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Five Questions: Jason McCutchin

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Jason McCutchin came to Springfield in June from Madison, Wis., where he worked as chief financial officer and treasurer for five markets under Mid-West Management, a sister group of Mid-West Family Broadcasting. McCutchin, who has a background in accounting and 12 years of experience with Mid-West, is managing four radio stations in Springfield – Q102.1, 104.7 The Cave, 105.1 Bob FM and 92.9 The Beat – and preparing to oversee construction of a nearly $3 million operations center in east Springfield. The new local president succeeds Rick McCoy as Mid-West works to rebound from strained economic times; local annual revenues are down more than 5 percent from 2008.
 
Madison Shuffle
“One of the gentlemen in our Madison market, the president and general manager up there, decided to take a step down. We moved the general manager from here up to Madison, and I moved from Madison to here. We did a shuffling of responsibilities and duties among the three of us. … I oversaw the accounting functions. I dealt with banks on loans. … I did a lot of (human resources) stuff – the behind-the-scenes things to help the general managers concentrate on their day-to-day operations.”

Adjusting The Dial
“The biggest adjustment has been getting focused on one market and the issues of the people in this building as opposed to dealing with things from a (wider) perspective with all five markets and how they interrelate. Issues that happened in one market would eventually happen in another market. It was just a timing thing. I was able to communicate those transitions from market-to-market previously, and now I’ve got the issues and got to resolve them with my perspective.”

Moving To The Beat
“One of the things we looked at – and something I’d been thinking about since I began interviewing for this position – was that (92.9) was one of the stations that wasn’t performing as well as needed in its old variation. We started looking at the opportunity in the market. (We found) we weren’t serving the 25- to 44-year-old female as well as we could. Our Q102 hit the younger (demographic) of 21- to 34-year-old males. We have the classic rock station, which hits the 25- to 54-year-old male. We have a country station, which hits 25- to 54-year-old persons, but we really didn’t have a female-leading station, so we decided to create The Beat. … You have to be able to compete, but you also have to make sure you are not stepping on your own toes, and we had two stations that were pretty close together.”

A New Economy
“The economy is just different. People are watching their pennies a little more tightly. It is all about trying to provide the most bang for the buck, whether that is a hyper-focus on branding or taking (clients) from one station to two stations. In some cases, maybe they have to tighten their wallets and go from two stations to one. It’s just about making the right choices for each client. That may mean using another medium beyond radio. We truly look at it from a marketing perspective. … In 2008, we probably hit our high point, and are down 5 [percent] to 10 percent from that. It was down a little bit more, maybe 15 percent before we started that recovery process. … We are projecting a 10 percent increase [this year compared to 2011].”

Investment in Springfield
“We are in the process of trying to get a new building built. We go to City Council (on Oct. 22) for our first reading, and then, hopefully in November, it will give us permission to build a new tower. Then we can start construction on a new facility off of Cherry and Patterson, next to O’Reilly [Automotive]. When we get done, my guess is that it will be between a $2.5 million and $3 million facility. … We’ve got about 35 people who are full-time, and I believe there are 15 of them who are shareholders. It is a locally focused company. … We plan on being here for a long time.”[[In-content Ad]]

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