"I’ve worked on numerous transactions with Dick over many years. He is creative, tireless and always upbeat."

— Jeff Warshaw, founder and CEO, Connoisseur Media

By Alyson Trager

As a kid, Richard A. “Dick” Foreman spent his evenings listening to “The Lone Ranger” on his transistor radio. This was his first introduction to the radio industry that would later become his life’s work. He loved all things radio: the announcers, the entertainers, the disc jockeys, the whole process. In the late 1950s, his uncle took him on a trip to Boston to learn more about radio transmission, and he was hooked. 

Foreman started his own radio station in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and later set one up at his prep school, Austin Cate Academy in Center Strafford, which ran until the school closed in 1981. During this time, he also worked part-time at a local radio station in Dover, solidifying his love for broadcasting. 
He got his first full-time radio job when he joined the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, working at a local station in Japan.

After his service, Foreman bounced around the country, working at smaller stations in Virginia and then moving on to bigger ones in Pennsylvania and Maryland before landing in Schenectady, New York, where he worked to reorganize the two keystone stations owned by General Electric, WGY and WGF. Taking part in a GE task force for broadcast communications, Foreman was charged with planning the company's direction, especially as FM radio began to take off with GE’s acquisition of two FM radio stations, one in Boston and one in San Francisco, in 1973.

Foreman then moved to North Carolina to work for Southern Broadcasting, later acquired by Harte-Hanks Broadcasting, rebuilding music stations in Houston, Phoenix, Memphis, Tennessee, and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. He had to get these running from the ground up, including hiring new announcers and formulating new advertising and marketing plans. 

Satellite Pioneer

With that hard-earned expertise, Foreman made his way to New York to work as VP of programming for the ABC Radio Networks in 1978. There, he used new technologies to integrate music into the stations at a time when the company didn’t have the transmission bandwidth to do so, creating an entire entertainment division that eventually pioneered the first digital transmission capability through satellite, bringing in NBC and CBS to change the way information was delivered to radio listeners forever.
 
“Anything could be transmitted through satellite communications digitally to all the radio stations in the country,” said Foreman, which was a fundamental change from delivering vinyl discs to station hosts around the U.S. 

From there, Foreman decided to create his own business, Richard A. Foreman Associates, also known as RAFAMEDIA, consulting radio stations that had fallen out of popularity because they weren’t effectively reaching their audiences. The venture started as purely a consulting firm, with Foreman’s first four clients being his four previous employers. 

“In 1985, the consulting business was good, but it really didn’t give me an opportunity to go into the financial, merger and acquisitions area of the business, which [was] really prospering at that time, because radio was becoming a real commodity on Wall Street,” Foreman said.

Since then, RAFAMEDIA has become involved with television, telephony, telecommunications and digital media, resulting in more than $2 billion of media transactions, including group transactions with NewMarket Media, Fritz Broadcasting, Sinclair and Black River Broadcasting, as well as digital transactions with DG Media, SnappSearch and JuiceReel.

“I’ve worked on numerous transactions with Dick over many years,” Connoisseur Media founder and CEO Jeff Warshaw said. “He is creative, tireless and always upbeat.”

Leading and Giving Back

Much of Foreman’s later career has been characterized by philanthropic endeavors and leadership roles. His involvement as director, and later as vice chair, of the Broadcasters Foundation of America allowed him to give back to broadcasters and others in need after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. 
 

“I think when you become successful in any particular genre, it is your mandate — your requirement — to go and give back to those people that have helped you through your initial involvement and growth in a particular arena”

— Richard A. Foreman

As a pilot, Foreman would deliver doctors and supplies to the southern parts of Haiti. This work earned him the Broadcasters Foundation of America Chairman’s Award in 2006 and a certificate of recognition from the National Association of Broadcasters in 2010. 

As for his next chapter, Foreman will continue to challenge himself, including while in the air, as he flies his eighth airplane. “I just want to do new things,” he said. “I want to enjoy life.”