After reading the accounts of technical, business and financial ineptitude of Jerry Don Russell, I decided I'd go ahead and tell my story. And maybe this will fill in a few gaps for those of you who are interested.
Oh, you know this is going to be a fun post.
The first day "Mr." Russell walked into the Cleveland Delta Radio stations as the owner I knew it was time to start backing up the data on my computer. He'd come with an entourage; a gang of hangers-on who'd spilled out of a pair of black Cadillac Escalades. Russell's Escalade had low profile wheels and spinning rims. All of them wore black business suits. All image, no substance. The first thing most of them did when they walked in was light a cigarette. They knew it was a no smoking facility and it was time for the Alpha Dog to start marking his territory. That first visit consisted mostly of a staff meeting where he gave a commendable performance. He’s quite a charismatic fellow. He started off by chastising anyone who'd dared show up without a piece of paper and pen for taking notes. Once everyone was set, he proceeded to ramble on about a lot of nothing for 45 minutes. Though, he did assure us all that we still had our jobs and that he was going to do everything he could to take care of us because he knew we were a good team. He talked about his plans for making a smooth transition, though he never said what the plan was. He talked about his plans for the stations. The only thing he knew for sure was that at least half of them needed to flip urban PDQ. No specifics there either. Then, he told us he wanted to get more black employees. Not to find more radio professionals. Not to search for more qualified people. Not to conduct proper outreach to find good talent. He just wanted to see more black people at the station. The insinuation was that the previous owner hadn’t done enough in this area. “Hello, Mr. Russell,” I thought. “Does EEO mean anything to you?” Every employee at the station was there because they did their jobs well. The ones who didn’t were quickly washed out regardless of color.
And Russell held true to his word. New people flooded in quickly. The new traffic guy was brought in straight from behind the front desk of a hotel in Greenville. He drove in each day and the girl doing traffic (who was leaving in 2 weeks to go back to school) tried to show him all of the intricacies of DARTS traffic and billing. He was a nice guy and he seemed bright enough, but you could tell from talking to him and to the traffic girl that this wasn't going to happen. Those first days, our guys in Greenville at KRKD and KZYQ quit. That left the office for KZYQ and KRKD empty. That meant I was blessed with an excuse to drive the 40 minutes to Greenville each day to take the logs on floppy disc and enter them into the old DCS system. Within a day or so, there were two local guys "working" at the station there. I don't know what they did, but they were there every day when I got there and they didn't seem interested at all in learning how to receive the log via email and transfer it into the system. One was a club DJ. He talked about these music mix CD's he produced for Jerry and the rest of the crew. "Yeah, I give 'em the first one free. When they like my mix, I charge $10 per CD after that." The mighty Delta Radio cluster; from pro-radio to bootleg piracy inside of 2 weeks. The other guy was one of the Delta’s notorious “promoters.” If you aren’t hip, a promoter is traditionally a con-artist that does the ol’ shuck & jive on club owners and music acts to make scratch off putting together concerts. He was the new GSM. And he already didn’t like Russell or the minions, either. There was dissention in the ranks from the first day. But I enjoyed that time each afternoon. Getting away from the office was essential for maintaining sanity. Kingfish, the morning man on WDTL, quit very early on into the deal to go work for the guys across town, leaving me to do mornings. Lord knows I wasn't built for that. The local lady Russell hired to be GM was gone just that fast, too. They were smarter than me. I stayed on for a couple more weeks while I decided what I was going to do about my Dream Job turned Hellish Night Terror. I was just buying time until I found my next gig.
It was during this time that I became more familiar with "The Plan." The Plan was referenced loudly and often by Russell to anyone who had questions about anything. I never got to see The Plan, nor was it ever shared with me. The Plan was kept in a leather bound executive binder that Russell always kept with him. He referred to it as his “Bible.” He liked to wave it around and talk about how all his deals were in there and the game plan for turning his stations into a media empire. It turns out that The Plan was to buy a lot of radio stations, mismanage them and make sure that every facet of the operation was as shady as possible. All image, no substance.
“You see, when we’re selling advertising, the business has a budget. And the budget is like a pie.” Russell is a regular Einstein. “But we don’t want the whole pie. We just want our piece of the pie.” What? You don’t want to try for the whole thing? “And the pie doesn’t get any bigger.”
[EDIT] Jerry Don Russell is incompetent.
The mood in the office was that of a city under communist siege. You weren't sure whom to trust. Hurried whispers behind closed doors were exchanged. New people were in and out all the time. Some were introduced one day and then were never seen again. More smart people, I guess. It was all typical "station under new management stuff" but with a focus on all the wrong things. WDTL was operating AudioVault using ABC's LocalMax for jock VT's, music scheduling. The LocalMax U.S. domestic service was being discontinued in less than a month. I couldn’t get time with Jerry to make a plan for handling the impending train wreck. Meanwhile, new furniture showed up in the lobby. Garish, overstuffed pieces in loud colors. Gone were the framed posters of Garth and Shania. Now, hanging in their place were Dollar Store lithographs of black children at play. That would have been okay, I guess, if the station were a pastor’s office or perhaps a daycare…or maybe if the flagship station wasn’t the #1 country giant in 7 counties. (The last numbers I remember were a 21 share for WDTL in early 2004.) Any attempt to get information on The Plan for any of the stations was quickly met with contempt or simply silence. Those are the only two responses appropriate for someone who does not have display total faith in "The Plan," right? If you pressed the point, you were leaned on. “What? You think you’s the only guy who know how to run things?” Russell maintained he had a cadre of highly trained engineers, technicians and programmers at his other stations in Texas and Arkansas armed with a fleet of U-Haul trailers ready to convoy to Cleveland at a moment’s notice to get any job done “if you can’t handle it.” “Sheesh, Jerry. I’d do something for you if you ever told me what you wanted to be done,” I thought. But nothing was ever passed down to me from on high was that I was a useless staff member and that I would now be a fulltime salesperson. I refused, saying I was a production/operations guy. I had handled a few sales accounts up until that time to get my pay up, but these were friends with local businesses. Most days in that 6-week period that I was with MRS, I just hid out after the morning show and waited until the log was ready for the afternoon drive to Greenville.
The bit that told me the absolute most about Jerry Russell and the outfit he was running was his performance one day in the front office. One of his goons had fielded a phone call from an agency wanting to place a buy. It was to start the next day, but for some reason, he wanted those spots to start right now. The traffic girl pointed it out and he proceeded to cuss her like you would a common whore. She left His Majesty to bring me the order. I knew something was up before she ever got to the control room. One of the goons (This one was Jerry’s driver. Yes, he had a driver.) was in the studio with me while I was dubbing barter spots. He’d leave the room now and then and disappear into the office where King Jerry was presiding and then come back and ask me things like, “What direction them dishes out back pointed to?” Up, of course. He was trying to ask we what satellites our dishes could see. They were trying to get Tom Joyner, as I recall. This time he walked in smoking his filthy Virginia Slim Menthol 120 and said, “I hope you know how to play a radio commercial.”And then in walks traffic girl. Very quiet. Looking at me but afraid to say what she was thinking because of the goon in the room. She gave me the insertions. I put the spots in the log. 10 seconds easy. The goon looked impressed. I went and found traffic girl and we walked outside where she started breathing deeply and sobbing and she came to pieces trying to tell me the foul things he had just said to her. That was the day I knew contempt and true disgust for a fellow human for the first time.
I carried that lump of magma-hot anger for a long time. I carried it not because of his childish inability to control his outbursts at the employees. Not because he was ruining the good thing we’d had for so long. I kept that anger because of the arrogant way he betrayed his promise to take care of us on that first day. I satisfied my anger for awhile by keeping in touch with my old mates from the station and talking smack. But you can’t live on that stuff. And watching as his Plan backfired on him and the empire crumbled, I knew that he was reaping what he sewed. And the anger faded. Now, I just feel blessed because it was through that experience that I ended up with my current job. I love it even more than the last one. And now Russell has painted himself into a corner. He’ll never recover from the colossal screw up that was his time in radio. How sad. I’ve heard a lot of people say what M.R.S. stands for. For me, it’s the Most Ridiculous Situation I’ve ever been in.
Now get back to work, you slackers! Reading the forums isn’t in The Plan.
[EDIT-profanity]
