cc  >> Jeanan Yasiri: This is a  course that's offered through  the University of Wisconsin  School of Human Ecology.  As we begin today, I'd like to  extend thanks to our partners in  supporting this course, the UW  Office of Corporate Relations,  the UW College of Engineering  for their technical support, and  the Ewing Marian Kauffman  Foundation, for their financial  support, they are committed to  advancing academic education and  entrepreneurialism.  Additionally we'd like to thank  our media partners, Wisconsin  Public Television and their  University Place crew for taping  today's lecture.  I am very pleased to introduce  our guest this afternoon, Tom  Walker, general manager of  Midwest Family Broadcasting here  in Madison.  Tom completed both his  bachelor's and master's degrees  in business administration here  at UW.  He has been with Midwest Family  Broadcasting since 1995, first  as director, then president, and  now as general manager since  2002.  In addition to his professional  contributions, Tom is very well  known in our community as a  supporter of many non-profit  interests, serving on boards  including United Way of Dane  County, the Wisconsin  Broadcasters Association  Foundation, St.  Vincent de Paul, and Madison  Ballet.  I have asked Tom to share with  us the changing environment for  electronic media and radio in  particular, and the  entrepreneurial imperative that  applies to that specific area of  media.  So please join me in welcoming  Tom Walker. 

 (applause)  >> Tom Walker: Thank you.  Good afternoon, how's everybody  doing?  Second hour.  You just got done with  newspaper, now we're gonna go  into the electronic part.  My background is radio, so I'm  gonna be concentrating mostly on  radio, but as we spend the next  hour together you will find that  there are very few things that I  do not have an opinion about.  So feel free, ask whatever  questions you want, where you  want to, and we'll do our best  to deal with them as time goes  on.  One of the questions I heard the  last time around as you guys are  wrapping up is, what's your  educational background and what  would you study, and all that,  and let me just put a plug-in on  that front in the beginning.  To everyone's terror in  broadcasting, I'm a CPA.  I got my bachelor's and my  master's here in accounting,  worked in public accounting for  KPMG, Peter Marwick, for ten  years, and got into broadcasting  after that.  And taught here for a year and a  half as a lecturer at the School  of Business, back when it was up  in Commerce, back in the good  old days.  And if there's one area that I  would say that you ought to at  least take one course in, or  learn one thing about, and  that's take an accounting  course. 

 And the only reason I say it is,  accounting is the language of  business, and one of the  failures that people have had in  media is they don't know how to  keep score.  If you don't know how to keep  score, you don't know how to  play the game.  Accounting is how you keep score  in business.  In government, in business,  anywhere.  Accounting is the score keeping  methodology, it's the language,  it's how we communicate  internationally and nationally,  and if there's one area that I  find people fall short on, it's  that ability to think critically  and analyze in an economic  sense.  And it's a great failure to my  estimation in journalism,  because I haven't seen a  journalist in the country who  really understands business, and  in the last 18 months, it's been  kind of important.  So one question, it struck me  that it was a very insightful  question from the prior group,  and I thought that I'd address  that right off.  What I do is run radio stations.  I run seven stations in Madison.  I run 1670, which is a talk  station with Sly in the morning  and Wisconsin Guys in the  afternoon. 

 I run an oldies station on 1550,  I run Madison's only Spanish  station, 1480, La Movida.  I run the hip-hop station in  town, 93.1,  I run the rock station in town,  94.1 JJO, and you see  their website behind us.  I run Magic 98, which is an  adult contemporary station, and  then I run Q106, country  station, on 106.3 and 106.7  now in the market.  So that's the environment that I  live in.  I thought I'd start real quick  and talk about the continuum of  mass communication and what's  happened, and I will have no  slides, 'cause I'm verbal.  So I purposely didn't make  slides, I could've, but I  didn't, 'cause I want you to not  be caught up in anything but my  voice and how we communicate in  my medium, which is all verbal.  In the early days, the first  mass communication that really  came along was the concept of  movable type.  This takes us way back into the  beginning of the, the end of the  Middle Ages and the beginning of  the industrial revolution.  Movable type allowed us to  basically print books, provide  mass communications from books,  comes newspapers and everything  that we talked about in the last  hour, with regard to the wide  dissemination of information via  the ability to print on a large  scale and distribute that.  After print comes along, now we  get telephone and telegraph. 

 Basically the same  communication, one with dots and  dashes and the other one  actually carrying voice.  The telephone and telegraph,  basically the same technology,  using wire to transmit  information almost  instantaneously over a wide  area.  What came after that in the  later 1800s and became more  commercially viable in the early  1900s was radio.    First, there's still a fight as  to who actually invented it, the  Russians, of course, say they  invented it, Marconi says he  invented it, the patent fights  are going forever, but back in  the 1890s, the idea of wireless  transmission and reception of  wireless signals became a  concept that we were able to put  into reality and, frankly, on  this campus back in 1915, the  call sign, let me look it up  here, the call sign 9XM was  actually put on this campus and  used by the physics department  for five years to experiment  with this concept of radio.  Time moves forward from the 20s  into the early 50s when  television, which was actually  invented in the 30s, became  commercially available in the  late 40s, widespread across the  United States in the 50s, kind  of took the place of radio as  the new medium, right?  And then now we compact  everything down from the 50s to  the 80s, with internet, and then  from the 80s to the 90s with  cell and texting technology, and  everything's just getting  pressed more and more, the time  span for movable type to  telephone and telegraph,  hundreds of years.  Telephone and telegraph to  radio.  Tens of years.  Less than that as we move along  each step of the technology  continuum that brings us to  today.  All right?  So I just wanted to give you a  sense for where radio and the  electronic media sit.  One would not exist without the  other, okay?  Madison Newspapers, the Capital  Times, before they merged up,  and the Wisconsin State Journal. 

 Both started radio stations in  Madison in the late 20s.  They merged together in 1930 and  became 1310, now WIBA.  That station eventually was  owned by the Capital Times and  the Evue Foundation, or the Evue  company, which owned the Cap  Times, but it was started with  the station that the State  Journal had started, WISJ, and  with the station the Cap Times  had started, WWCT.  That's late 20s.  There's people still alive who  remember that.  Not many, but they're still  alive.  All right?  So newspapers begat radio.  Same thing happened into the 50s  where radio, as a broadcasting  company, begets television.  WTMJ, the Milwaukee Journal's  radio station now brings on  Channel 3, WTMJ television.  Same thing happens in most major  cities where the old medium  springs off and creates  basically, funds, drives  interest in the new media. 

 And really where we're at right  now is internet and cellular,  the challenge right now is  internet and cellular weren't  spawned, right, from the  existing prior media companies.  The internet started more out of  the academic environment, and  the cellular technologies,  whether we talk about texting or  anything else you can do on your  device, I don't call 'em cell  phones anymore, because who'd  ever put a camera on a cell  phone?  But on the other hand, who'd  ever buy a camera where you  can't make a phone call from,  right?  There's so much stuff packed  into these cellular devices now,  it's really, to call them a cell  phone is an insult to the  device.  So that technology did not grow  out of the newspaper,  television, radio continuum of  technology.  They were created with entirely  different needs in mind, and  serving entirely different  audiences, for lack of a better  phrase.  And now we all come together to  the singularity of, everything  sits in the device, and that  becomes your primary  communication device, whether  it's hooked up to your computer,  this or that or the other thing,  it all sits in that device.  And the battle is, what do we do  to stay relevant within that  device?  So that's the technological  stream that we've gone through.  Now, let's just focus in on  radio and let's talk about  what's happened in its lifespan,  from the late 20s until now, and  drill into what's happened on  the radio side of things.  As I said before, WHA, which  started out as 9XM, started out  in the physics department here  at the UW, they experimented  with telecommunications and the  like.  Most radio stations shut down  during the first world war  because of concerns over  military secretism and all that  kind of good stuff the  military's always concerned  about.  9XM continued to broadcast  weather information over the  airwaves to ships in the Great  Lakes, first with Morse code,  and then in the late 1900s, they  were able to adapt to voice, and  carry voice. 

 First regular broadcast for WHA  was 1920.  So we're only talking 90 years  ago that there were regularly  scheduled radio broadcasts, WHA  one of the first radio stations  in the country.  And that was all done on the AM  spectrum.  FDR made radio national with his  Fireside Chats.  His informal chats about the  Depression, and then into the  second world war, he used those  Fireside Chats to communicate  nationally with the country  live.  Think about that.  1933 to 1944, before that, there  was no national press  conferences, there were no  national discussions where the  president could get on the  airwaves and tell you what was  going on right here, right now.  Everything was done through the  papers and you had to catch it  the next morning as yesterday's  news.  Now it was live, one way, top  down.  Critical point, on way, top down  communication. 

 FDR would tell you everything,  no feedback coming back.  Network radio, national radio  with the Firestone theater and a  lot of the Amos and Andy comedy  and stuff like that, those were  half-hour, one-hour long radio  network shows that were  broadcast throughout the country  during the 30s, and that was  radio's bread and butter.  We were national network, all  run, obviously broadcasting  locally, and then television  comes along.  What happens with television?  Television takes over in the  early 50s, coast to coast, they  take over the network gig.  They take over the half-hour  shows and Jackie Gleason and Bob  Hope and all that stuff, and  radio's dead.  Everybody said, that's it,  television is the new medium,  radio's dead.  Entrepreneurialism existed back  in the 50s and early 60s, what  does radio do?  They go to music.  Sony invents something in the  1960s, actually introduced in  1960, very important to radio,  called the transistor.  What's a transistor?  Transistor is a portable   electronic device, here I'm in  the hall of engineering talking  about transistors, those were  what we had before integrated  circuits, right?  They don't break.  Before that, broadcasting  television or radio, all lived  for the vacuum tube. 

 Had to warm up, very fragile,  what happens with the transistor  portable radios?  What happens with portable  radios?  Beach blanket bingo parties,  right?  Top 40 radio.  Never been heard of before 1960,  top 40 radio now rules the  airwaves for radio through the  60s and the 70s.  What emerges after that, a new  technology under AM radio, FM  radio.  Anybody in this radio every  listen to AM radio anymore?  Anybody in this room listen to  FM radio?  Okay, right.  So where's AM?  AM is where talk radio lives  now, not music, why did you go  to FM?  Better fidelity, stereo, no  hisses in the background,  thunderstorms don't crackle your  sound.  What created FM radio?  Rock.  The AM stations are playing the  top 40 stuff, they were playing  Captain and Tenille, they were  playing the Motown sound and all  that, FM radio was where the Who  lived, where the Rolling Stones  lived, where long-form broadcast  of albums lived, and rock and  roll grew out of FM radio.  That was in the 70s.  Now we're actually at a point  where we're talking about your  parents.  So, we're in the 70s, FM radio  is now living where?  In your cars, in your stereos,  that sort of stuff. 

 What emerges after that, next  technology, satellite radio.  Okay, and after that, satellite  radio, which is literally  launched in about the year 2000,  it existed a little before that,  but 2000 is when satellite radio  really hit stride.  And now we have streaming of  radio stations, we have WiFi  transmission of radio stations,  and that's where we are today  with the technology.  This history lesson is here for  a reason, 'cause I'm pulling us  towards a singularity as I call  it where you can talk about what  the rest of the world is.  The last thing I want to talk  about, third little history   lesson I want to give.  Broadcasting has always been  regulated by the Federal  Communications Commission.  So we live under this realm of  regulation with regard to  ownership, because the FCC did  not want broadcasters to amass  too much audience control and  too much power in this country.  The newspapers had stayed  localized in their city, they  wanted to keep broadcasting from  becoming too nationalized and  too controlling from one or two  entities.  So back in the old days, there  was a rule of seven that existed  with broadcasting.  Okay?  You could own seven AM stations,  seven FM stations, seven TV  stations nationwide and that was  it. 

 Seven, seven, seven.  And once you had all those you  were done.  So the biggest company could own  21 broadcast facilities.  Second point, there were duopoly  rules.  You could own one AM station in  the market and one FM station in  the market.  So the most you could own in any  given city, New York, LA, Tomah,  two stations, one AM, one FM.  That was it.  They also introduced later on a  rule in the late 60s, early 70s  called the "one to a market"  rule.  You could own newspaper in a  market, but if you owned a  newspaper, you couldn't own  television and radio.  So what happened with the Cap  Times?  They had owned WIBA, AM and FM,  they sold it in the 70s because  of the one-to-a-market rule. 

 If you owned a TV station you  couldn't own a radio station,  you couldn't own a newspaper.  If you owned radio, you couldn't  own the other two.  You had one of those three  mediums as what you could own.  That was it.  That rule's still in existence  today.  We go into the 90s, all these  radio stations get created in  the late 80s, all these FMs, the  industry's over-saturated with  facilities and with stations, so  the regulators decided to  de-regulate radio.  1996, Telecommunications Act,  supposedly there to de-regulate  long-distance and cable and a  bunch of other things like that,  also deregulates radio  ownership.  Now companies can own upwards of  1,000 or 2,000 radio stations,  TV stations in the country.  Duopoly rules are relaxed, where  somebody like my company can own  three AMs and four FMs in one  market, allowing concentration  within a market of broadcasters.  So what happened to Madison from  1960, 1960 we had three radio  stations in Madison, three AM  radio stations that were  commercially viable, I won't  talk about public broadcasting. 

 So we had --, we had WIBA, and  we had WTSO, that was it.  Three owners, three  broadcasters.  Fast forward to 1990, there were  nine owners in town, half of  which were losing money, half of  which were surviving.  The three old guard, WIBA, --,  TSO were doing fine, one other  company was doing fine, the  other companies were failing.  Too many stations, not enough ad  dollars to hold the thing  together.  They deregulate, allow us to  consolidate ownership, guess how  many owners are in Madison,  Wisconsin right now?  Three again.  Clear Channel's here, Intercom's  here, and then the company I  work with, Midwest Family is  here.  That's it, back down to three  owners.  So in 50 years we've  accomplished a lot more overhead  and a lot more formats and a lot  more stations in the same number  of hands that we had 50 years  ago.  The reason I bring all that up  is, I wanted to give you a  little history because most of  you probably don't know any of  this, how much of this  information is new to a lot of  you?  Okay, a fair amount of you,  great. 

 There's been an entrepreneurial  spirit in broadcasters and in  the media, and in the electronic  media, for years.  As the regulatory environment  has changed our lives, as the  technological environment has  changed our lives, the  electronic media has adapted and  has moved.  When television came on with  network, radio moved to music.  When FM came along and that's  where music migrated to, AM  found a way to do something  else, that's talk radio.  So the finding opportunities,  adapting to the change, and not  being a dinosaur and thinking  we're so big nothing can affect  us, but being smaller and more  nimble, the electronic media  over the years has been able to  adapt to that.  Where are we at today?  We're in an unregulated  environment, roughly unregulated  compared to what we used to  have, a number of radio stations  broadcasting, a number of TV  stations broadcasting.  Television now competes with  cable, they must carry with  cable, but they all now, instead  of four channels in Madison that  you could get with broadcast,  now there's probably 15 with  HDTV, you can still get the  broadcast.  And how many people actually get  their television via broadcast  here?  None.  How do you get it?  Cable and satellite.  And now instead of 15 channels,  you now have 100 or 200  channels. 

 It's affected TV huge.  They have their big powers,  millions of watts going up  broadcasting their signal to  about 5% of the population.  The rest of the population  receives their broadcasts via  cable and satellite must-carry  provisions.  They still make their money  through their 30s and their 60s,  you create an audience, you sell  the time, you sell access to the  audience, that's how they make  their money.  That's why broadcast television  is free.  You give them your time, they  sell your time to an advertiser  and everything's free from that  standpoint.  Cable, satellite, you've gotta  pay for that service, but you  can still get broadcast  television for free.  Broadcast radio, same deal.  Who do we compete with?  We now compete with satellite,  except how many of you actually  have satellite receivers?  One, two, three.  At home or in your car?  Both?  You must have a south-facing  window in your apartment, 'cause  unless you can see the satellite  it's very hard to get satellite  signal. 

 >> (inaudible)  >> Walker: Oh, your boat.  Okay, cool.  So the difference, the issue  with satellite radio is you've  gotta see the satellite.  In Wisconsin, to see a satellite  in a --, you've gotta look about  20 degrees off the horizon and  you either got to look towards  California or look towards  Florida, 'cause that's where the  two satellites are parked.  So if you have trees or if you  have a north-facing office or  something, you'll never see  satellite radio in your office.  In your car, you'll see it  unless you're in a tunnel.  We compete with WiFi radio,  stream stations.  We stream our own stations, but  I have an internet receiver in  my office, I can get about 2600  radio stations in the United  States and worldwide, streamed  off our WiFi in the building.  It's very cool.  "Morning Drive" in Auckland, New  Zealand is an amazing thing to  listen to in the afternoon from  Madison, Wisconsin. 

 You can do it.  What's local anymore?  Local is what's local to you and  what's interesting.  That's our new competitive  environment, that's what we live  in now.  And our question is, how do we  adapt to this competitive  environment and what do we see  as our opportunities.  Excuse me, I'm dry.  The key points, four key points  as to how we take advantage of  this opportunity.  Very different from newspaper.  The newspaper relied huge on  classifieds.  They relied huge on daily  distribution of news and they  were always the in-depth news  source, they were the  journalists.  I think that's an excellent  point. 

 When you guys were talking at  the end of the last session, I  fear for journalism.  Because what you see on the web  is not journalism.  Your primary news source should  not be the Jon Stewart show.  It's hilarious, I watch it every  night, I love it, it ain't  journalism, right?  If something gets blogged out on  the web or posted on the web, it  doesn't make it fact.  And we've seen it time and time  again where, "It must be true, I  saw it on the web."  Frankly, if you saw it on the  web, odds are it's not true,  even if somebody pasted really  cool graphics around it.  The journalistic drive of going  to actual sources for  information, not relying on  hearsay, getting verification of  the stories from an independent  source, the basic tenets of  journalism live in the print  media.  They live, even if it's slanted,  it's still factual.  You can listen to the left and  the right all the time and they  talk about how slanted Fox News  is, or how CNN is the Clinton  News Network, or how the New  York Post is this or the LA  Times is that, and okay fine, is  there a flavor to it,  absolutely.  Is there a slant to all of these  things, absolutely.  Do the reporters put their own  attitudes into these things,  probably, but at the fundamental  core of what gets reported under  the journalistic ideal, it's  still based on fact. 

 We have seen things take off on  the net that have absolutely no  basis in fact and it becomes the  God's truth within 24 hours.  And I fear for journalism  because of that.  Are we journalistic, do we have  news, absolutely.  Television still has their news  stories, radio still does news.  But we don't do the in-depth  reporting, we don't have the  resources for in-depth  reporting, that's not what  people look to us for.  They look to the print media for  the in-depth stories, they look  to us for headlines, they look  for us to stay connected.  And as long as we remember that  what we need to do is serve our  audiences as best we can, we  cannot keep our attitude of  being a top-down media source.  Broadcasting, newspaper,  television, it's always been  top-down.  The editors, the producers, the  air talent has always decided  what they're gonna do next and  then you have to consume it,  because it was a top-down world.  Where we're at now that attitude  has to change. 

 Broadcasting is still  broadcasting, we can't change  the top-down delivery system.  But what we change is our  attitude, okay?  It is no longer a top-down  world, there's an interactive  capability and you can talk  about Facebook and you can talk  about Twitter and you can talk  about all that kind of stuff,  it's all interaction, whether  you do it through one of those  more social "media," Twitter,  Facebook, MySpace kind of  things, or whether you do it  through email or texting.  That all opens up a two-way  communication that hasn't been  available before.  So one of the things that we  have to do as old school  top-down providers of  information is open up the  floodgates the other way and  quit controlling content as an  absolute.  And we're gonna decide what  you're gonna take next without  listening to you.  That attitude has to change.  One other thing that people have  to realize is these electronic  medias, the texting, the  Facebook, the internet  environment, whether it's  Googling or whatever.  That is not broadcasting.  Television and radio are  broadcasting, starts at a single  point, disperses widely to  consumers that are more  passively consuming whatever it  is we provide.  Internet is not passive. 

 Internet is interactive,  internet is point to point.  You go on the web, you look for  something, you Google it or do  whatever you're gonna do, you  have it bookmarked, and you go  to where you want to go and do  what you want to do.  And it is awesome for that, but  it is not broadcasting.  You can build the best website  in the world and no one will  find it because there's only 300  billion of them.  People remember 9/11, 2001?  Okay, first plane went in  7:45-ish Madison time, right?  Why do you think that time was  chosen?  Do you think it's a guess?  Why do you think that time was  chosen?  Before 9:00 Eastern time, before  8:00 Central Time, 7:00 and  6:00.  'Cause the morning news channels  were all on television and the  morning shows and the morning  news were all running on radio.  If you want to have maximum  impact on what happens in this  society, you do it during  morning drive.  Television stations are on, the  morning stations are running,  the radio stations are running.  I was pulling into work, 7:50,  on the news.  It hadn't hit anything yet  except the wires. 

 It wasn't on the network  channels, it wasn't on CNN, it  wasn't on ESPN, none of that  stuff.  We hit the air.  "It looks like a passenger plane  hit the south tower."  We were on the air with that  at 7:50.  7:55, second plane goes in, at  that point there are cameras on  it, okay?  CNN flips over, Fox flips over.  ABC, NBC, everybody flips over.  We flip over.  The instantaneous-ness that the  electronic media has to cover  and broadcast what's going on in  the world is mind-boggling.  The speed that we, there's a lot  of days nothing's going on and  you tune into CNN and they're  spending an awful lot of time  looking at some sick puppy some  place in West Virginia because  there's no other news.  That drives me crazy, but I'll  tell you, when something big  happens, do they turn on the  lights, do things get covered?  Our news people were out within  an hour.  They were shutting down every  airport in the country. 

 We're a state capital, what  provisions were being taken at  our state capitol?  How big was this attack?  Two planes go in and all of a  sudden, half an hour later, the  Pentagon's getting hit.  All of a sudden there's another  report of a plane down in  Pennsylvania.  How many more?  They ground every plane in the  country.  People are traveling, they don't  know what's going on.  Should I go to the airport,  should I go home?  All of this information was  disseminated through the  electronic media.  CNN, Fox did a great job  nationally, but locally there  were tons of questions as to  what was happening at Truax  airport?  And what was happening at the  capitol?  And what was happening at our  state office buildings?  Were schools gonna stay open or  close?  Are the kids supposed to go  home, what's going on?  The first four hours were  mayhem, because we had no idea  what was going on.  Then the next hours take over.  Now we've got to talk about how  you're gonna deal with the  grief.  What do you do with your kids,  how many people, who was  involved.  It started out there were 10,000  people, it ended up not being  that bad of a number, thank  goodness, but it was horrible to  start with. 

 The ability for broadcasting to  immediately disseminate critical  information, nationwide,  worldwide, in your community, is  huge.  What happened in the floods in  New Orleans?  Think a lot of people had their  TV and their cable running?  They had no power.  Half the TV and radio station  towers got knocked down.  You're sitting on top of your  house wondering what's going on,  or sitting in your basement in a  tornado in central Illinois, no  power, wondering what's going  on, you still have your  transistor radio.  Still using over-the-air  broadcast, still running on  battery power.  You may only use it once or  twice in your life, but do you  not want to have that?  So there's a, you've got to  realize that the internet does  not replace broadcasting,  broadcasting can't do what the  internet does.  But we have some things here  that we can start building on as  broadcasters.  And that's the last point I want  to make.  The key to our future, the first  thing we have to do as  broadcasters, whether it's  television or radio or whatever,  is we have to make sure that we  stay relevant by staying in the  technology.  As technology moves along, if  we're not along for that ride,  we're in trouble. 

 I brought this with me.  Anybody recognize this?  iPod Nano, right?  It's the new one with the video  camera.  But there's also something else  in it.  Anybody know what the other  thing is besides the video  camera?  FM radio.  Doesn't make my AM people any  happier, but it sure as hell  makes me a lot happier, 'cause  I've at least got FM radio now  sitting in the most ubiquitous  device in the last ten years.  Only 'cause cell phone's 15  years old.  But this is a music storage  system, what this is to you,  your parents had as 8-tracks and  cassettes, okay?  And this is gonna look as  antiquated to your kids as  8-tracks.  Anybody ever seen an 8-track?  There you go.  An 8-track or cassette, I mean,  8-tracks were really cool for  us.  'Cause you didn't have to take a  record with you. 

 Anybody know what a record looks  like?  Yeah, vinyl's back, vinyl's  cool.  So FM radio exists in this.  Best day in the last two years  for us, was hearing that Apple  was putting FM tuners back in  these things.  It's really cool, too, 'cause  the antenna is the headphones,  'cause everybody's hooked up  their little FM clock radios and  stuff, you've got to hang that  stupid wire off the back for FM?  The headphones are the antenna,  it's really cool.  The other thing we've got on my  iPhone, and I love all the  Apples in here 'cause I'm an  Apple junkie.  We also have in here, in  addition to me looking at my  daughter's Facebook so I know  what she's up to...  (laughter)  Friend your parents,  it'll make them sleep better  at night, trust me.  But we also have the capability  through an app on my iPhone  called "radiolicious" where I  can stream my hip-hop and my  rock station to my iPhone.  It's very cool.  It's G3 technology, but's  streamed radio stations,  anywhere in the country I can  stream it. 

 I'm happy with this, that's  technology I want to make sure  my medium stays in.  All right?  So enough with the history  lesson and enough of all that  stuff.  What are our opportunities?  How many of you think I sound  like an accountant so far?  I kind of break that mold, don't  I?  Wearing a JJO shirt, and I wore  my good Docksiders here.  The only time I didn't wear  Docksiders when I was growing up  was when everybody else was.  I never wore the little horsey  things, never wore my collar   turned up like your parents did  when I was in school here, or  khakis.  So what are our opportunities  here from a radio standpoint,  'cause I'm not gonna pretend to  talk about television's  opportunities here 'cause  they're not talking much to us  about what they're doing.  Everybody can build a website  and do all that stuff and use  their broadcast capability to  drive listenership or viewership  to their websites, but we're  taking this a different  direction 'cause the web is very  1990s.  It's still important, it's still  cool, but there are other things  that are going on and other  opportunities.  First off, does anybody have a  favorite television network?  Favorite television shows,  right?  Anybody watch "Glee" last night?  That's becoming my new favorite  show, I'm so glad I'm not in  high school anymore.  But you'll go to Fox to watch  one show, if the Packers are  playing an AFC team you'll go  to, you don't care, if they're  playing on Sunday night you'll  go to ABC. 

 You find your programming that  you want, probably Tivo it,  'cause you never want to do it  at the time they want you to,  right, so time-shifting is cool,  and you'll go back and watch it.  But you don't have a favorite  network.  Any of you have favorite radio  stations from where you were  growing up or here?  You might have favorite acts,  this that or the other thing,  but you have favorite radio  stations.  Radio has a unique opportunity  to bond as a station with its  listener.  Anybody go to band camp this  summer?  No, no rockers in the crowd?  Band Camp is an event that WJJO  puts on, my rock station, every  summer out on Willow Island in  August, so it's when most of you  guys are out of town and back  home.  One day, starts at 10:00 in the  morning, done at 9:00 at night.  16 bands, 11,000 people.  One day.  A radio station.  This year we had to close it  down twice because of  thunderstorms, we're the only  rock station in the country with  two staff meteorologists now. 

 There were two guys that worked  for the National Geologic Survey  out in the audience, and they  saw the thunderstorms rolling up  and they said, "You guys might  need us backstage to tell you  when to shut this thing down so  nobody gets hit by lighting," so  now they're our staff  meteorologists.  We gave them a couple of rock  signatures, they met a couple of  the bands, they're rock stars  now.  Meteorologists as rock stars is  kind of a cool thing.  So anyway, we have an ability to  bond, get 11,000 people to show  up someplace under threat of  rain and come out to a rock  concert that a radio station  puts on.  As a radio station you can talk  to a group of people that  particularly tie into your music  or your political viewpoint,  whether it's left, right,  center, sports, anything like  that, and you become bonded at a  higher level with that person  because you become their  favorite station, not their  favorite show, but their  favorite station.  And it's that relationship that  we have with our listeners and  our audience that offers us a  huge opportunity moving into the  future.  If you get an email from a  friend, somebody you know,  somebody you have a relationship  with, you're more likely to  respond to it than if you just  get spammed.  If this person that you know, if  this entertainment company that  you know, if you have a  relationship with them, and they  email you and ask you, if you  respond to something and you get  something back on the back side,  you're much more likely to do  that if you know them and if you  have this relationship with them  than if it's just some cold  email coming from somebody, or a  text coming from somebody you  don't know.  Radio's portable, wireless.  Can you imagine cable radio?  Streets would be a mess. 

 Get in your car, portable.  In your iPhone, in your iPod  now.  Portable.  Television, not so portable.  Video, portable now, as long as  you have the device, for those  of you who missed "Glee,"  there's always Hulu.  The other things that put radio  in a good stead right now, what  are our opportunities moving  ahead?  We're portable, we're personal,  another thing that we have going  for us at this point is, we're  multi-task friendly, okay?  You can be listening to a radio  station, you can be streaming  your favorite station or doing  whatever else you want, and you  can be on the web.  You can be doing your homework.  Can you have TV on and be doing  your homework?  Tougher.  Be reading the newspaper and  driving a car, not really a good  idea.  They're going against texting  and the like, texting should be  illegal when you're driving and  all that stuff, how about the  morons I saw 30 years ago when I  was working in Chicago, that had  the newspaper folded up in front  of them on the steering wheel  driving on the way to work in  Chicago. 

 With a newspaper on the steering  wheel, with the cruise on!  And then when they run off the  road and hit something, then  they sue the auto manufacturer  'cause the cruise didn't  disengage.  This happened.  But I digress.  So we're multi-task friendly  versus the web or anything like  that.  The other thing that radio has,  'cause we're forced into this,  when I did the history lesson,  we were forced into this  environment when TV came along  and took over the network  position.  We are local, local, and local.  Except for the large talk  programming like you get with  ESPN or Rush Limbaugh or Glenn  Beck or any of those sorts of  national, Air America programs,  everything else that gets done    is local, local, local.  As long as the broadcast company  believes that it needs to stay  local, local, local.  One of the demises of  broadcasting since 1996 with the  creation of these huge national  companies is the nationalized  companies have moved away from  localism as one of their tenets  of operations.  When we think they needed to  move to it. 

 What's the difference, local is  more expensive.  Going back to that accounting  course.  The accountants took over, cut  down costs, made it more  "efficient," but also took away  its soul.  Local, local, local.  One of the big things that we're  gonna take advantage of, and  we're taking advantage of now,  even though we haven't figured  out a way to monetize it, and  when I say monetize it, I mean  charge people money to do it,  because we're advertiser based.  We don't charge for what we do.  But one of the things that we  look at now is the ability to  use social networks and texting  and the like to open up an  efficient and cost-efficient  two-way communication.  We still broadcast, we still put  on the next song, we still talk  about what we're gonna talk  about, but now we can open up  the communication other than the  telephone.  And give people the opportunity  to communicate back with us.  "Hey, coming up next song, I  can't decide. 

 I'm either gonna play some Sean  Kingston or I'm gonna play some  Ludacris.  They're both coming to town  later this month, I can't figure  out which one.  Text me now, text me which one  you want to play."  They do it at the football  games, right?  Fourth quarter, which one of  these three songs do you want to  hear?  Of course you hear maybe 30  seconds of the song, I'd change  that, but now you can interact  with 70,000 people at a stadium.  You can interact with 100,000  people on the radio.  "Tell me what you want to hear  next, text me."  We do it with our talk  programming.  Talk radio, first interactive  use of broadcasting, right?  Here's a topic I'm gonna talk  about, if I get you honked off  enough at me, where you're gonna  pick up the phone and yell at me  for what I said, which is what  we do.  People won't pick up a phone  unless you push the right button  on 'em.  So we push the right button,  they pick up the phone and they  call us.  Thank goodness for cell phones,  or else during drive time we'd  get a lot fewer calls.  But we can get texts, we can get  Facebook, we can get Twitter,  all of that stuff goes straight  into the studio now, opens up a  two-way communication. 

 You may not want to say anything  on the air, but you might want  your feelings known, or you  might want to make a point, you  can do it via Facebook, Twitter,  or email.  So we're opening up that two-way  technology now and opening up  the conversation and putting  less of it on the air.  So instead of airing all these  phone calls, the prize winners,  and "What's your favorite  station, tee-hee!"  Now all that stuff is done via  texting.  "Hey, we've got two tickets to  give away for this,  text me now."  Boom, done.  It all happens off-air.  Those are my major points as far  as the history, what brings us  here, and where we see the  opportunities to work in the  digital age now, and move to the  future.  And I hope I gave you the sense  as I talked through this, and we  have how much time for questions  now?  >> Yasiri: A little less than  ten minutes.  >> Walker: Okay, see, two pages  of notes, I can go for half a  day.  We hope, we plan, we believe,  that the digital technologies  that are available to us now  that weren't available to us 70  and 80 years ago when radio  first came about are going to  improve our ability to  communicate and interact and not  put us in any sort of detriment.  So our future, we think, is  bright. 

 A little different than the last  guy you saw, but we're fired up  with all this, we think this is  cool.  >> Yasiri: I'm gonna look around  for folks that do have questions  and I'm gonna ask the first one.  I remember when La Movida came  on the air, and it makes me  wonder, how often do you have to  re-think who your audience  should be, or how to engage with  different populations that might  not have been as evident  recently?  And how long has La Movida been  on the air, it's been maybe ten  years?  >> Walker: Seven.  In fact, it's seven years pretty  much this week.  And that came out of, there's no  research to that, to turning on  La Movida, all-Spanish station.  There was a guy in town, Luis  Montoro, who was buying media  time on the weekends from a  station in Poynette.  And doing a couple hours there  and a station in Green Bay, and  I had this 1480 signal that I  had to do something with because  we were simulcasting it with  1670 for a lot of different  reasons that I won't go into.  But we had to come up with a new  format.  And I went to the directors,  "What do you want to do?"  "Well, we could do this kind  of talk, we could do that kind  of talk, we could do Wall  Street, we could do CNN."  Oh, that's boring.  And we had just come through the  census and according to the  census there were 15,000  Latinos, maybe 20,000 Latinos in  Dane County. 

 I figured, well, if they can  count 20,000, that means there's  at least 40,000, right?  So Luis was doing this on the  weekends, I go over to Luis'  place on South Park Street.  Luis, Tom Walker, hi, I've got a  proposition for you.  How'd you like to do this 24/7?  Luis was born in Texas, raised  in Texas, had worked in radio  down in Texas, and 24/7 radio  was a dream come true for him.  So we taught him how to do radio  24/7, he came on board with his  wife and two other people, and  it's been the most fun I've had  in the last ten years, 'cause  it's old-fashioned radio.  We can do whatever we want.  Because nobody else is doing it  in Spanish, it's like doing it  all by yourself.  You can do a morning show  however you want to do it, the  only complaint I've had from an  Ecuadorian friend of mine is  that it's too Mexican.  I thought it was all Spanish,  but there's Mexican, and  Guatemalan, and Ecuadorian,  there's Tropical and all that,  the music formats are amazing.  But we do a morning show, and  then we do an hour called "El  Debate," The Debate.  It's talk radio. 

  It's local service stuff, we  bring in United Way and talk  about services sometimes for  Latino community, we bring in  the health people.  If we're talking about things  that are maybe, we need to deal  with this in the Latino  community, it's become the  touchstone of the Latino  community and it's a riot.  We have a great time.  Yeah.  >> You mentioned FM has been  carrying for the last 40, 50  years now.  What's FM gonna be like in the  next 40 years, or are there  other spectrums that are gonna  be emerging?  >> Walker: The technological  change we're on the corner of  right now is, you've heard of  HDTV, they did that big switch,  they're supposed to do it  between the Super Bowl and the  NCAA basketball tournaments.  That was a hard date, and they  were never gonna change their  minds, and Congress was  committed, but they changed  their minds and moved it.  The same thing is going on with  radio, except a little less  catastrophic.  Television had to move to an  entirely new part of the radio  spectrum to go to HD and  everybody's buying new TV sets  and converters.  Radio's conversion to  high-definition digital  broadcast is an in-band,  on-channel solution. 

 And right now in town I think  seven radio stations broadcast  on HD.  Now let me do a straw poll.  How many people here have an HD  FM radio receiver?  That's what I thought, none.  HD is available on AM and FM and  what it can do is, it allows us,  instead of creating one channel  of programming on our frequency,  we can split that channel up,  just like digital television is,  where you get 3.1 and 3.2,  if you're getting  over-the-air television, it'll  allow us to carry two or three  more channels where there's a  channel.  So on JJO's channel, 94.1,  I could put on a real metal,  'cause JJO is mainstream rock,  it's not metal, even though your  parents will think it's metal.  I could go even farther metal, I  could go classic rock on it.  I could go hair bands from the  80s, we all need more Twisted  Sister and Whitesnake in our  lives, right?  So we can put two or three  different programs on one  channel 'cause we can split the  data stream up digitally now.  That's the next level of  technology that's available for  FM, but we've got to get  receivers in people's hands.  And my straw poll showed me  exactly, I've spent a million  dollars on it in this market.  Magic is digital, JJO is  digital, Q is digital. 

 And so's Jams.  And I think there's eight  receivers in town and I own two  of them.  And the WHA guys, where it's  digital have a couple two, they  have more engineers, so they  probably own four, and Clear  Channel's switched their AM and  three of their FMs to digital,  and their GM's got one, so  that's the eight.  But nobody else has got them, so    I'm not spending any more money  on programming until they can  get receivers in people's hands.  And this is not an HD receiver  either, because the power  demands are too high on the  battery.  They haven't solved that.  That's the long answer, but  that's the next thing, HD for  us.  >> I was just curious how  broadcasting companies find out  how many listeners they have at  any point in time or in general.  I hear on the radio how many  they have.  >> Walker: In the TV world, a  University of Wisconsin-Madison  alum named Arthur Nielsen  developed that technology for  television, that's why you have  Nielsen tennis stadium. 

 Located in Chicago, they put a  little box on your TV if you  decide to do it, to plug in, and  that records what that TV's been  doing that week, and they  download that information.  Television is held hostage by a  different company named Arbitron  for those sorts of ratings  services.  And what they do is they call  you up on your landline, the  last ten years, call you up on  your landline.  And if you answer the phone, or  if you call them back after they  leave you a message, and if you  agree to do the survey, they  will send you a paper diary  where you write down what you've  listening to on the radio in a  week and mail it back.  And of the people they call who  have landlines, who answer their  phones, who agree to do the  survey, half of them return the  surveys.  And that's how they do their  "audience estimates" for us.  They don't call it statistics,  'cause it's not.  They're moving toward a people  meter methodology where now  you'll be able to strap a  receiver on you, basically, that  we then will encode an inaudible  channel on our frequencies and  the people meter will pick up  what your ears would pick up as  far as, and record what stations  you've been "exposed to" during  the course of your week.  But then you get to wear a  little heart monitor thing,  which a lot of people would be  happy to do.  So that's what we're dealing  with right now with audience  estimates. 

 The way I always recognize my  audiences, if I put on a rock  concert and 11,000 people show  up in the rain, I've got a damn  good radio station.  And I can motivate people to do  things.  And if my advertisers or my  clients advertise on them, we  all tell them to go get a tattoo  and the place is full of people  wanting tattoos in the next two  weeks, I'm doing okay.  La Movida, we did, second year  we were on the air we did a  Mexican Independence Day  festival, which is in September,  and I think the line of cars  went from Park Street up West  Washington Avenue and around the  square and was still on East  Washington Avenue as they headed  out to the Alliant Center for  the party, that was our station  that did it.  Our ratings from Arbitron?  0.0.  That's a -- number, 0.0.  I have three miles of cars all  driving out to the Alliant  Center with no listeners, right.  Like I said, there's very few  things I don't have an attitude  about.  And I hope nobody here's parents  work for Arbitron, I apologize,  kind of.  >> I know you mentioned  accounting, and I wondered what  your career path has been to get  you where you are now. 

 >> Walker: I did my bachelor's  here and worked at the radio  stations, setting up remotes and  dubbing commercials from tape  onto other kind of tape back in  the good old days when we still  spun records.  That's where I got exposed to  broadcasting.  Did my master's here and taught  here, taught Introductory  Accounting 200.  And a year and a half after  that, I went to Milwaukee,  worked for KPM, Pete Marwick.  Three years there, audited  hospitals, banks.  I told this story this morning,  I'll tell you again.  My dad graduated high school in  1941, okay?  In 1941 when you got out of high  school there's one place you  went.  If you could swim you went to  the Pacific, and if you couldn't  swim, you went to Europe, right?  My dad could type.  He never left the United States.  'Cause whenever anybody who was  in basic training got drunk and  beat somebody else up, somebody  had to be Radar O'Reilly, right,  for those of you who watch TV  Land or whatever. 

 Somebody has to be the nerdy guy  with the glasses who types all  this stuff, right?  And in the army back then, no  women, so guys had to learn to  type.  My dad could type.  He survived World War II.  I went to high school '71 to  '75.  There were a lot of people going  to southeast Asia in '71 to '75,  he said, you'd better learn to  type.  I learned to type.  So I'm in Milwaukee, Pete  Marwick, 1981 comes and goes,  1983 there's this thing called  the PC that shows up.  IBM PC, running MS DOS.  Now I'm gonna geek everybody  out.  I could type. 

 I could communicate with that  beast faster than anybody else,  'cause there were no accountants  that ever learned how to type,  that was secretaries' work.  I could type, with more than  just two fingers.  Apple Macintosh comes out in  '84, our firm converts to Apple  Macintosh, I am now the expert.  I go to Europe for three years,  Amsterdam, that was a trip, and  the last year...  I've got stories, but I have  to take the microphone off.  (laughter)  The last year, Pete Marwick  is merging with --, in the US.  KMG and Pete Marwick  internationally.  I run the EDP support group for  Europe, that was '87.  I'm 30 years old.  2500 Macintoshes come into  Europe, I've got to train  everybody, I've got a 20-person  support unit underneath me. 

 We deal in English, and there's  no native English speakers on  the continent.  I'm in Holland, I've got to deal  with the Germans, the Belgians,  the French, the Italians, that  was interesting, out of our  training center in Brussels.  I spent a year doing that, that  was hugely fun.  Come back to Chicago, then  convert the Chicago office, the  auditors had all been converted  but the admin function and all  the proposal writing was still  done with pay stuff and old  school stuff.  We converted the Chicago office,  1,000 people, where all the  admin people lost their  typewriters and put computers on  their desks.  And all of the proposals and  desktop publishing went from  rubby letters and guys who  worked on -- boards to computer  stuff.  And then left that and came to  work in broadcasting in 1990.  That's my path.  Madison to Milwaukee to  Amsterdam to Chicago back to  Madison.  The water's always been on the  east side except in Amsterdam  when it's to the north. 

 >> Yasiri: And of course the  journey all started with you as  a Wisconsin Badger.  >> Walker: Absolutely!  >> Yasiri: With that, we want to  thank you very much, Tom Walker.  (applause)