A special essay on how radio companies can manage the interdependence of local staffs and centralized IT
FRANK MCCOY AND MIKE BALLERINI, Radio World
DEC 12, 2018
The authors are chief engineer of Salem Communications’ Chicago cluster and CIO of Salem Media Group, respectively.
It’s been a bit over two decades since computers largely took over radio station content management. As these systems became more sophisticated, they also became increasingly data network dependent. A lot of this was driven by consolidation in the late 1990s.
Those who lived it would agree that consolidation came with a few bumps. In those days, picking the low-hanging fruit of expense reduction was lucrative; it was an environment where stations and groups were valued as a double-digit multiple of cash flow. Every expense dollar shaved was worth 13 to shareholders. Computers running the music and spots was an obvious idea.
