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Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Bonneville group head Bruce Reese says radio must do better in digital

Bruce Reese at RAIN DC 2010

Commenting on the latest BIA/Kelsey estimate that by 2015, radio’s take from digital media will double from $400 million to $800, Reese says “We are in serious jeopardy” if that’s the best the industry can do. He tells Tuesday’s RAIN Summit East in Washington, D.C. that “We’ve got to invest….we’ve run historically at such great margins, we’ve been reluctant to knock a point or two off of it to invest” in new areas like digital. Perhaps surprisingly, Reese says "I'm still not sure that streaming by itself is a great business” for his company. He says “We have to do it, [but] we look at it as a combination of an opportunity to bring a little revenue in, and it’s part of the promotion budget.” The CEO says “the music presence of our radio stations is terribly important" and that “We need to figure out how to be part of the music discovery process” for listeners. One obstacle – “The new Arbitron tool [the PPM] isn’t particularly kind to new music.”

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