Fast, nimble, and willing to take risks, WNIS News Talk 790 in Norfolk, Virginia is always looking to keep listeners informed, entertained, and engaged 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. “[Bob Sinclair] just was always taking risks, making adventurous decisions that ended up bringing us a lot,” said General Sales Manager and Program Director Juli Worden.
The Sinclair Communications station is home to Worden, who just celebrated 36 years at WNIS, and like Sinclair won’t let their station be “gobbled up” by ‘the big guys.’ “We have a lot to learn from [larger brands] they’ve been able to do more things because they have more money and more stations,” Worden said.
The one thing which Worden feels has allowed for WNIS’s success is their ability to pivot and take risks quickly. “We can be more creative, we could be more within the community,” she said. “This was something brought up [at the BNM Summit] being out in the community being live and local.”
Being a smaller family-owned news talk station, being in a room with all your affiliates is hard to do, but the BNM Summit in early September allowed Worden to connect and brainstorm on best practices to survive in the changing world of radio. “We’ve got to see what we can do together to make it better,” she said. “We’re all fighting to get younger audiences. We’re all fighting to get into this digital world that is so sexy, and radio just isn’t as sexy as it was when I started. It’s hard for me to convince some of the young salespeople, and I don’t want to, [sales] used to be so easy because you have to be much more creative, and content is king, and we realize that.”
The biggest takeaway of the summit for Worden was expanding the platforms for her listeners. She said, “We need to start expanding the platforms where we can be heard or those listeners, the older listeners to radio, aren’t going to be there anymore.”
As Worden plans for future success for all her brands including TalkRadio 96.5FM/850AM WTAR, WNOB- BOB-FM, country station WUSH US 106.1, and their heritage alternative station 96X, she was able to note the places where the station is hitting the mark. “Some of it was reaffirmation we’re doing the right things, and some may be, okay, let’s try to expand what we’re doing and see digitally.”
Worden is already seeing plenty of ideas for her team via podcasting and social media. “We have to go outside of platforms that are our own medium , [to ones] like YouTube and Tik Tok and why not? That was my biggest takeaway.”
As pivot points get approved it might be a little easier than smaller stations because of WNIS’s ability to top their market in sales. “We’ve got to find a way to stand out and a way to set ourselves apart,” said Worden. “We are the number one local billing station in the entire market and one of the top ones in Virginia. So go figure but it’s just because we’ve got street fighters as opposed to just order takers, which is the way it used to be.”
‘Street fighters’ or those with grit, are essential to the success in sales at WNIS but it does come at a cost, literally. “You’ve got to pay your people, you’ve got to keep morale up and we’ve got to give these people their time off. And we have to let them work from home if they want. So, I think it’s a different generation we’re trying to target. We just need people that are willing to do the work and get out there and do what’s needed.”
The added bonus of team building is also an important part of morale building for Worden. She said, “We’re taking the whole staff on a fishing trip mid-October. Just to keep everybody happy and engaged and motivated because it’s hard and there’s a lot of rejection and they have to think out of the box.”
Worden herself is a street fighter. Hired by Bob Sinclair, Sr. in the early 1990s, she said, “I ran into one of my friends and he’s like, ‘You would do great selling radio,’ and I said, ‘I don’t know about that.’” Worden was promptly hired and soon landed her first account. “We had just signed on with Rush Limbaugh, and I didn’t know who Rush was,” she said. “I didn’t know the meteoric rise he would have in radio… [the sales just kept coming and] it was like taking candy from a baby.”
Today, she and Bob Sinclair, Jr. helm the station the elder Sinclair once ran. “We’ve always tried to recreate our business plan so that it involved new and alternative revenue, more promotions,” she said. “We’re probably the most promotionally active group in the market by far because we’re family owned, and we can walk down the hall and [get approval for events].”
Worden noted how important listener involvement is and including them in events is key to their network’s success. “We do a lot of our own stuff,” she explained. “We just kept reinventing who we are. There have been some wobbles as internet changed our competition and who we were fighting against.”
While Worden has worked at WNIS her whole career, she and the team recognize, “not everyone is here for a lifetime.” For those looking to find their way in the industry she suggests, “Find a job you love, and you really do never work a day in your life. I have some of the most stressful days of my life, but it’s always a different day every single day.”
Worden additionally advises young people to “find something that engages you, find where the environment [and] culture fit you. Where the job description fits you, but also [find a place] that you feel you can get ahead and you feel there’s levels of growth, not just a steppingstone.”
