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Tuesday, Mar 19, 2024

ON AIR ACCOUNTING

George Nadel Rivin is a partner in the media service practice at Miller Kaplan Arase. He has clients in radio and television broadcasting, newspapers, and outdoor advertising. The practice offers market revenue reports and the X-Ray report, which gives a detailed look at how advertising dollars are being spent. Before his accounting career, Rivin was a disc jockey and news director at stations in Iowa, South Dakota and Colorado. Question: What is unique about having broadcast clients? Answer: The media have certain areas in which the accounting treatment differs from traditional business in that there are issues of FCC license amortization. Unlike most companies where there are hard assets — where a lender can come in and take equipment or inventory as security — instead you have an intangible asset of the FCC license. Q: What market share does Miller Kaplan have with its media practice? A: In the radio industry, we serve virtually all the markets with a market revenue report in place. There are 116 radio markets we serve, and that includes about 2,500 stations. Q: Your firm offers the X-Ray report to media clients. How do they benefit from that report? A: The X-Ray is quite actionable as compared to the market revenue report, which you might consider to be a historical snapshot of what took place. The X-Ray allows them to see opportunities available to them. They can run exception reports to see those advertisers they are not getting. We have one report that shows them the advertisers from the prior year — (advertisers) that are no longer with them that are still spending in that market. Q: How has consolidation in the radio industry affected your business? A: It has affected our business in many ways. In the days prior to consolidation, we dealt primarily at the market level and all the data that came to use came from the individual markets. Today the majority of the information comes to us from corporate and most of our contacts are at the corporate level. We still deal with the individual market managers and their business manager, however the higher level discussions are all with corporate. Q: How often do you listen to radio? A: I listen to radio on average three hours a day. I enjoy contemporary music, alternative music. I spend a lot of time listening to news and sports stations. I also listen over the Internet to air checks of radio as it was in the ‘70s and ‘80s. I enjoy hearing the presentation as it was in those days, as well as listening to people who I worked with who went on to some success.

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