Can Podcasting Become “The Ultimate Form of Radio Delivery?”

I had the chance to speak with Norm Pattiz, a modern commercial radio pioneer who threw his hat into the podcasting ring last year with the PodcastOne network. Whether you’re a fan of commercial radio or not, Pattiz brings to podcasting decades of experience along with a good measure of vision and boldness that shouldn’t be dismissed.Pattiz told me that he was about to get married when he was fired from his job as sales manager at channel 13 in Los Angeles. When he got back from an extended honeymoon he met up with a friend in the radio business. In the background the local urban station was playing a 52-hour all-Motown weekend, and it caught Pattiz’s ear. He asked if the program was being packaged for syndication. The answer was “no.”

A week after that, “I’m producing a 24-hour special called the ‘Sound of Motown,’ playing all of the music from 1957 to the present at that time,” Pattiz told me in a phone interview. “Motown is supplying us with exclusive interviews and unreleased tracks, and I went out and sold it to a bunch of advertisers I knew.”

Coming from the television industry Pattiz understood syndication, which was a big business supplying stations with much of their daily program schedule. But at the time Pattiz said “radio syndication was a mom and pop business, selling 1 or 2 shows, mostly for cash. It was a real business, but at an early stage.” He realized that “nobody was exploiting the national market,” and saw his opportunity. Thus, in 1976 Westwood One was born, and it would grow to become the nation’s largest radio syndicator.