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Adam Nathanson | Mapleton Communications | California | MTV

A Golden Oldie

by Chris Warren

Adam Nathanson
One forward-looking radio company is a throwback to the good old days when “keep it local” was a mantra for success.

IF YOU HAPPEN to tune in to KPIG, an FM radio station based just outside of Santa Cruz, California, you might be surprised by what you hear — or, perhaps more accurately, by what you don’t hear.

Don’t expect to get a steady, endlessly repeating loop of songs by Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and the other select few much-hyped pop singers so many stations rely upon. Instead, you’ll find that KPIG cranks out a steady stream of, well, surprises. During one stretch, you might hear songs from Wilco, Little Feat, and Johnny Cash. In fact, KPIG has a playlist that spans decades and genres: It includes everything from classic rock and bluegrass to Hawaiian tunes and New Orleans funk.

KPIG proudly calls itself an anachronism; it’s the kind of radio station that was more common in the 1950s and ’60s, when DJs had considerable latitude in handpicking the kind of music they thought their listeners wanted to hear. But KPIG isn’t an anomaly. It’s one of 34 stations owned by Los Angeles–based Mapleton Communications, a company that has aggressively pursued what it sees as an unmet demand for radio programming tailored to the tastes of small and midsize markets across the western United States.

“We are thinking local and acting local. You want to be locally relevant, so the brands and all the stations that we are operating focus and cater to the local community and audience interest so that we can super-serve the communities,” says Adam Nathanson, Mapleton’s founder and president.

“Super-serve” has become a mantra that Nathanson and his colleagues work in to conversations with almost alarming frequency, which is understandable, given that it’s the nub of Mapleton’s philosophy for catering to advertisers and listeners in markets like San Luis Obispo and Chico, both in California, and Medford, Oregon. And super-serving is an approach that seems to be working. Since the company was founded, in 2001, it has grown to become the second-largest radio group in California, exceeded only by industry goliath Clear Channel Communications. Mapleton’s gross revenue in 2006 was $21.5 million, and some of its stations saw a doubling or tripling of revenue. While radio is not exactly a Wall Street darling these days — which is understandable, as the advent of iPods and digital music certainly poses a threat to the industry — last year, the Lazard Alternative Investments’ Corporate Partners II Fund purchased a 39 percent stake in Mapleton, giving it the kind of cash it needs in order to continue expanding.

IT WAS PROBABLY inevitable that Nathanson would carve out a career for himself in radio. For one thing, his grandfather Don Paul Nathanson was the publisher of Radio Showmanship Magazine and even owned a radio station. When Nathanson was growing up in Los Angeles, he was neighbors with Irving Azoff, the manager of bands such as the Eagles, Journey, and Van Halen. Not surprisingly, he developed a passion for music early on, and after attending Tulane University in New Orleans — where he was introduced to that city’s vibrant live-music scene — he got what he describes as a dream job: working for MTV in London.

While his official job for MTV was to help build the video channel’s brand throughout Europe, Nathanson was such a music junkie that he spent much of his free time hanging around the network’s studio, hoping to catch live performances of the many bands that played there. “I would volunteer to hold the cables for the camera operators so they wouldn’t trip in the studio,” he recalls. “So every night, I would be down [there] listening to the Smashing Pumpkins or Lenny Kravitz or Aerosmith.” After his stint at MTV, Nathanson worked for a record label that handled the Beastie Boys and other such bands.

By 2001, Nathanson was ready to venture out on his own, and he pitched his idea for Mapleton to his father, Marc, who had made a fortune running, and later selling, Falcon Cable TV. Like his interest in radio, Nathanson’s focus on small and midsize markets can also be seen as hereditary.

“Most of the markets we are in, with the exception of Merced, [are markets] my father used to be in in the cable business,” he says. “So we kind of know some of the economics of the markets, and having previously operated a local business there helps a lot. We are familiar with the markets and the economics and the communities. There’s history.”

And as far as Nathanson can tell, there is also plenty of opportunity. Small and midsize markets, he explains, just aren’t a big priority for his main competitor, the conglomerate Clear Channel. Nathanson says that big radio operators like Clear Channel focus on major metropolitan areas. “That is where their bottom line is coming from. They have to focus on the lion’s share of cash flow and revenue,” he says. That’s not so with Mapleton. “Mapleton treats Monterey and San Luis Obispo and Merced as our L.A., Chicago, and New York.”

THAT’S WHERE the whole concept of super-serving comes in. In practice, at least on the programming side, it means ditching the homogenized playlists, which often make a station in New Hampshire indistinguishable from one in Alaska. “We combat that,” says Andrew Adams, a senior vice president and the general manager of Mapleton’s Radio Merced. “We don’t play just the same 200 songs.” And the stations also focus relentlessly on anything and everything local, from news to events to contests.

“Where our competitors may do national contests, we are doing everything local, with local winners,” says Nathanson. “It’s a fantasy experience on a local level that people get to touch and feel through radio. That makes it special.”

Because of their focus on smaller communities, Mapleton stations can also deliver personalized attention to the local businesses that advertise with them. That can translate into ad salespeople at the stations forming one-on-one relationships with business owners and getting real-time feedback about which ads work and which don’t. Bigger stations, by contrast, devote their attention to national advertisers. “We feel that we can control our destiny by focusing on local advertisers and building the relationships and helping them grow their businesses. By doing that, it helps us grow our business,” says Nathanson.

Growth is what Nathanson has in mind for Mapleton. The company recently signed a purchase agreement to enter the Spokane, Washington, market, which will allow the company to add seven stations to its portfolio. To Nathanson, this is just the beginning. And thanks to the success he’s had thus far, he fully expects other companies to mimic Mapleton’s local focus. “I think companies like Mapleton are the future of radio, and we take some pride in that,” he says.


Related Topics:

California | MTV | Van Halen | Los Angeles | Johnny Cash | Lenny Kravitz | Chicago | London | New Orleans | Santa Cruz | Europe | United States | Wall Street | Aerosmith | Smashing Pumpkins | Britney Spears | Christina Aguilera | Alaska | New Hampshire | Oregon | Washington | Cable TV

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