In addition to her Market Manager responsibilities for CBS Radio in Houston, Sarah Frazier has a busy agenda that has her working extra hours advancing the cause for radio. Sarah Frazier is on Radio Ink’s 2017 Most Influential Women in Radio list set to be released on June 19. That issue includes advice from radio’s Most Influential Women about leadership, success and what the industry needs to better in order to succeed moving forward. It also includes our interview with MIW legend Kay Olin and a special piece on a new project the MIW group is working on with Nielsen. Here is our extended interview with Sarah Frazier, one of radio’s Most Influential…
Radio Ink: What are you doing to make the radio industry stronger?
Frazier: I work with our future industry professionals both at Universities and Industry Conferences speaking to, mentoring, or participating in panel discussions. I do the same locally at community organizations such as the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Media Alliance of Houston. My favorite this year was giving the keynote address at the University of Houston AMA Conference in October titled, “Confessions of a Marketing Junkie.”
I serve on the Executive Board of the Texas Association of Broadcasters where I lobby
for the broadcast industry to keep our voice heard both in Austin and in Washington D.C. Without our state associations hard work, legislation could endanger the great community service we are able to provide, and our employee’s livelihoods. In addition, 2017 will be my fourth year as Radio Chair of the TAB Convention. We plan and convene a full agenda of continuing education open to all members of the Texas broadcast industry. The Convention is one of the highest-attended state conventions in the US. This affects current members of the industry as well as students that we bring on scholarship to attend.
Lastly, I work to keep local broadcasting’s importance front and center with local businesses, sports teams and government officials via the publication of our annual Community Impact Report. The report details the hundreds of hours CBS Houston spends in the community and the donation we make of three million dollars in cash and airtime each year. We were granted our license to serve the community and I take that very seriously.
Radio Ink: What advice can you offer our readers on how to be successful today in radio?
Frazier: Radio is an industry that is very “American”. By that, I mean, you can start as an intern and end up running the company. It’s just about working harder than the other guy. It isn’t immediate gratification though, so have patience, have dedication, be loyal, and work your way up. You can do it!
Radio Ink: What steps should they take to advance toward achieving their goals?
Frazier: Talk to everyone who is successful. Ask questions. Everyone has their own path to success, and while you’re creating yours take the time to learn from others. You might keep yourself from making some of the same mistakes. If not, worst-case-scenario you end up with another contact; you never know when you’re going to end up working with someone.
Radio Ink: What is it about you that makes you successful and influential?
Frazier: Success in this business is increasing revenue. I have been able to consistently increase revenues at every stage of my career. After many years building a track record as AE, LSM, GSM and DOS, my performance and my loyalty paid off for me. When you’re good, you’re constantly getting called with opportunities; however, I didn’t leave, and I think it was my track record combined with my loyalty to CBS (Dan Mason and Brian Purdy) that enabled me to advance into the market manager chair when I did.
As far as influential, what I hear the most is that I am an example of someone who is able to successfully balance my career with being a mom. A woman came up to me at CRS this year and told me she’d heard me speak on a panel in 2015. When asked about how I maintain balance between home and career, I said, “I have a rule that I go home at 5:30 to take care of my daughter. Period. I get back on my computer if I need to when she goes to bed, but I’m not going to miss these moments with her. We only get to do this once.” She said that she thinks about those words every day when she leaves on time to pick up her daughter and she hugged me. If that is the kind of influence that I am, then I couldn’t be prouder.
Radio Ink: What do you want to see radio do better?
Frazier: Let’s all fight together to get more money spent in radio! I think we all know what a great medium we have but we have got to get the people planning the media to believe it, and plan a large share of the marketing spend to be dedicated to radio. Too many times we are talking to the buyer after the plan has already been decided to put less money into radio. At that point, we are left fighting for an unfair share of an already diminished buy. Let’s go back and start our sales process at the beginning of the chain; let’s talk more to the people that are making the decisions about what medium they are going to use to send the marketing message. If we can get them to increase the money spent in radio then we all win, don’t we? To put it another way…if we all are only going to share only one bottle of wine…don’t we want that bottle to be as big as possible?
Congratulate Sarah on being one of radio’s Most Influential at [email protected]. Subscribe to Radio Ink in time to receive the 2017 Most Influential Women in Radio issue HERE
