Neal Schore sees cool things every day. As founder, president and CEO of Triton Media Group LLC, new trends and technologies often cross his desk.
He heard about a couple of guys, for example, who imagined controlling what came out of the radio via remote. There was also the idea to let radio audiences view a station’s playlist online and instantly download the song they just heard.
Sometimes, cool catches Schore’s attention. Triton Media Group partnered with those guys — who formed a company called Jelli — to give national radio audiences control over content. And one of the many digital products and services Triton supplies to the media industry is a TuneGenie music discovery platform, which lets listeners view play-lists and browse in-depth song information from a station’s homepage.
But Schore doesn’t get carried away by ideas that sound intriguing.
“The transition between cool and engagement with an audience and then monetizing that cool is where we’ve spent a lot of time,” says Schore, who leads about 550 employees. “We don’t get hung up in cool. We get enthusiastic about what works.” With more than 18 years of media experience, Schore has learned how to qualify trends and ideas that catch his attention and validate the business case behind them. He does that at an accelerated pace to keep Triton, which had 2009 revenue of about $225 million, ahead of the curve.
“We’ve spent a lot of time and investment against where we think the market is going, and that’s allowed us to not only be innovative and leaders but also made us very relevant and turnkey to our clients,” Schore says. “So they’ve grown to trust us because we’re effectively delivering against their needs in advance of them understanding their needs themselves.”
