Media Insultant
Keith Samuels and Jackson Weaver, two media executives opine on all things media - radio, TV, cable, print, and digital. Both have long careers in radio, TV, digital and print and are not short on opinions in this tumultuous time. All opinions are theirs but happy to hear yours too! Video version available on Vimeo. New episodes each Wednesday. jackson@intownmedia.com and www.intownmedia.com
Media Insultant
JEFF SMULYAN TALKS ABOUT HIS NEW BOOK - "NEVER RIDE A ROLLER COASTER UPSIDE DOWN!" Tuesday 12.6.22
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Jeff Smulyan and his legendary Emmis Communications have been argueably one of the most innovative broadcasters in the past 30 years. Sports radio, the urban Power formats in New York and LA, and NextRadio among many others. Now Jeff is releasing his book NEVER RIDE A ROLLER COASTER UPSIDE DOWN where he candidly talks about his ups and downs in the broadcast business. He also talks about how he created one of the most envied work cultures in the broadcasting. Join us for a very interesting discussion with Jeff Smulyan.
Media Insultant is produced each Wednesday as Jackson Dell Weaver & Keith Samuels offer comments, ideas and sometimes snarky comments about the current media landscape. They focus on radio and TV primarily - but also any media that is relevent or beneficial to media sales and management. Videos are under the Media Insultant Showcase on Vimeo.
Comments are always welcome at jackson@intownmedia.com
Thanks for listening!
To most in the broadcast business, Jeff Smonian's MS Communications has been a legendary company. Now they've never been the biggest, you know, they but they did radio, they did TV, they did magazine publishing, professional sports, European bride, all kinds of things. But they certainly have been the most innovative. Emma's created sports radio, the power format in LA and New York. And they launched private radio in Eastern Europe. And let's not even forget the Seattle Mariners and that story. Jeff has now written a book called Never Ride a Roller Coaster Upside Down: The Ups, Downs, and Reinvention of an Entrepreneur. It's out now, and it's a very compelling read for anybody, frankly, but particularly for those of us in the media space. And of course, we at Media Insultant wanted to talk to him about the book, and so we did. You've met my co-host, Keith Samuels, who is also a USC grad, so you guys can can chit and chat about that at to no end. You know, uh frankly, uh you're a really helpful PR person, uh Carolyn Connors, um, asked me how long we need to interview you for this podcast. And in light of all that you've done in radio and TV and sports, I said, uh, you know, maybe a week, but I'd settle for 20 minutes. Thanks, Jack. You've got so many interesting stories, Jeff. Um, whether the reader is in broadcasting or not. And your book is called Never Ride a Roller Coaster Upside Down: The Ups, Downs, and Reinvention of an Entrepreneur, which by the way, Jeff, is not pithy. It's just not pithy. But what what prompted you to write a book at this point in your career and in your life?
SPEAKER_00Jackson, I have driven my daughter to school, uh, who is now a freshman in college, and I drove her to school every day from kindergarten until uh she fired me when she got her driver's license. Um and we would talk about life. It was always a 30-minute drive, and we'd just talk about, you know, lessons, and I would tell her stories. And I'm I'm sort of I'm one of those dads who's a lesson guy. Uh here's what I learned here. And one day she said, Dad, you've got to write this down. Nobody would ever believe these stories. And so when COVID came, I just started writing and sent it to a couple friends, and they said, You know, you really got a book here. And I got a wonderful editor who tightened it up and said, This is extraneous, cut this, or you need to talk more about this. And the next thing I knew, I had an agent and I had a um um a publisher, and here we are.
SPEAKER_03Fabulous. Is it if you would you describe this as a business book uh or a broadcast-centric book on radio and TV? Well, how how would you describe the book?
SPEAKER_00I think it would be a book about lessons in life uh by somebody who's been in radio and TV and sports and happened to be an ambassador and just all the all the crazy things I learned from all the the wonderful people I've dealt with. Um and so I I don't think it's really a there's a lot in bro about broadcasting, there's obviously a lot about sports, there's a lot about um just also what I've learned building a culture.
SPEAKER_01Well, speaking of the culture, uh you you um built an amazing culture at Emmets. Uh-huh. And certainly Jackson and I had lots of firsthand experience, sadly not working for you, but you know, me as a vendor, uh Jackson is a competitor, and I was also a competitor in LA for a bit. But you know, you you hired some incredible people who really really felt uh that you really felt confident and and and comfortable working with, you felt energized about serving them, helping them out, uh, from Val Mackie to Janet Brainen to Angie May. Uh do you how you credit you know some of your success? Obviously most of your do you how much credit do you give to the people you hired because you did a great job.
SPEAKER_00Well, uh mm somewhere between 102 and 108 percent. Um, I mean seriously, we we've always had wonderful people. I uh talked about Rick Cummings. Rick was the second person I hired. We've been together for all these years. Um, you know, Val was with us for over 30 years, and Janet, you know, 20 some. And you know, i I've been fortunate. We've been, I think if if I'm proud of one thing, we created a culture where people wanted to be, wanted to stay, and I think felt they were treated well, um, and I'm very, very proud of that.
SPEAKER_03But Jeff, culture uh starts with value system. What was the value system that you perpetuated that worked so well for EmmaS? Because Keith is right, you know, uh everybody in the business has has respected Emma's to the point of it's the best place in the business to work. So what was the value system?
SPEAKER_00It's funny, uh Jackson, in the very beginning I put um on a napkin one night at dinner, somebody said, What are the values? And wrote them down. I always kitted that number seven was uh never jeopardize your integrity, and and I've always said in in if I had really ranked them, that would always be number one. As I told my kids, if your word is good, nothing else matters, and if your word's not good, nothing else matters. So, but but have fun, self-belief, uh be compassionate, be passionate, be rational. Um I you'll you'll be happy to know we added the 11th commandment of Emma after uh the Mariners, which is admit your mistakes. Um but it was but it was just those values, and and and we always said, look, I I've given speeches and talked about the 11 commandments of Emmons for 40 years, and people always come up and say, I love them, I want them, you know, can I use them? And I said, look, use them if they fit you, but if they don't fit you, because if you're not living up to your values every day, um, you know, I mean, I can't tell you the number of employee surveys where we said, you know, somebody said, My manager doesn't live up to commandment number three. Um so if you really, or five or six or whatever, so if you're not living your values every day, it you know, the people figure that out. So whatever your values are, those have to be the values you build your company around. We were we were always a company where we always said an autocrat came to die here. This is a company that was very collaborative, and I I take great pride in the fact that Val Mackey and Janet Brainan and and a lot of other people could walk into my office and say, you know, I heard what you said and I think you're really full of it. And I was very proud of that kind of culture.
SPEAKER_03That reflects itself. You know, your your career, if you if you take a look kind of a macro view of it, Jeff, it was really divided into three tranches. You know, we have radio, TV, professional sports, and any one of them we could use uh an entire podcast on. But let's focus in, let's start with radio. What possessed you to buy an A.M. daytime radio station at the far end of the dial in Indianapolis, Indiana?
SPEAKER_00What were you thinking? I didn't really buy it. I actually it was owned by a a uh distant cousin, uh, and my dad uh was approached by my distant cousin to help invest in it. It was failing. And my dad basically said, if you'll come back and run it, he needs help. Uh my dad really wanted me to come back to Indiana. I was still in California. Uh and I knew it was a you know uh w we used to say it was the world next to your glove compartment because it was so far at the end of the dial. Uh and we had a lot of fun with that. But but uh but I did it. Uh he talked me into it, and he said, Look, when you're waiting to start your company, come back here and you'll be home. Uh and I did it, and the first six months I said, Why did I leave Los Angeles? And after that, I never regretted it. I have loved Indianapolis and I've had a billion chances to leave, and I it's home and I love it.
SPEAKER_03But that radio station, you admitted you made a mistake in the format. And and and you flipped it to something that was not intuitive to a radio programmer.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, we knew, I mean, it was it was country, we knew it was the second country. You know, a daytime AM is, you know, so we tried, we'd always do something fun. We did news talk in sports, and and the it's known because the talk guy was Letterman. Um, but you know, it was clear that while it made some inroads, and you know, and David got an audience, and we had audience in the other segments, that it was never going to get major numbers in Indianapolis. It was competing against WIBC, which we ended up owning for 40 years. Um But uh so we knew and when it and then NBC did an all-news network, which not many people remember. We switched it to that because it it made the station economically viable. Then they canceled it, and then we realized that at day timer at 1590, the only real viable format was religion. So that's what we did.
SPEAKER_03And that turned out to be a good choice. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, it's interesting, Jeff, as i if I could jump in here, Jackson, because you you you came right out of uh out of SC, SC undergrad, SC, SC law, and you go back home and now you're you're running, owning and running radio stations.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, at that time, you know, who who were some of your mentors, who were some of the group guys, if you will, that were that were kind of uh either helpful or influential, or you know, you could rely on for good advice?
SPEAKER_00You know, it's funny because the the one guy that's sort of been a big brother to I've had two big real semi-big brothers, John Dilly, uh the dear friend, uh, and then in baseball Jerry Reinsdorf, who's Jerry's been a life manner since we have one of the fun relationships of all time. But in those days, Don Nelson ran WIRE, WXTZ, and Jim Hilliard, and those are the guys that everybody looked up to. They had national reputations at Indianapolis at the time, and both were wonderful broadcasters.
SPEAKER_03When you first bought the radio station in Indianapolis, did you have a vision for EmmaS as it evolved?
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, I always love people say, you know, when you went on the air with the first station, you said you would do X, Y, and Z. I can absolutely fanatically say that wasn't true. Um we we we had a bit, you always had a vision, let's do this and and see how we do. Uh the first station, WNS, went really, really well. We bought WLOL, we inherited Doyle Rose, that went great. We bought St. Louis in Los Angeles. Caixy, we had more fun changing the perception of Caixy than just about anything we've ever done. Uh Los Angeles, we said, we're so good at adult contemporary radio, we'll we'll we'll make the station Magic 106 and it will be fabulous. Uh and it sort of fell on its face. And after a year and a half, we had had our secondary idea was to do this rhythmic top uh rhythmic urban format, which became power, which became one of the great success stories of all time. So we but I but no, we just said let's just keep doing this and have fun. Uh there was a master plan.
SPEAKER_03Was there one station that catapulted the company into what I would consider the big time, Jeff?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think it would be power. Um we got a lot of notoriety for Indianapolis, a lot of notoriety for Minneapolis, the rebranding and the repositioning of Casey and St. Louis, but I think power really made us like a skyrocket. And then we followed that up with the Double Day stations and hot uh what became Hot 97 and Waiva in Washington and then Fan, uh, and then we bought the NBC station. So we really had uh you know we had a a decade where it seemed like everything we did turned to gold. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, what a what a great run and what a great catapult, you know, power was. But you know, Jackson and I were talking about this the other day. We were always scratching our heads, why you never bought a station or a couple of stations in Seattle and go up against us?
SPEAKER_00Well, we we we you know uh we made the N1. I always said I wanted to do anything in Seattle but own their baseball team. I always thought Seattle I really did. I always thought Seattle was one of the great towns of all time. I when when it came up, uh I had visited Seattle in the World's Fair in '62 when I was a kid. And I just thought, what a magical place. And uh and I, you know, and and so the idea of owning a baseball team there uh, you know, uh it seemed like a great idea. Um and I did, I love the town. I got in trouble once. I said it, but you know, if only I could do something else here, like you know, compete with you guys at radio. Um but I love the town, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, since you've brought up the mariners, let's let's delve into that a little bit. Uh tell us the story about how the Mariners came about.
SPEAKER_00Well, we had we had done WFAN and we had the Mets. Um got to know the Mets people. Uh in those days, you could only buy one FM in a market if you guys remember.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00We were primarily an FM station with only one AM. And so there really were we we were in just about everywhere of the top ten markets, and somebody said the Mariners really need marketing, and we were sort of marketing guys. And um uh I what I didn't realize we were kind of a lab experiment for baseball. Baseball had had a very checkered relationship with Seattle, which I never really understood.
unknownYep.
SPEAKER_00But we did it, we we got to know George Argeros and made a deal, and uh um I mean it was you know, it was one of the I always say everybody should be a pariah once in their life, and uh if you own the Mariners, you probably will be. But um but I loved it. I I I and like I said, the one chapter is I went from boy wonder, genius, signing autographs for 30 minutes every night, to being a pariah. Um but I think that's one of those great life experiences. It's not fun going through it. But uh but I love the experience of of the Mariners.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03Let me ask you this because you you you did become a a bit of a pariah, but I also have come to the conclusion that that is the natural cycle for a sports professional sports team owner.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Particularly with 24 by 7 sports radio. Yeah, d is is that do would you share that opinion?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'll tell you a funny story. Um one of my dear friends in in baseball who's reigned nameless said, you know, before 24-7 sports, if you were an owner or a player or a manager, uh, and somebody wrote a nasty opinion about you in the paper, you read the column and put it down and went on with your day. But he said, once you invented sports radio, this became our lives 24-7.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We could never turn on the radio without getting ripped. And he said, the fact that the guy who invented this horrific format that ruined all of our lives now owns a team. And and I can turn it on and hear him getting ripped proved to me that there is really a God. Um and so uh uh and it's true, it really did make sports 24-7. Uh and you know, I've said sports is the American opiate, um, you know, that people care about it. It's a great escape from our lives.
SPEAKER_01You lived out the fantasy that a lot of us sports guys have, which is owning a team. But then again, it's not the fantasy of uh owning the team, it's the uh reality of running it. But you know, those were some great years. I mean, you you know, obviously Dave Neehouse doing play-by-play and you know, the beginning of the uh uh of building that team back to greatness. Um, you know, you know.
SPEAKER_00I'm very proud of some of the things we did. Uh one of my favorite moments was somebody said every man in America wants to run a major league baseball team except the 28 who actually do. Um because it's really I mean, you know, it it uh one of my friends came up from LA to to spend a day and he and he watched us work all day and you know, sitting in the office, uh and then went to the ballgame and agonizing over every pitch. And he said, My God, this is really work. I said, Yeah, it's not only really work, this is an impossibly difficult business. Yes, it's work. Uh but I loved it, and I I I always said you do your best work in impossible situations. Uh I our problem in Seattle was we especially when radio went through a downturn, we didn't have the kind of money to lose $20 million a year and with collusion and everything. And and while I had said that, I said, guys, nobody will work harder than us. And I and I to this day I believe we did that, and we really tried. But I said we didn't have the money to make it work. It wasn't a mystery. Um the infamous bank memo, which I always laugh about, was a meeting which was not held with me. Um and and the the bank had the question we want to make sure Jeff's not crazy because this thing's not going to make any money. And my friend Gary, as president of the team, said he's not crazy. If it doesn't work in another year or so, we'll put it up for sale. Um yeah, I but but you know, uh that's life.
SPEAKER_03I appreciate you saying that you enjoyed it and then that it was that it was one of those those great lessons in in life and that you had the cushion, if you will, to be able to do it. But uh you you started we started talking a little bit about sports radio, and you started the fan, which was the original sports radio. Right and so take a step back and and tell us the story about how that came about because you had uh you you'd struggled with that AM station in New York.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, I I actually uh this came about when I was not paying attention in a telecom class at USC, and I sort of thought about all sports radio would be fun. And then years later, we bought the double-A stations, and we had two FMs, which is our specialty, and we had one AM, and the AM had the Mets, uh, and then they were doing country music, and I proposed the idea to our managers, including the aforementioned Rick Cummings and Doyle Rose, and and um and it got voted down. Um people thought it was a stupid idea, and one of my other friends said, What do you what do you want to do? And I said, You really can't lead people where they won't follow. So we're not gonna do it. And the next day, Rick and Doyle walked into my office and said, Look, we still think this is a stupid idea. Um But we're hitting on all cylinders and we owe you one. We know you love this one. So we did it, and then it for the first year or so it became Smollian's Folly. Um Jim Lampley called it uh the Vietnam War of Emma's. You know, at every day at five o'clock, people say, Well, it's five o'clock, we lost another $18,000 today at WFAN. So I really was I was firmly in the idiot camp. Um, and then one day, you know, the format took off. We merged it with when we bought the NBC stations, we moved it to 660, we inherited IMAS, we put Mike and the Mad Dog on, and then all of a sudden the whole thing took off. So I went from idiot to genius. Um, but I could still remember when we were buying the NBC stations, one of the bankers said, you know, that thing's not making any money, how long will you stay with it? And it was sort of like the same question that they ask, would ask later in the bank uh about the Mariners. You know, this doesn't look very good. Are you crazy? Or we you pull the plug and we said, look, we're gonna give it more time, but if not, you know, we'll we'll vacate it. And unlike the Mariners, it turned around and it became you know 500 all sports stations in the United States now.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, just incredible, just incredible. Yeah. So, Jeff, the transition to TV, could and again I love all these these uh channels we get into. We could talk all day, but uh you got into television. I'm I'm curious, was it a natural progression for Emma's like you know, newspapers got into radio, radio got into TV back in uh you know the previous decades. How how is it you came to get into TV?
SPEAKER_00We looked at radio in the mid-90s after deregulation and saw spiraling prices, Jackson. Um, for years you could buy a radio station, a good one for 10 times cash flow, and in a two-year period it went to like 23 times cash flow. And we said this is unsustainable. So we took the opposite path. Um as time would prove, we were right, because the people who bought all those assets ended up with too much debt, and that led to a whole host of things, which I won't bore you with, but if you read the book, you'll see all of that. Okay. Um but we said, look, we we think we have transferable skill sets. We brought in some outside people and said, we think what we do in radio we can do in TV. And we can buy TV stations for nine, ten, eleven times cash flow, and we can't buy a desirable radio station. So that led to TV. One of my board members is a guy named Greg Nathanson, who had been a roommate at SC. Greg had run the Fox stations, he had run Showtime, and he was on my board. Um and I said, Greg, I'll do this if you'll run them, and Greg did. Um, and then a few years later, his brother sold Falcon Falcon Cable, and Greg was the second largest shareholder, and now he just lives on the beam. But that's another story. But we did. We ran it, and uh we we really said we love radio, but uh we were and I think it was the right decision. Uh and we got to TV and said these guys have to get a second revenue stream, retransmission consent, um, but and which they did ultimately after we vacated.
SPEAKER_03You know, there uh there's an interesting story you tell. I worked a little with Andy Fisher when Cox was launching City Sites and all their markets. I launched the one here in in Seattle, and and I don't have any good stories, but you have a great story about um uh what you what you call the Boca effect.
SPEAKER_00Can you tell us that story? Yeah, we got Greg and I would sit and we'd say, look, uh the retransmission act of 92 was passed, and it gave broadcasters the chance to get paid for their signals. Now, in in in you know, in the mid 90s, 75 percent of what everybody watched were the local TV stations. So we said, you know, and John Malone was brilliant, and John Malone made deals with the networks and sort of shafted the local affiliates, but we said at some point these guys are gonna get paid. And Early in my TV career, I was asked to join what was called the Television Operators Caucus, which was the major non-network companies, Cox and Belo and Tribune and Post Newsweek. And I sat in my first meeting and I said, You guys have spent four hours debating who's going to be on the NAB board and who's going to be, you know, w whether you're going to get another 25-second promo from ABC on Thursday nights. I said, why are you not focusing all of your attention on retransmission consent and getting paid? And they said, Well, that's why we're happy to have you. You're an entrepreneur. And they were all, they were all division heads of major newspaper companies. And I said, look, an entrepreneur looks at this business and said, the only thing that matters is getting paid for your signal. And a manager looks at it and says, I don't want to rock the boat. And Andy got mad at me, you know, I swear by the quote, because I said, you know, how can you not do this? And he said, My boss likes to play golf and hunt, and I don't want to get him off the golf course to tell him that his multi-billion dollar business is in jeopardy. And I said, you know, and so I called it the Boca problem. I said, the problem with this industry is, and I really believe this, uh, is that all the people who run these companies don't want to tackle this issue, which is a multi-year issue, because they feel like there's too much energy, it may take years, and by the time they might win, they're retired and living in Boca. Uh, so they don't want to deal with it. Uh and and the corollary to the Boca problem is the Scottsdale problem. Uh, because some of them moved to Scottsdale. And it became legendary in the industry, but it was exactly right. Um, the major, the major broadcasters didn't want to go to war with the cable industry. One of them said, Well, they're not gentlemen. And I said, Guys, you have to win this battle. And it took entrepreneurs like Perry Sook and David Smith to, you know, an entrepreneur looks at a business like this and says, Look, I I don't want to fight these guys, but I have no choice. It's my future. This business and and the TV business would have died if they had not gotten the second revenue street.
SPEAKER_03Well, you know, my experience in television is there were some remarkably lazy management because it was so profitable. Right. These stations just generated unbelievable amounts of cash, and they didn't have to do much. You know, a couple of newscasts, and that was it.
SPEAKER_01You know, and then Jeff, you you got into you got into the publishing business and you're still in it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we we have just, yeah, we've sort of uh you know I love the business. I got into it because I had a dear friend who was the editor of Indianapolis Monthly, and years ago she said, we've got to do a profile on you, and they did a profile, and I met the owner, and he said, You know, I'm thinking of selling this, and we ended up buying it, and then we bought Atlanta and Texas Monthly in LA and did that, and uh we're sort of vacating all of media now, but I I love the publishing business too.
SPEAKER_01So Jeff so, Jeff, you're vacating all this, and you've you've paired back, but you're still in business. Right. What what's next for for you and Amos? Because you're you're too good a guy for us to not have in the business.
SPEAKER_00Well, I appreciate that. I I really do. Um, Keith, but I think we we've sort of said we're we've got a sound masking business which we like. We said we spent 50 years trying to get people to listen to sound, and now we're gonna spend the next 10 trying to get them to have no sound. So but that but that's that's a business that deadens sounds in offices and hospitals. Of course, I always say, I am such a genius that I buy a business that controls sound in offices and hospitals two months before a pandemic, which closes all the offices and makes the hospital totally non-reliant on this service. So but we like that business. We have a dynamic pricing business, which we like a lot too. We have a business, uh Rick Cummings is overseeing, which which uh produces podcasts for major companies, and and we're looking for a few other things to buy. So we we're having fun here. And you know, the the good news is we have no debt, we have cash in the bank, so we're we're having fun. And I'll never I'll never retire. I am I uh you I always said I'm an entrepreneur because I'm not hireable in a free society. Um so we're not gonna see you in Boca very soon. No, and and uh I I could not retire because I anybody who's ever seen me play golf realizes that five days a week of me playing golf would be pretty much a federal offense. So that's not gonna be anything.
SPEAKER_03Okay, listen, I I I there's just I got one other final question for you, Jeff, and and um it's it it just reels your book is so candid about your failures and as you said, the the borderline between crazy and genius. Is there one venture that stands out that didn't work that you really truly wish you hadn't done?
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean there were a few. I mean, you know, I I I've always kidded. Great Nathan, who I've talked about, always said you see ideas before anybody else, and they usually require collective work uh that never gets them done. You rely on the rationality of people who basically spend their lives hating each other. So when you look in the TV section, it was wireless TV, which I really was very proud of. And Next Radio uh I poured my heart and soul and millions of dollars into. Uh and I really felt that the the premise behind Next Radio was you have to save portability for the industry. Uh and it hasn't done that. Um and there was in the and I go into the economics of streaming, which when I wrote the book, uh you know, it everybody said, well, streaming and television is going to be the next big answer. And now, of course, you see that streaming and television has the same problems that streaming and audio did. Yes. Um so yeah, I mean, you know, I've had a lot of things I've loved. You know, I think sure next radio was one I really wish it worked, because I think it would have really changed the trajectory of the American radio industry if it had.
SPEAKER_03So the book, because we've got to we've got to plug the book a little, uh, is it uh will be in stores and and available online December 9th. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_00December 6th. And uh for anybody who sees this early, they can um go online to Amazon or Barnes and Noble or uh Apple or wherever you buy books and or pre-order it and it will be released on December 6th. And anybody who could bear listening to 300 pages of me reading, you could buy the audiobook. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01Audio. What a concept. Okay. I know.
SPEAKER_04I know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Any any signing events, Jeff? I mean, can we can we get in line and get a bit more copy?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we're just setting those up now. I'm gonna do one at USC and and a couple in Indianapolis. Um right now I'm just gonna do media for the next couple weeks because I guess theoretically get the word out uh and then uh they tell me do signing later. So we'll see. But we're having I've had more fun with this than anything I've ever done. I have absolutely loved it. And uh and I hope people who read it will laugh and maybe learn a few things.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'll get down to see you on campus when you uh do the signing. That'll be great. Thanks, Keith. Thanks.
SPEAKER_03Hey uh Jeff, thanks for writing the damn thing. I mean, I know how much work that must have been. Uh and uh thanks for all you've done in in the business. I I know it sounds like I'm you know I'm just sucking up, but you have been a uh a great mentor for for the business. And and I do want you to know that uh we here at Media Insultant will single-handedly take credit for the book Rising to the Top of the New York Times bestseller list. I would appreciate that. And if it doesn't, we'll deny we'll deny knowing you, Jeff. We deny knowing you. I know how that works, Jackson. Have a great holiday. This is you too. Thanks. Thanks so much, Jeff. Thanks, Jess.
SPEAKER_01Fight on you. I'll get down to see you on campus when you uh do the signing. That'll be thanks, Keith. Thanks.
SPEAKER_03Hey uh Jeff, thanks for writing the damn thing. I mean, I know how much work that must have been. Uh and uh thanks for all you've done in in the business. I I know it sounds like I'm you know I'm just sucking up, but you have been a uh a great mentor for for the business. And and I do want you to know that uh we here at Media Insultant will single handedly take credit for the book rising to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. I would appreciate that. And if it doesn't, we'll deny we'll deny knowing you, Jeff. We deny knowing you. I know how that works, Jackson. Have a great holiday. This is great, you too. Thanks. Thanks so much, Jeff.