Mike Hulvey is the President and CEO of Neuhoff Communications, which own and operate 20 radio stations in Illinois and Indiana.
Mike is a radio board member of the NAB, on the board of the RAB and is it’s Immediate Past Chair, and is past President of the International Broadcasters Idea Bank Board of Directors.
He has also served as Steering Committee Chairman of the national Radio Show in both 2015 and 2016.
In 2018, he joined Dick Van Dyke and Gene Hackman as an inductee on the Danville High School Wall of Fame.
Both of these celebrities worked at the Danville station of Neuhoff, and their pictures, taken when they were at the station, are in the hallway just outside Mike’s office door. He refers to the area as Hackman’s Hallway.
I met Mike in 2014 at the Radio Show in Orlando, just by chance sitting at his table on the night of the Marconi Radio Awards.
He inquired where I was from, and then told me I probably wouldn’t know where his stations were, in the town of Danville, Illinois.
To his surprise I told him I had been there a month prior for a family reunion as my mother comes from Danville, and had gone to Danville High, and knew both Jerry and Dick Van Dyke who had been on either side of her year at the school.
We have been friends since.
With the NABShow now just two weeks away, I asked him about some of the highlights for this year.
radioinfo: So NAB is coming up not too far away, and you are doing a session with the Small and Medium Market Radio Forum on the Saturday.
Mike: Well, one of the things I love about that in the round table perspective, is you do have an opportunity to share ideas amongst a very diverse group of broadcasters.
You know, diversity from the perspective of size of market locations as well as audiences served, etcetera.
So it gives the smaller broadcaster the opportunity to engage with others who they may not be able to on a regular basis and share an idea.
And one of the things that I love about this, and I’ve been involved in these kinds of endeavours a lot, and one of the things I really like about it is that you never know where that one good idea is going to come for someone.
You may think it’s a throwaway idea or someone has doing this, they’ve always kind of done that, and just offhandedly mention something and then all of a sudden it germinates in someone who heard it and they start thinking about their application and then it grows and goes from there.
That’s one of the things that happens at events like that, and that’s where I know there’s great value in doing it and participating.
radioinfo: I like the fact that they’ve turned it into a full day now. They did that last year I think for the first time, and it will happen again this time on the Saturday.
Mike: Yeah. The problem we had, Wayne, was we ran out of chairs.
The organisers of that specific event, again, the kickoff event in my mind, even though the NAB Show starts on Sunday, the Saturday event for the local broadcasters.
What I think they anticipated, and I’m going to throw a number at 150, 160 broadcasters. We ended up with almost 250 broadcasters in the room.
They literally ran out of chairs and people just kept coming in and that is awesome.
Again, last year we were the first real experience after the pandemic. People were excited to see each other and engage again back in a group setting, but it really was a home run and I know a lot of effort, a tremendous amount of effort has gone into, you know, this year’s event and people are excited to have the opportunity.
radioinfo: It’s interesting also this year that a lot of the radio sessions and radio equipment displays are all in the West Hall. They’re all together this year, which I think is going to make it a lot easier to get around.
Mike: Yeah. And that’s a step in my mind, a step in the right direction. The NAB has worked very hard to make sure that there are communities, you know, within the larger footprint of the NAB show itself.
And you’re right, radio is in the West Hall. Last year we, we had some vendors that were kind of spread through the spread through the facility.
There were sessions that were kind of spread out some. And this year we are all in the same area, which will make it great.
Vendors love to see broadcasters walk through, and when you have a community of broadcasters or community of vendors who we do business with are all in the same location, it makes it so much easy, easier for us to get to the people we want to see, but also learn about new products and services.
And that’s one of the nice things about NAB, is you have the opportunity to engage with a vendor about something that you don’t know anything about or haven’t had or have had limited exposure to. It gives you an opportunity for some of those conversations.
radioinfo: The NAB Show is the biggest trade show in the world. And if you’re going to see new equipment, that’s the place to go. I already know that there are a number of organisations who are debuting things at NAB this year.
I also like the fact that they’ve got it all together this year is that West Hall, because that’s a long walk down to the West Hall. I mean, the Las Vegas Convention Centre is a lot bigger than people realise. It’s huge.
And of course, the underground tunnel is half the fun of getting there.
Mike: I was excited last year for the opportunity to get in a Tesla and do the tunnel, so I’m looking forward to doing that again this year. I there was, I think John David and Erica Farber and I ended up in a Tesla and we did that together. It was a shared experience that was a lot of fun.
radioinfo: So, the hundredth year of NAB Shows, and what an incredible week it promises to be attendance wise. Very hard to judge how many are going to be there this year. It was good last year.
CES did pretty well, didn’t they, at the beginning of the year. And you would think that that augurs well for this conference?
Mike: Yeah, I was looking at CES as our benchmark and CES improved upon the numbers that they had the previous year.
Last year’s NAB was good, it was better than expected and I anticipate that we’ll continue to see the growth as people gravitate to come back to events like this.
You know, I think there was a thought that maybe are we done with the event business? But as it is, I like to say and I’ve said it a number of times, the most valuable real estate at NAB is the hallway because of the opportunity for interactions.
And you and I over the years have had hallway interactions and have developed a friendship based upon the hallway. And that’s what you don’t get in a Zoom and you don’t get, you know, in a remote learning environment.
But you do you do get when you’re together in the sessions is important. The ideas that are presented are important. But to me the most valuable real estate, if you will, is the hallways.
Some would say the bar, but it’s still the same conversation. And that is that you’re connecting with other broadcasters and sharing ideas.
radioinfo: Yeah. True indeed. All right. Great to talk to you, as always. Look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks.
Mike: Well, safe travels to Las Vegas. My flight will be shorter than yours.
This is the program for Saturday.
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Next week I will share Mike’s thoughts on RadioGPT and ChatGPT, as well as taking a look at the Summer School for radio that he started 26 years ago and so far has had over 400 students attend, many of whom have gone onto careers in the media.