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BETH DAVIS
senior vice president and market manager, Infinity Broadcasting
St. Louis |
Tuned for Success
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By Chas Adams
As the senior vice president and market manager of Infinity Broadcasting
St. Louis since February of this year, Beth Davis has been busy
applying her radio mojo to the three stations under her purview—KEZK-FM,
KYKY-FM and KMOX-AM. Her stewardship of these stations, especially
the venerable KMOX, is proving to be the latest of her successful
accomplishments in the realm of radio. This is no small feat, considering
KYKY and KEZK attract a 65 percent share of the women who listen
to the radio, and KMOX is the number one 12-plus AM station. And,
the three stations combined—with a 38-39 share in the market—are
also the number one revenue producer in the market.
“The challenge I see is making sure that each of the radio stations,
particularly KMOX, maintains or increases its position in the market,
its face in the market and its purpose in the market, while continuing
to promote among all three stations the right marketing opportunities
for advertisers,” Davis says.
The model that Davis is using to meet this challenge is one of her
own design, based on her previous successes. At the heart of her
plans has been the establishment of a leadership team developed
to foster and encourage effective, friendly, thorough communication
in all departments throughout the three stations—each with its own
flavor and listenership. She faced a similar challenge when she
came to St. Louis in 1997 to be the director of sales for American
Radio Systems, which owned KYKY, KEZK, KSD-FM and KFNS-AM, and later,
KLOU-FM.
The organization went through a few name changes, and by 1998 Infinity
Broadcasting St. Louis began the process of rearranging its holdings
to include KYKY, KEZK and KMOX. That same year, Davis was promoted
to vice president and general manager of KEZK and KYKY.
“The opportunity I saw was to coordinate the efforts of selling
the stations as a group and the power that group has as a marketing
tool for an advertiser. Part of that process included coordinating
and communicating with the sales managers so they maximized the
revenues from their individual stations while also working with
each other to maximize the marketing opportunities of their clients,”
Davis says.
With Davis at the helm, both KYKY and KEZK enjoyed superior performance.
In 1999, both stations increased sales by 29 percent over 1998.
In 2000, the stations earned an additional 23 percent over the previous
year.
To achieve these desired results, Davis drew upon her experiences
in the world of broadcasting, which extends back to 1979 when she
began working as an account executive for KRIX, a radio station
in south Texas—the only English-speaking FM station that reached
Padre Island and the Rio Grande Valley.
She also relied on the dual degrees in education and psychology
she earned—with honors—from Texas Women’s University.
Davis spent three-and-a-half years after graduation working in education,
but soon decided “the intensity of work that I was putting into
my chosen profession could probably be used to make a better income
and life for myself.” Around that time, she read an article that
stated teachers made the best sales people, because they constantly
find new ways to present the same information to achieve buy-in
from their students.
“I believed it and that is what gave me the impetus to pursue a
radio sales career,” she says. Through the help of a family friend,
she found the job at KRIX. “I loved the radio business. It drove
me to learn more and constantly educate myself about programming,
management, running the business, etc.,” Davis says.
One year later, Davis moved to Dallas to work as an account executive
with Belo Broadcasting and then in three years joined a then-Westinghouse
radio station in San Diego as general sales manager for a radio
communications company. Three years later, she joined Granum Communcations-Dallas,
where in a five-year span, she helped grow the company’s holdings
from one station to 12. In 1996, during a six-month sabbatical,
a business acquaintance alerted her to the opportunity of working
in St. Louis for American Radio Systems.
Today, Davis is poised to apply her proven methods to the reigning
stations in the St. Louis area.
“As I match the skills of the individuals on our team, it is like
putting a baseball team together. Not everyone is going to be an
outfielder or a pitcher. It takes study to put a good team together,
and that, I think, requires more than a little skill in education
and psychology,” she says.
C.B. Adams is a St. Louis-based writer and an adjunct communications
professor at UM-St. Louis and St. Charles Community College.
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