Thank you for checking out The Industry According To. Every Wednesday, we speak with a different expert or leader from somewhere in the vast music industry — label executives, artist managers, programmers, talent, artists, consultants and beyond. To be considered as a future guest, email me at keithblackboxgroup@gmail.com.
Today we’re huddled with one of the most experienced, connected, and influential leaders in radio, Jeff Federman. Jeff isRegional President for Audacy West, overseeing some of the company’s largest and most competitive markets, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle and others. Across three decades in broadcasting, corporate leadership and technology, he has developed a reputation for building strong teams, guiding major brands and finding growth in an increasingly complicated media business.
From the resurgence of KROQ to the launch of LA’s first all-sports FM station, Jeff has been at the center of some of the West Coast’s biggest radio stories.
So, let’s dive in.
*Editor’s Note: Answers have been edited for clarity and length.*
The State of the State
Keith: You oversee a vast territory with enormous revenue responsibility. We know what the headlines say, but from your chair, what does the radio business really look like right now — healthier than reported, worse, or simply different? Why?
Jeff: Actually, we should look at this as one of the most exciting times we’ve experienced in our business. For most of radio’s history, we had one primary product and one way to distribute it. Today, we can take our content, personalities and local relationships across broadcast, streaming, podcasts, video, social and live events. We are able to create solutions for advertisers that we couldn’t have imagined a decade ago.
That doesn’t mean the business is easy but if you connect all of your assets in a way that produces results for advertisers, there is tremendous upside.
We shouldn’t look at radio as a challenged business. We should look at it as a business with enormously valuable assets that we are still learning how to fully unlock.
Ratings
Keith: On a scale of 1-10, how important are ratings to your markets hitting their 2026 revenue budgets — and what accounts for the rest of the equation?
Jeff: I would say a 6. Ratings still matter, and thankfully all of our stations excel in their genres. However, a rank is only one part of the story. It is much more about the ideas we bring to the table.
Every station has a place in the market and an audience it can motivate to take action. The opportunity is understanding what makes that audience unique and developing the right idea to activate it. A station doesn’t have to be number one to be incredibly valuable to the right advertiser.
Obviously, ratings can help get you in the door quicker. That being said, our teams tend to lead with a strong idea, supported by vetted talent, content, execution and measurement. The formula has served us well.
LA’s New Sports Station
Keith: Earlier this year, Audacy launched LA’s first all-sports FM station, 97.1 The Fan. Walk us through the decision. Why sports, why that frequency, and why in a market long considered uniquely difficult for the format?
Jeff: The idea of an all-sports station in Los Angeles has been discussed for a very long time. We came close over the years, but the right opportunity never quite materialized.
Audacy has leaned heavily into sports and built an incredible national portfolio, but Los Angeles was always the missing piece. When Kelli Turner came in as Chief Executive Officer, one of the first initiatives on the agenda was making sure we had sports on FM in every top 10 market. With a great deal of pride, we can now say we do.
I always chuckle when people say Los Angeles isn’t a sports town. There are 14 million people in Southern California, and sports touches nearly every part of this community from recreation leagues and high school athletics to college and professional sports.
We have 15 professional teams and 13 premier, world-class sports and entertainment venues. That doesn’t even include the enormous following for USC and UCLA sports. Oh, and there is this little 2 week event coming in 2028 called, The Olympics. The appetite is clearly here. In 2019, the LA Times had a front page article that said, “LA Will Be the Epicenter of Sports for the Next Decade”. We have clearly seen that materialize.
Moving KNX exclusively back to 1070 AM gave us the opportunity to build an all sports station on FM that reflects the size, energy and diversity of the Southern California sports audience.
But 97.1 is only one of The Fan’s addresses. The station is accessible across platforms, wherever and however the audience wants to listen or engage. That is critical to its success, and the same is true for KNX News and nearly all of our brands. The frequency remains incredibly important, but today we are building multi-platform brands not just radio stations.
There are established competitors in the market, but we believe we can all coexist and thrive. There are 6 music stations in Los Angeles that play Nirvana. We think there is more than enough room for 3 stations to talk about the Rams on Monday.
Defining The Fan’s Success
Keith: Nielsen will only tell part of The Fan’s story. Revenue aside, what is the single most important metric you’ll use to judge success — and what will you need to see from that metric?
Jeff: In our first year, the most important measure of success is engagement with our socials, our live events, listener interaction and client enthusiasm. We need to earn the trust of Southern California’s sports community, and we do that by being on top of the stories people are talking about and giving them a reason to turn to us.
We are already seeing significant growth across social media, which tells us The Fan is becoming part of the LA sports conversation.
For our advertising partners, success will be measured by how much product we move, how many phones we make ring, number of customer visits or other actions we can drive. Sports is a foreground format. Consumers lean in, pay attention and become emotionally invested in the conversation. That level of engagement gives advertisers a tremendous advantage when they partner with us.
Ultimately, a sports station succeeds when it becomes the place people instinctively turn after the game, after the trade or whenever a major story breaks. When Southern California sports fans and our advertising partners feel they need The Fan, we will know we have built something meaningful.
The KROQ Story
Keith: After a challenging stretch of ratings, bad press and enormous change, KROQ has bounced back and reclaimed its long-held position as a dominant Los Angeles brand. How did you manage morale during the toughest period, and what ultimately restored the brand’s footing?
Jeff: The hardest part was separating KROQ’s difficult moment from its identity. The station was struggling, but the brand was never irrelevant. Millions of people still cared deeply about what KROQ represented and I was certainly one of them having grown up in LA. The station was under my watch so I was responsible for the misstep in the storied history of KROQ. Putting the brand back to its proper stature was the top priority.
We didn’t pretend everything was fine. From programming to sales, everyone felt the station’s decline, so there was no faking it. The goal was to right the ship. There was only one person who could make that happen and that was Kevin Weatherly.
Kevin and I have worked together since the early ’90s and remained close friends throughout our careers. Thankfully, he was interested in coming back. So after being gone for just over 2 years, in May of 2022, Kev was back at the helm. His return was THE pivotal moment. Kevin didn’t simply understand KROQ’s history, he was the architect of the station for the past three decades. He restored clarity, consistency and confidence.
We both believed immensely in Klein and Ally. We made the decision to give their show the time and support it needed to grow. Kevin also convinced Kevin Ryder to return, as well as Sluggo. So along with Megan Holiday, an absolute pro throughout this period, and Miles, MD and on-air talent, our on-air staff was complete. We once again had decades of passionate KROQ experience and history on the air.
Our imaging was back on track with the best in the business, Trevor Shand, and our social platforms were on point under Cody Black’s leadership. Our Sound Space, since named KROQ’s, In-n-Out Sound Space (where we have intimate performances by some of the biggest artists in the world) was also back up and putting on private shows every month. KROQ was set up for what we believed would become one of the greatest comebacks in radio history.
The turnaround didn’t happen overnight. It took a year for the station to settle in. Slowly we started to see growth. It never goes as fast as you want, but we began to see consistent and steady improvement each month. Kev, Miles and the entire KROQ team kept their heads down, worked incredibly hard and never lost sight of the mission: put KROQ back on top.
Finally, earlier this year, (2026) KROQ made it back to the top of the ratings. Klein.Ally.Show also earned their way to the top of the ratings (and I say earned because they work harder and smarter than any two people I have ever seen) where they are currently enjoying success across almost every key demo. We can’t thank Chris Oliviero (Chief Business Officer) and Jeff Sottolano (Chief Programming Officer) enough for their patience and support throughout the journey. And you know what they say about success, it’s a journey so there has been no let up for the KROQ team.
The lesson learned is that great brands can recover, but it takes patience, trust and humor. You simply can’t get through the toughest times without humor.
The Ideas or the Sellers
Keith: I’ve heard sales leaders say radio doesn’t have an idea shortage — it has a selling-the-ideas problem. Do you agree? When strong concepts remain unsold, is the problem the marketplace, the execution, or the seller?
Jeff: We do have ideas. It’s a strength that sets us apart from other mediums. Radio people are the most creative and resourceful individuals I have ever been around.
I believe where we might fall short sometimes is listening to client needs. At times, and we are all guilty of this, we want to talk about how great our assets are, and we forget to listen. We need to listen more so we can bring the right solution not the solution we want to sell.
Reach and Results
Keith: Radio frequently touts its huge reach, but a local advertiser cares about results in its own backyard. How close is the industry to reliably proving what someone does after hearing a commercial?
Jeff: We are much closer than many advertisers realize. We can now connect exposure to website visits, searches, store traffic, app activity and, in many cases, actual conversions. It isn’t perfect, but neither is attribution in most other media.
For years, radio relied heavily on reach and testimonials. Both still matter, but they are no longer enough. Advertisers should expect us to establish metrics before the campaign begins, measure the right behaviors and report what happened afterward.
Our opportunity is to combine radio’s local scale and trusted voices with the measurement clients have come to expect from digital. That is an extremely powerful combination.
The Best Sellers
Keith: What are your best sellers doing right now that separates them from those who are merely getting by?
Jeff: They are curious, prepared, consistent and unafraid to make a recommendation.
Our best sellers understand the client’s business, not just its advertising. They know how the company makes money, where its growth needs to come from and what is preventing it from getting there. Then they bring together the right combination of audio, talent, digital and experiential assets to address that problem.
They also prospect consistently, use data without hiding behind it and bring in the right people when they need help. They know how much it takes to fund a successful campaign and are not afraid to ask for it. Clients may not always agree with the recommendation, but they know the seller has thought seriously about their business.
Authority vs. Accountability
Keith: Audacy’s new content-first structure moves programming authority from the local market to national format verticals. As someone responsible for local results in several markets, how do you maintain accountability when some of the most important product decisions may no longer live in the market?
Jeff: Accountability doesn’t disappear because the organizational structure changes. If I am responsible for the market’s performance, I still have a responsibility to advocate for what our audience, employees and advertisers need.
The benefit of the content-first structure is that programmers can collaborate across markets, share and make decisions with a broader view of the format. For instance, in the West Region we have 4 format VP’s that work across the country. They don’t have all the answers but they do have perspective and sometimes that can make the difference in helping someone come to a station specific conundrum.
Scaling Local
Keith: Audacy has national scale but still relies heavily on local talent. As the company becomes more centralized, do you see more syndication or more sharing of talent across markets than today’s current structure?
Jeff: I think we will see more sharing, but sharing and syndication are not necessarily the same thing.
Great talent should have the opportunity to reach a larger audience. Technology allows us to distribute a compelling personality, feature or piece of content across multiple markets much more easily than before. That makes sense when it improves the listener experience.
But local connection remains one of radio’s greatest advantages. A personality who understands the teams, neighborhoods, traffic, history and attitude of a market creates a relationship that is difficult to replicate nationally.
The right model is not local or national. It is using national scale to amplify exceptional content while protecting the local relevance that makes our brands matter.
Jeff’s New Company
Keith: Tomorrow,you open a brick-and-mortar business in Los Angeles and have $100,000 to spend exclusively on radio in Q4. Put demo-targeting aside: How are you dividing the spend among spots, endorsements, sponsorships and extensions — and what would you demand before renewing?
Jeff: First off, $50,000 into a strong and consistent audio schedule, $25,000 into endorsements from personalities who use and/or believe in the product. $15,000 into a memorable sponsorship or promotion and $10,000 into social and digital extensions.
I would not spread the money across every station in the market. I would choose a small number of brands that fit the customer and invest enough to be noticed. The creative would have one clear message and one clear call to action.
Before starting the campaign, I want to know what a successful campaign looks like to the advertiser. I would want to know whether the campaign is supposed to create awareness, drive traffic, etc. This has to be established before the first commercial airs.
The Biggest Crisis
Keith: What’s the most difficult crisis you’ve had to navigate – and was there a moment when you genuinely weren’t sure how it would end?
Jeff: The Los Angeles wildfires were unlike anything I had experienced because the professional and personal sides of my life collided.
Our responsibility as broadcasters was to keep people informed, support the community and make sure our employees were safe. Our KNX newsroom was here for Southern California. They worked around the clock throughout the first week of the tragedy. KNX was the one place first responders, politicians, hospitals, dog shelters and of course victims could connect with the latest breaking news. We were just awarded a National Murrow Award for our Fire Coverage. Not an award we were seeking but it is gratifying to know we made a difference for so many people.
In a crisis, leadership is less about having every answer and more about remaining present, communicating honestly and helping when and where needed.
The Blank Slate
Keith: Say anything you want to any corner of the music industry. What do you want them to hear?
Jeff: Technology will continue to change distribution, measurement and business models. That is inevitable. But consumers still want discovery, companionship, connection and a sense that someone understands their city and their lives. Music and the personalities surrounding it provide all of those things. Don’t underestimate the power of local radio!
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