Saul Mate

Saul Mate
By Mike Kinosian
Inside Radio

Tomorrow (2-14) is every romantic’s red-letter day.

This week also holds special - albeit deeply painful - history for someone in the middle of what Tinsel Town should take note of for the silver screen.

The powerful, relatable lead character will uniquely inspire and motivate audiences as his real-deal “Love Story” is filled with pathos and augmented by a committed and compassionate co-star.

Interesting plot turns; caring support cast; and – for good measure – adorable triplets punctuate the script. Casting unequaled Tom Hanks in the lead role would nearly ensure it Oscar-worthy status.

Currently missing is a feel-good ending - but that phase is in heavy development.

Youthful Capitalist
Early-1970s metro Chicago is our backdrop as Brad Saul accompanies his parents to a Saturday afternoon Street Fair.

WLTD/Evanston’s Chuck Schaden is broadcasting “Those Were The Days,” a retro show that instantly made a momentous impression on 13-year-old Saul, who’d later become WLTD’s GM. “[Schaden] also had a Saturday morning show called ‘Radio For Kids,’ which featured a [different weekly] co-host,” Saul notes. “That was my first on-air radio thing. I still have the script where I read the first weather forecast I ever did on the air.”

It isn’t hyperbolic to note the Matrix Media President has been a successful entrepreneur the greater part of his 45 years of life. Witnessing Schaden do his thing on that Saturday remote prompted the barely-teen Saul to sell copies of old radio shows.

After buying an ad in a physician’s journal – his stepfather is a physician and his biological father played in the Washington Senators minor league system and died when Saul was four – he was “flooded” with orders. “There was no such thing as high-speed duplication then,” explains Saul, whose “Radio Nostalgia” emanated from his bedroom after school. “I literally had to make copies from one cassette recorder to another.”

Operations had to be suspended because the lad literally had too much business.

Blood, Sweat & Orange Juice
Late in his freshman year at the University of Missouri (“I absolutely hated it”), Saul was contacted by WBBM/Chicago. “I couldn’t quit college because guilt would be with me forever,” he recounts. “So I applied to the one school [Northwestern University] I was absolutely sure I wouldn’t get into.”

From a field of 400 that year, Northwestern accepted seven transfer students – including Saul - who claims the only reason he was chosen was the Dean of Students liked him.

To subsidize his education, Spanish-fluent Saul performed a coterie of jobs, including Spanish talk show host. “I did whatever I could up to – and including – giving blood,” he convincingly notes. “It came with a free meal, orange juice and cookies. I ate peanut butter and crackers six nights a week and cauliflower the seventh because I needed a vegetable.”

Along the way, he ran WEEF/Highland Park, IL and turned WONX – formerly WLTD - from a money-losing Beautiful Music AM into a brokered Spanish outlet.

Problem Issue Addressed
A packed academic load and fulltime radio jobs lasted through Saul’s senior year when the seed for an idea to initiate (another) business sprouted.

One “horrible” responsibility he had at WEEF and WONX was making sure that the public affairs programming covered material on the then-annual “Issues & Problem” lists. “That usually meant calling someone from a local non-profit and getting them to the station to do a show,” Saul recalls. “It would be great if a syndicated barter program could do that and be customized so it sounded like I did it from my station.”

That’s precisely what he and a partner attempted in 1981. “On Thanksgiving weekend, 19 of the smallest stations you’ve ever heard of [carried our show, which] began PIA - Public Interest Affiliates.”

A second half-hour on health issues soon followed on what would lead to the nucleus of a much bigger 1983 business.

Flying High
Late golden-voiced John Doremus supplied in-flight audio (“Music In The Air”) to several airlines, but following deregulation in 1981, airlines no longer wanted to pay for such programming.

It occurred to Saul there were similarities between in-flight programming and bartered syndication. “Eastern became the first airline to allow us to sell in-flight audio commercials and we launched that on a barter basis,” he explains. “It was [so] successful they asked us to do the same for their in-flight television programming. We were involved in doing in-flight programming/ad sales for American, Eastern, TWA, United and Western.”

Triple Threat
There also was Saul at the height of the home shopping craze (1986) creating Value Radio. “People laughed and asked how we would sell things that couldn’t be seen,” reflects the Executive Producer of the first two Radio Hall Of Fame broadcasts. “[To me], if you don’t believe you can sell things people can’t see, [you shouldn’t be] in this business. We put together a string of stations for this overnight talk show and did close to $2 million in merchandise a month. We got 5% commission on merchandise sold [as did] radio stations [in their individual markets]. We were a last resort for weird ideas of the world because we made them work.”

That included his 1987 brainchild to put a radio station studio in the middle of a Chicagoland amusement park and sell sponsorships to it. “The idea [for ‘Great America Radio’] was to talk about food service times and ride-wait times and traffic to/from the park,” Saul points out. “We did it for a year [but] Bob Pittman [later] did it much more successfully with televisions everywhere. I wrote a high school newspaper column and interviewed Bob when he was the 21-year-old PD of [Chicago’s WMAQ].”

Yet another epiphany came to Saul when, in 1998, he realized the NBA was professional sports’ only league without a network radio deal, so he began – courting - the league. “Nobody cared who I was or who PIA was – the product was the NBA,” he stresses. “Other deals were on the table and the money was greater than ours [but] the thing I truly believe that sealed the deal was we said it would be the NBA Radio Network.”
Most imperative to underscore in all this is that every milestone noted thus far was reached prior to Saul’s 30th birthday. “Fear and hunger are great motivators,” he modestly downplays. “I needed to support myself.”

Maintaining An Important Pledge
On June 29, 1990 at 10:17am, Saul fulfilled a promise to quit smoking when he turned 30. Five weeks later, while having drinks at the Ritz Carlton with a woman (Debbie) who captivated his attention when he made the NBA pitch, he experienced blurry vision. It was nerve-related, he was told, and would clear up in a few weeks. The problem did disappear and he went through that fall thinking everything was fine as his relationship with Debbie intensified.

Devastating Diagnosis
By January, though, Saul experienced balance problems. On advice of a neurologist, an MRI was done President’s Day weekend 1991 and Saul candidly admits, “I was scared to death. The three possibilities were a brain tumor, aneurism - which is what my biological father died of – or MS.”

Less than eight months after turning 30 (2-17-1991) and after kicking a smoking habit, Brad Saul was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, although he had no idea what that meant. “I’m now very educated about it. There are many different kinds of MS. Some people have one bout and nothing happens ever again.”

Or you can have significant disability - like Saul does. “I believe there was a connection between quitting smoking and the onset of MS – not that I wouldn’t have [contracted MS] anyway. Nicotine is an enhancer of neurotransmission. If you take it away cold turkey from someone predisposed to needing a little help, you cause a stress event that opens Pandora’s Box and you’re done.”

With only slight hesitation and crackle in his voice, Saul doesn’t second-guess the decision that paid priceless dividends. “Debbie would never have married me if I didn’t quit [smoking]. She’s the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me.”

Their 14-month engagement followed Saul’s MS diagnosis. “I told her I’d prefer that, as much as I’d be devastated and never recover from it, I’d rather she break off the engagement than go forward with it; marry me; have kids; and then decide she couldn’t deal with it. That would have been horrendous.”

Not only didn’t that happen, but triplets Brennan, Gabrielle and Griffen turned seven on 1-14-2006 and are the “reason for being” for wheelchair-bound Saul.

Country’s Largest Minority
Scenes of a doting dad and loving husband serve as a stunning contrast to his earlier family situation. “I didn’t speak to my parents for 15 years [until] I ran into them on an airplane,” Saul reveals. “I struggled for most of the flight if I should say hello and decided I should. [Debbie] comes from a close-knit family and couldn’t possibly understand how a family couldn’t speak to each other. She opened the door to creating that relationship with my family. [The way things are now], you’d never know there were ever any issues, but there were plenty.”

The disease has so badly riddled Saul’s body that the once most independent person one could find and who put himself through Northwestern (dual major of Radio/TV/Film and Spanish); graduate school (also Northwestern); and Loyola Law School needs help to do the most menial things. “The only Achilles heel I have is my physical being. [Suddenly] I’m the most physically dependent guy in the whole world. If you looked at an MRI of my brain, you’d never know I had [MS].”

Some might seriously contemplate suicide and Saul admits, “In the state I’m in, I really don’t want to be here. I can’t do things I used to and want to do. [Taking my own life] isn’t an option – that’s the most narcissistic thing one could possibly do, because it hurts everyone around you.”

Instead of preying on people’s pity, the ever resourceful Saul in 1999 established The Radio Center For People With Disabilities, a 501(c)3 non profit agency that recruits, trains and places people with disabilities in off-air radio jobs. “We’ve placed 14 people,” he proudly notes. “[President Bill] Clinton was the one who paved the way for us to do something like this.”

With the help of Yellow Cab/Chicago Owner Pat Corrigan, Saul is endeavoring to make The Windy City more responsive to the disability community. “After employment, transportation is the second biggest problem for people with disabilities,” he points out. “We’re the largest minority group in the country [and the only one] that doesn’t discriminate by age, sex or ethnicity; anybody can join us in a heartbeat.”

Innovative Ideas
By early-2000, the former PIA became a three-tiered enterprise: UBC Radio Network; Matrix (short form feature syndication with several features airing on 400 stations); and EBN (24/7 Talk). “Syndication is even tougher in this consolidated marketplace,” Saul remarks. “We try to find programs geared to very narrow-targeted audiences. There’s no barrier to enter syndication and people try something new every day. You have to be very creative and innovative with your business model and programming. Particularly with HD Radio and Internet radio, traditional syndication’s model will no longer work. Thankfully, more often than not we’re successful and I’m always looking for new ideas/new opportunities.”

A daily talk show hosted by Reverend Al Sharpton, for example, sounded extremely promising, but the former presidential candidate made a deal with Radio One while having a contract with Saul. “We settled with Radio One and wish him nothing but the best.”

Especially since Emmis is one of UBC’s minority shareholders, Saul and Emmis President/Chairman/CEO Jeff Smulyan frequently email each other and periodically talk on the phone. “He’s been a great supporter in everything we’ve done, yet in the ten years we’ve known each other,” rabid Cubs fan/22-year season ticket holder Saul notes of the possible future owner of the Washington Nationals - “we’ve never even met.”

Several years ago, Saul got to know Business TalkRadio’s then President Chet Tart. “They lost $1.4 million in 2000 [but] I suggested if he’d change 12 things and move the operation to Chicago, he’d come to within shouting distance of breaking even,” Saul remarks. “In 2001 – which was a tough year because of 9/11 – they made [under our guidance] their first ever profit [$400,000]. To turn around something that dramatically in that environment is one of the things I’m most proud of. We also made them profitable in 2002 and 2003.”

Deity Deal
Satellite radio still attracts attention, but at the very least, color Saul skeptical. “Every pay radio service in the history of this country – going back to 1940 when the first one was created for five cents a day – has failed,” he points out. “The country’s average commute time is 37 minutes and over 90% of radio listenership takes place in cars. People are being asked to pay for essentially 74 minutes of commute time every day. It’s possible [Sirius or XM] will survive because of truckers who are in their [vehicles] a lot.”

It might be 18-24 months away, but wireless Internet could be more threatening. “You’ll have access to [thousands] of radio stations versus paying [more than $10 a month] for about 150 stations,” Saul states. “I think [Howard Stern] is one of radio’s greatest talents, but the important point is that if every Sirius subscriber listened to him, he’d have 20% of the audience he had on [terrestrial] radio.”

The fire for the business still clearly burns within Saul’s belly. “The day I’m no longer passionate about this is the day I’ll no longer do it,” comments a part-owner of Independent (baseball) League’s Schaumburg Flyers. “[But I’m concerned] new young minds are going other places. I hope there’s a 13-year old out there [who] will get bitten by the radio bug like I was. The deal I made with God is I’ll be a sport and deal with this disease in this life, but if she does this again in my next life – and I do hope God is a she – I’ll really have a problem.”