The 2024 BNM Summit is coming to Washington D.C. on September 4-5, 2024 at the Jack Morton Auditorium at George Washington University. Though the event may feel a long ways away, the days and weeks pass quickly. Before you know it summer is over, kids are back in school, and we’re standing on a stage sharing ideas, opinions, and information, and exploring new paths forward for one of radio’s most important formats.

If you haven’t made plans to join us yet, tickets are on sale here. You can also reserve your hotel room here. I highly recommend not waiting until the last minute to take care of your accommodations and tickets. There won’t be any wiggle room closer to the event.

We’ve previously announced 19 top-notch broadcasters for the 2024 BNM Summit. Today, we’re adding six more to the list, expanding our speakers group to twenty five.

It’s a pleasure to welcome back Premiere Networks President Julie Talbott, KMOX and 97.1 FM Talk Brand Manager Steve Moore, and Edison Research co-founder and President Larry Rosin to our conference. Larry won’t be coming alone though this time. He’s bringing Edison’s Director of Research Laura Ivey with him. Larry and Laura will present together, Julie will be part of a revenue session involving Mike Hulvey and Steve Passwaiter, and Steve will be part of a programming panel alongside Ken Charles and Bill Hess.

In addition to Julie, Larry, Laura and Steve, I’m excited to have Westwood One’s Vice President of News and Talk Programming Kevin DeLany, and WBAL Newsradio 1090 & FM 101.5’s Director of Programming/News Director Jeff Wade joining us for their first Summit experience. Kevin joins a panel that will include Fox News Radio’s John Sylvester. Jeff will be part of one that features David Wood and Tim Wenger. I’m expecting to announce another high-profile addition to the Summit next week. Stay tuned!

The full schedule for the show won’t be released until closer to the show. We do this by design. There’s more still to finalize including our very first award’s presentations presented by Premiere Networks. In the meantime, if your business is interested in being an event partner, email Stephanie Eads. She can let you know which opportunities are still available.

We are expecting a full room for this event. The show lineup is stellar, and it’s only going to get stronger. Thanks as always for the support, and I hope to see you in the nation’s capital in September.

After the October 7th terrorist attacks in Gaza, news/talk radio hosts Sid Rosenberg, Mike Gallagher, and Tony Katz each individually took trips to Israel to share stories from the Jewish state.

On Sunday, October 8th, the NFL’s New York Giants were set to play the New York Jets in a regular season that happens roughly once every four years. For Sid Rosenberg, the day should have been a joyous one as one of the biggest media members in the market.

However, the day was a somber one for the 77 WABC morning host. He posted a video on Instagram that Sunday morning, sharing his true feelings about the situation, stating he could hardly be bothered to care about the football game that day after the attacks.

It didn’t take him long to declare that he would visit Israel. In fact, just over six weeks after Hamas killed an estimated 1,100 Israelis on that fateful Saturday, Rosenberg told his listeners he would be hosting his wildly popular morning show from the Middle East.

He told Barrett News Media he became motivated to cover the story on the ground from Israel — a country he had never been to before — while watching the events unfold that early October day.

“I’ve always wanted to go, obviously as a Jewish kid from Brooklyn, and once that day happened October the 7th, I vowed I would go at some point, hopefully sooner than later,” he shared.

“I was so horrified by what I had seen, what I had heard, what was coming next that it really shook me. And, you know, it’s one thing to talk about it when you’re here watching the news most of which you can trust, I knew how to go and see it for myself. I had to go and talk to the Israelis in the streets … So, I wanted to talk to the Israelis in the streets and find out how they were coping with all of that. It’s one thing when you cover this story from your city, it’s another one you actually go to the destination.”

Mike Gallagher, who hosts The Mike Gallagher Show for Salem Radio Network and Salem News Channel, made the trek to Israel in late February and early March. He told Barrett News Media that, like Rosenberg, he became motivated to tell the story of the attacks from the nation on October 7th. He shared he felt it was a “very important component of what I do for a living every day on the radio.”

He added that the reaction from his audience was an intense gratitude.

“Just enormous appreciation for going over there,” Mike Gallagher said of his listeners. “Just a lot of support for the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. They’re providing armored ambulances to paramedics and emergency first responders, and helmets, and food, and supplies. Our audience stepped up big time to help the fellowship. So their generosity was really inspiring and overwhelming.

“But there was just a deep gratitude that we went through the effort of going over there,” he continued. “My goal was to bring our audience to Israel, rather than trying to cover the headlines the way we grew up in the United States. And I think the audience was very, very grateful that we went.”

Mike Gallagher added that one of the takeaways from the trip was the sheer brutality of the terrorists during the attack. The Israeli State Department compiled a 47-minute video of closed-circuit television footage, along with footage show by Hamas, which showed the “euphoria and the joy”, Gallagher said, the fighters received from executing the attacks.

Sid Rosenberg was quick to admit he was not the most religious Jewish person, but visiting the Holy Land had a profound impact on his faith.

“I don’t observe Shabbos, I don’t celebrate every holiday, and I still don’t. But I’m a lot more serious about the religion than I was before. We’ve joined a temple. I’ve been to many, many people’s houses for Shabbat dinner since October 7th which I’d never done before in my lifetime,” he shared.

“I’ve got people listening every day in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and if I could provide them with some support and some hope that things will get better, that’s what I try to do every day. It has completely changed me. It has made me a more proud Jew than I’ve ever been. And I look to help any Jew that I can, here and abroad, at every opportunity I can.”

As the coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas continues, Gallagher shared how impactful visiting Jerusalem was in helping to truly understand the conflict.

“It gave me a clarity and an insight that I could have never gotten had I just been sitting in my studio in Florida talking about it on the air,” he said.

Sid Rosenberg, who was the first host to take his show to the Middle East nation, said there needs to be an authenticity if other hosts want to make the same pilgrimage he made.

“Listen, you gotta feel it. That’s the bottom line. I felt it,” he shared. “Every show since then, I’ve had mentions of Israel and what these people are going through. I haven’t gone one day. I still find a way every day to include conversations about Israel, and what’s going on, I was torn up. So my advice is if you’re going to go there just to say you were there, don’t do it.”

Sid Rosenberg added that the reception he received from the Jewish people was second to none and that he could feel the unity and resolve from their spirits.

“If it’s not in your heart, don’t bother going. But if it is, I recommend you go. Go to the sites down south where the tragedies happened and try to see and learn as much Jewish history as possible. Because the more you learn, the more you’re going to find out that these pro-Palestinian rallies are nothing but a bunch of bulls—.”

Mike Gallagher shared similar sentiments. He noted that Salem Radio Network partnered with the Jewish News Service to provide him with studio space while he was in the country. However, the technology has made it much easier to do a trip like this.

“You just got to figure out how to get over there. It’s not cheap. It’s not inexpensive to fly to Tel Aviv, but it’s also not impossible,” said Gallagher. “I believe it’s what good hosts, good programming, and good content creators should be doing anyway. When you get a chance to bring your show to a place where headlines worldwide are being made like this, you should do it.

“Remotes have been part of my career for 40-plus years. I’ll be in Milwaukee this summer for the Republican National Convention. I’ve been to every convention for the last I think 28, 30 years. I like doing that. It can be tricky and distracting, but it’s important because you know the audience wants to be there. To be part of that breaking news is what it’s all about. I would encourage anybody who has a little ingenuity, creativity, and a little bit of a budget, to go over there and tell the story to your audience here in the United States. It’ll be transformational.”

Tuesday, May 14th, is Israel’s Independence Day as the country celebrates the 76th of declaring independence which was proclaimed by David Ben-Guiron.

My two least favorite subjects in the world of media are “Layoffs” and “Talk Shows”.

That’s not to say I don’t find it worthwhile to address their occasion or existence, instead, I just wish they were far less pervasive.

Quite frankly, my head has barely stopped spinning from the most recent job cuts, department gutting, and personnel removals that have hit the business of news, largely in radio once again. And remember, most of us are bystanders in all this, empathetic for certain but fiscally unaffected.

Imagine how the injured must be feeling.

The pattern is evident, largely because it’s a repetitive process. News stations cut the journalism product, which means slicing away more journalists. News/Talk stations, too cut the journalism product, by again, slicing away more journalists.

So, News becomes less news-like and News/Talk becomes more talky.

The circle of life continues.

I say that because to me it’s quite apparent that the common thought process by management and higher-ups is that “news” is not very necessary if at all and that the audience will not recognize the depreciation of the product and therefore not miss the people or the content.

One can only surmise that the modern directorate of these stations and parent companies has full faith and confidence that the Talk shows can keep them alive. They get listener emails and calls so they must be popular. Does anybody bother to check how many of those emails or calls are coming from the same nine people? Probably not.

That’s not to say that stations are actually holding on to their local Talk product with both hands.

Not at all.

Local Talk shows can be pricey to a station, that’s why there are so many across the country that have one, maybe two local shows at most and farm the rest of the day out to syndicated programming. The local hosts offer local topics, some less than others — and to be accurate, it’s usually the same things, over and over — but there is no denying that the topics, while repetitive, are mostly legitimate. But, syndicated shows do the same thing only with national or more generic subject matter and often they come at a bargain or significantly reduced overhead.

Most of the time, actually, the average listener has no idea where their host is broadcasting from anyway. They don’t know if that voice is in the studio or their den at home. Hell, many a time the listener doesn’t know that their “local” host is actually in another state, and because the station overlords aren’t keen on letting the audience know that, their local show ain’t so local.

But of course, these are the same bosses who let their shows take those same nine callers every day and put them on the air. Like, have a free co-host, right?

Not long ago I would sit in a newsroom adjacent to a very empty air studio where the local shows were being piped out all day. There were two local hosts that I did not even see for more than a year even though I was doing the top and bottom-of-the-hour newscasts during their “local” shows.

I eventually met both of them when they came to town for a holiday party.

Does it matter at the end of the day?

The bosses may say no but time will tell and I don’t share their optimism. When you cut people and products no matter the reason, it’s still a self-inflicted wound. It may be a slow bleed but it’s a bleed nonetheless and relying on one or even two-person shows that offer little else than conjecture, gossip, and one-dimensional thinking is hardly a recipe for life-support much less well-being.

That’s not even to recognize what media outlets are doing to the Talk programming that they expect to keep them afloat. We already know that recent layoffs impacted News anchors, reporters, producers, and editors. So that means a local anchor who was once able to focus solely on the news content now must edit that content themselves and often pick up the traffic report to boot. Easier in some markets than others I would guess.

Let’s look at the Talk shows now, the saviors, if you will and what station management thinks made sense to do.

Cut one host from a two-person show to save money, take another host from another day part and stick them with the now solo host, and fill that gap with syndicated programming that you got on the cheap because nobody wants it. Oh, by the way, your new two-person host team, did you bother to check to see if they’re compatible, that they have any chemistry, or that the audience will embrace the now no longer gender or culturally diverse show?

Calling yourself a News or a News-Talk station still comes with some responsibilities and obligations but that often is not recognized by programmers who do not have a news background or do not have a talk history but come instead from the sales and promotions departments.

Here’s a thought: If you’re not selling ad time, do you really believe the problem is with your news staff or one-half of a talk team? Could it be the salespeople who aren’t selling or the promotions people who aren’t promoting? You know, the very jobs you hired them to do? Is business still business or are these individuals in charge simply spinning their wheels and wasting people’s time?

In the current climate, I’m not even so sure that having a talk background is actually a benefit to being a successful talk programmer. Put a blindfold on and stick a pin in a list of syndicated shows or spin the wheel of national programs that you can afford to onboard. Chances are you’re going to mirror the talk lineup offered on dozens of stations in dozens of markets so where’s the risk?

Locally, it’s either stunt casting or a former journalist who crossed over into what they actually believed was something called News/Talk. There’s no such thing or if there was, it’s long gone. You’re Moonlight Graham and you stepped over the baseline. You can’t go back.

So, when there is no more news to cut, the elective surgery will focus almost completely on the last remaining target, exactly what the bosses believe will keep the station afloat and they themselves employed. Talk about repeatedly biting the hand that feeds you.

As you might expect, the focus will soon turn to the very bosses and underbosses who will eventually find themselves the subjects of layoffs, reorganization, and perhaps even the inescapable format flip.

Come on now, everybody loves sports and country music, right?

Either way, for some inexplicable reason, Sales and Promotions will still be there.