Lenard Liberman started his first business as a teenager growing up in the San Fernando Valley. He sold jewelry, vitamins and diet products to a mainly Hispanic clientele, and for advertising, turned to the radio stations owned at the time by his father, Jose Liberman, a pioneer in Hispanic broadcasting. “I had a good business that continued for many years into college,” the 55-year-old Liberman said. “I was managing it as a full-time student.” He later attended Stanford University and earned both a law degree and an MBA. By 1987, Jose Liberman had retired from his original broadcasting company and started a new one with his son that is now known as LBI Media Inc. The Burbank company owns and operates 10 television stations throughout the United States under the Estrella TV network moniker and more than a dozen radio stations in California and Texas. Liberman’s duties at the company are a combination of programming and sales. His father remains a fixture at the headquarters on Empire Avenue, one of four buildings LBI has in Burbank. Liberman took time to discuss with the Business Journal his thoughts on Hispanic media, why telenovelas are irrelevant in the U.S. market, how he got started in business as a teenager and his reading habits. Titles: CEO & Co-Founder, LBI Media Inc Born: Los Angeles, 1961 Education: Bachelors degree, law degree, MBA, Stanford University Career Turning Point: Purchasing KRCA-TV in 1998 Personal: Married with six children, lives in Toluca Lake Hobbies: Swimming and mountain biking Question: What motivates you? Answer: I’ve always been hardworking. I started my first business when I was 15 years old. I never was the type of person who took time off or acted leisurely. I always had my nose to the grindstone. There has always been an ethic in me to work hard and to have a goal or task and accomplish it. In terms of the Hispanic business, what motivates me is an innate enjoyment of entertaining people and finding things that people love. It hurts when it doesn’t work, but when it does it’s great fun. Does LBI Media reflect your personality? At one time it did a lot more because it was smaller. Today we have up to 1,000 employees. On the other hand, I am a hard worker and I am here a lot and I interact with my management. I think that style has to pass through to the employees in some way but maybe not as much as it once did. How do you spend your workday? I start at about 8 a.m. Generally, there is a meeting in the morning, whether it’s a managers meeting or a sales meeting. Then I start in on the programming – watch shows, review ideas for different television shows, or edits on programs. At night, I’ll be at a TV shoot that’s in production or be in a manager’s meeting or another kind of meeting. Occasionally I’ll go on sales calls, take clients to lunch or dinner. It is a combination of sales and programming. Does the programming reflect your personal interests? No. The programming is based on what I believe the Hispanic market would enjoy seeing based on the fact they live in the United States and their tastes have changed as a result of that inclusion and involvement in everyday society. They are exposed to great television in the general market. I think they should have great television in the Hispanic market. What has Hispanic broadcast programming been like? Historically, they have been exposed to one form of programming, which is the telenovelas produced in a foreign country whether it is Colombia or Mexico. But they’re produced for a different market with a different set of experiences, with a different set of economic and educational opportunities. I think Hispanics living in the states are not Mexicans, are not Colombians; they are Americans. Are telenovelas a thing of the past? I think telenovelas were produced in Mexico to placate an economic class that did not have a lot of opportunity and at one point enjoyed seeing what life could be like if they had opportunity. But the experience in the United States is entirely different. Living in the United States you can go to school through high school and even get into community college if you have no money and then matriculate into another college. There is financial aid and there is opportunity. In the United States, there is upward mobility. You can start a restaurant, you can start a business, you can get a job and go to night school and improve your life. How does that come back to telenovelas? Because of that, you don’t have a need to live vicariously. You can experience yourself at a level of success and happiness that comes from being given opportunity. So, that is one area. The second area is that (broadcast company) Televisa is such a monopoly in the Mexican market that people just watched for a long time whatever they gave them. They did not have the competitive landscape that gave people other programming to watch. How does LBI stack up against other Hispanic broadcasters, such as Univision? Our competitors have had ratings declines of 60, 70 percent over the last five years. Meanwhile our programming has grown year over year. To what do you attribute that growth? What I do is look at what resonates with the Hispanic market living in the U.S. I look at shows that index well with Hispanic audiences and I produce it in Spanish, in their own language with certain cultural touchstones, cultural sensitivities that I am aware of given my experience in the market. I embed those into the shows which makes it more relevant than the program they are watching for the general market. Univision is still the largest of the Hispanic broadcasters, right? It depends on the market. Nationwide, yes. But in Los Angeles, our programming in primetime we were number one last night with adults 25 to 54, men 18 to 49 and men 25 to 54. How big is the market for Hispanic programming? The Hispanic television market is probably a $2.5 billion to $3 billion business, I’m guessing. Radio, I am not so sure. There are several hundreds of millions in Spanish radio. Combined total is $4 billion. What is the future of Hispanic broadcasting? It is addressing the ever-changing tastes of people based on what other networks in the general market are producing. You look at the shows in the general market, there is great television. It is competing with that and staying ahead of it. If you had one message for advertisers about the Hispanic market, what would it be? Loyalty. It is a loyal market. A great consumer. They want to be treated well and want a great product. If you treat the Hispanic market well and if you provide a great product, they will be loyal for life. They are not a complicated, difficult, complaining consumer. Hispanics like to consume. They like to enjoy life. They are not huge savers. That is not in the culture so much. It is about enjoying life. Can you give a few examples of shows you produce? “Tengo Talento, Mucho Talento” is much like any amateur competition show. It could be like “American Idol” or “The Voice” or America’s Got Talent.” There is a lot of comedy involved with it. One of the hosts is a comedian, so there is a comedy base. What big name Hispanic personalities have come through your studios? “Tengo Talento” had Vicente Fernández perform. That was a huge high point for the company to have the number one Hispanic representative personality in our world and he performed on our talent show. We had Marco Antonio Solis. We’ve had a lot of big names come through. Your father was a pioneer of sorts in Hispanic broadcasting, wasn’t he? He owned the first FM station ever to go Spanish west of the Mississippi and the first (Spanish) FM in Los Angeles, KLVE, he bought them in 1975. When he bought it, people told him “Hispanics don’t have FM radios, why would you buy an FM radio station; they only listen to AM.” He said, “No, that’s not true.” For various reasons in 1985 he sold out. He was in partnership with his brothers and they all wanted to do their own thing. So he retired for a couple of years. How did you start LBI with him? In 1987, I graduated from school and was determining what I would do. I knew I wanted to go into business, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go into the radio business as much because my father had done it and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to follow in that direction. At the end of the day we decided to buy these two English (language) radio stations in Orange County. Low and behold, I am the general sales manager at the stations going on sales calls and people were saying, “We really need a local Spanish radio station in Orange County.” We took our AM that was not doing any revenue and turned it Spanish and it was a huge success. I said, “OK, you can’t fight success.” What happened from there? We bought a station in L.A., the old KHJ, 930 AM, we turned it Spanish and did well. We purchased an FM in L.A., it did very well. We thought radio was hard to buy more of because radio (station) prices were rising at the time dramatically because the FCC had deregulated the ownership of radio. Big companies started gobbling up all the big radio stations. We said “We can’t really buy radio anymore, so what do we do?” So we started buying TV (in 1998). That was kind of a turning point in terms of something that really changed our business. Why a turning point? Until we purchased television no one had put radio and TV together in the Hispanic market. That has changed since then. In 1998, there were two forms of electronic entertainment that mattered, radio and TV. They comprised of 85 percent of the local advertising budgets in the Los Angeles market. But media companies either owned radio or owned TV. They didn’t own them together. What has changed? We were the first broadcaster to own radio and TV together. We had to go to advertisers with a package. There was a lot of cross-promotion. After we did that, a few years later Univision bought Tichenor Broadcasting and created Univision radio. We did it in L.A. then we did it Houston and we did it in Dallas. Univision ended up copying it and buying radio. It was very successful to combine the two. Ever considered taking the company public? We did, back in 2005. Instead I was convinced by an investor to purchase a piece of the company and have all the expenses attached to that. It worked out well for us. Oaktree Capital Management, in downtown Los Angeles, purchased a piece of the company instead of us going public. What was your childhood like? Brought up in the San Fernando Valley. Two sisters. Played a lot of sports. I rode my bike all over because you could in those years. I got to hang out with friends until 5 o’clock, 6 o’clock at night having fun playing sports. How did you get interested in business? At a young age, I decided I wanted to make money. So, after my bar mitzvah, when I was 13, I took the money I made and invested it in the stock market. When I was 15, before I could drive, I started a mail order business. My father owned Spanish radio stations and I said charge me your lowest rate, I want to buy advertising so I could advertise jewelry. I knew the Hispanic market at the time was interested in amulets. In the first six months, I think I did $120,000 in sales at age 15. I got into the vitamin business, and some diet products. I had a good business that continued for many years into college. I had an office with two, three employees filling orders. I was managing it as a full-time student. Did you expect to follow in your father’s footsteps? Not at all. My father, even when in business in the early days, his strength was programming. He’s very good with employees and motivating and being a resource. While I was the nose to the grindstone, execute the business plan type, he was more the visionary. Your father is a bigger than life personality in Hispanic media. Do you ever feel overshadowed? No. My father is amazingly humble. Remarkably, at a very young age he allowed me to do what I wanted to do. Shortly after we purchased our L.A. station he had a health issue, so that required me to step up in a big way and I took over the L.A. operation and he took over the Orange County operation. Who are people you admire? It could be a Steven Spielberg type. You look at the 1960s and 70s, and look at “Green Acres” and “The Brady Bunch,” all the shows we grew up on. They were written by Sherwood Schwartz, folks who just had hit after hit after hit, and wrote them and directed them and produced them. That is impressive to me. People who are able to write and produce television and repeat success across different formats – Aaron Sorkin would be an example. That impresses me. What was the last book you read? I like reading biographies. The last biography I read might have been Bob Hope. I’ve read Ava Gardner, I’ve read Walt Disney. I’m reading (Winston) Churchill right now. I just also finished Thomas Friedman’s book from the 1980s about the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. You listed mountain biking as a hobby. Where do you like to ride? Sycamore Canyon. That’s my favorite place. I start in Newbury Park and end up at Point Mugu beach and then come back through the canyon.