Mr. Radio goes major league.

• Author: Johnson, J. Douglas
• Position: Jeffrey Smulyan of Emmis Broadcasting Group - Company profile

Mr. Radio Goes MAJOR LEAGUE

An all-sports radio station in New York was not enough for baseball fan Jeff Smulyan. Now he has the Mariners.

Jeffrey Smulyan is the 42-year-old chairman and 60 percent owner of Emmis Broadcasting Corporation, a radio group with 11 stations in top markets from coast-to-coast. It reaches 8.6 million people every week. Added to that are three other profit centers; two research firms and a city magazine. His company employs more than 1,000 people and has an estimated market value of $200 million. He has the mansion on the lake, the gold Rolex, the high-ticket automobiles and all the electronic gadgets required by a man of his stature. In its infallible wisdom, Cosmopolitan magazine named him "Bachelor of the Month" for June '88. What more?

How about a baseball team? During the third week in August, Indiana media were spattered with news about the big Seattle Mariners buy. There was a flash on every TV and radio newscast. The Indianapolis Star ran five stories in a Sunday edition: 112 inches, a good nine feet of copy. Smulyan and Michael G. Browning, president of Browning Investments, Inc., in Carmel, were rumored to be--, had decided to--, were about to-- and, finally, did buy the team. This action was no shock to anyone who knows Smulyan. It had to happen.

Life has not always been rosy for Smulyan. In fact, early on it was more a bed of nettles than posies. Some wondered whether he would ever amount to much. According to one biographer, the day he was brought home from the hospital, his sister, Doris, took one long look, shrugged and walked away. At the John Strange Elementary School in Indianapolis, he was cuffed and regularly banished to the hall for talking baseball and basketball and running his own pep rallies in class.

He did all right through North Central High School and interned summers as a writer on the sports desk at The Indianapolis Star but was no early blooming Dick Schaap or Dave Garlick. By cramming the day before tests, he made it through the University of Southern California with a degree in history and telecommunications, surf, sea and sand.

Smulyan's dad, Sam, a real-estate man, thought a lawyer would make a nice addition to the family. The younger Smulyan liked the West Coast, so stayed on at USC to take law. He made it through and everything worked out fine until he took--and flunked--the California bar exam.

Back home in Indiana, Smulyan the elder gave up on his son as a potential Perry Mason and bought into a small AM radio station in Shelbyville. They renamed it WNTS-AM for "news, talk and sports," but virtually nobody cared except Smulyan who had found his calling--"competitive radio." As manager, he hired a young fellow who was working as a TV...