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Anatomy of a Flip

G

groled

Guest
so how does this all work?

1-Do you fire all staff or keep some?
2-What about all the ad time sold and then you go ad free
3-What about syndicated shows. Is there a clause that lets you out scott free?
4-Does the boss literally walk in the studio, tell you to move and start playing the "stunt" or is everyone in on it?
 
As I've seen it happen a few times....here goes:

1. You keep a couple who know what buttons to flip and where the stuff is hidden. Then, as your people come in you let them go, too. Can't have old loyalties in the building.

2. I dunno, but traditionally, sales people get really pissed when they don't know about beforehand. remotes get cancelled, customers bow out, commissions are lost and they are ILL!

3. Don't know.

4. No. The boss gets one of his recently hired weasels to do it..or he gets the traitor who DIDN'T get let go do it. It is also easy to pass this dirty work on to a local manager whose sphincter is already slammed shut afraid HE'S going to lose his job.

And no...everyone's NOT in on it.
 
groled said:
so how does this all work?

1-Do you fire all staff or keep some?
2-What about all the ad time sold and then you go ad free
3-What about syndicated shows. Is there a clause that lets you out scott free?
4-Does the boss literally walk in the studio, tell you to move and start playing the "stunt" or is everyone in on it?
Click to expand...

Much of it depends on the company and managers involved. Best case, when CC fired Rick Dees they told him before the shift and let him have his last day on the air to say goodbye.

Worst case, you come in for your shift and the locks are changed...or if you are a PD, you read about it in the trades. A good PD friend of mine saw the ad in Billboard welcoming the new PD...to HIS stations!

In the case of a format flip, I've seen the PD come in with a cart rack (I'm old, remember) and a stack of new liners and say "get up, you're fired" to the guy on the air.

Like meep said, you don't tell the sales staff and the building will explode...

It can and does get pretty ugly.

Entercom did a dang good job of keeping this one a secret.
 
yeah with networks and harddrives someone doesnt have to sneak round 600 carts and hide in the production room carting up the new jingles for days
 
Reminds me of the time we flipped an Urban to oldies...very secret.....I had to come in overnight and fiddle with the processing...I'd have to wait for an old Motown song to adjust things for the oldies.

'Thumpin' processing does NOT sound good on the Byrds "Eight Miles High".

We took a turntable and a cart machine to the PD's house so he and the music director could cart up the library.
 
my favorite was doing mornings and getting a message one afternoon - "don't come in until 10 tomorrow."

arriving at 9:59 and being handed a stack of papers with those little post-it arrows - "sign here" for my exit papers and severance (pennies).

that was a rough day.
 
BTW...Entercom did a VERY GOOD job of keeping it secret.
The sales staff didn't know until Friday, and weren't told WHAT was happening even then.
They literally cancelled untold dollars' worth of remotes and spots.
Nobody in production or traffic new it was coming...yet the jingle package and everything were raring to go this morning.
It was slick from what I understand.

On the subject of firings and such...I recall being hired to replace an afternoon drive guy and to take over PD duties from the OM. He just told me to show up on Monday about an hour before the PM drive shift to familiarize myself with the board and etc.
When I got there, the old afternoon guy was on the air!
The OM had NOT informed the guy of his fate yet!
I actually walked in the control room while he was on-NOT knowing he was unaware.
He asked who I was and what I was doing.
I said, "Well...I'm the new afternoon guy!"
The rest of the story is very awkward...but I sure learned how NOT TO let someone go.
 
It wasn't a flip, but I got hired to replace a morning guy a few years back, and I was in the building for two weeks, before they finally let him go. I was told just to avoid contact with him around the building until they pulled the trigger. Pathetic.
 
Well, back in the old days...
The first format flip I lived through (briefly) was WMPS going from top 40 to country (on 680 AM, kids). We pretty well knew it was coming, and I was tasked with carting up the library (over 600 songs iirc). About a couple of weeks after the switch, they had a jock meeting while I was on the air. Normally, they would toss Robert E. Knight (then the Chief Engineer) on in my place, and I would go to the meeting. This time they just left me on the air, and I knew I was history. Right after the shift, I was sent to the GM's office and told they were bringing in the new PD, Johnny Randolph (hey, that's great), but they were giving him my airshift (hey, that's bad).
I started on air when I was 14. By the time I was 25, every station I had worked for had changed format except the station I started at, which is still to this day doing easy listening (WBAQ-FM, Greenville), and the guy who gave me my first job is still on the air there daily. Given, this was at the tail end of the AM thing, but I left quite a wake of destruction.
The quote didn't originate with John Long, but he was the first I heard say it, and it rings true year after year:
"There's nothing constant but change"
 
robgrayson said:
Well, back in the old days...
The first format flip I lived through (briefly) was WMPS going from top 40 to country (on 680 AM, kids). We pretty well knew it was coming, and I was tasked with carting up the library (over 600 songs iirc). About a couple of weeks after the switch, they had a jock meeting while I was on the air. Normally, they would toss Robert E. Knight (then the Chief Engineer) on in my place, and I would go to the meeting. This time they just left me on the air, and I knew I was history. Right after the shift, I was sent to the GM's office and told they were bringing in the new PD, Johnny Randolph (hey, that's great), but they were giving him my airshift (hey, that's bad).
I started on air when I was 14. By the time I was 25, every station I had worked for had changed format except the station I started at, which is still to this day doing easy listening (WBAQ-FM, Greenville), and the guy who gave me my first job is still on the air there daily. Given, this was at the tail end of the AM thing, but I left quite a wake of destruction.
The quote didn't originate with John Long, but he was the first I heard say it, and it rings true year after year:
"There's nothing constant but change"
Click to expand...


I had to literally pull the plug on Herb Kneeland at then 680 WKDJ in the middle of his shift when Viacom took over that station about '83 or so. I was on the phone with him at the time, trying to coordinate it. He was quite graceful about it. He put on an instrumental and said, "I'm just gonna double clutch it here until you're ready".

Rob, if I wasn't at home with the sinus crud I'd buy you to lunch at the Catfish place around the corner. Happy Birthday!
 
There are good ways to flip a format, and bad ways.

One station I worked for in a medium-large market (Top 35) kept practically everyone. About the only people who left were people who specifically identified that they weren't keen on the new format and didn't wish to work for it. There were new staffers brought in, but in the end just about everyone from the old staff was employed at the new station. It was a quite bloodless flip. And it was conducted by a company no longer in the radio business, but quite a well known one.

I also participated in a format flip at the same station under previous ownership.
I was brought in along with the new Program Director and discovered when we arrived Monday morning at 10 that the staff would be told they were gone at a meeting that afternoon. Then, the new PD and I had to work in the building for a week with people who had been given their walking papers. Most of the old staff were professional about it and didn't give us much grief. But, it was not the way I'd ever like to do a format change again.

My overall opinion of format changes is that if it makes sense to keep people, you keep them. You make the minimum amount of changes necessary for the success of the new station. Of course, there's no denying there can be sitations where overturning an entire staff is a necessity. In that case, one would hope the situation would be dealt with as humanely as possible. Unfortunately, the fact of life in radio is that it doesn't always happen that way.

Ultimately, yes, the salespeople need to be brought into the equation...but, not too early on. Some sales types (as well as other departments, too!) feel the need gossip, which is how format changes and staff lineups appear on boards such as this one from time to time in advance of flips.
 
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