Speaker 1: Hi everybody, Bill Haag from MAGID joined with my good friend and colleague Bill Day. We've spent the last two weeks listening to Q3 earnings calls from the media sector, everybody from Disney to Ray and Tegna, a lot of folks that we work with. And what Bill Day and I have been chatting about are really two or three themes from those calls. And the first on the macro side of things is those economic headwinds that every company talked about in their calls. What were your main takeaways and thoughts as to what people can do?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, there was no surprise there to us or to our clients. You know, we listen to a thousand consumers every other week and we've been asking them about how they're feeling about their economic situation. Rising gas prices and grocery prices, increasing rent and utility costs have been squeezing family budgets. Families have been concerned about their ability to keep spending. So it wasn't surprising to hear that get caught up in the C-suite. We still remain relatively optimistic about the outlook for 23, but we're definitely heading in to a tougher period coming out of some real lift after the pandemic. I think that's one of the areas that's not controllable for these media companies. I think the other one, Bill, that I was listening to was the impact of political. I mean, we often think of political as kind of this massive wave of money that washes over the broadcast space. But what we saw this time around was that it didn't fall in the ways that they expected. Some states weren't as competitive as they expected. Some races didn't break the way they thought. And that showed up in those Q3 earnings as well as another factor that they just don't have control over. Happy to have the money, but not as much control over where it lands as maybe they would have

Speaker 1: hoped for. So you make an interesting point about what's not controllable. What is controllable is really, I mean, I think of three areas that broadcasters, local media and media properties control. One, their content, two, their distribution, and three, that notion of where they generate revenue and that sales brand. We talk a lot about building a sales brand and how you differentiate and can stand out and really make a mark in a market. You want to chat a little bit about that?

Speaker 2: Those first two areas, Bill, our clients are zeroed in on. Some of them are better at it than others. Some of them are further ahead on that process than others, but they know, right? They've got to have the right product, the right content in front of the right consumers and the right platform. And they're working against that. Some of them doing better than others. I think the place where we see the biggest gap is in those local sales teams building themselves as trusted brands. Business that's different than saying, I have the products you need to reach the audience you want. This is different. This is saying you should hire us to help you solve your problems. Many of the clients we work with continue to struggle with how to use that. How do they build the tools and how do they build sales organizations that give them more enterprise sales, that give them more control over their destiny? And that's a real area of opportunity. I got to tell you, we're seeing the big tech companies struggle with the same thing. The layoffs at Meta, the layoffs that even at Twitter are all about the fact that they don't have enough control over the ad revenue streams that come into them and they're subject to the whims of the market. That's not a good place to be. We heard that loud and clear out of those Q3 calls this week. And I'm eager to see what our clients, I'm eager to see what the industry does in the coming weeks and months.

Speaker 1: And the optimism that you and I have are around this notion of building brands, right? And strong brands stand out. They stand out for consumers, they stand out for direct clients, advertisers, and agencies. So there's a real opportunity there to stand out in the marketplace. The last piece that you and I have been talking about was about extending their reach beyond their linear broadcast channel, right? So fast channels, streaming channels, virtual MVPDs, different business models, really fishing where the fish are and delivering on that 24-7 ideal that everyone has gotten used to. The challenge is, is now they're going to be competing against Netflix and Apple and Disney for ad dollars, in addition to a lot of other folks out there. Thoughts on the push to the non-linear world?

Speaker 2: Look, it's a real opportunity for local broadcasters. What we hear from advertisers over and over again is that they remain really confused by this space. They don't know how to navigate it. They don't understand how to pull those triggers. But what we know from consumers is that when the hurricane blows through, as it is today in Florida, they're turning to those trusted sources of local news and weather. Those are local broadcasters, whether they're on the radio or on the television. In those moments, that's where consumers turn. Same thing when your favorite sports team is doing well or when your favorite sports team isn't doing as well as you hope. Those are spaces they turn. Finding the way to deliver those to consumers is absolutely a challenge. And again, many of our clients are working hard at making sure that they're delivering that content in ways that make sense. The place where they're all lagging is building monetization strategies that tap into the local advertisers and bring those dollars into the new space. Again, you mentioned our friends at Netflix and Amazon. They are running hard to get those local ad dollars. I am optimistic that our clients can build a big enough moat to protect themselves. But it feels like now's the moment for them to accelerate those efforts to build sales brands and to build teams that can deliver enterprise value into local and regional advertisers.

Speaker 1: I love the moat image and it's got to be a little deeper and a little wider than it has been in the past. So, thank you, Bill. Great discussion. You and I could go on for a lot longer. We're happy to continue the conversation offline, so please reach out. Thank you for listening.