Originally published on April 15, 2005

Joe Davis

Salem Communications
Chief Operating Officer

According to Arbitron, Religious radio grew 32% between 1999 and 2003, making it the fastest-growing format.

Salem Communications, which specializes in Christian-formatted radio, is the third-largest radio group in the top 25 markets, after Clear Channel and Infinity, in terms of total number of stations within those markets.

 

Joe Davis is Salem's recently appointed COO. After finding his calling at the age of 6, Davis joined Salem as GM in 1989.

 

Getting into the business: "I was not only in the business, I was in this format by the time I was 6 years old. I grew up in Charleston, WV and started telling Bible stories on the air on a church program on WTIP/Charleston. I caught the radio bug and knew that it was what I wanted to do. In high school I worked at stations, putting away records and things like that. I got my first real job when I was in college at a station in Aurora, IL. I was on the air.

 

"My dad died when I was a freshman, and I knew I couldn't pay my way through college at a $1.65 an hour, so I looked around and saw who had the best cars in the parking lot: It was the sellers. I got into radio sales and paid the rest of my way through college. I remember going to the owner of the station and asking if he'd give me an account list, and he gave me a phone book.

 

"I've been in some aspect of broadcasting ever since. During the Vietnam War years I was with Armed Forces Radio and Television in Athens, Greece for four years. I took the job vacated by a fellow named Adrian Kronhauer, who had gone to Vietnam. He's the guy Robin Williams made the movie Good Morning Vietnam about. I came back and had an advertising agency in Phoenix for a number of years before I joined Salem."

 

Joining Salem: "I came aboard to put WMCA on the air in New York as a Christian-formatted station in 1989. During those first three years I personally visited 154 churches and stood in front of the congregations and invited them to listen to the station. I figured if it was a Sports station, you'd hang out at sports arenas. If it was a classical music station, you'd go to concert halls. It wasn't too hard to figure out where people who were interested in religious-oriented products hung out.

 

"I worked a deal where I got myself invited to churches. During that time I put listener guides in the hands of 38,000 people and invited them to listen to the station and built it to where we got a pretty good response.

 

"I was just promoted to COO for the company and will be moving to the corporate office, but I've been overseeing the radio stations for the last two years."

 

Salem's radio division: "For years the only kind of station Salem had was what we called our 'Christian Teaching and Talk' format. That's a block-programmed format where we typically have 52 minutes of paid block programming time in any hour, and then we sell spots and do other kinds of news, information and traffic in the remaining eight minutes. We now have 44 of those stations.

 

"We also have 15 Contemporary Christian stations addressing the growing popularity of contemporary Christian music. We brand those stations as 'The Fish,' and we have them in a number of major markets. News/Talk comprises most of the rest of our portfolio. We have 31 of them, mostly AMs. We got into that primarily because we discovered that when listeners left our Christian Talk and Teaching stations, they usually tuned to News/Talk stations. We developed our own network product that we supplemented with some key marquee talent, and we have those stations in a number of our clusters now. We have Bill Bennett in the morning. He just celebrated his first year of his program with something like 138 affiliates.

 

"There are also a few stragglers that aren't in any of those three strategic formats."

 

Growth plans: "We want to grow in terms of stations and markets. There's a lot of room for organic growth because we have a very young portfolio. Some of these stations are recently launched, and we are in markets where we don't have a full cluster consisting of all three of our strategic formats. We want to have those three strategic formats in each of our markets, and, of course, we are always looking for new markets as well."

 

Biggest issues: "We need to continue to lead the industry in growth. We've been among the very top growing groups, and we need to continue to do that because we're in an industry where Wall Street doesn't always - or isn't right now - reward us for that growth as much as we would like.

 

"They are infatuated with emerging technology, whether it's satellite or the iPod or whatever, but we are certainly involved in those. We have satellite channels on XM. We have a web company that is the largest streamer of Christian product, OnePlace.com. We're very involved in new technologies, but we're still primarily a terrestrial broadcaster, and terrestrial broadcasting has some challenges.

 

"I just got off the phone with a manager, and we were addressing phase two of our 'Less is More' program. We just call it clutter reduction. We're adding a couple more minutes of content in the morning hours and taking out commercial time at some cost. It's something we feel we need to do. We want to give people as much content as possible while recognizing that we are an advertising-driven medium."

 

Biggest challenge: "Absorbing all the new opportunities presented to us, evaluating them, and then squeezing the most out of them in terms of quality, income for the company, value for the shareholders and keeping excellent people, which we've been known for. We have some of the best sellers in the industry. They sell without ratings, and they have been able to grow these stations at a time when sales were flat in many of the markets and when their peers weren't doing it. My biggest challenge is to keep those kinds of people motivated and to find new ones."

 

State of Christian radio: "Christian radio is one of the strongest formats, and the hunger and thirst for anything of eternal value seem to be as great as they've ever been. Witness the best-selling book by Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life. Its has sold something like 22 million copies and is still a No. 1 seller. Everybody witnessed the phenomena of The Passion of the Christ, and those of us familiar with this audience knew there would be a tremendous response. In their homes and churches there's a tremendous hunger for things of a spiritual nature."

 

Something about Salem that might surprise our readers: "How visible we are in the major markets. Half the people in the United States live in the top 25 markets, and to reach the other 50% of the people you have to go from market 26 to 325, so we reach so many people through our owned-and-operated radio stations. The other thing is, we also have the Salem Radio Network, which has another 1,900 affiliates to which we supply some sort of network programming, either our talk product, news or music."

 

Most influential individual: "The first is Russ Salter, who owned the station where I first worked as a seller. He built the station with his own hands and took the kind of pride in it that only that kind of person could. He didn't have a son, and I was a 19-year-old who was eager to learn. He took me under his wing and taught me an awful lot not just about radio, but about life. Also Ed Atsinger, who took a real chance when he sent me to New York. He's meant a tremendous amount to my career. He's one of the brightest people I know. He's a person who analyzes things and tends to come up with solutions that nobody else ever thought of but that make you say, 'Yeah, I knew that.'"

 

Career highlight: "One of the great things we did in New York to put WMCA in the public eye was, for 10 years in a row, from 1990 to 1999, we went into Times Square on New Year's eve and broadcast live from 44th and Broadway. We would start about Thanksgiving to ask our listeners to get groups together from their churches to come to Times Square and do works of mercy - hand out hot chocolate, do street drama, give a smile to people. In 1990 New York wasn't like it is now. Times Square was dangerous. We like to think that we were maybe a little part of the rehabilitation."

 

Career disappointment: "I wish I hadn't been away from radio for the 12 or so years I was away, because I missed a lot."

 

Favorite radio format: "The button I always hit first is the scan button. When I'm in a new town I like to listen to all formats. I have a short attention span anyway, so the scan button works just fine for me. Sometimes it's on one of our stations, sometimes it's on NPR, sometimes it's on another News/Talk station, and once in a while it's on music, usually an old tune I identify with."

 

Favorite television show: "American Idol."

 

Favorite musicians: "Diana Krall and Count Basie."

 

Favorite book: "First Break All the Rules, by Marcus Buckingham."

 

Favorite restaurant: "L'Impero down by the United Nations in New York."

 

Beverage of choice: "Diet Coke."

 

Hobbies: "I enjoy buying and selling on EBay - antique watches, pens, things like that. And I enjoy hiking."

 

E-mail address: "joed@salem.cc."

 

Advice for broadcasters: "Don't give up on broadcasting. We've got many, many years ahead of us. We're very good at reinventing ourselves. We've done it many times before, and broadcasting is still going to be here for my grandchildren and yours."