Wandering in With the Experts

Wednesday, October 05, 2005, at 09:12AM

By Eric Richardson

Here's one of the random things you get with a USC education that you don't get pretty much anywhere else... I'm sitting in one of my classes, The Communication Revolution and the Arts, and we're talking about cable television and its ability to roll out channels that appeal to a very narrow segment of the market. The discussion was about whether there are too many channels spread too thin, and whether consolidation is going to need to occur in the future.

As we're having this discussion one of the Annenberg administration people wanders in and asks the professor if it might be ok if his guest gives some real world experience on the subject. With him is Jeff Smulyan, CEO of Emmis Communications. Emmis just happens to own a bunch of radio stations including LA Leader Power 106 and has owned a number of TV stations (but is working on getting out of that market). And so for the next ten minutes or so we get to hear Smulyan talk about where he sees the digital market going.

Smulyen is a grad of both USC undergrad and the Law School, and currently is on the school's Board of Trustees.