One of the main themes of this year’s BNM Summit will be community engagement and its impact on the success of a show. Jeff Katz, moderator of The Jeff Katz Showwill bring a lot of insight from his own personal experience to this panel. “I’m excited about it,” said Katz, “Our focus is to translate community engagement into on-air activities.”
Community involvement isn’t just about being a good person off the air. More importantly, it’s a way to connect with both listeners/viewers and your advertisers. “The reality is, your listeners have charities they’re involved with. Your advertisers have charities they’re involved with. They’re happy to work with you. They want to get involved. They’re supporting you. From a programming perspective, this can help you get better ratings, higher revenue, and all the good industry issues we love to talk about, while doing really important work for the community.”
Katz has experienced this effect firsthand with his own audiences. “Many of my listeners are in the police force, so the fact that I’m addressing this issue and supporting people in this field is very important. It also serves as a reinforcer because when a police officer hears you talking about issue A, B and C, or you support (a particular) activity, police officers go out and tell others (about you).”
His own charitable efforts began with his own personal experience. “I have a daughter who is severely disabled,” Katz said. “Julia is chronologically 21 years old, but developmentally she’s about 18 months old. I really understood how difficult that is, not just for people like Julia, but for families that have members like Julia. That’s driven a lot of the charitable work to help families navigate the system, because the whole system seems to be designed to just push people away at every point.”
Today, he is involved with many charities that he greatly admires. “The Friendship Circle connects typically developing children with children with special needs, and they do it all over the world. We have raised a lot of money for our Friendship Circle of Virginia, and they do great work. Other charities are involved with police officers. That is something that is very important to me. I make sure that the officers (and) their families are taken care of and that they are helped at any stage that they need help.”
Another of Katz’s passions is the Fatherhood Foundation of Virginia. “Our mission is to help men become better fathers. It’s as simple as that. There are millions of books for moms and many programs for moms, but dads are just the companion in many cases. The Fatherhood Foundation focuses on what some of these men need to know.
The Fatherhood Foundation is preparing to launch a program with Katz. “I’m really excited about it,” he said. “I’m going into the prison, not as a guest, but as a visitor. We have a program to help men who are in prison be decent fathers when they get out. It’s probably taken me almost two years to convince the local prison administration and a number of other stakeholders and get funding, but we’re getting ready to launch.”
Another way Katz connects with his audience is by sharing his personal experiences as a former police officer. “I had every intention of becoming a lawyer at some point. My father, who never had the best timing in the world, had a heart attack and I had to work. There was a job I could get as a police officer in Philadelphia and I went in that direction to pay some bills and provide for the family.”
The radio host spent five years as a police officer, calling it a “useful detour.” Perhaps most importantly, his time serving the Philadelphia community gave him a “tremendous acumen for bullshit. It doesn’t take long to figure out when someone is making up a story instead of telling you the truth, so it’s an important skill.”
Katz noted that it is difficult to give advice to those who want to follow him in the industry because, “I told each of my sons that if they ever thought about going into radio, I would staple their tongues to the ground. (I told them) that they should not go into radio under any circumstances.”
Because the business is changing rapidly, there are so many different ways to connect with your audience. “We have to remember that people are consuming what we’re offering them,” Katz said. “They might watch it, they might listen to it, they might read it. It might be on X, it might be on Instagram. It might be on any of a thousand different platforms. So I don’t know if I can give any advice to someone who wants to get into this business, because I don’t think this business, as it’s set up now, is going to last in the same way.”
Katz believes there are two important things for young people: they should follow their passion and not wait.
“That’s the other thing,” Katz explained. “You don’t have to wait for the big gatekeepers, right? There aren’t the same barriers to entry that there were 30 years ago. (Back then) you wrote for a newspaper, spoke on a radio station or appeared on a TV station and that was it. Nobody has to wait for that today. You can set up your YouTube channel today. You can start your own podcast. Now you have the material to reach consumers. That’s going to be your challenge. But I think people should absolutely try and follow their passion. And then if they can find a way to make money from it and make it their actual business that pays their bills, then God bless them. Go ahead.”
