An Insider's Look at the Media
Posted by Beth Covino
on Jul 15, 2015
On July 13th, Bill Binnie, president of NH1 News & WBIN-TV, presented the Rotary Club of Nashua with “An Insider's Look at the Media”. Bill ran for US Senate in 2010 and is actively involved and interested in politics. Beyond the corporate and political world, Bill is an accomplished racecar driver having driven in over 100 professional races around the world for Lotus, Ferrari, Porsche and his own race team. He twice won his class at the world-renowned 24-Hours of Le Mans. And most notable, Bill has driven around the world twice including from Peking to Paris!
Bill started his talk by saying that most of his life he has been a race car driver. He talked about what it is like to drive 200 miles an hour for three consecutive hours. Racing is not about driving fast, it’s about being able to break from going 200mph down to 20mph in 150 yards. This is equal to pulling 6 Gs (as a reference point - going on a fantastic roller coaster is equal to about pulling 1.5 Gs!)
Following high school, Bill made his was to San Francisco. Heading back home from SF (he grew up in NY), he stopped to see his brother in Pittsburgh. His brother ‘dragged’ him to register for college. He calls himself an unintentional student. Bill graduated from Harvard University with an undergraduate degree and from Harvard Business School, but actually expected his profession to be an auto mechanic.
Talking about his business career, Bill noted that he’s ‘a decent manager today’ because he “made many mistakes and was able to recognize them.” Over his career, he has run “a bunch of companies in 15 different industries.”
He recently started Binnie Media (which includes NH1 news).
He noted that southern NH TV (WMUR and NH1news) is hurt by being included in the Boston media market. In doing this, the Boston media outlet is elevated from 15th to 7th, which means billions of dollars in revenue. The relation of NH coverage is minimized in this rating scenario, as Boston stations focus on Greater Boston stories.
Binnie media rated #1 for news in the 10pm time slot last week (Neilsen ratings)!
Bill says the secret to success in business is asking questions. Always ask ‘why?’.
He noted three things that are hard to do in business:
- Getting strangers to give money to you. (Take away their reason to say ‘no.’ Need a hook and a connection to get a ‘yes.’)
- Knowing when to say ‘no’ – have a business focus. It’s incredibly important to hire the right people; decide where your marketing dollars are invested; decide where you open an offices
- The secret sauce to business and to successful life is TIME. Time and the understanding of time are both really important.