Alan Burns
Alan Burns & Associates
Alan Burns is President and Chief Executive Officer of Alan Burns and Associates, a worldwide media consulting firm with offices in the United States and Germany. The firm has consulted over 200 radio stations and large groups, including ABC, CBS/Infinity, Emmis, and Clear Channel Communications, and radio clients in the US, Europe, Scandinavia, the Mid-East, Australia, and New Zealand.
Burns received an MA in Mass Communication from the University of Alabama where he was named “Outstanding Alumnus” in 2005. Burns has been in mass media for over 35 years. He served as a consultant with noted broadcast research and consulting firm Frank Magid Associates,in the late 1970s, then joined ABC radio at WLS Chicago. In 1979 he moved to WRQX Washington D.C. as Program Director.
Mr. Burns launched Alan Burns and Associates in 1985, and the company quickly became one of the top radio programming and marketing firms in the U.S. Alan Burns and Associates/Europe is also now the largest radio-consulting firm in Germany, with additional clients throughout Northern and Eastern Europe and Scandinavia.
Mr. Burns has been something of a pioneer in the use of audience research in radio, having conducted, among other things, the first cluster analysis project in the industry. He is quoted in Wimmer and Dominick’s collegiate textbook Mass Media Research.
Mr. Burns' strengths include strategic vision, market research, marketing/advertising/promotion, market and product positioning, creation of entertainment products, and envisioning possibilities. For example, he advised CBS Television to pursue music-TV in the early 1970s before MTV was created. He also recommended that Columbia Records begin marketing music videos in the early '80s (videos later became large revenue sources for most labels). Similarly, he advised Elektra Records in the early '90s as to how to position both artists and record labels. Mr. Burns accurately predicted the far-reaching effects of radio ownership consolidation in an article written for Radio and Records in 1995.
In addition to its work in commercial radio, Alan Burns and Associates has used its marketing, research, and creative skills to advise clients such as DMX Cable, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, major record labels such as Atlantic, Elektra, and RCA, and the NBC Television program “Red, Hot, and Blue.”
Mr. Burns has served as a member of the Management Steering Committee for the National Association of Broadcasters, is invited to speak at most major industry gatherings, and has authored articles in every major radio industry publication. Additionally, Mr. Burns co-authored the radio industry best seller, Morning Radio: Creating On-Air Superstars (1999) and "Psychographics and Radio Decision-Making" in the New Mexico Journal of Communication.
