The situation
Local radio is a good business that mostly runs on instinct. FLX was no exception: real relationships, a loyal audience, steady billing — and a revenue engine held together by spreadsheets, one person’s memory, and a sales team selling the way they always had. There was no single view of what was booked versus billed versus collected, no way to see which advertisers or formats were actually growing, and AI was something the team used quietly, if at all.
The goal wasn’t to cut. It was to see clearly, then grow.
What I did
Put every dollar in one place
Wired the ad-traffic system into a data warehouse and built a live dashboard, so booked, delivered, invoiced, and collected revenue are finally one trusted picture — by station, by rep, by advertiser, by month. Decisions stopped being arguments about whose spreadsheet was right.
Sharpened the sales team
Set clear accountability, segmented the market with real data, and gave reps the reports to sell on outcomes instead of gut. Built a market-evaluation tool that scores any station’s coverage and demographics — the same lens we’ll use to pick the next acquisition.
Put AI to work across the business
The newsroom uses it to draft, source, and produce faster — freeing people for the work only people can do. Sales uses purpose-built prompt libraries to write sharper ad scripts. We automated daily local-weather video that most small stations can’t produce at all. AI on the boring work; people on the work that matters.
Started building the audience-data asset
From day one we began capturing first-party audience data — who engages, where, with what. That foundation turns one product (radio spots) into many: newsletter, web, and connected-TV inventory sold against an audience we actually understand.
What’s next
FLX is the proof, not the destination. The same playbook — instrument the revenue, sharpen the team, deploy AI, build the data asset — applies to comparable markets across the country. The market-evaluation tool is already scoring the next ones. This is what I do for clients, and now it’s what I’m doing for myself.
Figures are full-year-2026 first-half and Q2 results versus the prior owner’s 2025, on a comparable basis. FLX Local Media operations are run by TOTIB; the station acquisition is pending final FCC license transfer.
Want this run inside your company?
If you’re scaling and your revenue engine can’t keep up with the plan, that’s the gap I close — and you own everything I build.
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