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iHeart Restructures - Departures

T

TheBigA

Today iHeart announced some restructuring affecting its radio stations. As expected, there are some "departures." Here's the main story:

https://www.allaccess.com/net-news/...tmedia-revamps-markets-group-structure-with-t

www.countryaircheck.com has announced some departures affecting country radio stations:

Among the early confirmed departures are Baltimore SVPP & WPOC PD Mike Preston; KAJA & KRPT/San Antonio APD/MD/on-air personality and KASE & KVET/Austin APD/MD/on-air personality Bree Wagner; Little Rock SVPP/OM, KSSN PD and iHeartCountry Brand Coordinator Chad Heritage; WSIX/Nashville and iHeart Custom afternoon personalities Tige & Daniel; and KKXY/Oklahoma City PD/personality, KTST MD/personality and 26-year company vet Bill Reed.
 
TheBigA said:
Today iHeart announced some restructuring affecting its radio stations. As expected, there are some "departures." Here's the main story:

https://www.allaccess.com/net-news/...tmedia-revamps-markets-group-structure-with-t

www.countryaircheck.com has announced some departures affecting country radio stations:

Among the early confirmed departures are Baltimore SVPP & WPOC PD Mike Preston; KAJA & KRPT/San Antonio APD/MD/on-air personality and KASE & KVET/Austin APD/MD/on-air personality Bree Wagner; Little Rock SVPP/OM, KSSN PD and iHeartCountry Brand Coordinator Chad Heritage; WSIX/Nashville and iHeart Custom afternoon personalities Tige & Daniel; and KKXY/Oklahoma City PD/personality, KTST MD/personality and 26-year company vet Bill Reed.
Click to expand...


It's just the beginning. RadioINK is reporting over a thousand people could be without jobs. All on-air show lineups have been removed from the iHeart web sites ... in every market. This is on-going. You will be hearing the words "restructuring" and "departures" a lot for a while.

Happy New Year! :(
 
Sounds like 2 things are happening:

Markets 25+: Stripped to bare bones -- sales and a select few popular local hosts remain while VTing other stations and/or markets(?)
Anything larger than market #25: Local shifts plus VTing several smaller markets.
Production sounds like it'll be regionalized. Ditto with IT/engineering, and even programming.

I'd be curious if the on-air lineup will be as well. Something tells me that will be much harder to put into practice. If you're big in Peoria, are you willing to move 150 miles away to Chicago to remain big in Peoria because of "business efficiencies"? Clearly iHeart doesn't want to lose you...You may get a pay raise, but your workload will be doubled. Beyond being big in Peoria in the mornings, you have to do weekends in Chicago and mid-days in Indianapolis, Ann Arbor, and Des Moines. That may be a tough sell for many...but having that many people "on the beach" at the same time may not give a smaller-market jock much of any other option.
 
Presumably the announcement of iHeart's building a 2nd digital headquarters in Nashville is part of this plan. We can't discount the interest that Liberty Media has shown in iHeart.

Basically, iHeart builds new regional centers to crank out and acquire content of all kinds...on-air radio, podcasting, video, etc....and local radio will be the distribution channel. Np, I don't believe iHeart will be selling stations, even the dogs and dog markets equal distribution for national programming. The laid off sports talk host in Des Moines will start a podcast, and maybe be picked up by the iHeart app (no salary or benefits, however). That's going to be the new reality, whether as a competitor to SiriusXM or part of SiriusXM.


Don't think of iHeart of having interest in local radio. It's all about being in the space with Spotify, etc.

There is no one on the air in Market #3 after 7pm at iHeart stations, per Feder.

My 2 cents.
 
i think IHeartMedia is planning to phase out "Live Radio" in the next 10 years where the entire radio industry will just be people who run "Webstreams with ads" on FM and AM stations, today's layoffs are jobs that will never be returned as most of the people who got laid off today are gonna have to move on from this industry and look for a job in other industries that can't go with AI Robots yet. so in 5 years, all radio stations owned by IHeartMedia will become a company that isn't doing live radio n more where the only thing on the station is music, ads and that's it, and it will be streamlined not in the city you live in but instead from a computer set up to run a radio station in a office in either New York or LA.
 
Will_H_69_9 said:
i think IHeartMedia is planning to phase out "Live Radio" in the next 10 years
Click to expand...

I don't see that at all. They've already been offering the "premium choice" which is live hosted formats based at certain stations around the country. So it would be live radio, but not local. In point of fact, that's what Sirius is doing with many of its stations. Small non-group stations have been running satellite delivered formats for 30 year. There are lots of ways to do radio.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
Lance Venta of RadioInsight reports on Twitter that there will be more shoes to drop tomorrow and possibly further into the week
Click to expand...

It's been in the works since the bankruptcy. The lenders want to cut costs. Plus they need to prepare for Liberty & John Malone. He runs very lean.
 
Random thoughts: Today's cuts are just a sign that the biggest company is now the Dollar General Of Radio. It has nothing to do with the decline of radio (or Television). It is the new norm. How many outlets can we own.. how lean can we can we run them. If you own a small business or worked with franchising you know it started with big box stores, and fast food restaurants and went from there. Small town Main street USA is now comprised of National Chains which has put a strain on many communites. The municipality makes out with tax revenue, and if you own stock, you get to share the dividends. Now in another turn, online services are starting to cut into brick and mortar outlets. The restructuring of today will serve to group the whole collective.. concerts, podcasts, Satellite radio syndication into one nice marketing presentation for that Chain Store or restuarant with a thosand locations or that wireless phone company or insurance provider, or car manfacturer or parts outlet.The biggest company has realized that it is not work mining for the scraps in medium and small markets, when you can go right to the top and get everything a' la carte. Programmers are no longer needed in this new structure when you are creating the Artist and hits for a major marketing push (it is no longer about the music). So what about small market operators? We run lean to survive too. We never know when the next restaurant, retail store, manufacturing plant is going to close. The pool of potential businesses is shrinking and that big box store is not going to spend money with us when they can get everything under one outlet. My thoughts are with those who were part of the restructuring today. "Welcome To The New Age"
 
gr8oldies said:
Presumably the announcement of iHeart's building a 2nd digital headquarters in Nashville is part of this plan. We can't discount the interest that Liberty Media has shown in iHeart.

Basically, iHeart builds new regional centers to crank out and acquire content of all kinds...on-air radio, podcasting, video, etc....and local radio will be the distribution channel. Np, I don't believe iHeart will be selling stations, even the dogs and dog markets equal distribution for national programming. The laid off sports talk host in Des Moines will start a podcast, and maybe be picked up by the iHeart app (no salary or benefits, however). That's going to be the new reality, whether as a competitor to SiriusXM or part of SiriusXM.


Don't think of iHeart of having interest in local radio. It's all about being in the space with Spotify, etc.

There is no one on the air in Market #3 after 7pm at iHeart stations, per Feder.

My 2 cents.
Click to expand...

Also prior to the layoffs Iheart has been putting out promos on their O&Os for their podcasts and music awards shows. I know in parts of Pennsylvania there are Iheart owned stations starting to simulcast podcasts from their streams.
 
When AI voice is good enough to replace real people, what will happen to voice tracking? I know this is not 100% related to the issue at hand, just speculating into the future. My local NOAA weather robot sounds fairly human now, with less glitches in pronunciation. Just imagine, when someone comes up with an even better AI for voice, these large companies won't even need people. [sarcasm button off]

PS, as someone who was laid off from the industry in the 2000's, I understand at least a little bit of what some of these folks are going through. It's tough. Those of us who chose radio as an industry did it for the love of the medium.
 
boombox4 said:
Those of us who chose radio as an industry did it for the love of the medium.
Click to expand...

In the dichotomy of love vs. money, love is easier to get. Lots of ways to still get that feeling of love today. Those who lost their jobs should keep an open mind. I know a lot of people who've found jobs they love in radio. They may not pay a lot, they may not be in big markets, they may not be in the ideal format, they may not have a lot of listeners, but they love what they're doing. Those are the jobs to seek out. Losing a job this way can be a blessing.
 
We are seeing another 'trimming' going on by one of the largest radio groups. It is a remedy of a problem that comes from many sources. Debt has been an issue all along when companies went public and 'needed' station(s) in certain markets for an attractive portfolio. The big price tags were to be taken care of by airing more commercials and forcing pricing upwards. Neither had the desired effect. In the years that have passed, radio has faced challenges from new competitors after the ears of radio listeners. Then the business community, especially the traditional retailer, saw customer count and profits threatened by online retailers and big chain stores. Those retailers, the brick and mortar type, were an important factor for the radio station that counted on this group for advertising.

Today we see online and big chain retailers getting bigger. There's fewer local ad dollars. Radio stations are stretched to the max as if stations ever had adequate staff in the first place. Computers virtually saved radio as did consolidation because it allowed stations to share resources when the budget of one station made it impossible.

Listeners changed too. We have seen national radio programs do quite well. We hate to admit that listeners don't care if Delilah isn't local or that morning show is originating from another city and heard on 45 stations. And listeners seem to care less if there is a DJ. The Jack format would have never made it if listeners wanted to hear the deejay.

I look for more national and regional shows. I think more stations will have fewer jocked hours in the future.

From the sales end, I can see that scaling back. Regional and national offices will handle agency business with some token buys in the local market. In almost every major business right down to banks and car dealers, most have a bunch of location because that is what is required to make it these days. Look at Capital One. They shut most of their branches and are simply an ATM and drive-thru. Capital One customers seem to be at least mostly okay with this. Radio is working it's was to this.

It's happening in small markets. One station I know has a morning guy that functions as operations manager. His 2nd morning show voice is part-time. There's a pair of salespeople. After the morning show the station is voicetracked and the community is none the wiser. Nobody asks why it's always the morning guy doing the live remotes. The station has the listeners and the revenue is ample enough to pull some profit or at least savings for a rainy day. If they had to pay a couple of live and local jocks to fill out the day, the station would go under.

By the way, this is in no way a trend but rather one market I know intimately. There are 5 stations, 42,000 people and over 720 million in retail sales. I have watched revenue for 7 years. I can say in this market 5% of the dollars spent on radio in 2019 will go away or get spent elsewhere in 2020. For the print media, that figure is about 8%. From what I see, it is fewer advertising dollars versus losing dollars to other advertising venues. I base that on the percentage of big chain stores sales versus the overall retail sales. That figure has increased 50% in the past 7 years. In other words if it was 60 million in 2012 it was 90 million in big chain retail sales in 2019 resulting in a corresponding loss of radio revenue dollars.

These words from a former jock, former GM and long time sales guy who has worked from that tiny town to the #6 market. I'd love to be playing 45s, slinging carts and reading teletype because I have fond memories but that was then. I'm not all that happy about where radio is headed but radio doesn't care what I think. Even so, if I was running the show, I'd be running very lean too.
 
Have to think it would be hard for A/I to do a talk show.

boombox4 said:
When AI voice is good enough to replace real people, what will happen to voice tracking? I know this is not 100% related to the issue at hand, just speculating into the future. My local NOAA weather robot sounds fairly human now, with less glitches in pronunciation. Just imagine, when someone comes up with an even better AI for voice, these large companies won't even need people. [sarcasm button off]

PS, as someone who was laid off from the industry in the 2000's, I understand at least a little bit of what some of these folks are going through. It's tough. Those of us who chose radio as an industry did it for the love of the medium.
Click to expand...
 
TheBigA said:
I don't see that at all. They've already been offering the "premium choice" which is live hosted formats based at certain stations around the country. So it would be live radio, but not local. In point of fact, that's what Sirius is doing with many of its stations. Small non-group stations have been running satellite delivered formats for 30 year. There are lots of ways to do radio.
Click to expand...

If iHeart automates their stations, they’ll become nothing more than a repetitive Spotify playlist that doesn’t allow listeners to skip songs. The live experience and presentation are what differentiate radio from Spotify.

There are several serval successful national shows like Open House Party and Most Requested that offer a live interactive experience for the listener.

This is also how radio is done in other countries. In the UK, there are national feeds of Capital, Heart, Kiss, Absolute, LBC with live DJs around the clock outside of the local morning shows.

The typical DJ chatter I’ve heard on most iHeart stations is not locally relevant. From a business perspective, it makes sense to streamline resources instead of paying a full-time employee to record a voice track about celebrity gossip for each station.

While it really sucks for the people that lost their jobs, hopefully the positive outcome from this change will be that iHeart can invest more in compelling and engaging programming instead of mediocre “local” content.
 
louisparker said:
If iHeart automates their stations....
Click to expand...

Where did I say they're automating their stations?

To you other points, if these changes are bad for their stations, we'll see it in the ratings. The listeners will switch to competitors. On the other hand, if the listeners don't care, then we won't. We'll find out very soon.
 
louisparker said:
This is also how radio is done in other countries. In the UK, there are national feeds of Capital, Heart, Kiss, Absolute, LBC with live DJs around the clock outside of the local morning shows. .
Click to expand...

Yes and no. Countries with very dominant total national networks tend to be ones with one time zone: Germany, Spain, France, England, Hungary, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Jamaica, etc.

In the US, morning drive in CA is mid-day in New York. There are challenges, and the way most companies are dealing with them is by doing workparts that are inserted locally into the music & commercial log at each station.

iHeart has designed the latest iterations of RCS's Zetta to do just that very seamlessly. Many shows are done that way, such as Seacrest's morning show. If you look closely, some of the talent can do a week's worth of 4 hour a day shows in a few hours... sometimes with no in-studio time.

Live and Local: Live has no advantage over a well done bit or break that was recorded the day before. Local is irrelevant in most music formats.
 
Groove1670 said:
Random thoughts: Today's cuts are just a sign that the biggest company is now the Dollar General Of Radio. It has nothing to do with the decline of radio (or Television). It is the new norm. How many outlets can we own.. how lean can we can we run them. If you own a small business or worked with franchising you know it started with big box stores, and fast food restaurants and went from there. Small town Main street USA is now comprised of National Chains which has put a strain on many communites. The municipality makes out with tax revenue, and if you own stock, you get to share the dividends. Now in another turn, online services are starting to cut into brick and mortar outlets. The restructuring of today will serve to group the whole collective.. concerts, podcasts, Satellite radio syndication into one nice marketing presentation for that Chain Store or restuarant with a thosand locations or that wireless phone company or insurance provider, or car manfacturer or parts outlet.The biggest company has realized that it is not work mining for the scraps in medium and small markets, when you can go right to the top and get everything a' la carte. Programmers are no longer needed in this new structure when you are creating the Artist and hits for a major marketing push (it is no longer about the music). So what about small market operators? We run lean to survive too. We never know when the next restaurant, retail store, manufacturing plant is going to close. The pool of potential businesses is shrinking and that big box store is not going to spend money with us when they can get everything under one outlet. My thoughts are with those who were part of the restructuring today. "Welcome To The New Age"
Click to expand...

I think that's a pretty good analogy, although I suspect you intended the Dollar General reference to be derisive of these changes. I may well be wrong on your intent in this regard.

Dollar General has been amazingly successful in bringing more affordable goods to consumers, particularly in less populated areas that have traditionally been underserved by large retailers.

Iheart's changes won't save consumers money, per say, but it will allow the continued operation of stations in medium to smaller markets. They had to make a change like this as painful as it is for those losing their jobs.
 
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