Bonneville's Seattle GM

[TowerLamp]

From All Access:

"BONNEVILLE INTERNATIONAL has named SCOTT SUTHERLAND Market Manager for its three newly acquired SEATTLE radio stations.

SUTHERLAND has been serving as Dir./Sales for BONNEVILLE’s PHOENIX Radio Group since JANUARY 2005 and will assume his new responsibilities for the company in SEATTLE upon finalization of a local marketing agreement (LMA) with ENTERCOM...

 

[RadioRon]

so what does that mean for current Entercom management? Will they remain with Entercom?

 

[LITTLEBOYBLUE]

so what does that mean for current Entercom management? Will they remain with Entercom?

In all fairness...there is apparently no such thing as a stupid question.

OK...I tease because I love. If you're fairly new to these situations...almost always the old (in this case Entercom) management is out and the new company (in this case Bonneville) puts in their own leadership. But in this scenario, Entercom keeps the other stations so the market management and station management of THOSE stations would stay. Likely Dave Pridemore is the most visible casualty of this. When Bonneville gets to town it will be time to see if there are changes on the Programming front (e.g. Clendenning, etc.). I wouldn't suspect changes on the KBSG front (yet) ... but since KIRO is the station that they probably want to re-tool {feels natural right now using the word "tool" and "KIRO" in same sentence} I'd suspect it will be the most visibly affected in the near term either as far as management changes or simply with new directives about what station should sound like. Usually there is not much turmoil with regard to account exec's and office staff ... unless an incoming owner already has stations in the market (which Bonneville does not) and they consolidate the operations and are, in MOST cases, most loyal to their existing employees.

 

[Shark]

so what does that mean for current Entercom management? Will they remain with Entercom?

If you're fairly new to these situations...almost always the old (in this case Entercom) management is out and the new company (in this case Bonneville) puts in their own leadership. But in this scenario, Entercom keeps the other stations so the market management and station management of THOSE stations would stay. Likely Dave Pridemore is the most visible casualty of this.

"Almost" is the operative word here. When Clear Channel bought Ackerley, many thought they'd bring in their own management but nearly five years later Michele Grosenick is still in charge. What's surprising about the Bonneville move is that Dave Pridemore started his KIRO career as a Bonneville guy and supposedly was happy about becoming a Bonneville guy again. Perhaps they'll keep him on in some capacity.

 

[TowerLamp]

Pridemore stays on as Market Sales Manager, a newly created position. So David lives to fight another day!

 

[LITTLEBOYBLUE]

Pridemore stays on as Market Sales Manager, a newly created position. So David lives to fight another day!

I'm always hesitant to read too much into simple issues ... but this strikes me as an indication that Bonneville is a somewhat classier operation. As mentioned above, Dave has history with the company and it's nice and respectful they are making effort to take care of that history of service both to them and to this market.

I only have two data points of personal involvement with Bonneville ... one is pretty old (go figure) from when they owned KIRO as a combined AM/FM/TV operation. In that case, my take was that they were generally willing to invest in the newest toys and renovations and so forth to keep the operation competitive. The downside was local leadership (at the time Lloyd Cooney and Ken Hatch) sometimes seemed to come across as a little "power happy" which affected the morale at the operation a bit. But the take I had was they were generally supportive of keeping their stations in the game. KIRO was first to go electronic (from film), first with chopper, usually more progressive set design, etc. -- all those things that are tough to do without someone willing to write the checks to back you up.

The second data point was in recent years in the web game...had interactions with them on corporate level. Again, the company had a vision for what they wanted and it was generally more aggressive than what most competitors were doing; and the only frustrating thing was again...the local people driving the initiatives were a little forceful; but what they were told to implement was generally pretty decent strategy.

All this to say I would think the Eastlake contingent has every right to be happy and optimistic that they may be getting the support they want/need to get in the game again. Think they may have the support of a completely different corporate mindset than "just keep the shareholders off our backs"!

(And I caught one of the license transfer announcements on air the other day ... listing dang near every executive who has ever worked for ... or spelled ... Entercom as part of the legal announcement. Certainly hope that every airing of that announcement counts against their respective 15 minutes of fame).