Personal information
Current company: Henson Media, Inc.
Position: President / Owner
Location: Louisville, KY
Place of Birth: Louisville, KY
Date of Birth: The year of Bobby Thompson’s home run
Spouse/Kid/Personal info: Married with three grown children
College: Johns Hopkins University
Favorite band or artist: Simon and Garfunkel – still
Favorite movies: It’s a Wonderful Life (not an original choice, but a great movie); Chariots of Fire, Shane, and definitely High Noon.
Favorite books: The Bible, Sherlock Holmes and John le Carre’s series with George Smiley
Sports Team Preferences: Teams I coached at the Douglass Community Center
Hobbies/Passions: Runner for 45 years, baseball and politics; active in our church
Questions:
1. How did you get started in the business?
My father was a consulting engineer and started taking me on field trips when I was about seven. Starting around the age of 10, I would do popcounts by hand (would take a whole weekend) and help him on FCC applications. Came home from college the summer after my sophomore year of college and worked at a station he had built in Louisville. Fell in love with the business. Went back to college, took some extra classes, graduated a year early and came back in the fall of 1972 and started working fulltime at WLRS-FM.
2. What are the biggest differences in running radio stations when you entered the business and now? What’s still the same?
Obviously, technology is the biggest change. When we sold our stations in Louisville in 1988, believe we had just gotten a fax machine! This past basketball season at our station in Union County, Kentucky, we video streamed about ten boys and girls basketball games through our website and became a small television station. Obviously, one thing that has not changed is that people have been and still are the key.
3. What are the unique challenges operating a small group in small markets?
Obviously, the pool for potential people to work with you is smaller. But there are a lot of positive aspects to having stations in smaller markets. It’s easier to develop personal relationships with your advertising clients and you get quick and frequent feedback to the results they receive from the power of radio advertising. People pay quickly, as the vast majority of our clients pay within 30 days. Many people in our communities have a real passionate emotional attachment to their stations.
4. How are revenues shaping up for 2013, and is there a digital component for your group?
We had a good year across the board in 2012 and so far, so good in 2013. But as Satchel Paige would say, “Don’t look back; they may be gaining on you.” Digital is still a small percentage for us.
5. If we can get you to put on your broker/appraiser hat for a moment, how does the station trading environment look, particularly in smaller markets?
Over the last fifteen years, smaller maker trading hasn’t experienced some of the periods of boom or slowdowns, experienced in larger markets. While fewer people are building small market groups than did ten years ago, there still is a steady amount of deals being done. Prospective buyers will look at cash flow multiples, but they also look at a number of other factors. Many prospective buyers feel there’s a real value with stations in smaller markets, since they are such a key source of information for people in their communities.
6. What are your major goals in your new upcoming role as an NAB Radio Board member?
My first goal will be to listen and learn. I will want to represent the views of the stations in Kentucky and West Virginia to the board and also to share the NAB’s views and advantages back to the stations. Have always been active in trade associations and feel there’s a power in stations working as a group.
7. What are the keys to running a successful radio station?
Three come to mind immediately. The first is the people who are working with you. We are fortunate to have a group of professional, highly competent and caring people. I have never figured out how to motivate people. Think you just hire self motivated people and then give them the tools to do their jobs. A second key is to operate the station so your listeners and the community develop an emotional attachment to the station. A newspaper reporter once wrote that people didn’t listen to our FM station in Louisville, but they joined it. A third key is to always remember that radio is a fixed cost business and the last 20% of revenue can make all the difference in the world.
