Broadcasters big and small are operating in a whole new world, one that can be hard to grasp, thanks particularly to AI’s large-language models.
Perhaps the way media managers can enhance digital growth and develop new audiences is to be found within what local outlets already do best.
This year’s Broadcast Management and Monetization Conference at NAB Show looks to explore such questions over three days, starting on Sunday, April 19.
The conference returns to the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center and brings together media professionals from TV, radio, podcasting and digital.
Forum
The track encompasses six sessions, including the popular Small/Medium Market Radio Forum, which will be held on Sunday this year.
The forum, in North Hall Rooms 252/254, serves attendees from Nielsen-rated markets 51 and smaller. It attracted about 240 people a year ago.
The forum’s speakers include Dave Casper, senior vice president of digital services at the Radio Advertising Bureau; Mike Hulvey, president and CEO of RAB, and Sun Sachs, senior vice president of digital products at Townsquare Media.
Attendees participate in roundtable discussions, led by peers who are station owners, researchers or product solution providers.
The 30-minute roundtable will include forward-looking discussions on AI, cybersecurity and peer-to-peer collaboration, organizers said.
Leveraging Digital
How are your customers or prospective advertisers prompting large-language models? Does your station appear appropriately in the AI’s response?
That’s the subject of a fascinating conference session on Monday, April 20, in N259, “Beyond Search: How Broadcasters Can Win or Lose in AI-Powered Search.”
Kelli Frieler, CEO of Vibrant Impact, will present with Casper of RAB and Jon Latzer, senior VP and general manager of Salem Media.
Frieler is uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between traditional broadcasting and the digital frontier. She is the granddaughter of Al Leighton, founder of Upper Midwest radio company Leighton Media, so she grew up understanding the community impact of local radio.
Today, she uses that foundation to empower stations digitally, transforming the web presence of Leighton Media and clients like Baton Rouge’s Guaranty Media.
Through her research, Frieler has identified a major hurdle for local broadcasters: AI models naturally prioritize national aggregators over fragmented local data. It is a battle of volume.
“Places like Spotify have one large aggregate of knowledge and information that they’ve been publishing for over a decade,” Frieler said. “LLMs have to default to trust, and it’s often easier to trust based on a massive library of content.”
How can a local radio station fight back and ensure it isn’t erased from AI’s recommendations? According to Frieler, you don’t reinvent the wheel. You go back to basics.
“We have to be careful not to completely reinvent everything that we know,” she said. “One of the best things we can do is continue to double down on making sure we’re building our brands.”
She offers a highly relatable scenario: A local roofer decides they want a new marketing plan and runs the question through an AI model. It is unrealistic to expect the AI to spontaneously generate your specific station’s name for that roofer’s budget.
“Instead, how do we make sure that we show up there?” Frieler asked. The answer lies in reverse-engineering the models.
She recommends that your digital sales team experiment with the “Big Three” — OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude — asking them to build local marketing plans to see where the blind spots are, and adjusting your digital content to fill those gaps.
Ultimately, Frieler argued, broadcasters cannot expect to sell digital and AI-adjacent solutions successfully to their clients if their own digital house isn’t in order.
“If we can do this and showcase our own case study of self-improvement in this space,” Frieler said, “it carries a ton of weight in making traction in our markets.”
Monday’s portion of the track will be capped with the wisdom of Laura Ivey, research director at Edison Research/SSRS, who is among the speakers at “Improving the Listener Experience” in N259.
A panel session moderated by renowned media consultant Mike McVay, president of McVay Media, promises to explore how audience data and real-world insights can drive smarter content and stronger listener connections.
Tuesday begins with “The Local Advertising Buying Landscape,” in N259, featuring a deep dive into the results of Borrell Associates and RAB’s 14th annual Digital Benchmarking Report on radio digital sales based on local business radio advertisers and radio sales managers.
Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates, will present, alongside RAB’s Hulvey and Dustin Wilson, senior director of digital strategy for Marketron.
Finally, the “Hot Digital Trends” session that closes out Tuesday in N259 includes Andy Slater, who serves as head of partnerships at ART19, Amazon’s podcast hosting and monetization platform.
