An interview with Lee Abrams


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Posted by Community on November 06, 2010 at 12:54:56:

Lee Abrams
November 2, 2010


Well, here's a man who needs no introduction. To be sure, Lee Abrams' legacy runs far deeper than creating a politically insensitive internal memo. After all, he was one of the movers and shakers in building Rock radio in the '70s and '80s, and then helped XM get off the ground before his ill-fated attempt to provoke inspiration at the Tribune Company. To count him out now underestimates his passion for radio, music and new media. When Lee Abrams chooses his next opportunity to return, here's what he'll be bringing to the table.


What made you decide to go to a newspaper in the first place --just the challenge of it all?

I was the first employee at XM ... and I left XM almost 10 years to the day to join Tribune. It's important to note that while the Tribune Company is named after the newspaper, in reality it's more of a multimedia company with a large TV and online presence. The newspapers are just a component of the company. My job was to encourage ideas to help bring the traditional media into the 21st century ... and it was pretty exciting as a lot of people shared that. When I started, I focused on the newspapers, which were the most desperate division in terms of dealing with the digital age. They made a lot of progress, but in the last year, I was almost exclusively working with the TV side, which was bringing in the biggest profits but also required some re-thinking.


Let's get to the cause célèbre - the memo. Was it strictly for the newspaper arm or for everyone?

It was for everybody. I've been writing think pieces pretty much on a weekly basis for two-and-a-half years; after that many memos, by now you'd think that a link to a satirical video to make a point about TV wouldn't offend people, but apparently it did offend a few. I was trying to use every resource possible to change conventional thinking and bring people into the current mindset. The Onion video was part of that, as were other videos and thought-starters
There's a perception that I was sending out pornography for laughs when it was actually part of a typical weekly memo. Read the memo yourself to put it in context.
If you really think about it, the whole memo incident may clearly have been an excuse for some of the print people to make a point about the new culture that they didn't care for. This was first one I heard complaints about since about a year ago, when I brought up the ratings of Fox news in a memo. I got lot of angry phone calls from people on the newspaper side.
There are over 10,000 employees at Tribune, so it was massive task trying to move things forward. I found out about 80% embraced our changes immediately, about 15% weren't too sure ... and 5% were very angry about it. The majority of people in the Online and TV divisions got what we were trying to do, as did most of those in the newspapers division -- outside of the newsroom.
Most people could see writing on the wall, that old media has to embrace change. The attitude of the others seems to fall under a whole denial thing. Change requires a lot of self-examination; apparently the newsroom didn't want to go through that exercise. It seemed that they were somewhat insulted to be asked to do it.


Bottom line: Is the business mentality of radio and print something akin to mixing oil and water?

That sure is the impression I got. Yet I've seen lots of examples at the papers where they were looking forward and trying new things. The Chicago Tribune did a pretty radical redesign; papers in Florida and Baltimore also took steps in that direction; they were able to break away from the denial of the current situation and come up with some solutions to some of their problems.


Describe your experience at XM -- what are satellite's pluses and minuses?

From my point of view, the biggest plus was the fact that we had no ratings or ad sales to worry about on the music side; we focused completely on listeners with the mandate that since people paid for this, it better be different and/or better. We had two years to evaluate AM/FM to do things they couldn't. We also had the advantage of hiring people from scratch. We brought in some amazing people to build a new culture -- and we created some pretty outstanding radio by being able to break the rulebook and try a lot of new things
The negative was the cost of running the business and the acquisition of the hardware of course. Howard Stern is expensive, as is Fox News. But from my standpoint, it was all a real liberating experience. It showed me the potential of what can be done with radio if you didn't have any of the traditional restrictions.


It sounds like you believe radio can still become a potent cutting-edge media force.

The potential at terrestrial radio and local TV is extraordinary, but it's going to require dramatically new thinking. The playbook has to be thrown out and rewritten; radio has to balance its efforts between operations, technical and creative. For too long, creative focus has been shoved into the background; radio has to get out of the notion that they can get by just by doing what they've always been doing, creatively. If they put the effort into creative as well as revenue, operations and technology, radio can be great again, but so far I haven't seen a lot of that. It's all about balance where creative is equal to the other components of running stations.
Ask yourself this question: What if radio was never invented until right now ... what would it sound like? That's how we should approach it. Radio programmers have to start looking at listeners as fans and not just as numbers to sell. This goes for stations in every format: you have to look at your listeners as potentially passionate fans. There's a tremendous opportunity here, which will require someone in control to have the courage to blow up the playbook and create a paradigm shift the same way Gordon McClendon and Bill Drake did with Top 40 and those behind the move to FM did. It's going to take some dramatic re-thinking on a revolutionary scale. It starts with seeing the opportunity and doing it.
When I was at XM, we lived by the letters, "AFDI", which stood for "Absolutely Freaking Do It." Instead of simply talking about change and re-engaging the audience -- which a lot of people did and still do -- we took action to do things. We started living outside the radio walls, stopped looking at our competition across the street and started looking at our place in the whole world. It's never been more important to think beyond traditional radio thinking as it doesn't necessarily resonate on the streets in 2010. Local TV is similar, instead of referencing other stations I believe stations need to live in the avatar world. There's more innovation coming out of YouTube than there is from the local TV stations.


Are there things you learned during your early radio days that still work today ... or must you forget everything you learned and start fresh?

When it gets down to rewriting the rulebook, you don't rewrite parts of it; you re-do everything from identifying and busting clichés to creating a new generation of content trademarks. This is not the time to be on auto-pilot, which is usually coming up with new slogans, using Star Wars production, and constantly telling your listeners that you rock harder than everyone else. That's all part of the '80s playbook, which doesn't work anymore -- and it still won't work when the economy improves.
However, some of the very old thinking ... going back to the '50s and '60s, before it was discarded ... is still relevant today if presented in a 21st Century manner. Listen to the historically great stations; there's a lot of magic there that is missing but can be re-introduced on today's terms. A lot of that comes from the culture we in the industry created, in the way people approach radio from the inside. It's important to treat your job as a mission and not just as a paying gig -- and part of the mission is to generate magic.
For a programmer or operator, adaptability is the key. In the early '70s, there were underground free-form stations on one side and blazing heavily researched Top 40s on to other. We sought a middle ground in musical focus. Now radio is 180 degrees from that era. There are no underground stations; everything generally skews to a one-dimensional sound and I believe that sound may be losing relevance faster than it's gaining it.
Passion! I run into so many people who have lost the passion, which is another timeless ingredient to success. Being passionate about what you do and proud of what you hear makes your product better. I'm not sure now many people have that pride factor anymore.


A common complaint expressed in past Power Player interviews is that radio is behind the curve when it comes to adapting and utilizing its digital assets. I get the impression that you feel it's more important to focus on reinvigorating your content first.

Exactly. Obviously, the future is in digital, but right now, for 2010 the important thing is for the station to focus on the product.
There was a situation I ran into on the TV side at Tribune which illustrates what I'm getting at. There was this amazing viral video going around, so I asked the TV station, "Are you covering this?" And they went, "Yes, it's on our website." But why wasn't it on their core product? You don't save good content solely for the web. You always use the best content on your core product.
There has been tremendous innovation in the newspapers' online properties, but little of that has shown up on the papers themselves. Obviously, the future is in digital, but that's not going to translate unless the core product is as brilliant as it can be.


Content-wise, has radio programming (especially in terms of new formats) been evolving fast enough to cater to today's listeners?

No, radio in general is moving at very slow pace, as has a lot of traditional media. We live in a time when you have to be urgent. Doing things incrementally doesn't work. If you're going to make changes, do them fast, aggressively and completely.
Sometimes potentially great ideas get stuck in committees and focus groups ... and the next thing you know the great ideas are watered down so there's no public notice-ability outside the conference room. You go in there and talk big, but by time that "new idea" gets on air, it's just more of the same. It's, again, an auto-pilot thing. It often seems all stations care about is the morning show, a tested music list and a few billboards.
Stations are over-researched, which makes them too tight and predictable. They trot out these "new" formats, but they're often more of the same. If a station is dominant and making money, okay, but if a station isn't, the answer isn't in something that won't scream out as blatantly different.
Because of my job at the Trib which had only one radio station, I really haven't focused on what type of format should be tried, but I certainly have ideas on legal pads, as I know others do. The great thing radio has going for it is that everybody has one. XM had to fight the battle of getting units in cars; FM and AM radio are already there. Now it's just a matter of mobilizing brilliance to create fans.


What's your take on HD Radio?

The technology is pretty interesting, but the marketing has been pretty lame. I've had limited experience using it, but what I heard was mostly the same old thing on a new platform. It's not being positioned as something really cool; it's being marketed as more of a utility. You need to have a cool factor, but without much amazing content, it doesn't sound much different than FM. Maybe the playlists are a bit deeper, but that's it - and that's not enough. HD has a lot of potential, but it needs a lot more inspiration.


Has the introduction of PPM -- and its effects on programming -- had any influence, positive or negative, on the out-of-the-box thinking you believe needs to be done to improve radio?

Stations have figured out how to work the diary; they can figure out how to work the PPM. I hear that as a kind of an excuse a lot ... and there may be something to it, but I also think there are solutions. I feel people have a lot of solutions; they may not all be right, but there are a lot of people out there, like me, with solutions and ideas ... from within radio and from people out of radio.
One of the things we found at XM was when we gave people the opportunity to do radio for the reasons they got into it in the first place, it was like taking your fingers out of a hole in the dike in terms of ideas. They come pouring out when you can propose and try things without the fear of being fired. The solutions are out there; you just have to make the right people feel liberated by giving them a mandate to really make changes. And you do that by treating creative with exactly the same importance as revenue and engineering. You need to put it back out to the forefront. A creatively brilliant station will drive revenue and make the online presence that much more powerful.


Can radio ever return to its heyday as an influential purveyor of music culture, or should it find a more reasonable (albeit downsized) role in today's digital media?

Well, you have to adapt "AFDI" -- and actually do something instead if just complaining about the state of things. If, instead of over-thinking it, you go out there and execute, I have no doubt whatsoever that radio can be essential again. It may not reach the heights it was in the '70s and '80s, but it certainly can become an integral part of the media puzzle in the long term.
But to return to a place where it becomes a significant source of music culture, radio needs to stop shooting itself in the foot. Here's another XM story: A year or two after XM launched, we did quite a bit of research to better understand just who was buying XM. We found out that most of the people were over 40. Why weren't younger people into XM?
The overwhelming response we received was that a lot of people who were 18 or so had never heard a truly great radio station in their lives. They started listening to radio in the late '90s ... after consolidation hit. They couldn't relate to what a great radio station was really like, so why pay for 100 channels of something that sucked?
Fortunately by being everywhere, radio can recover from that kind of perception -- if they provide passionate, exciting content.


Since your departure from Tribune, what kind of feedback have you been getting from your radio peers?

From the people who worked with me in the past or who know me, it's been overwhelmingly positive. I still get anonymous bloggers who say nasty things, but that comes with the territory.


What's your next move? Would you consider going back into radio?

Whatever I do next, I'll be passionate about it. It can be in radio, TV or new media. I'm looking to help companies that are willing take things to the next level, to work with passionate people who want to create a team to move things forward. The timing and opportunities for this has never been better. There is a creative crisis in America, in the media, in automotive, in a lot of industries. I'm just taking some time to focus on where I can go to do that.


And the life lesson you've learned from this most recent episode of your career?

Do what you gotta do ... but be careful!



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