Lew Dickey Talks NashFM At CRS

Lew Dickey

The addition of a country radio station in New York City will directly benefit the Nashville music community, the president and CEO of Cumulus Media said Thursday.

NASH FM, which launched last month, will focus on building relationships with Nashville record labels, Lew Dickey said. The new station depends on local labels for fresh music and views itself as the “promotional arm” of those operations, he said.

“Content is incredibly important to us,” Dickey said according to the Nashville Tennssean. “We just look at it as NASH is good for Nashville.”

The station already has had a cumulative audience of more than 1 million, Dickey said, adding that a spike in country record sales in the New York area followed the station’s launch.

The media company is hoping NASH FM will be viewed as “hip, fun and accessible,” characteristics that will help it transcend country music’s image and rope in new listeners, Dickey said.

“It has actually exceeded our expectations as this largely transcendent brand,” Dickey said. “That’s one of the things necessary to bring advertisers to the brand.”

Dickey shared his vision for the start-up station and the NASH brand during a morning presentation at the Country Radio Seminar. The annual gathering of country radio and music label executives and recording artists concludes today at the Nashville Convention Center.

Last month’s launch of NASH FM in New York marked the first time the city has had a country radio station in 17 years. With the addition of NASH, Cumulus now controls a market-leading 84 country radio stations.

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Country Aircheck’s Daily Buzz reports Dickey was sked about the company's management philosophy. "We believe in centralization where it makes sense. We view corporate as quality control and strategic planning ... every market is different, but the fundamentals that drive great radio stations – sales, promotion, programming – are all the same. That doesn't mean you play the same playlist in every market ... but there are a set of key fundamentals that, if practiced properly, will result in strong performance."

As for the perception of Cumulus within the label community he admitted, "There's probably a little bit of misunderstanding and maybe some overreach on our part ... but that's not the intent and that's not the steady-state of how we want to run the business. Radio and the label have a symbiotic partnership. We are the promotional arm for the labels. We want to have a very constructive relationship."