TheBigA said:
The very first thing Larry did when he bought the CBS cluster in Portland was fire on air talent. In fact, the very first thing Wilks did when it bought CBS in Kansas City and Denver was fire talent. I have no reason to feel that this pattern is limited to a handful of companies.
A, you're absolutely right, but wouldn't you agree modern-day CC/Citadel/Cumulus have raised the practice to an art form? And for no other compelling reason than corporate cost-cutting?
New owners/management coming in and blowing out talent, or more often than not an entire airstaff - format change or not - is in itself old as the hills. Since you brought up WKRP, isn't that how the original show ended...Mama Carlson sold the place and the new owners came in and blew out the airstaff in a format change? Yes there was often cost-cutting involved but wasn't it usually tied to local results, rather than corporate fiat?
The four years I spent working for (former 'GR PD) Larry Anderson at WWVA-WOVK/Wheeling 1989-92 were a time of transition in the industry. When owner Osborn Communications had lost its shirt on a failed joint venture called Fairmont, they began to plunder the two successful properties in the company: Wheeling and 93Q-WNDR/Syracuse. The cost-cutting began in those two markets to attempt to prop up Osborn's other failing properties.
In addition, Osborn had bought a station in Brunswick, GA to upgrade its signal in an attempt to get into the Jacksonville, FL market. When that failed, Brunswick, I'm told, became the nation's first LMA. In two years we went from getting profit-sharing checks to layoffs...entirely because of financial woes at the company's other failing properties.
At least in my experience...it wasn't all sunshine and roses before consolidation and fire and brimstone after. But it did give people pre-disposed to cutting in all the wrong areas a forum to do it on a grand scale. And since many consolidators grossly overpaid for those properties...it only made the situation worse.
And as far as radio salespeople go...Herb Tarlek's still about as faithful a depiction as they come.
The leisure suit's long gone and sexual harassment laws prohibit hitting on the receptionist...but I've only worked with a handful of AE's who wouldn't sell your mother if that's what they needed to do to make budget. Having been production director or a main go-to prod guy for most of my four decades in this business, that's been my experience.
I read Jerry Del Colliano every morning...I believe he'd welcome significant re-regulation of the business. But I don't see it solving anything. What I would like to see is to see an end to move-ins and new licensing of any kind. It sounds mean but I think it's time for the FCC to allow for some significant contraction. If a signal has a history of failure, let the license expire and turn it in for a tax deduction. Our competition now goes far beyond our medium, and far beyond TV and the web. It's cell phones and texting. It's on-demand programming. Only those who can adapt will survive. I know Jerry sometimes sounds like the Apple stockholder that he is, but he makes very good points.
