There are very few people in corporate leadership positions in radio that I have talked to as much as I have talked to Scott Sutherland at Bonneville International. I knew he would have plenty to say and would be game to participate when I asked him to be a part of our Meet the Leaders series presented by Point-to-Point Marketing!
In fact, before ascending to his current role as Bonneville’s EVP of Regional Media Operations, he was the company’s market manager for its Phoenix cluster. He was one of the first handful of people in that position to participate in our Meet the Market Managers series back in 2021. That puts him on a short list (I think just him and Mike Francesa) of people that have been profiled in two different iterations of this series of interviews.
Sutherland has seen his career grow at Bonneville, rising up the ranks to his current position. He has also seen the radio industry change. In a lot of cases, he has been part of leading the way. In others, he has reacted to what is happening around him to position his stations as best he can for the future.
In this conversation, we talk about maintaining unique identities for multiple stations sharing assets, the value of terrestrial sticks in 2024 and beyond, and why media companies may find their future leaders by looking at other businesses. Enjoy!
Demetri Ravanos: I know the roots of the company being what they are explains why Bonneville is exclusively focused in the Western United States, but as we see, not just populations shift, but also where businesses are starting and moving to shift, you couldn’t be in a more advantageous group of markets.
Scott Sutherland: We like the Western footprint with Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake, Seattle, Sacramento, and San Francisco. All big markets. You know, San Francisco obviously has been the biggest struggle for our business for obvious reasons, but we love our footprint.
DR: It seems like that at some point the company settled on four being the ideal for the number of stations in a cluster. Is there any reason behind that or just pure coincidence?
SS: I would say it’s the latter, just more pure coincidence on how things shook out after the Hubbard sale and then with our acquisition strategy, within the last eight years or so. We don’t have any hard rules or thoughts on whether we’re at three, four, or six. I think that’s fairly random.
DR: Even if there are not hard rules, having been in a bunch of buildings where there are seven and eight stations and maybe three or four of them have nobody that actually comes into the building, two to four stations does seem like a way to make sure all of them are actually getting the attention they need.
SS: I would agree. Over my tenure in the business, I’ve had eight in the beginning and then gone to some markets that have had two and three and I actually like that. We just want big brands, and I think if you can have four big brands or five big brands, that’s perfect! But I would agree with you that three to four seems like a good, sweet spot.
DR: So speaking of big brands, in Salt Lake, KSL is a radio station, a television station, and now you’ve got the KSL Sports brand on as part of the branding for 97.5. How do you make sure each one of those different entities has its own unique identity while also being able to utilize each other’s resources?
SS: That’s a great question. And you have to throw in KSL.com. A fun fact for you is that Salt Lake City is the only market where KSL.com beats Craigslist in the classifieds. They were first in. It’s just a massive website.
I think that’s obviously Tanya Vea’s expertise. She runs the Salt Lake market and is also the President of our company.
I think they’ve done a good job of picking their lanes, pouring gas where it’s needed. On the sports side, The Zone is an acquisition that’s new to us and then you’ve got a full KSL Sports division led by Nate Dowdle. That’s in addition to the behemoth, our news brand which extends from radio to TV. So, it’s complicated without a question, but I think we have great content leaders to make sure that they can kind of corral it and make sure the right people are in the appropriate lanes. It’s certainly complicated when you have something that big.
DR: So KSL.com is part of this trend you guys have with MyNorthwest.com up in Seattle and then also all of the sports station websites are branded to the market, Denver Sports, SacTown Sports, etc.. Tell me a little bit about the evolution of prioritizing local in everything you do digitally, not just banner ads.
SS: Arizona Sports was the first one that we switched to that model in 2011. It really came out of a meeting that we had. We flew to Bristol to pitch John Kosner, who used to be the head of ESPN Digital when ESPN was launching their local sites, ESPN Chicago and Boston, and then they were subsequently getting ready to launch ESPN LA and New York.
We made a presentation, really on our heels, saying, “Hey, let us be ESPN Phoenix and let us have that local strategy.”
So they launched and then I think it was a little stagnant, so we basically corralled and said, “Why can’t we just do this ourselves? Let’s create an agnostic brand around Arizona Sports.”
Not to impugn a bunch of call letter websites, but I don’t think they were doing anyone any favors. So, we decided to just own the category.
So it started in Phoenix. Then we rebranded the whole station, and then two and a half years ago, we thought, “let’s pour gas on this sports strategy because it’s working.”
So we rebranded Seattle as Seattle Sports, SacTown Sports in Sacramento and then Denver Sports.
We like that. We think we own the category, whether it comes to audio, video or our websites around the one brand. I think it has played out very well for us.
DR: You guys do not have one single strategy for sports, so from where you sit in a corporate role, have you seen that it’s more valuable to have a market leading, can’t-miss show in one of the drive time dayparts or is it more valuable to have the play-by-play rights to the market’s most popular team?
SS: If I had to only pick one, I would take the former without a question. Those are our superstars. The play-by-play dynamics are changing. In Phoenix, we have everybody. Well, we did have the Coyotes until Utah stole them from us, so we lost that. In Denver though, we don’t have anything.
Play-by-play’s getting more complicated. Our philosophy is we want to be in the play-by-play business. I say this sort of facetiously, they don’t teach this at McKinsey, and they certainly wouldn’t advise it, but our thought is we’re not willing to lose a dime, but we don’t have to make a dime either. Those old deals where broadcasters just got hammered and they were so upside down that’s where our industry had to pivot. If folks can cut a good deal, then we’re certainly amenable to take it.
I think that our use of the Arizona Sports app has given us the ability to take some of the secondary and tertiary games, whether it’s the small soccer league or maybe a secondary college team in the market. So I think we have found the opportunity to do that.
DR: It’s an election year. The economy is in an uncertain state. So when you have conversations with local leaders, how many different plans for the future are you hearing from these folks?
SS: Well, the deflationary world in which we live has not helped us. Some of the key categories, whether it’s around finance, auto, all things tied to home and mortgage, have been tough. That rebound is starting to come, but I think for all of us, we have to ask tough questions. Some of what we pose is how do we get growth and what are we willing to do differently?
The business certainly is changing, and I think there’s this juxtaposition between how you align expenses in your core and how do you invest in areas around audience and revenue growth. I think that dynamic is something that all of our markets are dealing with.
Then you get the change in video. For us at Bonneville, we’re currently pouring significant gas on a video strategy. You have resources that are required to do that. Continuing to grow our local revenue is still important, of course, but it’s different than before. There’s the digital side to think about too. How do we grow our first party data? How do we grow our audio impressions? Our video impressions?
Our distribution is becoming ubiquitous, clearly. You can get the content our talent produces on many different channels, so how do we make sure whether it’s radio website, app, streaming, newsletter, social media, YouTube downloads, you’re there? I mean, those are all individual things whereas before, when it was linear, you were driving in the car and the 98.7 frequency is where our audience is.
It’s a changing dynamic. It’s complicated. So, I think that’s where you kind of have the blend of “it’s hard” with “how do we balance that core competency into growth expectations?”.
DR: So, we’ve seen other companies kind of take a similar view of “there are so many different ways people are getting the content now.” You mentioned newsletters and social media. There are so many different types of content that people want now beyond just the spoken word that we put out or the music that our station is playing, whatever the case may be. And we’ve seen some of those companies take the opportunity, while an FM or AM stick is still valuable, to sell that real estate. Do you think, given the amount of focus you guys have put into building up these digital brands, that Bonneville could get to that point in the future?
SS: As far as selling sticks?
DR: Yeah, for example, could you see getting to the point where the 98.7 frequency is not seen as an essential part of the Arizona sports brand?
SS: Yeah. I think at some point there’s no towers on the mountains, whether that’s 20 years or 15 years, which is why frankly, in 2011 we wanted to start to make sure and rebrand whether it’s Arizona Sports or any other station, so there’s an escape hatch. I definitely see that, but I think the FM band is certainly still vibrant.
You know, we started back in ’06 with Bonneville when we put KTAR on the FM. We blew up a pretty successful music station in ’14 here in Phoenix to put our sports station on FM. Right now, you better play in all the spaces for existential reasons.
DR: Local leaders are always thinking about how and where they are recruiting the next generation of sellers from, whether they are coming right out of school or somebody that has had success selling another product, and that success could translate over to media.
I wonder about the next generation of leaders. Do you think they need to come up through the ranks and understand the media business front to back, or can you look at leaders in other fields and see that they have the type of qualities and type of experience that might be valuable to leading a media company on the local level?
SS: Without a doubt you could do the latter, and I think you have to be much more intentional as it relates to recruiting. One of the things that our company has done an amazing job with really is succession planning and having specific actions of whether it’s a PD in said market or we need a market manager or someone who’s retiring. We are very, very intentional.
I’m a pretty good example. I got shipped to Seattle for my first market manager job and then shipped back here. We love to promote from within. We love to grow our own people, but we certainly have gone outside to hire other folks as well.
Some of the sellers that we have are from other industries, we have a blend where we will hire some of the younger people, whether through internships or we have the Cronkite School here, which is amazing. So, we’ll bring in younger folks but also bring in people from other industries. Without a doubt, the days of disguising your voice dive-bombing your competitor are over.
I say that facetiously, but I think if you want to build a great, dynamic organization and have growth, then you better make sure that you have a specific plan in place for their growth and are paying a lot of attention and being intentional about it.
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.
