FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. — Some 30 years ago, Bill Wilson was not in a corporate job at Universal Music Group, Polygram, or any other giant global force in the recording industry. Armed with a business degree, he could have easily taken this career route. However, his passion — routed in his rearing in Bergen County, N.J. — was in the music itself, and not the business of it. He loved hip-hop, and taped New York stations WBLS-FM and WQHT-FM “Hot 97” at night, in the earliest days of rap’s 1990s transition and rise.
That’s why Wilson took a job as the assistant to Richard Sanders in the marketing department of Arista Records, in 1992. Today, Wilson is the newly minted lone CEO of Townsquare Media, presenting at one of the nation’s more important investor conferences for the first time.
Wilson knows there’s some learning ahead. Based on his passion and positivity, Townsquare could be on track to reach new highs in local ratings books and with potential investors.
“I didn’t want a corporate job.”
That’s how Wilson explains his decision to work under Sanders, today the CEO of Jay-Z’s streaming service TIDAL.
In a sense, Wilson doesn’t have a “corporate job” even today, as he assumes much of the financial side of Townsquare’s executive leadership duties from just-departed co-CEO Dhruv Prasad.
That’s perhaps thanks to a career that began with the promotion of Sarah McLachlan’s earliest singles and wound its way to worldwide marketing duties at BMG before joining Aol in the beginning of 2001, just as the tech bubble was about to burst. He stayed the course, and in fall 2006 ascended to a post as a programming EVP. At Aol, he rose to AOL Media President.
Then, in September 2010, an opportunity involving music and digital media arose. It also involved running a group of radio stations.
Suddenly, Wilson was an EVP at Townsquare Media — a newly formed entity born out of the ashes of Terry Jacobs’ Regent Communications and its acquisition out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection by Oaktree Capital Management.
Townsquare would grow with deals giving it stations from Gap Broadcasting Group, Double O Radio, and, significantly, Cumulus Media. More recently, Townsquare added to its holdings with the acquisition of WOUR-FM 96.9 in Utica-Rome, N.Y., from Galaxy Communications, and a group of stations in Central New Jersey from Connoisseur Media — including heritage Top 40 WPST-FM 94.5 in Trenton.
Today, Townsquare is the No. 3 owner of commercially licensed radio stations in the U.S. and No. 4 overall, behind Cumulus, Educational Media Foundation and iHeartMedia.
For Wilson, job one as the sole CEO of a company he has been with since its inception involves translating his passion for music — and for local media — to Wall Street. “My love is music,” he said Tuesday morning over breakfast, ahead of his NobleCon XV presentation at the W Fort Lauderdale Beach resort. “But, when my family was watching TV at night, I was listening to the radio.”
Marketing this passion to investors could come naturally for Wilson, who immediately discusses what he believes is a key difference when compared to other radio station owners.
“The differentiator is our local markets,” Wilson says. “Our greatest asset is our on-air talent. They are connected to the community.”
In a way, it is these local personalities that are the connective tissue to what will drive Townsquare’s financial success, and attract interest from Wall Street and institutional investors who attend such conferences as NobleCon XV.
As they learn more about Townsquare, Wilson will spend the next year learning more about them — and using his belief in the power of local media to drive business.
SMALL MARKETS, BIG RETURNS
It is no secret that Townsquare Media, one of the nation’s largest radio station owners, has no big-market presence. That won’t change under Wilson’s leadership.
“Our strategy from Day One was that we will not grow in the Top 50 markets,” he says.
Yet, Wilson acknowledges that there is a prejudice against small-market radio versus big-market opportunities. His goal is to get investors on board with his belief that Townsquare’s geographical design is perfect.
“I don’t think big-market radio thinks the same way,” Wilson says while name-dropping some of the company’s many local personalities, including Buddy Logan, the afternoon drive host at KNUE-FM 101.5 in Tyler, Texas, and Boris and Robin, the morning show at WPDH-FM 101.5 in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., some 90 minutes northwest of Townsquare’s Greenwich, Conn., headquarters.
For Wilson, these hosts are the “original social influencers,” and brings to the market something unique and of desire to consumers.
While local content is certainly a growth driver for Townsquare, it is its digital marketing arm that has given the company a big edge across its markets. With Townsquare Interactive, small to medium-sized businesses can gain from web design, local SEO, and social media. Thus, Townsquare is not a “radio company” but a local media operator. And, that’s exactly what Wilson wants financier to fully understand.
Townsquare Ignite, another important component of the company’s digital solutions offerings, offers programmatic, search, and location-targeted services that position the company as a total local media connection point.
Oh, and it has reach through its radio stations — something a digital media player that’s grabbing ad dollars from advertisers can’t match.
The establishment of Townsquare Ignite and Townsquare Interactive is rooted in Wilson’s activities at Aol. While much of his experience at Aol Media was injected into the DNA of Townsquare, it also helped that some 45 employees also made the leap from Aol to Townsquare on Day One in 2010.
As Regent was merged with Gap, and Townsquare moved forward in its earliest incarnation, there was no digital platform to be had. A team was needed to build a platform from the ground up. This saw Wilson largely attract a team of individuals he had worked with for a decade, in an environment without any cumbersome legacy systems in need of an upgrade.
UNTAPPED OPPORTUNITIES
Wilson spends much of his time in both Greenwich and in Townsquare’s New York City offices in Midtown Manhattan.
When at the gym, or on the road, he listens to many of Townsquare’s radio stations. His early love for hip-hop hasn’t ebbed. Wilson spoke lovingly of WBLK-FM 93.7 in Buffalo, a heritage Urban Contemporary station saluted by Drake — a Toronto native — on his current album Scorpion.
Does Wilson have a favorite station? Yes. For him, it is KHXT-FM “Hot 107.9” in Lafayette, La., a Townsquare CHR/Rhythmic station home to morning hosts Chris Reed and “DJ Digital.”
He also listens to the aforementioned WPDH, and many other Townsquare stations across its markets.
It keeps Wilson in touch with his company’s assets, as well as keeping him entertained.
This can only help Townsquare as it explains how its “typical” market is home to 300,000 people, and how it competes against one of the companies that once owned a big chunk of its stations — Cumulus — in 10 locales. The No. 1 owner of stations, iHeartMedia, is a competitor of Townsquare in 14 markets. Entercom is a competitor in just one market: Buffalo.
LOCAL FIRST
While Wilson speaks highly of Townsquare’s commitment to local talent, the company’s radio stations are not completely devoid of syndicated talent. In Poughkeepsie, WCZX-FM saw a rebranding from “Mix 97-7” to “97-7 Now” in March 2018, a move designed to make the Hot AC station a little bit hotter. Veteran local personality Mark Bolger had exited wakeups ahead of the relaunch; the syndicated Brooke and Jubal was placed in morning drive.
Asked about when syndicated programming will appear, Wilson was candid. “If we can have a great local on-air talent, we will do that — full stop,” he says. “I will choose that 100 out of 100 times.”
But, if a personality is shown to be putting minimal effort into their on-air shift and bigger role at the station — one that could see endorsements, live commercial reads or more with the ad sales department — then a move will be made, Wilson says.
“If done right, commercials are a value to the community,” he adds.
Should syndication be the choice, localization will be done. At WCZX, a local producer is in house to make Brooke & Jubal a good fit for the station while meeting the company’s mission statement of being as local as it can.
With NobleCon XV attendees awaiting, Wilson was asked what his key objective was for this late January sojourn to South Florida.
“To get our story out,” he says. One-on-one meetings with eight investors are on the calendar. None presently hold TSQ stock.
“I believe that Townsquare Media is the most powerful, diversified company in mid-America, and we’re just getting started,” Wilson concludes.
Later in the morning, upon exiting the invitation-only conference, Wilson was asked how the presentation went. With a smile, he gave a thumbs-up.
It’s a clear sign that Townsquare’s new leader is full of passion, so much that it could very well spark renewed interest and attention in a local digital media entity that’s part radio, part online, and wholly ingrained in the communities it serves.
RBR+TVBR
