Dave Witzig, Vice President of Content & Commerce Development, NetRadio Network, Lake Forest MBA Class of 1996
Dave Witzig spent 17 years of his life working for EMI Music (Capitol Records). He held positions in marketing, sales, promotion and executive management. He worked on a number of successful sales and marketing campaigns for recording artists including The Beatles, Garth Brooks, Bonnie Raitt, The Rolling Stones, Janet Jackson and Tina Turner. In fact, he relocated eight times for the company. What he wouldn't do is move back to Los Angeles.
"My wife and I decided we wanted to raise our kids in a place where we liked to live and that place wasn't LA," he said. The couple settled on Minneapolis, where Witzig serves as vice president of content & commerce development for NetRadio Network. "I knew I'd eventually wind up in Los Angeles with EMI, so I looked f or opportunities here in Minneapolis and the one that intrigued me combined my music background and the ability to market over the Internet." NetRadio Network appealed to Witzig's pioneering spirit and desire to work for a smaller company after his years with EMI.
"My first class in the LFGSM program confirmed a lot of the thoughts I had about working for a smaller organization, one where your thoughts and ideas have a more dramatic impact," he said. "I was one of the first few people to join NetRadio Network and now I'm one of three members of the executive management team. We originally had some struggle to finance the company, but we're now experiencing success, going into our second round of financing and fine-tuning our operations."
The first Internet radio network, NetRadio Network allows users to create customized programming to suit their individual tastes and interests. Tony Bennett fans can hear all-Tony, all the time. Baseball fans can tune into the baseball information channel and its three-to-five minute updates. It's Witzig's job to develop and/or acquire original programming for the site and its audience, and turn the listeners into users of music software consumer goods. He notes programming is challenging on two fronts: not only does the audience expect a wide variety of musical styles, but it is a global audience as well. NetRadio offers more than 125 channels of music and information dedicated to the Internet audience.
"More than 22 percent of our listeners are from outside the United States," he explained. "We're creating original content for a global audience. We provide niche programming as well. Jazz, for instance, means different things to different people. Most jazz radio stations play all the various styles, so you may have to listen to an hour of bebop to hear one fusion tune. With NetRadio, you hear only the music you want to hear when you want to hear it."
Witzig notes that his LFGSM experiences prepared him for the move into another field by giving him a good general business education with real-world emphasis. "I looked at several schools and did some interviews before making a decision. Most of the schools I looked at stressed the scholastic aspects more than real work," he said. "The thought of having some tenured professor teaching me about marketing when he hadn't been in the field for ten years just wasn't attractive. LFGSM had the faculty I wanted and the real world concept hit a nerve."
Back