Frank Bo Wood Sr.

Frank "Bo" Wood with his new magazine Tracks in his 35th floor offices at 312 Walnut St. The magazine is geared toward baby boomer music fans and Gen-Xers who share their tastes.
...
Frank "Bo" Wood has an economics degree - cum laude - from Harvard University and a law degree from the University of Chicago.But just now the creative force behind the founding of WEBN-FM 102.7 is pondering the wisdom of his latest multimillion-dollar media investment.

Tracks magazine, a music magazine for music lovers, launched its premier issue in January under the leadership of editor-in-chief Alan Light, who was born and reared in Springfield Township, with $5 million in backing from Wood, 61, and other local investors.
...
Wood may sit in his office on the 35th floor of the Scripps Center in downtown Cincinnati and cringe when he considers the money pouring into this effort and whether there will ever be an end to the red ink.
...
FRANK 'BO' WOOD
...
For a time, too, Wood was a local concert promoter.He brought Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company, Sly and the Family Stone, Arlo Guthrie and Paul Krasner to Music Hall.He tried to bring Jim Morrison and the Doors as well, but the city pulled the plug because Morrison was facing indecency charges for a show in Florida the week before.Wood sued the city but lost.

He folded up the concert promotion efforts and went on to become a radio company executive at Jacor Communications and later formed private venture capital company Secret Communications.In the meantime, he financed a handful of Web-based companies.Today he is chairman of the board of a music magazine via his limited liability company, Sub Rosa.

His roots in radio date to 1967.Upon graduation from the University of Chicago law school, he went to work as an associate at a Cincinnati law firm.He soon found that torts were not for him.

Meanwhile, his father, the late Frank Wood Sr., learned that a Cincinnati FM radio signal was up for grabs.
...
The sweeping playlist swap from jazz to rock first came about during Wood's 10 p.m.-1 a.m. Saturday night shift, a show dubbed "Jelly Pudding."
...
"My Dad didn't like the sound of the music until it started sounding like a cash register," Wood said.

But it was neither a smooth nor a free ride.

Wood remembers one bleak February afternoon in 1972 when a new bank executive called in a loan.Without it the station was doomed.Wood immediately gave up his salary to meet payroll obligations, but when he finished toting expenses and revenues for the week, he found he was still $30 short.

"True story - I went down to the pop machine on the first floor, and it had $30 worth of dimes," Wood said.
...
In 1999, when Wood divested his Secret Communications of the last of 15 stations in clusters in markets in Houston, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia, more than $550 million went to pay off debt and investors.

Not a bad run for the initial $5,000 investment on an orphaned FM signal 30 years before.

The passage of time still staggers Wood.

"One day some guy is trying to pass you a joint at Woodstock.You blink your eyes and your daughter is passing you a granddaughter," he said."Where did the time go?

"Where did it go?"

Tracks is the latest entrepreneurial effort for Wood, who has agreed to provide $5 million in backing over the next three years.

He figures that while black ink may fill the magazine's pages, it will be a while before he sees it on the balance sheet."A safe, sure investment?This isn't it," Wood said.

It's the possible multimillion-dollar windfall a few years down the road that brings entrepreneurs like Wood to the magazine industry.The value of a consumer magazine, like a radio station, is usually based on cash flow or earnings - before income taxes, depreciation and amortization - times a multiple of seven to 10.So if a magazine has annual earnings of, say, $2 million, its sale price will range from $14 million to $20 million.

When a pair of music magazine editors approached Wood about two years ago, Wood was intrigued by the opportunity to invest in a magazine that targeted at least two generations of music lovers: baby boomers who now check 401(k) performance the way they used to listen to Joni Mitchell, and the Gen-Xers who share many boomers' lost passion for music.
...
Then luck produced Wood, who learned of the venture from another multimillionaire in an international motorcycle-riding club.
...
"Pretty much the guy we described in our ideal world matched up with Frank."
...
"It strikes me that in Frank Wood they have the best of all possible investors - somebody who is jazzed with the idea."

Still, he said, the Tracks team must sell an enthusiast publication to people who may not be interested in reading about music any more.

"It's going to be tricky on the consumer side to see it work," he said.