Takin A Walk/Episode Twenty Three with Former Media Executive and Founder of Pyramid Radio Richie Balsbaugh

Richie Balsbaugh:

I’m Richie Balsbaugh. I started Kiss 108 in Boston in 1978. I’m the founder of Pyramid Radio. I’ve been in the radio business, or was in the radio business, for a long time. I sold my company in 1996 to what is now Clear Channel. And I’ve been a gentleman of leisure. And I can’t think of anything more fun to do than to take a walk with Buzz and talk about radio.

Audio:

Welcome to Takin’ a Walk, an excursion to converse, connect and catch up at a cool location with some of the most interesting people you can find. Here’s Buzz Knight.

Buzz Knight:

Richie Balsbaugh, it’s so great to be here in Brookline, Mass to take a walk with you. So nice to see you.

Richie Balsbaugh:

Nice to see you too, Buzz.

Buzz Knight:

It’s been a while. I know we would run into each other at probably industry events in Boston over the years, but one of the real joys for me, for the Takin’ a Walk series, is there’s people I know, but I don’t know well enough. And being able to connect and take a walk with old friends and make new friends is really kind of exciting. So thank you for having me.

Richie Balsbaugh:

Well, I’m glad to be here. I’ve actually been trying to kind of get my story out in a way. I’ve been in the middle of putting together a television show with Mark Wahlberg, which is going nowhere fast, just based on his schedule and my lack of pushing it. And I’ve written a lot of things. And I really am much better at talking about things than writing them down, because I’m certainly not a writer. I’m a talker, though.

Buzz Knight:

You have built this tremendous legacy. It’s an amazing story. We know some of the same people. I know some of the people who worked for you. Everybody always, when they talk about Richie, you bring a smile to their face to this day. And you built an amazing company in Pyramid. Tell me about culture, first of all, when you thought of building Pyramid.

Richie Balsbaugh:

Well, first of all, you couldn’t pay me a better compliment than to say that I my name brings a smile to people’s faces, because that’s what this business is all about to me. And I mean that. I’m not just saying that because it sounds like the right thing to say. I mean, as long as my legacy or what I leave behind in radio is that I was somebody that people loved to work with, and I made them happy, and they enjoyed going to work every day, then I did the right thing. Culture-wise, it’s interesting. I started out as a radio salesman for the Knight Quality broadcasting stations, Norman Knight, Scott Knight. They had little stations in Portsmouth, Manchester, New Hampshire, Fitchburg, Worcester and Fall River, Mass. And although they were smaller markets, what we did is Scott and I had offices in Boston. And we formed this ring around Boston thing, where we sold against the Boston radio stations.

Richie Balsbaugh:

So I thought my radio stations that I worked for were the biggest thing in the world. Meanwhile, here we’re selling against BZ and RKO and all the giants. I just loved what I did. I loved radio so much. I was always happy where I was. And all of a sudden I started getting unsolicited calls from people about being a general sales manager in Boston. And I played with the idea, toyed with the idea. I got opportunities to go to other markets. And then I had this really strange phone call from a lawyer in Washington, DC named Jason Shrinsky. And he informed me that he was the broadcasting lawyer for Cecil Heftel, who was a democratic Congressman from the great state of Hawaii. And Cecil Heftel had just bought BCN in Boston and had heard about me. And he wanted to come up to talk to me about being the general manager.

Richie Balsbaugh:

Now, I had never been a sales manager of a big radio station. I was working with a small group. And it was kind of a leap going from being the National Sales Manager of the Knight Quality radio stations to being a General Manager of what was BCN. Well, I took the interview. Jason Shrinsky came up from Washington on the behest of Cecil Heftel and interviewed me and we just hit it off. So he hired me, I think, a little prematurely, because he hadn’t even hired a president of the broadcasting company. And lo and behold, I went into Norman Knight and resigned and told him about my great opportunity. And the deal fell through for BCN. So all of a sudden I was up the creek without a paddle, as they say. I didn’t know what was going to happen next. I said, “What did I do? I just gave up something I love for an opportunity that didn’t happen.”

Richie Balsbaugh:

Well, they told me not to worry, they were going to buy another radio station. Everything was going to be fine. And this may be a long prelude to my culture, but there’s a reason for it, a method to my madness. And so then they called me and they were very excited. They bought WROR, which also fell through. So they said, “Not to worry. We’re going to pay you. You’re going to be fine.” And I get the phone call, “Okay, now we got the deal done. We just bought this radio station in Medford, Mass, WWEL.” Now, I lived in Boston. I had never heard of it, which was kind of a telltale sign. I thought, oh my God, my life’s come to an end. I went from this group of radio stations that were prestigious to a radio station I never heard of, as the General Manager. Boy, was this going to be a screw up of major proportions.

Richie Balsbaugh:

Anyway, as it turns out, I then had the opportunity, I mean, I was going to take over this radio station, an AM/FM in Medford, that basically was out of 34 radio stations in Boston. The FM was rated number 33. The AM was 34. The combined share of the two of them was about a .4 of a hundred percent of the market. And the FM was beautiful music. And the AM was a simulcast of beautiful music. And it was in this cement cinder block building in Medford. I’ll never forget the first time I went there as the new General Manager to visit it. It was horrifying. And I said, “Well, I’m going to make the best of it.” The thing that really happened was, because of all the screw ups and because I had put myself on the line, I was given the ability to do with the radio station kind of what I wanted. I mean, there’s nowhere to go but up.

Richie Balsbaugh:

And I, in the meantime, had worked with Scott Knight. And Scott was just a wonderful mentor and wonderful guy, and Norman Knight. And Norman was like a slave driver. And we had to go in every Saturday. We had to be in before he got in. He was in at 6:30. So we had to be there at 6:00. It was kind of foolish, but it was learning. It was like the Marines, I guess, kind of like boot camp. And what I really did is I learned so much of what not to do from what he did, from what Norman Knight did. And I basically took on the personality of Scott Knight, who was just a great guy. And I decided that I was never going to treat people like that. I was going to be more of a person who was like a partner of theirs rather than somebody that they worked for. So my main goal when I was taking over this radio station in Medford, was to do something exciting and to hire people that were really young and dynamic and kind of were into the same thing as I was.

Richie Balsbaugh:

So, as it turns out, I went into the station for my maiden voyage, my trip. And at that time they had hired a president who was not thrilled that I was already previously hired. He couldn’t hire his guy. But it was tough luck for him, because the deal was done. And so we went in and we walked through and met the general manager and met the different personnel. And in this little office in the back, there was no windows, it was by the engineering office, there was this guy. And he was sitting behind this little desk. And it was Arnie Woo-Woo Ginsberg. And, I mean, he, to me, was an icon in Boston, the Adventure Car Hop, everything else. I mean, Arnie, he’s just a brilliant guy. He was a chief engineer, a general sales manager, a general manager. He did everything in radio for RKO. Never really got great credit.

Richie Balsbaugh:

So when I saw him in there, he wasn’t being paid. They just let him have an office. He was kind of kicked to the curb in radio. And so after we made the tour, I went back. I said, “Can I meet with you afterwards?” And he said, “Sure.” And a little bit prior to that, I had actually made one hire. I went down to ILD. We were on the fourth floor of the Sonesta Building on Commonwealth Avenue. And the ILD was on the floor below. And Sunny Joe White was the young program director. And I loved soul music. I loved black music. And so I knew I wanted to do a disco radio station. I wanted to do something that was rhythmic and fun. And so I hired Sunny basically without even any approval from anybody else in the company. So Sunny was already on board.

Richie Balsbaugh:

I have this guy Arnie Ginsberg, so I go into see Arnie. I say, “Hey, Arnie, would you come and work for me as my operations manager? I’m 29 years old, 30 years old.” I think I was 29. “I’ve never run a radio station. You’ve done everything. I mean, you can be my mentor. You can be my right hand guy. And here’s what I’m thinking of doing.” And his eyes lit up. It was really exciting. So the birth of what was going to be the new radio station in Medford took hold that day.

Buzz Knight:

All in a matter of that day, pretty much.

Richie Balsbaugh:

Well, I knew before what I wanted to do when I hired Sunny. But when I got Arnie to graciously come on board to be excited, well, I mean, he wasn’t making any money. He was working in an office that was four-sided cinder block. I guess anything would’ve been a step up. But he got very excited about it. He got rejuvenated about his broadcasting. And so we had our little meeting. I said, “What I want to do is I want to do a disco radio station.” And it was kind of near the end of disco, or certainly near the waning hours. And WBOS in Boston was a powerhouse disco radio station. But they just weren’t that good, I didn’t think. So I said, “Look, here’s the idea. The idea is to do disco. And we’ll kind of blend it into a top 40 kind of thing. We’ll kind of slowly blend it.” They got on board. Everybody got on board with it.

Richie Balsbaugh:

So Arnie and Sunny and I sat down. I said, “Look, we got to come up with some great call letters.” Well, Arnie found WXKS, Kiss. X for the kiss and the whole thing. He found the call letters. Got to give Arnie a hundred percent props for that. And so when I went to Cecil Heftel and the guy who was the president, Tom Hoyt, and told them, “Oh, I had already hired a program director. I had hired an operations manager. And by the way, I have new call letters and here’s what we’re going to do,” their heads blew off.

Buzz Knight:

No research, Richie, right, to do this? [crosstalk]

Richie Balsbaugh:

No. No, no research. It was total gut.

Buzz Knight:

[crosstalk] gut. Wow.

Richie Balsbaugh:

That was a culture that I wanted to develop, right there. He looked at Sunny Joe White, Arnie Ginsberg, changing things without really getting any approval from the ownership. That was the culture that I wanted to have. I mean, you were never going to be a rebel like BCN. Those guys were like, that’s what they lived on. That was their reputation. But I was going to do it in a different way, right? In more of a mainstream way. So it was kind of too late for Heftel or for Tom Hoyt or for anybody else to go crazy. So what they did is actually they hired Kent Burkhart from Burkhart Abrams to kind of hold my hand, or so they thought, because they thought I was just doing things that were over my head.

Richie Balsbaugh:

Well, he was a non-issue. I mean, he showed up and made his big consulting fee from Heftel. But he really didn’t help us with anything. So going forward, it was Sunny Joe White and Arnie Ginsberg and I. We got the new call letters, the BXKS Kiss 108. And so, I mean, this could be a story that lasts forever. There’s so many details and so many people that were involved. But I had, from my previous days, I had a real good relationship, a very strong relationship, with an advertising guy named John Pearson, Pearson and MacDonald. And he was a creative wiz. He was this really creative guru. And so I told him what we were doing. And he came up with this big black billboard with the big red lips, Kiss and a commercial with a girl who turned around and blew a kiss and the whole thing. And Kiss 108 overnight was born.

Richie Balsbaugh:

I can let a lie get in the way of a good story, but I think that it’s more of a fib. I say we went from being 32nd, 33rd and 34th in the market to first overnight. Took about six months. So it wasn’t overnight. But basically Kiss, with all we did, just went through the roof.

Buzz Knight:

What an amazing story. And thinking about the way businesses run and certainly radio is, that you need research, you need lawyers, you need a corporate structure to sign off, you walked in and sized it up and it took on a momentum and a life of its own, it sounds like.

Richie Balsbaugh:

Yeah, it did. I can’t really say there was brilliance. I think there was a lot of timing and good luck, too, and things that had good fortune and the right people. But a couple of things that happened, I made a deal based on having really, totally pissed off the guy that owned the thing and the president, that everything I did was based on revenues. And he had some ideas of revenues. And I took a very, very low salary, but I big bonuses based on revenues, which he thought were just unattainable. And I blew him away. And actually, the reason I was able to buy Kiss as my first radio station is because he owed me so much money from the bonuses that I had accrued from my contract. He kind of had no choice. He made me president of his company at other radio stations and then I wound up buying Kiss. But that’s a story that goes down the road.

Richie Balsbaugh:

But anyway, so we went on the air. Sunny Joe White was really the only personality on the morning show. We had mixers. And these guys weren’t even personalities. They just would mix records. So it was disco during the disco era. And then we gradually built a staff. And we were everywhere. The one thing that this guy that owned the radio station, Cecil Heftel, did, he was known as being this great promoter. And I was able to get him to give me a lot of money to promote with. We gave a million dollars away twice the first year. But now, it was $50,000 a year for 20 years. It was an annuity. So it was really kind of a mirror job, because it wasn’t really giving away a million bucks, but it sure sounded good on the air.

Buzz Knight:

I was going to say, I remember Heftel from the million dollars, probably elsewhere. It probably started here.

Richie Balsbaugh:

He did it on Y100 in Miami. [crosstalk] that he had. He agreed to go along with that. It was so successful. And the radio station did so well and the revenues were just kicking that we did it a second time. And then everybody in the market, the whole market, was trying to react to what we were doing, because our ratings went through the roof. They started giving away money and stuff. So when they did that, then I gave away a couple houses. That was our next thing. We just kind of stayed ahead of it, ahead of the flow, but-

Buzz Knight:

Was there a thing, though, like, “Hey, we just did this big promotion three weeks ago. Next promotion, we have to top ourself.” I mean, was that the attitude?

Richie Balsbaugh:

Yes and no. Yes, it was always the attitude to try to do something bigger and better. And basically, it’s kind of funny, you’ve segued this thing perfectly. It really kind of was the reason that I created the Kiss concert, which is now basically the iHeartRadio concert. After giving away money, and houses, and cars, and all those things that everybody else in the market following suit, it was just everybody doing the same thing. And so I wanted to come up with something. I wanted to do something that money couldn’t buy. So I created this unbelievable party, a concert where you brought, basically, Hollywood to Boston. And that was the birth of the Kiss concert. And it started out small. It started out at Boston, Boston the nightclub, on Lansdale Street.

Richie Balsbaugh:

The first four acts that I had when I first put the radio station on the air, and I had to actually beg people to come in from the streets to go to this thing, the headliner were The Tramps, Sister Sledge, Tasha Thomas, who was in The Wiz, Sarah Dash, who was in Labelle and a group called Machine, There But for the Grace of God Go I, that song that was… Anyway, that was my big lineup. And obviously, it’s manifested itself into the biggest show now, even though I don’t own, it’s still an adjunct to that. Even when I left, when I sold the company, it was the biggest show. We did 25 acts. Everybody from Aerosmith to Prince to Madonna, they all played the Kiss concert.

Buzz Knight:

Well, and as somebody who came to the Boston market in 1992, it was all anybody talked about when the Kiss concert was happening. It was the buzz of the market. It was the hottest ticket. It was, “Do you know someone over at Kiss? Can you get tickets? I want to go, or my kids want to go.” So it really had this gargantuan, and still does, this gargantuan image. How did you round up the label community to be so helpful? And was there anybody that ever came to mind that you just couldn’t get, or you almost got, or you had to work hard to get for a Kiss concert?

Richie Balsbaugh:

Yeah, a lot. Almost everyone. I mean, the groups, as they got bigger, they didn’t want to play a concert for nothing. Now, by the way, I didn’t pay the groups. iHeartRadio, everybody else pays for these groups. They’re basically tours, now. What I did was I would basically, and, I guess, it’s borderline plugola, but it really wasn’t, because basically I’d just say, “Look, Kiss is one of the two or three most important radio stations in the country for breaking music. If they play the Kiss concert, you got a pretty good shot at getting the records played.” I mean, that kind of a thing, basically. And the records companies would see that working out. Jerry Brenner was the independent promoter. And obviously, Kiss became a big money maker for him as an independent. And so he would work his end with the record companies. I would work with the… I got to know all the record label heads. I got to know all the managers of the major groups.

Richie Balsbaugh:

And it’s interesting, you had asked a question a little while ago about doing something bigger and better. Well, the Kiss concert became that bigger and better thing. And nobody, nobody could ever equal it, because it was our thing. These record companies, they weren’t going to do it for another radio station. We created it. We did it for the Genesis Funds. There was a charity. And they became a part of it. So groups actually would call me, the managers, and say, “Can we play the Kiss concert?” which was bizarre. I mean, one notable was Eddie Money. He came up here himself and he went to Berkeley and put together a band to play. And it just was one of those kind of things.

Richie Balsbaugh:

But that’s what became bigger and better. So during the of couple months up to the Kiss concert, and then I created the Jingle Ball to do it another time. But what really worked was that nobody could compete with it. You could give away whatever you wanted to, but you couldn’t get tickets for the Kiss concert.

Buzz Knight:

And for everybody who was in the biz or associated, was known as this five-star event, that if you were invited inside the tent, you just had the time of your life.

Richie Balsbaugh:

And by the way, I invited Oedipus and Tony [Baradini] and all those guys, too, just to watch the look on their face. But it became really kind of an event. It became a happening. It became a good charitable event. It was something everybody looked forward to every year.

Buzz Knight:

Was anybody obstinate and say, “I can’t play this thing”? And did you finally convince him and who was it?

Richie Balsbaugh:

Well, I mean, the greatest showdown I ever had… I could tell you a million stories. Yeah, there’s two. One is a story about one that didn’t happen. And the other story is about one that did. The first one was, I love to play golf and I was out at Pebble Beach at this little mini golf tournament that a couple guys had put together. I played every year. And I had just convinced the guy who was a manager of Huey Lewis, Bob Brown, to play the Kiss concert. I think it’s after Sunny Joe White had left and Steve Rivers was the new Program Director. I’m kind of trying to get my timelines right. But I was out there and I said, “Look, Steve, Huey Lewis is going to play the concert. Bob Brown, after years of fighting to get him to do it…” And he was huge then. “So they got their record coming out, so let’s make sure that we give it consideration, because he’s doing this. And I’m pretty sure it’s because he knows he’s got a record coming out.”

Richie Balsbaugh:

And so I was out there and, of course, Steve Rivers didn’t play the record, didn’t add the record. And this guy called me and yelled at me and told me I was the biggest liar that ever lived. And I wasn’t a man of my word. And he wasn’t going to play the concert, da, da, da. At that point, I had 14 radio stations. So I pulled his records on every one of the radio stations. We had a fight that was monumental. I wouldn’t play Huey Lewis under any circumstances, although I should have. But it was just one of those personal vendetta things, because right away, I said, “It was my fault. I was playing golf,” da, da, da. And it didn’t matter.

Richie Balsbaugh:

But the one that’s my greatest story, I think, is that my favorite artist, that I can listen to day and night, is Luther Vandross. And Luther, his voice is, I mean, it’s just ridiculous, I think. I mean, he can sing like an instrument plays, like every instrument plays. And I wanted Luther Vandross more than anything for the Kiss concert. Now, it wasn’t even a huge Kiss artist. That was kind of for me, for the Richie concert. So Polly Anthony was the President of Epic Records. And she was a very good friend of mine. And she said, “Richie, I would do anything for you. We can’t get Luther to do anything. Actually, he’s a pain. And he has his entourage around and we keep asking him to do things and he just says, ‘No, no, no, no, no.'”

Richie Balsbaugh:

I said, “Well, look, I’ll come to New York. Can you just get me a 15-minute, 20-minute meeting with him? Have coffee, a cocktail, whatever, just so I can meet him. That will appease me. If he says to me, ‘No,’ he can’t do it, all right. I won’t bother you anymore.” So anyway, she calls me. And she said, “Look,” she said, “Luther’s going to be in the office. I’ve convinced him to walk over to the Four Seasons.” They were on 55th and Madison. The Four Season was right there, a block away. “I convinced he and his manager and his handler,” whatever it was, “and me to come over and have coffee with you at the Four Seasons.”

Richie Balsbaugh:

So I meet Luther there. And Luther’s got, right away, he’s got such attitude. Luther was very effeminate in his actions, in his life. He would make these gestures that were just putting you off kind of thing. And you could tell that he wanted to be there less than he wanted to have his teeth drilled. And so he’s there and he’s kind of listening. He’s not even looking at me. He’s looking the other way, looking left and right. And so I said, “Luther, look, you’re my favorite artist. We play your music. We play everything. I’ve done these concerts. I’ve had everybody.” I listed the groups that have played. I said, “It’s my goal to have Luther Vandross play my Kiss concert.” And I said, “What would it take for you to play the Kiss concert?” And he said, “I’ll play the Kiss concert if you get the Boston Pops to be my backup band.”

Richie Balsbaugh:

Now, as luck would have it, I had been to dinner with Robin Brown, who was then the manager of the Four Seasons in Boston, a very close friend of mine. And he happened to be very close friends with Keith Lockhart. And we had had a dinner at the hotel, just less than a month prior to that. Keith was there. And I had met Keith before. But we were seated next to each other. It was a small dinner, six or eight of us. And we were talking about he knew everything about radio and about Kiss. And he was very, very charming and very engaging. We were having our conversation. I said, “You got to come to the concert.” He said, “I’d love to.” So he gave me his number and everything else. So I’m sitting in the Four Seasons and I’m thinking, huh, this is kind of interesting. So I excuse myself for a moment. And I went into the lobby and I called Rob. And I said, “Robin, do you think that if I called Keith,” I told him the story. And he said, “Well, he gave you his number.”

Richie Balsbaugh:

So I called him and he got on the phone. So I tell him what’s going on. And he goes, “When is the date of it?” And I tell him. He goes, “Well, we’ll do that.” So I walked back to Luther with the phone and I hand him the phone. And he looks at me. “It’s Keith Lockhart saying that they’ll play the Kiss concert.” Luther could not get out of it. It cost me a gazillion dollars to have the Boston Pops practicing in the ballroom of the Four Seasons. It didn’t matter. I beat Luther. It was the coolest thing in the world. He never played the concert. That’s the best story. That’s the best story. And the concert was spectacular, just as an adjunct. There’s two PSs to the story. One is, I could actually tell more stories about artists and the things with the Kiss concerts, not more, but as many as I could about the radio days in terms of the people.

Richie Balsbaugh:

And boy, do I have some stories about Sunny Joe White and all those characters that worked for me. They were incredible. But the first story is that when he was in Boston, everybody stated the Four Seasons. He would not stay where any of the artists stayed. Now, mind you, we had Bon Jovi. We had all these big artists. But Luther, in his mind, was bigger than them. Luther had just become skinny Luther. He had lost a hundred pounds. He was always going up and down, which may have contributed to his stroking out, the whole thing. But I’m not sure of that. But he was skinny Luther. So we had a dinner planned at Sonsie. And Luther was, the record company made him do this now, at this point, after all kind of the things we did for him. And he was staying at the Ritz, the old Ritz. And so we had this thing at Sonsie. We were a little bit late, because getting everybody organized, and he was sitting there alone very upset.

Richie Balsbaugh:

And my daughter, my little girl, Lauren, was at that point, I think, 12 years old. And so he wound up sitting next to her. She was really the only person he would talk to. He didn’t want anything to do with us. He wouldn’t eat anything. And so the chef, I had the chef come over, Billy Poirier, I’ll never forget. And he comes over and he says, “Luther, I’ll make you some fish with no butter. We’ll put it in,” whatever. And, “No, no, no. I can’t have that.” I think he had some lettuce or something. Anyway, but he and Lauren, my daughter, they kind of hit it off. So he asked Lauren to actually pick the wardrobe. He played for 40 minutes and he had four wardrobe changes. I mean, he put four different jackets. I mean, the guy was unbelievable. You talk about a total diva, oh my God, he was unreal. So anyway, so my daughter, basically, he embraced Lauren and he was somewhat happy doing the thing. And the show was just spectacular.

Richie Balsbaugh:

I mean, he sang five hits, four or five hits. And he had a different glittery outfit on every time. It was beautiful. But the thing that’s kind of the PS to the store is that he wouldn’t eat or wouldn’t do anything. He was at a different hotel from everybody else. So I get the bill. And the way they worked was the record companies paid for the transportation and the airfare, whatever. And I paid for the hotels, and the food, and the things that while they were in Boston, and the transportation to and from the venue. Pretty sweet deal for me, actually, when you think about it’s, since we weren’t paying the artist. And I got the bill from the Ritz and I look, and I go, “What the heck is going on here?” So I look and I knew what the room rate was. And it was just two or three times the room rate. I couldn’t understand it.

Richie Balsbaugh:

So I asked for the backup and I got the backup. And lo and behold, he had had 30 Snickers bars, 20 walnuts. He ate everything, but the playing cards and the ice cube trays from the hotel. It was unbelievable. I think he was a closet eater, but he was, and is to me, the greatest singer, ever. So I went off the radio key but it kind is the reason I did the Kiss concerts. And then, because I’m so into music and I got to know all the record people, and I got to know the artists so well, I just… I mean, they became part for the audience, part for me.

Richie Balsbaugh:

I had groups, like K. D. Lang. K.D. Lang I’ll never forget. I’m sitting in her bus. She goes, “Well, why did you want me?” I said, “Because you have a hit. That song, it’s going to be a hit. And we’re going to play the heck out of it, because it’s great.” And she went out and played and tore it up. And I saw her at one of the Grammy’s years later. And she ran to me and hugged me. I mean, it was kind of crazy, because I made some really great relationships from a lot of artists. And some that weren’t so great.

Buzz Knight:

So when deregulation hit the radio industry, that’s kind of when you got out. Is that correct?

Richie Balsbaugh:

Yeah. Well, I had in the early ’90s, I owned stations in Boston, Rochester, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Charlotte and Chicago. And Chicago was off balance sheet. It was like another entity. And in the early ’90s the interest rates went way up. And although we were in compliance in terms of paying our interest and our debt service, changed their multiples of what your debt ratio should be. And one of the banks tried to get me to sell the Chicago radio station, which I was not willing to do, to become in compliance. And they were just flexing their strength. They were a bank that I had a very bad relationship with. They had meetings with me and I’d show up late for the meetings. I didn’t like them. And they didn’t like me. And they showed me by the fact that they kept squeezing for me to do this.

Richie Balsbaugh:

So what I did is I wound up refinancing the company just to get them out of it. And in refinancing the company, what I had to give up for the refinancing basically, it was a sliding scale. And what happened was then deregulation happened. And I was going to have the ability, because I had this kind of big-money company behind me, to go out and purchase a lot of radio stations. But the way my deal and my management deal worked, we were growing at a very slow rate, while they were growing astronomically with the way the deal was structured. So I went to them and I said, “Look, I know that you’re excited about deregulation. We can buy radio stations. Everywhere we can double up, everywhere triple up. But we kind have to change the deal, because we made a deal under different circumstances.”

Richie Balsbaugh:

They said, “Well, we can’t change the deal. We have partners.” And I said, “Well, then we’re going to sell the company.” And they go, “Well, you can’t sell the company.” I said, “Well, read the agreement.” I said, “I specifically had that put in just for something like this.” Well, they thought that if they played chicken with me, they thought I wouldn’t sell. And I did, because I wasn’t going to work for them. I was going to work for myself. And quite honestly, in retrospect, I think that because of what deregulation did to radio, I’m kind of glad that I got out. But I would’ve loved to have seen as long as the playing field was level with this group that I had behind me, what we could have done. I think we could have done a lot better than Clear Channel did. Hate to say that, but true.

Buzz Knight:

Well, so you led into where I was headed, which was any regrets. So you were reading my [crosstalk].

Richie Balsbaugh:

Yeah, I have regrets. Of course. I miss what it was. But I don’t think I’d miss what it has become.

Buzz Knight:

Well, so as we’re going to close here, Richie, with Takin’ a Walk and talking, what advice would you give to the current radio industry, leadership owners, et cetera, on how to navigate the times that they’re in?

Richie Balsbaugh:

I mean, that’s a $60,000 question. I really don’t know. I mean, I got to tell you something. I had I’ve had offers to be on boards and do different things in consulting radio companies. And I’ve refused them. Not because I didn’t like the idea of making some money, but because I don’t really think that I could give a value added. The business that I was in was much different than it is today. Today it’s all based on research. You’re right, everything is research oriented. I mean, if you can save money and put a personality in 20 markets versus having the localization, you’re going to do it to save money, because your debt service is so high. I’m not a financial guy. And I didn’t want to become one. I was an entrepreneur. And that’s what I’ve always been and always will be. And so it’d be hard for somebody who is not a financial guy to give advice to the radio people now, because they’re all really financial guys.

Richie Balsbaugh:

I speak to some of the people that work for me. And a lot of them are still at Clear Channel. They’re still in really big jobs. And they lament about it all the time. It’s a catch 22. I mean, you can’t really be creative. A perfect example. I can end with this, I think. They had this situation at Clear Channel with Matt Siegel, where he basically quit over the Demi Lovato thing about him, her, whatever the heck it was. And basically, he was doing his shtick, which is incredible. He’s a brilliant personality. He was doing what he does. And all of a sudden word from above came that he had to stop, because they didn’t want to touch that area. And he went ballistic.

Richie Balsbaugh:

And so he talked to me about it and I said, “I think you’re absolutely right. I think they’re wrong, but do you really want to quit over Demi Lovato?” I mean, whatever. I mean, actually, I didn’t say that. I think his wife said that, but that’s what I thought. You tie somebody’s hand behind them when you’re telling them what to do. You’re telling them what to do, not asking them to do what you want them to do. In other words, if you have a goal, what I used to love to do is just say, “Here’s the goal. Get it. Make it or achieve it. Get to it.” Now, they say, “Here’s what the goal is and here’s how you’re going to do it.” And so for that reason, I don’t think I could really give much advice to anybody. I really couldn’t.

Buzz Knight:

It’s funny, Mel Brooks has a book out, an autobiography.

Richie Balsbaugh:

Boy, I hope I live as long as he is.

Buzz Knight:

I think you’re going to, because of your spirit. But Mel Brooks talks in the book throughout his career where this investor, bookkeeper, manager would tell him, “No, you can’t do that. No, don’t do that. Don’t do that in Blazing Saddles.” And he would go, “Okay.” And then he would just go do it.

Richie Balsbaugh:

Well, that might be the legacy of Richie Balsbaugh, because that’s kind of the way that I have been. Now, sometimes to my detriment and sometimes to the good. But I don’t know if it’s irreverence. I think it’s just self-assurance. I loved the broadcast and the radio business more than anything in the world. I loved the fact that you could be partners with the record companies instead of being their adversaries. I loved the fact that I got to know the artists, know the managers, know the company presidents, hang out with the Clive Davis’s and also hang out with the Steven Tylers and also hang out with the bankers. The bankers have kind of separated themselves. They think they’re too good for the record broadcasters now or the investment bankers.

Richie Balsbaugh:

And quite honestly, I can’t complain about how I did in terms of selling my company. Would I wish that the business wouldn’t have been deregulated as it did and changed? Yes, because I would still be in it. I’d be in it til my deathbed probably. But it did. And I have no controller over that. So here I am walking and talking.

Buzz Knight:

This has been fantastic. It’s amazing to hear the insight and the behind-the-scenes having competed against you for so many years and admired the work. And I’m so grateful that we got to take a walk.

Richie Balsbaugh:

You competed against me? Okay. Hey, Hey, just send this big shout out to Wendy at Loft68.

Buzz Knight:

I love it. Thanks, Richie.

Richie Balsbaugh:

Thanks, Buzz. Appreciate it.

Buzz Knight:

Oh, Thank you.

Audio:

Takin’ a Walk with Buzz Knight is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Buzz Knight is an established media executive with a long history of content creation and multi-platform distribution.

After a successful career as a Radio Executive, he formed Buzz Knight Media which focuses on strategic guidance and the development of new original content.