Newly appointed Entercom Sports President MIKE DEE has more than 20 years of experience running organizations in both the NFL and MLB, but is now taking on a new challenge as he jumps into the world of sports radio. Dee will move to Philadelphia later this summer, but will first spend the next few months working in S.F., while spending his weekends at home with his family in San Diego. Most Friday nights are capped with a family dinner in the beach community of Cardiff-by-the-Sea, and his two teenage boys fill his weekends with lacrosse, baseball and basketball games.
ON THE DOCKET: I have two teenage boys, so I’ve got lacrosse and baseball and club basketball in my outlook. That will be the bulk of my free time, but there will be a lot of work done as well. There’s a lot of studying going on amongst the kids’ activities, and because I’m still in San Diego, I will sneak out for a bike ride one day -- I’m an avid cyclist. The perfect weekend for me is a lot of time with my wife and kids. San Diego is a great place to enjoy the outdoors, so I’ll typically try to get in a round of golf or an extended paddle board trip. We have markets around San Diego and L.A., so on each end of the weekend I’ll be spending time with those market presidents and continuing to immerse myself in a new world.
GETTING READY FOR THE WORK WEEK: The traditional plan when you’re on the road for four or five days in the coming week, that’s going to be my life here for the near-term, I just lay out the calendar for the week. There’s not a shortage of things to take hold of and to get done. So, just your traditional planning and mixed in with an immersive full-court press on trying to read industry trade publications and looking into the structure of deals with teams. It takes time to wrap up and I want to make sure I get as much information down as possible. There’s not a shortage of data and analytics in the radio digital world. So, I’m a student at the moment.
HERE & NOW: I’ll be making the move back east over the summer, but I’m working on some initiatives out here in the S.F. market for a few months and also getting acclimated with the sports portfolio that we have. The phones have been ringing since last week with teams and opportunities. Entercom has been very focused in the marketplace, being a local content provider. So, that’s not just music, but news and sports play a big part of that. So, hopefully that sets the table for sports playing an even larger part in that picture moving forward.
LISTEN CLOSELY: I feel like my kids, my two high school boys, who I used to kid all the time about walking around the house with headphones on. Now I’ve joined them. My listenership has definitely increased dramatically over the last month with the new position. I always listened to sports radio, though. I can get all of our stations through the digital platform directly and most are available on TuneIn. I’ve been utilizing both of those in my commute up here in S.F. during the week.
NEW KID ON THE BLOCK: I spent 20-plus years on the team side of things and I got to deal with three different markets that were distinctly different. San Diego, Boston and Miami/South Florida. That experience and overseeing the relationship we had with our broadcast partners in each of those respective markets -- seeing the difference in a larger market like Boston or Miami and a smaller market like San Diego -- I think has prepared me well for this. I’ve gotten probably four or five team presidents calling over the last week with either existing rightsholders or with Entercom or folks that saw my announcement and want to talk to us about a possible Entercom relationship.
