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Clear Channel Blowout Update?

S

stafferman

I'm not trying to revel in people's despair but how bad was it today for Raleigh & Greensboro?

I didn't see any listing of firings on radio-info or all access

I know Rush Radio is all but flushed but the other stations...?
 
I liked listening to Wicker, and have enjoyed listening to him since his days on WBCY in Charlotte. I much prefer Wicker to Roper in the morning. Wicker is about the only time I listened to WTQR, and that was for Wicker.

It is a shame what WTQR has become.

I was reminded last week of how things changed when I was traveling to Raleigh. I ran into stopped traffic on 40 East near the 15/501 interchange. I knew there was a traffic accident ahead, how, you ask, the message board signs. Not being from the Triangle, I checked traffic reports on air, and all I got was "there is an accident and back up on 40." Duh. I remember the good old days when they not only told you of the accident but alternate routes....

Back to my Sirius programming
 
Yep - I remember Jeff from WBCY days, too. He's always been good on the air. And Rod - geez. I remember when WMAG first went on the air 100 years ago. If my noggin's working right, it was Flynn in the morning, Rod in middays, Bill Gable in afternoons. Jim Ballard was the production voice. George Francis the GM? Took the market by freakin' storm.
 
what is the thinking at CC?
I saw a story that they are going to have more local programing.
how do you have more not less local when you fire everyone?
 
Back to my Sirius programming
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That's what it has come down too....might not be local but atleast a majority of it is live and real, people not pretending to be in your city and pretending they know where accidents and happen

Listening to outsourced traffic reports is embarrassing, I'm pretty sure Clear Channel/Metro/Total Traffic/ Whatever the F they call it now, is just hiring college interns to do all their anchoring
 
CC spun with a press release claiming there would be more local, blah blah blah. Their thinking is that Bob Pittman (and John Hogan under his direction) are doing away with local-jock-driven music radio, driving bottom line by slashing to the total bone. Regional and/or national programmers, so-called "premium choice" programming, voice tracking by a shrinking stable of talent.
 
Yep - I remember Jeff from WBCY days, too. He's always been good on the air. And Rod - geez. I remember when WMAG first went on the air 100 years ago. If my noggin's working right, it was Flynn in the morning, Rod in middays, Bill Gable in afternoons. Jim Ballard was the production voice. George Francis the GM?
This is partly right, as JT Austin came from Raleigh's rocker WQDR as the Production Director and initially did afternoons but ended up in middays for the first 7 years. Rod didn't come on board until the 2nd or 3rd year after his PM Magazine gig. Bill Gable signed on as PD when Jim Ballard left all about the same time, and yes, George Francis was the ship's captain until about 1988, when Dick Harlow took the reigns.
 
Thanks for dialing in my memory. I remember listening to JB in Charlotte, too - on Big WAYS/95Q? I think George was down there before coming up to Greensboro. I ended up working with George and Jim both in Greenville-Spartanburg, where WMYI stormed into that market much the same way WMAG did in GSO.

It's ironic to contemplate it all in light of today. Back in those days, the mom&pop owners - Tom Armshaw at WRQK, Nick Patella at WSEZ, whoever had KZL and whoever had the precursor to WMAG (was it WGLD?) - started to have their heads handed to them when larger operators came in - Nationwide, et al. While the mom & pops were still playing scratchy 45s and automation tapes on reel-to-reel decks, the big boys came in with modern (for then) operations and solid formats and ate everyone's lunch. Consolidation started and solidified positions for Entercom, Jacor, finally Clear Channel. One of the few who survived those days and was able to shift to play with the big boys was George Beasley - then the king of brokered religious programming and automation. Who'd of predicted that he'd be the one to figure it out and thrive? Even Summit couldn't keep up with WSJS and WTQR ultimately.

Here's the irony. Now, the stations are gutted again. Automated again. Running on shoe-string budgets again. They sound like crap. Comparable to the early 80s last gasps of the mom & pops. And just like back then, the very same stations are vulnerable all over again. The question is, will any new players emerge who (a) believe that over-the-air radio is potentially a viable, sustainable, profit-generating business; (b) have a vision for a business model that will work; (c) have capital that isn't tied to private equity groups whose only goal, ever, is purchase, gut, liquidate and then leverage debt to drive share value for their private equity shareholders. If it's even possible that those new players exist, they will be more akin to the mom & pops who got their lunch eaten nearly 30 years ago. Since we live in a transmitter-optional world, I'm not sure that such a scenario is even possible. It's more likely just a bad acid trip to even contemplate it. But who knows?
 
I believe you're right about it all and the only independent operator I can think of nowadays would be Curtis Media Group. Friends there tell me that Don Curtis is committed to live and local and even has human bodies in his stations 24-7. Of course that doesn't account for the dismal showing of the Triad Sports Network. The Triad network of AM-ers that doesn't even cover ALL of the Triad. Should've hit the ground running as an ESPN threesome as "Triad Sports Network" is a misnomer.
 
I'm not in the Triad any longer and so I'm not familiar with their strategy (or lack of). One of the things independent, upstart operators are going to have to do is focus great guns on their digital platform. They'll have to devise a way to operate in which if you took their physical transmitter away, they could still make plan. Radical.
 
OK. Curtis Media Group is the largest privately owned Broadcast company in NC. They either have or have lma'ed stations from the coast to the mountains with a live body in each one every single night 24-7. I know they have a digital arm to the company but not sure how vested they are in the digital platform.
 
I hate to hear that Wicker is gone. He was incredibly nice to me, even though we worked at competing stations at the time. I hope that the radio landscape changes for the better soon.
 
So, with all this RIF going on at CC who is going to be on the air? There should be a HUGE party going on at the Dick and Entercom stations. Virtually no personalities on the air at WMAG and who knows what WTQR is doing. Guess CC could move from that big building into a storefront and continue to operate!
 
nuffsaid said:
So, with all this RIF going on at CC who is going to be on the air? There should be a HUGE party going on at the Dick and Entercom stations. Virtually no personalities on the air at WMAG and who knows what WTQR is doing. Guess CC could move from that big building into a storefront and continue to operate!
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Sounds to me like they could move the stuff they need to stay on the air to a 5 X 5 storage locker and install a satellite dish on the roof.

Like the infamous Moe Howard once said, "Step aside numbscull, I'm broadcasting!"
 
Worked with Rod Davis few years and also with Jeff Wicker, both of them great people.Wish them and their families the best in their futures endeavours. 8)
 
knowsdown said:
OK. Curtis Media Group is the largest privately owned Broadcast company in NC. They either have or have lma'ed stations from the coast to the mountains with a live body in each one every single night 24-7. I know they have a digital arm to the company but not sure how vested they are in the digital platform.
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Don't know where you're getting your information from, but one of the first things Curtis and Zachary did when they bought WSJS was to get it automated overnights. Poor Ron Wishon lost a job he'd had for years, before he ultimately passed away.

Furthermore, there are zero live bodies having anything to do with the operation of the Triad Sports Network. It's essentially a computer in a closet.
 
tropicanamedia said:
Worked with Rod Davis few years and also with Jeff Wicker, both of them great people.Wish them and their families the best in their futures endeavours. 8)
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You sound like the memo that comes out when someone gets canned! You must be a PD or MM!
 
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