Leslie Scott: Building Teams, Reshaping Radio

Back in 2016, Leslie was the PD for 107.7 The End in Seattle,
driving the station to huge success in the millennial market.
Since then, she's taken on a few more stations, been elevated to
overseeing programming of Audacy's exclusive streaming-only
channels... And like so many people in radio, been restructured
out of a job. Their loss. We discuss where Leslie's currently at
both life and career wise, but mainly this is a time for us to
catch up and learn how Leslie's thoughts and predictions from
2016 have aged.


For the most part, Leslie's values remain the same: Radio and
digital should be friends, not enemies; Radio stations need to
focus on curating personalities above all else; and the youngest
generation is a giant well of untapped potential listeners who
should be catered to. However, interestingly, Leslie is no longer
a part of that youngest generation. She once was a sort of
"Millennial Whisperer" in the radio industry, but Gen Z is a
whole different beast, which we discuss at length. 7 years
doesn't sound like a long time, but it really is, especially in
an industry that's been scrambling so hard to keep up with the
youth, and Leslie has a lot of thoughts about the way things have
changed.


We also discuss women's progress in the radio industry, or
rather, its stagnation in recent years. Fred Jacobs of Jacobs
Media published his AQ6 survey earlier this year, which you can
read about here. It showed that women's representation in radio
hasn't really improved since 2019. Being both a woman herself and
serving on the board of directors for mentoring and inspiring
women in radio, Leslie shares some interesting insights into why
that might be.


If you haven't heard our original interview with Leslie, and
you'd like to compare for yourself, you can listen to it here. If
nothing else, it's an interesting time capsule to a world before
TikTok.


A Transcript and video version of the episode is available on the
network page.


Please sign up for the SOUNDING OFF Newsletter. Full of all
the verbal diarrhea you never knew what you were missing in your
life.


Also we added the Sound Off Podcast to the The Open Podcast
Prefix Project (OP3) A free
and open-source podcast prefix analytics
service committed to open data and listener
privacy. You can be a nosey parker by checking out our
downloads here.


Thanks to the following organizations for supporting the
show:


Nlogic - TV & Radio Audience Data Solutions


Mary Anne Ivison at Ivison Voice. - Make her the female
voice of your radio station.


Matt Fogarty Voiceovers - It's great to have Matt back for
2024 supporting our show. Make him the imaging voice for
your radio station by contacting him through his website.


Megatrax - Licensed Music for your radio station or podcast
production company.


See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California
Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.