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Pete
Salant has been consulting radio broadcasters nationwide
since 1983.
In the early 1980s, NBC
Radio brought
26-year-old Pete Salant to New York City as Director of Operations and
Programming of its beleaguered adult contemporary station, 97 WYNY.
In short order, WYNY became New York's first "worst to
first" story as Salant propelled the station to #1in
America's largest radio
market and #1 in the nation. While at WYNY, Salant chased
legendary competitor WABC (AM) into the talk format as WYNY pulled
in the highest
annual revenue and cash flow that any NBC-owned radio station would ever
achieve.
Salant is widely credited with having developed the Adult Contemporary
format while at WYNY, and he went on to innovate as a consultant. A
skilled musician and audio
engineer, Salant collaborated on the
introduction of the first four-band audio processor, and contributed
primary input to the development of Bob Orban's Optimod FM 8100,
which became the most widely used audio processor in radio history. Salant
left WYNY in 1983 to establish his consultancy.
As a programming consultant, Pete Salant advised
hundreds of winning CHR, Hot AC, AC,
Country, Oldies, Classic Rock, and Talk-formatted stations in
markets of all sizes around the country.
The proliferation of computer-based automation through the radio
industry during the 1990s saw Salant engaged as a consultant to each of
the major vendors of digital playback products, including RCS,
Prophet Systems, BE audioVault, and Scott Studios.
By the year 2000, consolidation had taken its toll on the demand for programming consultants. So Salant shifted gears and began producing TV commercials for radio stations, drawing on his extensive production background. In 2005, Salant joined Clear Channel's
Connecticut radio cluster as PD of four stations in the Hartford/New
Haven market, including WWYZ Country 92.5. Pete
departed Clear Channel in May 2009 to focus on New Media development.
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