When he started in broadcasting during the early 1970s as a radio disc jockey working his way through college, Bill Lamb had every intention of following that career path as long as music was imprinted on vinyl records. Ironically, that form of music reproduction, as well as his fledgling career behind the microphone, had a relatively short lifespan, because a young radio station general manager named Lynn Martin — only a couple of weeks on the job at WCZN in Flint, Mich. — told Lamb he should hang up his headphones.
It was a little like a blow to the gut.
“He said, ‘Bill, I don’t think you’re gonna make much money as a disc jockey — you just don’t have a lot of talent. But I think you’d make a great salesperson,’” Lamb recalled. “He took away my dream, but ended up doing did me a favor.”
Forty years later, Lamb — now president and GM of television stations WDRB and WMYO in Louisville, as well as vice president of broadcast operations for Block Communications — finds himself in an unforeseen, if not unlikely, partnership with the man who redirected him.
In June, Martin’s Lexington-based LM Communications Radio Group completed the purchase of WBKI, a WB Network television affiliate in Louisville. As part of the acquisition, LM Communications entered into a shared services agreement with Block Communications. Master control of WBKI is located at Block Communications, along with other departments such as accounting and traffic. Each of those had been outsourced out of state by the previous owner but are now under one roof, allowing “greater efficiency” and “keeping the jobs in Kentucky.”
The move prompted the creation of an LM Communications Television division and expanded the parent companies’ reach into another medium. In addition to WBKI, along with the six radio stations it has in the Lexington market, LM also owns stations in Charleston, W.V., and Charleston, S.C., with more than 30 employees based in central Kentucky and in excess of 120 throughout the company.
But who could have seen it coming? Especially for a 30-year-old company built around a niche it had created for itself as something of a mom-and-pop radio broadcaster in a world seemingly run more and more by corporate Goliaths?
“Any time somebody takes slight deviation from their charted course, it’s a little surprising, though not really with Lynn,” Lamb said. “At the end of the day, he’s not just a radio broadcaster but a broadcaster, and most of the core principles apply here (with TV). So I’m not shocked. You can get to a point in your life where you can either wind down or crank it up. Lynn has always struck me as a crank-it-up kind of guy. He doesn’t have a neutral; it’s always in overdrive. He’s a very, very driven person. That’s for sure.”
Lamb’s speaking from personal experience. Consider his first significant interaction with Martin, the one that set Lamb on a different course.
It wasn’t as if Martin, then only 26 years old, made that fateful decision to reassign Lamb with no experience to validate it. He had assumed his post in Flint after reversing the fortunes of a pair of stations in Toledo, Ohio, pulling off what both described as “worst to first” turnarounds.
But like Lamb, Martin had engrossed himself in the sexy side of broadcasting well before that. Growing up in Bristol, Va., he would tag along to the station where his father served as an announcer. Starting in his early teens, he worked his way up the radio foodchain doing various tasks, eventually having something of his own weekend show spinning records, working the control board and occasionally talking on the air.
“I didn’t think my dad really worked; I thought he just enjoyed himself,” Martin said. “I thought it was cool.”
He graduated high school and played football at the University of Virginia for two years before injuring his left knee and then transferring to the University of Toledo. Martin took a summer job in the sales department of Toledo’s WCWA AM/FM in 1971 and became a full-time employee in 1970, working with few goals bigger than simply making enough to earn his pilot’s license. A funny thing happened, however: He was named sales manager a year later, and in 1974, he was named a general manager.
Martin continued as a general manager in Ohio and Michigan until 1981. Having pushed into his 30s and created a reputation as someone who could fix flailing stations, Martin then set a different course. He partnered with an investor to purchase WKLC FM in Charleston, W.Va., altering the format to rock music and laying the cornerstone for LM Communications. Martin purchased another station in Lexington’s WGKS three years later and then became a regular commuter from West Virginia to central Kentucky.
He moved full-time to Lexington in 1986 after adding an AM station (WLXG) and went on to purchase four more in Kentucky and additional stations in the Charleston, S.C., market, as federal regulations with regard to ownership of multiple stations were relaxed toward the end of the 20th century.
Martin has since bought out the investor with whom he partnered to buy that first station in West Virginia and is now sole owner of LM Communications. That doesn’t mean he isn’t taking on new challenges as he dives deeper into his fifth decade in broadcasting.
LM has made a number of moves during the past year in order to better position itself in the marketplace. This includes securing local rights for Cincinnati Bengals broadcasts as well as laying the groundwork to revamp LM’s digital properties and adding additional internal staff to help better facilitate business development.
The biggest (or at least most notable) move, however, was the acquisition of the television station in Louisville. Ky. The twist is it came about as an example of Lamb giving Martin advice this time around.
Lamb worked for Martin for four years after being moved into sales before he shifted over into television. The pair had no contact until 2008 when Lamb, as a Kentucky Broadcasters Association boardmember, learned of LM Communications and its owner. He reached out to Martin, and the two have remained in touch since, including when Lamb suggested Martin take a look at a possible opportunity in TV.
As a result, Martin now sits in a corner office on the top floor of downtown Lexington’s Victorian Square, the owner of a television station. A photo of his father — who moved to Bristol chasing a dream to be a big-league baseball announcer — is positioned behind his desk, and a cherished model of his first jet airplane is stashed away on the opposite side of the room.
Both served as motivation for a man who, if not reinventing himself, definitely continues to evolve.
“I’ve always had the bug, and television is simply radio with pictures,” Martin said. “I just really enjoy what I do. I feel like I’m one of the luckiest people in the world because I get to make a living doing something I like.”