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Philly Special: Catching up with Alex Silverman of KYW

KYW recently added an FM simulcast for the first time in its long history. I wanted to talk about that, Alex’s thoughts on the format and how his team handled Wednesday’s shocking events in Washington D.C.

Ryan Maguire

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I recall one afternoon early on in my tenure at KIRO in Seattle, my General Manager at the time called me into his office to introduce me to some partners of the station.

“This is Ryan Maguire, our new Director of News and Programming on KIRO.  People thought we were crazy for hiring him, but we couldn’t find any candidates for the job that were younger than Barbara Bush.”

(The Former First Lady has just died the day before).

My boss’ macabre sense of humor aside, he did have a point.  News-Talk and All-News radio has skewed older in listenership the last few years.  To this day, its one of the biggest challenges for the format.  In some cases, the best way to find younger listeners is with younger leadership.

For quite some time, I’ve wanted to catch up with Alex Silverman, the Brand Manager and Program Director at legendary All-News station, KYW in Philadelphia.  I had heard of him from my colleagues at KIRO (where he also worked previously) and others in the industry who hold him in high regard.

Once I followed him on social media (https://twitter.com/AlexSilverman) and spent time exchanging e-mails with him for this piece, I could see why.

He has an amazing amount of energy, enthusiasm, and optimism for news radio.  He also has the right ideas and the right mindset to take a heritage brand like KYW into new, younger generations of listeners.

KYW recently added an FM simulcast for the first time in its long history.  I wanted to talk about that, Alex’s thoughts on the format and how his team handled Wednesday’s shocking events in Washington D.C.

Wednesday was truly a surreal day in the history of our country.  How were you able to approach it…personally and professionally?

It was surreal, upsetting, and scary for sure, but I knew we had a team that could handle whatever the day might bring. We know that hundreds of thousands of people not only depend on us on a daily basis, but when something of great consequence happens, they turn to us because they trust us. That is a great responsibility which we take very seriously.

The past year has stretched everyone in every newsroom across this country to the limit, but it has also shown me how capable our newsroom is of handling the unexpected and the challenging. My role in these types of situations is to make sure the team has the support and guidance they need. As soon as things started to take a turn, we mobilized two reporters to Washington – one of whom was already in Delaware covering President-Elect Biden. We knew we were the closest Entercom all-news station to DC, so we would not only be able to serve our audience but also millions of listeners across the country. We had additional reporters working remotely who started calling their local contacts, and everyone shifted into continuous coverage mode: the anchors, the editors and production team, and the digital content team – and stayed that way into the night. We needed to not only make it sound big and important, but to place it in the context it deserved – as a dark day in the history of this country – so we talked a lot about the language we would use to communicate that.

What differentiated your coverage from what other media outlets were doing?

We’re fortunate to have the most experienced broadcast reporting team in Philadelphia, and that institutional knowledge and those contacts paid off immediately. One of the great things about all-news radio is our ability to pivot immediately into continuous crisis coverage. While there are a lot of moving parts to our operation, when it comes down to critical breaking news information, once it’s confirmed it’s just “hit the sounder, open the mic, and tell the world.” So, whether you were listening on 103.9 FM, or on a smart speaker in a home office, or on the RADIO.COM app, you were learning what was happening literally as we were seeing it with our own eyes or verifying it. RADIO.COM allows us to send push alerts to a larger audience beyond our typical listeners, and we were simultaneously producing newscasts for our sister stations in Philadelphia because this was a situation where people needed to know what was happening in real time.

Talk about your background and how your career journey brought you to KYW.

I’ve always been fascinated by the intimacy of radio and the one-on-one connection it creates with the listener; it’s something that I recognized at a young age and just knew I wanted to be in the business. I actually started out in management – as the GM of the greatest student-run radio station in America, WJPZ at Syracuse University – before getting my first on-air news job at WSYR in Syracuse. I spent some time in Seattle at KIRO as a reporter and anchor, then eight years at WCBS 880 in New York City, first as an anchor and reporter and later as APD. When the legendary Steve Butler retired in 2018, it was an amazing opportunity to be able to come to KYW Newsradio and lead one of the country’s great all-news stations.

What are the best parts of your job?

Getting to work with such a talented and connected team of broadcast journalists is a huge privilege. I learn something from them every day. When we break news and tell stories that matter to people, we get an enormously positive response from the audience and that’s always a great feeling.

Technology is providing many of the service elements all-news stations would provide (news-traffic-weather, etc.) on demand and instantly.  How does this format stay relevant in 2021 and beyond?

I’d push back on the premise just a bit because there’s a distinction between the content itself and the technology used to convey it. “Technology” on its own can’t produce the service we provide – it can’t replicate the journalism experience and institutional knowledge and storytelling ability. That said, as technology evolves, we are evolving right along with it. If you have a smart speaker at home and want the news from a credible, local source, all you have to do is ask it to “play KYW Newsradio.” All our stories are available on demand in both written and audio form on KYWnewsradio.com and on the RADIO.COM app. We’re on social media at the same time we’re on the air with a story. We have a local news interview podcast, KYW Newsradio In Depth, that focuses on big ideas that we wouldn’t have time to dive into in our typical format. All of this makes us a really strong part of the modern news ecosystem.

As for traffic, sure – the apps are great, I use them like everyone else. But they don’t tell the full story. If I’m stuck in traffic, I want to know what the heck is really happening and why. It takes a human being to provide that color commentary and that’s the service our listeners tell us they appreciate. The same goes for weather. We have a fabulous partnership with NBC10 here in Philadelphia. When weather is a story, people want someone they trust to explain what it means.

Your station was given an FM signal for the first time in its history and got a fresh rebranding as well.  What have the early returns been from your listeners and sponsors?

It’s incredibly exciting for us, and we saw the launch on 103.9 FM in late November as one of the most historic moments ever in Philadelphia media. It not only improves the quality of service for our existing audience, but also allows us to reach some areas where the 1060 AM signal was never particularly strong. I was actually driving around one of those areas in Bucks County the day we launched, and – I swear – the clerk at a deli saw my jacket and said “when’s KYW gonna be on FM? It’s so staticky around here.” I told him, and he was thrilled. So, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from both listeners and sponsors who know there’s more of a chance for new listeners to discover us on the FM band. It’s still too early to make any sweeping statements about the impact, but we’re very optimistic.

Caption- Alex Silverman talks about the FM simulcast on NBC10 in Philadelphia

You’re VERY active on social media which is not common for many Program Directors.  What’s your strategy behind that?

Having spent a lot of time on the on-air side, I’m used to having a public voice and engaging with the audience. It’s a good way to keep in mind that there are real people out there who have opinions and perspectives on what we’re doing, and I think they appreciate that kind of direct engagement. We can’t ever take our audience for granted, so we have to be everywhere they are – and social media is one of those places.

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BNM Writers

News is the Only Thing Missing From Election Coverage

Coverage of the election is, as we’ve discussed, still very horse-race-centric, and there’s been, of course, coverage of the various Trump court cases, but where is the coverage of exactly what the candidates plan to do if elected?

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A photo featuring I voted stickers

The first thought I had when I heard NBC had hired Ronna McDaniel as a commentator for $300,000 a year was to wonder how many actual journalists they could have hired for that money. Then, I recalled that NBC had laid off dozens of news staffers just a few months ago. Then, I remembered that I had just recently written a column decrying news organizations throwing pretty much anybody on the air as a “pundit” and this….

This was worse. It’s one thing to grab some rando who happened to be a minor functionary for the Executive Branch. It’s another to hire someone whose job was to promote election denialism and pretend that her opinion is something valuable for viewers. And, yes, it’s just as ridiculous when news organizations hire former presidential press secretaries (that’s you, Jen Psaki and Sean Spicer), their very jobs were to spin everything in their bosses’ favor and now you’re going to pay them big salaries for, um, what? Because they “have a name” or you’re afraid someone else will snap them up? Why them?

The McDaniel deal lasted five days, one completely unilluminating interview, and one unexpected Chuck Todd spine-growing outburst, so it’ll all blow over soon enough. The problem is, though, the part about having fired several news staffers, and what it means in an election year on both the national and local levels. If you have the money to hire an alleged pundit – any alleged pundit – you have the money to hire reporters, and I don’t mean anchors or opinion show hosts.

Coverage of the election is, as we’ve discussed, still very horse-race-centric, and there’s been, of course, coverage of the various Trump court cases, but where is the coverage of exactly what the candidates plan to do if elected? Who’s probing Project 2025 and why isn’t it front-page, first-segment news? Who’s pressing the Biden administration on Gaza? Is anyone reporting on the candidates’ record on climate change?

Beyond prescription drug prices, is anyone digging into the broken healthcare system and demanding answers from the candidates about what they’ll do to fix it (and not letting Trump get away with “I’ll have a better plan, a beautiful plan” without a single specific detail, like they did in 2016)? Why didn’t anyone focus on, for example, the GOP candidate for governor of North Carolina and his incendiary past comments well before the primary?

Pundits are not going to do the legwork on the issues; they’ll just talk about swing states while John King and Steve Kornacki point at their touchscreen maps. We need reporting on the things that matter (and can affect that horse race, even if most people have made up their minds). It shouldn’t just be Pro Publica and scattered independent journalists doing the dirty work.

Honestly, I don’t want to hear the complaints about the quality of the candidates or how this is a rerun or any of that. (We’ll leave that to The New York Times.) We are a horribly underinformed electorate and we got the horse race we deserve. It might just be idealists like me who think that, just maybe, the news media can play a role in educating the public and bursting the bubbles and echo chambers. This country has survived and prospered for a few centuries with the press shining a light on injustice and corruption.

Now, when we need that most, they’re more concerned with what they think will bring them ratings and money (although someone will have to explain to me who thought having Ronna McDaniel as a paid commentator would draw a single viewer to NBC).

Here’s a thought: Don’t lay off reporters, especially in an election year.  Assign them to dig deep on issues that matter to the voters.

Let the pundits talk about that.

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8 Ways to Take Your Commercials From Drab to Fab

Our main source of income is derived from commercials. There are a lot of bad commercials.

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Another reason to read this column, I often add an Easter egg. We are in the advertising business. Our main source of income is derived from commercials. There are a lot of bad commercials. Frequently, clients write these ads. You can excuse it if the spots suck. But when the commercials are written by Account Executives or the production department at the station, it is kind of unforgivable.

I am going to share the most meaningless phrases in commercials.

Locally Owned and Operated

Customers do not care. If customers cared about a business being locally owned and operated, Walmart would not exist. People want service, selection, and value. They do not want to get soaked. When you purchase something, are you willing to pay 20% for a local company? If you say yes, you are wrong. People want a deal.

The Phone Number

Doing 70 down the 405, John slammed on the brakes to write down the phone number for an amazing HVAC Company. That is not how it works people. HVAC companies rarely have or should have regular customers.

Normally, your AC is out. You call the HVAC Company that you are familiar with. Radio advertising allows people to have “TOMA”: Top of Mind Awareness. There are stats that show when a company is advertising on your radio station, their website shows an increase in traffic. When you needed a service for your home, you hit Google and choose the company that you’ve heard of. It’s that simple. I actually heard a commercial asking listeners to add a businesses phone number to their contact list. That is a moronic use of advertising real estate.

Street Addresses

“Tequilaberry’s Prime Rib is located at 106 East Governors Drive in Peoria.” 

The people listening cannot process that detail. You could say “Tequilaberry’s Prime Rib is on Governors Drive just off 10th in Peoria.” That is almost digestible. That creates a picture of where it is.

Trust me, people interested in prime rib will Google you and load the address in their navigation system. Spend that precious spot time selling the experience of the restaurant.

Always Using the Company Owner/Founder in Commercials

Sometimes, it is amazing when business owners are their spokesperson. They have passion and are natural salespeople. Some business owners are terrible at speaking about their product.

When you have a business owner who is a natural promoter, they can drag listeners into their business. I once worked with a family who owned a couple of hardware stores. They spoke about the benefits of visiting their stores. It was heartfelt and real. They promised that their employees can help solve any problem in your home. If you went to that store and had a simple or complex problem, the employees helped you out.

I once worked with a man who owned a really nice flooring company.  For whatever reason, he thought that he was funny. He had spots written by him, his wife, or a kid. The ads were dreadful. They were not funny at all. Account Executives need to talk these clients out of doing commercials like this. Nothing says wacky hijinks like flooring.

Overuse of Numbers

“We have grapes at 99 cents a pound, Chuck steak at $1.99, two-for-one zucchini.”

Trust me, no one driving in city traffic can keep track of that. “The 2025 Chevy Chevette is back with 45-mpg efficiency and amazing 18-inch tires. Prices start at $19,999…  The New Chevy Silverado starts at $32,999.”

It gets really confusing fast.

WWW.

Yes, I hear commercials saying check us on the internet at “W-W-W dot business name here dot com.”

WWW is assumed and not needed anymore unless you are running a Commadore-64 with the latest floppy disc technology.

Yellow Pages Ad

“Check out our new ad in the Yellow Pages!”

OMG, no one reads those damn things anymore. Most people born after 1960 just toss those suckers in the trash. There was a time when the Yellow Pages were the largest revenue generator in advertising. Yes, a book of ads. Like Facebook, without your buddy’s political, vacation, or food posts. It was just ads. Zero content.

I had stuffed salmon tonight that I engineered myself. I would make Sydney Sweeney quite the trophy husband. Set us up. Hey, I am single. It was not that long ago that you would hear a radio ad that promoted a coupon in the Sunday paper.

Well, that copy should be deader than a doornail.

Amateur Theater

A husband and wife discussing their lawn and how she heard about Telly’s Lawn Service from her friend Stacy. 

Those commercials are obviously contrived and not interesting at all. 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Open every commercial must have an attention-grabbing opener. “Totally Jammed…  The floor covered with the guest towels. Fearing the horrific consequences of another flush…  I did the right thing. I called ABC Plumbing. Quick service, a great price, and peace of mind.”

The next time that the plunger is failing to get the desired results, the listener of that commercial will identify with the very realist scenario.

We are in the advertising business. Use radio as it was meant.

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The Lost Art of Using Sound as a Springboard

Use sound it wherever you can. All you need is a loyal, capable and willing board operator, to go along with a conscientious host.

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A photo of Jon Stewart hosting The Daily Show
(Photo: Comedy Central)

Jon Stewart was the first guy to do it — take a politician’s words from the news of the day or week. Search his or her entire past and find a sound byte saying the exact opposite.

It became an art form – and a great way to keep people accountable.

Most radio operations don’t have the resources necessary to consistently do something like that, but truth be told, that kind of journalism isn’t really the point of this week’s column.

It’s an example of the simple power of sound. We need to use it more within our shows. Use sound it wherever you can. All you need is a loyal, capable, and willing board operator, to go along with a conscientious host.

Speaking from experience, not doing it is lazy.

Doing it takes minimal effort and helps conversations tremendously – especially when it’s in real-time. I know. I’ve been there – missing opportunity after opportunity because I didn’t think of it, ask for help or just do it myself.

Put simply, good sound is a better springboard to a question than just a question.

Just the other day, I realized how well it works and how little I’ve been doing it.

Here’s what happened.

We have one particularly heated congressional race in our state. The Republican candidate is running for a second time after narrowly losing in 2022 in an election where Connecticut’s gubernatorial candidate from the same party got smoked, and the Republican presidential candidate lost the state as well.

This time around, there’s a struggling Democratic President with real doubts about the economy and the country’s standing in the world.

Put simply, the Democratic congressional incumbent has a massive task ahead to get re-elected.

On my show, I try to be consistently independent and be a place for both parties to appear with the expectation that the conversations will be fair and honest.

The Republican candidate came on the show earlier this month, and we went through a number of issues. Connecticut is a relatively strong Democratic stronghold, where the party controls the legislature, the Governor’s Mansion, and the entire congressional delegation.

Having said that, the largest voting block is unaffiliated, so appealing to independents is crucial for either side to win. I asked the Republican candidate twice about whether he will support Donald Trump, and both times, he equivocated. I asked the follow-up, we were on the record, so I moved on.

The following week, his opponent, the Democratic incumbent, was scheduled to appear on the show. Before her arrival, I realized the Trump Q&A should probably be replayed for her. Duh.

My producer found it, clipped it, and had it at the ready. I felt that I should have realized it sooner and not put some added strain on my partner’s morning routine. He was fine, but it definitely added unnecessary work within the show.

Lesson learned.

The sound byte worked well. I played it. She responded. We moved the story forward, and it was compelling – as you might imagine, the topic of Trump vs. Biden is pretty compelling these days.

By no means did it create a “wow” moment. That would be a little much. But it did make the show better, using the opponent’s own voice as opposed to my paraphrasing something. That lends credibility, not only to the topic but also to the show. He gave this important answer on our show, and she gave her response … on our show.

My final thought on this is that we (I) need to look for more places to utilize sound as a springboard to conversations, as opposed to simply raising the topic and discussing it. Maybe you’re already good at it and do it all the time, but this past week, I realized I need to push myself to do it more.

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