The broom has swept again at Entercom Buffalo. The station eliminated its business office effective in August. Now, they have swept out the production department. Production will be done in Kansas City. Can't wait to hear their people stumble over Scajaquada, etc.! Matt Young is out. Todd Broady may be, too, that announcement may be saved for another day. They are chopping lower salaries when the top managers continue to sail along, literally! Sad place!
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Bad decisions about buying good stations
- Thread starter Oldbloodandguts
- Start date
Broady may hang on because of his role with the Buffalo Bills broadcasts. It's a shame about Matt Young. Talented guy who's had a long history of doing great local production. Easy to work with as well. Not surprised about some of the business office functions. Pretty much all of the majors are hubbing and automating traffic (with often awful results due to incorrect coding of sponsors). More responsibilities get dumped on sales people who should be spending their time SELLING, not filling out forms.
Most stations don't do sponsor protection much, if at all any more. It is no longer done in TV, where you see two or three car brands or dealers in a break.
In any case, coding a client for protection is depends on the salesperson inputting the right information to traffic. It is not traffic's responsibility to look up every client to see what they do.
Seems to me that's the case regardless of where the traffic department is. I've worked where the traffic department was on a different floor from sales. They might have well have been in another state.
K
kw1025
Guest
Radio One Buffalo hires great people who care, that is why one of the Entercom business employees will be joining our staff over the next few weeks. We do not believe cutting staff is the way to success. We believe that creating more revenue is a much better way to operate so all staff can benefit from overall success
An awful lot of companies talk about "serving their advertisers", then cut local points of contact. Entercom seems to be backing away from what made them successful and adopting the CBS way of life. That may be acceptable in large markets that are transaction-driven, but is likely to be less palatable to medium and small markets where relationships matter. They would do well to pay attention to the practices that sent both iHeart and Cumulus into bankruptcy. Cumulus has made an effort to create a much friendlier environment after emerging from the mess that the Dickey "top-down" regime left. Yes, there's still hubbing of traffic and local positions in that department have been eliminated but it's not as drastic as what Entercom is doing now and iHeart has done in the past. Somewhere, somebody near the top of the food chain needs to recognize that one size does NOT fit all.
Entercom's new direction is disappointing. It seems to me that it's been amply proven that you CANNOT "cut your way to prosperity." This move will add more to the responsibilities of account executives. Added to their "revised compensation plan" for AEs is going to increase discomfort on the sales floor. It's especially egregious in a market like Buffalo where Entercom has a team that has consistently outperformed both the market and competitors with arguable better numbers to sell.
Entercom's new direction is disappointing. It seems to me that it's been amply proven that you CANNOT "cut your way to prosperity." This move will add more to the responsibilities of account executives. Added to their "revised compensation plan" for AEs is going to increase discomfort on the sales floor. It's especially egregious in a market like Buffalo where Entercom has a team that has consistently outperformed both the market and competitors with arguable better numbers to sell.
The practices that sent both of those companies into bankruptcy was accumulating too much debt in ill-advised financial decisions. For iHeart, it was going private, buying back all their stock at the market-high price of $37 a share. For Cumulus, it was the $2 billion purchase of the already-bankrupt Citadel. Otherwise, neither of them would have gone bankrupt.
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I remember when it was common to have traffic done from a helicopter.
I'll be here all week.
Cumulus was actually absorbed by Citadel after they emerged from bankruptcy. They'd already shed a lot of debt when Farid Suleman took them into the bankruptcy that followed their acquisition of ABC radio. He then demanded ridiculous money to manage the company for the lenders who ended up with the assets. They balked, and the Dickey-led Cumulus group offered them $2.5-billion for the company. In essence, the Dickeys ending up managing the new company combined under the Cumulus name, but the old Citadel owners had a far bigger share of the stock than the Dickey family. They were essentially hired to manage the group. They then ran the new Cumulus into the ground - and were booted when another bankruptcy reorganized the company. Mary Berner has done a much better job rebuilding the company that the Dickey's drove into the ground.
K
kw1025
Guest
They paid WAY too much for these companies
K
kw1025
Guest
Mary Berner has done a great job with millions of bad debt now off their ledger to help EBITA. I can tell you that Cumulus in Buffalo is on the chopping block. They are divesting markets that they do not have top market share. In Buffalo, they have number 3 market share, just 20 percent of all radio revenue in Buffalo
Cumulus just divested NYC where they did not have a cluster capable of competing with the other big players in the market. It raised a lot more cash than they could have gotten out of the market by continuing to operate there. Ditto their sale of a couple of orphan stations in the LA market. They swapped stations with Connoisseur in a deal that strengthened the position of both groups in mid-sized markets.
The Buffalo market has been rebuilding a group stripped by the Dickey regime. It's a strong group with good numbers that has more than paid its way in the company. It's also fits the market profile that they like - not too small, and a dominant demographic position that they can sell. In radio, you never say never, but unless somebody comes along offering stupid money to get into the Buffalo market, they're not likely to sell as long as OTA radio is viable. I don't anticipate anybody will come along offering stupid money to a market which overall provides stable income but shows no tendency toward growth.
The Buffalo market has been rebuilding a group stripped by the Dickey regime. It's a strong group with good numbers that has more than paid its way in the company. It's also fits the market profile that they like - not too small, and a dominant demographic position that they can sell. In radio, you never say never, but unless somebody comes along offering stupid money to get into the Buffalo market, they're not likely to sell as long as OTA radio is viable. I don't anticipate anybody will come along offering stupid money to a market which overall provides stable income but shows no tendency toward growth.
K
kw1025
Guest
Your wrong. The Buffalo market is seriously underperforming in revenue. Cumulus wants to sell the market. It could be sold for 15 million tops. For everything.
Well, start getting your backers together, "Not Buddy." It's all or nothing. They're not going to sell the FMs piecemeal, and the AMs aren't worth much.
Excuse my skepticism, but $15 million for three 50kW FMs + two marginal AMs in Buffalo seems unrealistic based on current cash flow multiples, price per thousand (listeners) or flat stick value. If in fact that price holds, there will likely be more than a few takers with cash or cash + stock on hand to swoop them up. Saga comes to mind, as do Pegula Sports and Charlie Banta/Mercury Communications. Banta once owned the FM properties, for which he paid considerably more than $15M for one FM. Banta sold Mercury to Citadel. Also, Lew Dickey has a line of credit. And then there's a guy named Randy Michaels who's kept his powder dry. Some people think he's out of the game. Unlikely. Michaels would turn this market upside down (again), as is his standard MO.
As to the thread topic, Entercom's cuts don't come as a total surprise given David Field's comments about "synergies" when Entercom took over CBS. Damn shame that good people are now on the street. Entercom is known to cut reasonable severance checks as parting gifts. It's small consolation. Most people would rather work. Reliable sources say that most of the people who've been shown the door are over 50, knowledgeable and skilled in the art and nuances of radio. Some skills are transferable, but many employers look at applicants over the age of 50 with a modicum of disdain.
As to the thread topic, Entercom's cuts don't come as a total surprise given David Field's comments about "synergies" when Entercom took over CBS. Damn shame that good people are now on the street. Entercom is known to cut reasonable severance checks as parting gifts. It's small consolation. Most people would rather work. Reliable sources say that most of the people who've been shown the door are over 50, knowledgeable and skilled in the art and nuances of radio. Some skills are transferable, but many employers look at applicants over the age of 50 with a modicum of disdain.
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On the other hand, those over 50 with knowledge and skills possess all the tools required to start their own business. That's what "not Buddy" did.
What I don't understand is why outsource to a market nearly 1000 miles and one time zone away? Couldn't Buffalo and Rochester combine production duties? Or Hartford?
Too smart by a half. Typical. iHeart learned a few things about hubbing across time zones and scaled back to regional applications. The workload and logistics are bound to create operational stress, to say nothing of potential human stress. But that should be of little concern. [/sarc]
Some former iHeart staffers also learned that the stations they used to work for still needed them, so they offered their services back to the station for a price.
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