A Conversation About Why Platform Doesn’t Matter Anymore
If you run a radio or TV station in a small or medium market, you already have something Google and Meta will never have: a brand your community trusts. You back the best concerts. You break the school closings. Your call letters mean something at the little league field and the chamber luncheon alike.
So why are you still selling like it’s 1998?
We sat down recently to talk about a shift that’s been building for years but has finally hit a tipping point. On the radio side, broadcast and digital listening lines are converging. Digital now accounts for roughly 45 percent of total listening for many stations. On the TV side, stations across Wisconsin are already living this reality, building streaming channels, launching news apps, and selling CTV alongside their linear inventory. This decade, the old wall between “broadcast” and “digital” has disappeared.
And if you’re a broadcaster in Wisconsin heading into 2026, you’ve got an even more urgent reason to think this way. AdImpact projects $253 million in political ad spending in this state for the 2026 cycle, with $113 million of that going toward the open governor’s race alone. Political spending at that scale doesn’t just fill your linear avails. It squeezes your local advertisers right off the air. The stations that have already built a multi-platform brand can move those displaced local clients to streaming, app, social, and digital inventory without missing a beat. The stations that haven’t? They’re about to watch those advertisers walk to Meta and Google and never come back.
What follows are the highlights of our conversation, lightly edited for clarity. If you’re a broadcaster wondering how to grow revenue without adding more complexity to your sales pitch, keep reading.
Bob: If you have an audience, and that audience is targeted through your content and they fit into certain demographic and psychographic categories, that audience doesn’t change much from platform to platform. Maybe your digital audience skews a little younger than your over-the-air audience. But if you’re an AC station, you’re still targeting mostly women, mostly 25 to 64. If you’re the 10 o’clock news in Green Bay, those viewers are the same people whether they’re watching on the family room TV set or streaming on their phone at the gym. So why should the CPM an advertiser pays be any different on any different channel? If they’re hearing a message, they’re hearing a message. That’s worth something. If they’re seeing a message, that’s probably worth a little more.
Chris: Totally agree.
Bob: One of the big complaints you hear all the time is, “I’ve got too many things to sell.” But you really don’t. It’s like Coca-Cola, you’re selling the same product. You’re just caught up in whether it’s coming out of a fountain, a bottle, or a can. Whether it’s a 30-second TV spot, a pre-roll on your stream, or a banner in your app. Your advertiser doesn’t care. They just want your audience. And if you’re selling them just one thing because that’s what’s top of mind, you’re blowing it.
Chris: It reminds me of working at a station where a client got the title sponsorship to the concert. In theory, the client thinks that means they get everything. Then we looked at the audit afterward and they weren’t on the social media posts. “Why not?” “Well, it wasn’t in the proposal.” The client doesn’t know about that. The client doesn’t care. If you’re the title sponsor, you’re everywhere.
Bob: Right in the name. And so the shift here is actually going from something that’s been needlessly complicated to something that can be much simpler and much easier to sell. Now it’s just: these are our channels. There’s six of them or whatever it is. If you’re buying, you’re buying.
Bob: In my humble opinion, your best digital channel is your mobile app. That’s the thing sitting in their pocket. It’s the device they’re using four to eight hours a day.
Chris: Remember when radio stations used to give away refrigerator magnets as tchotchkes? Because people would fill out their ratings diaries in the kitchen, so you wanted your logo on the fridge. Well, now the logo’s on people’s phones. It’s even better than being on the refrigerator because I can see it when I’m checking out at the grocery store.
Bob: And I can tap it and instantly get the product. I can’t tap my refrigerator magnet and hear the radio station. Nobody who matters cares what speaker it comes out of.
Bob: I think particularly in smaller markets, broadcasters have the inside track on this. In smaller and medium-sized markets, those call letters mean something. They have a value proposition to the community. So deliver more.
Chris: In an era where there’s more content than ever, and the flow of new content is growing exponentially with AI, having a trusted brand has never been more valuable.
Bob: Having a trusted brand and an editorial voice people trust. They know you back the best concerts. They know you’re a key player at the summer festivals. There’s huge value to be derived from your brand, but don’t confine it to your radio station or your TV tower. Move it around.
Bob: We just launched an app for a company in Memphis, and the call letters of the station are not what’s on the header of the app. It’s “Memphis.” That’s what they want to be, because they have multiple stations. There are so many ways to create leverage and synergies across media properties and brands.
Chris: Right. And that same thinking applies to a broadcast group in Wisconsin with stations in Milwaukee, Green Bay, Wausau, and La Crosse. You’ve got four towers, four websites, four apps, four streaming channels, and four social media presences. That’s not four things to sell. That’s one brand with twenty-plus touchpoints.
Bob: Another area where we’ve seen this is in news. Town Crier Wire in Southwest Michigan is the local news authority. Sitting here right now, I couldn’t tell you the call letters of the news radio station it grew out of. I just know Town Crier Wire. It’s an app, it’s events, it’s all kinds of stuff. That’s how you think about it. You go to advertisers with a really strong brand promise and all these ways to deliver it.
Next month in Part Two: Chris and Bob discuss the election year opportunity, why CTV inventory is a competitive weapon, and how speaking the language of impressions wins younger buyers.
The WBA Digital Hotline is a free service of the WBA. To contact Chris Brunt directly with any questions relating to digital revenue, AI, and anything else in the digital space, he can be reached at Chris@jacobsmedia.com. Bob Kernen is the COO of jacapps. Contact him with questions about mobile apps for broadcasters at Bob@jacapps.com.
