking for $75,000 and below income. They love news, talk, and sports. But how do we make it more exciting to make people want to tune in? It’s available to everybody. Make it cooler. Make it hipper. There’s a way. It’s not all about the content that’s being spoken about.”
“I would agree,” said Vitti. “One of the strongest demo is the 35-64 and older. But you’re going to struggle when you’re looking at 18-25. Which is unfortunate, because everybody needs news. The audience that comes for those hosts, though, are going there because they trust what they’re saying. But it should lead to success for that client.”
“People really focus on talent more so than a station. They identify with a personality and they become a friend. They lean in daily and it’s active listening,” said Brown. “I do think there’s a more upscale audience in news and news/talk. I think those are the type of things that generate the ROI advertisers are looking for.”
Hulvey then asked what the perception of the format is to the advertising clients represnted by the assembled brands.
“At the end of the day, you could always find that 27th ranked station in the market that has that perfect host that is going to connect directly to your audience app,” said Vitti. “Every single morning … when you actually find someone that connects and buys into what that product or service that you’re trying to promote is that’s truly the most valuable thing that you’re going to find.”
“When I go into a market, I want to buy every station in the market, not one, not three, not five,” said Sarner. “I’ll buy 15 or 18, and we have some real investors out there that are doing this. 2% of the people in America will get in a car accident. Yet personal injury lawyers on a local level, is the fastest growing category in radio across America. Yet none of these lawyers ever get attribution from any of the stations. And we do a ton of endorsements across America, and nobody mentions the talent’s name. They don’t call. They go online. So where’s the attribution?
“The attribution is at Google,” continued Sarner. “And understand that as you’re going out to sell your products, your brand, if they’re on one station, you will see some attribution because now it’s focused. But when you’re doing a radio campaign and you need to be across multiple places, different genres, the attribution is not going to be given to radio or TV anymore. It is given to Google.”
10:50-11:30 AM: The Keynote Conversation Presented By Newsmax
- Jeff Warshaw (Connoisseur Media)
Warshaw’s appearance at the BNM Summit coincided with the company’s announcement that it had officially completed its acquisition of Alpha Media.
With the company’s extreme expansion, it now operates more than 200 stations in 47 markets around the company. That mean’s Warshaw’s job duties have expanded, but haven’t largely changed.
“As a CEO, I think I have three major jobs. One is to establish the culture,” Warshaw began. “The second is major hires and major important people that will either be reporting to me or will be important on a large basis for the company. And then the third is strategy. Strategy includes everything from M&A, including divestitures, acquisitions, bulking up in our markets.”
Warshaw added that the company will soon be launching a full-service creative agency for its local markets in an effrort to attract local advertisers who aren’t currently spending with AM/FM Radio.
The Connoisseur Media CEO stated that having personal relationships with his employees matters to him.
“The authentic concern and affection for the people in our company, it can’t be faked,” he said. “Having a successful company amd doing it with people that we love and care about in communities that you’re committed to, that’s winning. It’s not important what I want. I don’t come into the radio stations. You come into the new company. Tell everybody, ‘This is what I want. This is what I need to do.’ We try to take an approach of like, ‘We can’t be successful if we don’t have the best people that are motivated, and happy, and learning, and thriving, and enthusiastic. So we need to achieve that, and then we have a shot at being successful.”
Warshaw has visited more than two dozen Alpha Media markets since announcing intention to purchase the company. He said it’s been the best way to learn about what he’s undertaking.
“Nothing takes the place of actually sitting in a room with the people and hearing what’s going right and what’s going wrong,” he said. “You hear things that no one is going to tell you. It’s not that they’re trying to hide it from you. It’s just that the things that when you’re exposed to every day, I hear them. It’s always the best education I can get.
“Look, I have a family. I try to be there all the time. And people who know me know that I’m always getting phone calls. I have lots of things to do, but I still got up from my comfortable desk in Connecticut, and I got on a plane, got in lots of cars, and sat in lots of little buildings and heard from people what’s really going on. Without that I would never be able to do my job.”
When asked by Jason Barrett what advertisers get wrong or don’t understand about the radio business and advertising market, Warshaw had a long list.
“My friends are like, ‘Oh my god, doesn’t everyone listen to satellite radio?’ I was like, ‘One for every 15 people that are listening to radio.’ Not everybody is a managing director of a firm in Greenwich,” Warshaw said. “In Middle America, most people are not really that interested in paying to listen to something that’s better for free. Even amongst marketing professionals there’s just a tremendous misperception.
“There’s no shortage of data to support that. The RAB has done a great job bringing that data forward,” he continued. “If you look at many of the media buyers, they are young, they live in big cities, and they don’t commute. So they don’t listen to radio for lots of reasons. They’re biased. There’s so many things that we can do that other media can do, but that’s our job, to continue to push that and on a local basis.”
The AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act still has not been passed, despite widespread, bipartisan support. Warshaw shared his support for the bill and how important the AM Band is for local communities.
“Rather than look at it from an owner of AM radio stations, why don’t we look at it as far as what our job as broadcasters are? When there’s a power outage, you need to listen to the radio,” said Warshaw. “A lot of those stations, particularly those AM stations, have elderly listeners, not to stereotype it. Obviously, there’s an older bias for AM. They need these stations in their communities to know what’s going on. We’re providing a vital service, and to deprive our communities of those local services because the auto manufacturers want to make another $150 or $250? That’s wrong.
“We don’t have the right to deprive our listeners of what they need,” Warshaw continued. “It’s petty and it’s short sighted for the auto manufacturing, for people that say, let AM die. Because for every one of these markets that would lose the AM in the radio, it will cost lives, and it will definitely negatively impact these communities. There are lots of things we can do to make more money that hurt our community. The decision is you know whether or not we’re willing to do that.”
11:30-12:25: BNM Summit Awards Ceremony Presented by Premiere Networks
- Curtis Sliwa (77 WABC)
- John Catsimatidis (Red Apple Media)
- Julie Talbott (Premiere Networks)
- Julia Ziegler (WTOP News)
The first award of the day honored longtime New York news/talk radio host Curtis Sliwa. Sliwa, who is currently off the air at 77 WABC as he runs for Mayor of the Big Apple, was bestowed with the News/Talk Radio Lifetime Achievement Award.
Curtis Sliwa gave credit to longtime New York-based host Bob Grant for pioneering the genre and also advocating for his career when he first began.
“I would never have had a 35 year career in talk radio, if not for Bob Grant paving the way for me and so many others,” Sliwa said. “He actually looked to elevate personalities and give them an opportunity.”
Sliwa added that he appreciates what 77 WABC owners John & Margo Catsimatidis for saving the station he loves from “the chopping block” that Cumulus Media had the brand on.
“I was given a renewed opportunity at WABC by John and Margo Catsimatidis, who had rescued that iconic station from what was basically the execution list at the time,” he said. “Cumulus, the second largest owner and operator of stations in America, had decided they didn’t want to stay in the New York City Market. We knew we were on the chopping block. We knew it’s just a matter of time before we would all have to learn Cantonese, Russian, or some foreign language entity would buy the big stick. You imagine most iconic call letters in all of talk radio, WABC would go black and be no more?
“John and Margo and the general manager, Chad Lopez, rescued us right at the time of the lockdown and pandemic. I remember how difficult it was, but we all came into the studio. We did our broadcast, we came to Penn Station. It was one of the most dangerous times that our city had ever faced, because nobody knew what was going on. Talk radio became a lifeline to a lot of people.”
Sliwa pledged that — should he win election to the mayor’s office in November — he will launch a radio row at City Hall. He added that part of his mayoral platform, and personality, has been built on talk radio, which he’ll forever grateful to those who gave him the opportunity to have that platform and find himself on the air.
WTOP Director of News and Programming Julia Ziegler was given the honor of of the Gold Standard in Programming Award.
“I am very honored and humbled to accept this award in front of all of you today,” Ziegler said.
She added that WTOP News has launched a three-year plan to reinvent the way it operates, and has seen that plan come to fruition as a vision for the future.
“People’s media habits are changing. Traditional revenue streams are declining, and I’m extremely grateful for events like this, where we get to come together and talk about solutions,” said Ziegler. “When we started this project, it was daunting and a bit overwhelming … there were no third rails. Everything was on the table and up for debate. We looked at every bit of programming across platforms and asked ourselves whether it still works for today’s audience and whether it’s going to work the audiences of the future. We’re in the process of completely revamping how our reporters work on a daily basis to serve news consumers across all platforms.”
She concluded by stating that the radio business needs to be more open about sharing its successes, and offered anyone in attendance the opportunity to speak with her to discuss any item that could help any colleague.
Premiere Networks President Julie Talbott was honored with the Gold Standard in Business Award.
The upcoming Radio Hall of Famer shared that she couldn’t have been bestowed with the award by herself, noting that she has been surrounded by a great time during her tenure with the company.
“At Premiere, our number one objective is to really have — from a nationwide standpoint — the number one talent at any given point,” she shared. “That’s the challenge, and that is why we get to work with great programmers throughout the country, and know that we’re not doing this alone, that the colleagues that we work with are creative, they are open to ideas, and it’s our responsibility to provide them with great talent.”
She added that she remains optimistic and enthused about the industry.
“This is such an incredible industry. It is fun, it is tough, it is hard every day, but the passion that everybody has in this room and the passion that everyone has in this industry is incredible, and it motivates me every single day to get up and try to find new talent, to find new initiatives, to try to find new solutions for all of us to have a vibrant, ever expanding business,” she said. “No matter what the economy throws at us, I know that we are going to persevere through this and come out on top. So thank you very, very much. I am truly honored. Thank you.”
Red Apple Media President John Catsimatidis was honored with the Gold Standard in Leadership Award for his stewardship of 77 WABC.
The billionaire said that the radio station is his favorite business — of which he owns many — to run and operate. He called getting to host Cats & Cosby the highlight of his day.
“No matter how hard I work, from six in the morning, eight in the morning, all the way at five o’clock, I go from the fifth floor — where our corporate offices are — to the second floor where the WABC studio is, guess what? I get energized. And I want all of you to be energized and deliver the truth to your community. Always tell the truth. Thank you all.”
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