Diane Wade Exits WSEN

[CNYRadio.com]

Buckley has parted ways with another local air talent, replacing her with a voice tracker out of Connecticut.

http://www.cnyradio.com/2009/03/13/wsen-drops-middayer-diane-wade/

Also, details on an interesting find when we went looking for her photo to accompany the story. We're not sure how seriously it should be read into... if anyone knows anything else about it, please let us know via our e-mail on the site.

 

[theradiokid]

WFBL now has no midday personality? Ooohhh, this is not good. I used to love listening to WFBL, especially after they got rid of the shmuck voicetracking from WSEN personalities, and replaced them with their own set of DJs. Now, I don’t know how much I’ll be listening to WFBL, with all the changes it’s gone through. And, if they ax Dave “Smilin’ Smitty wit you!” Smith, I’ll scream!

--The Radio Kid
(Oswego, NY.)
My email: [email protected].

 

[Radknowski]

Buckley has parted ways with another local air talent, replacing her with a voice tracker out of Connecticut. http://www.cnyradio.com/2009/03/13/wsen-drops-middayer-diane-wade/
Also, details on an interesting find when we went looking for her photo to accompany the story. We're not sure how seriously it should be read into... if anyone knows anything else about it, please let us know via our e-mail on the site.

Bad move, WSEN. This is happening in markets large and small, from Tampa to Buffalo. In Tampa, an entire staff was blown out at one station and another voice tracks middays, nights, all nights and every shift on weekends save for midday Saturday. In Buffalo, Citadel blew out a well-known local midday guy at Gold-AC Mix 104 and a woman from Colorado Springs now voice tracks middays. You'd think they'd at least use somebody from the same time zone.

The new paradigm seems to be "live morning and afternoon drive," voice track middays and nights, yet another move that will drive listeners away. It may not happen immediately, but when local voices, especially established personalities, are replaced by drones from outside the market, the connection is lost.

The move to voice-tracking middays is particularly stupid because midday ratings at AC, Classic Rock and Classic Hits stations often carry the station. Cume in middays may be softer than morning and afternoon drive, but TSL and share are through the roof thanks to "at work listening." Local people make that connection better than even the best outside the market voice trackers.

Someday, some manager will have a "Doh!" moment and come to his/her senses. "You might do better if you have a live, local midday person on the air from 10 til 3." Good move Buckley, you've gone from shooting yourself in the foot to putting a bullet in your head. Penny wise, pound foolish. Sorry to say, that's typical of radio these days.

 

[BobRoss]

The new paradigm seems to be "live morning and afternoon drive," voice track middays and nights, yet another move that will drive listeners away. It may not happen immediately, but when local voices, especially established personalities, are replaced by drones from outside the market, the connection is lost.

Sadly, it's even worse at Clear Channel. Look at Y94, where mornings are live, middays are tracked, afternoons are Tesh (tracked) and evenings are tracked. That nice big studio, completely empty after 10am. Yet worse at Nova... where there's only one local voice in the morning, TRACKED, followed by the balance of the day being tracked or syndicated by out-of-towners.

You're 100% correct though... stations need to be live from morning drive through afternoon drive. And CHR stations must also be live in the evenings. When people call the request line for ANY reason at ANY time during regular business hours, there should be someone there to answer it. Doesn't matter if there's no contests or no requests... if a listener has a question about anything from a song title to a contest or where this weekend's remote will be... there should be a jock sitting there, ready to answer -- and (get this concept) ready to record the call in case it MIGHT be good enough to put it on the air!

All this robot radio... terrible. You might as well just shut down the signal and hand out free MP3 players. Voicetracking liners about sponsorships is not serving the public interest. At one point, the FCC said it was considering requiring stations to have their studios located in their actual city of license, with live staffing 24/7. That's a little extreme. However, I'm all for the requirement to have stations staffed 24/7. The requirement would return some live, local flavor to radio, it would bring back plenty of unused/displaced talent, and in the end, it would benefit stations because it would bring listeners back. In the end, I think owners would actually end up *thanking* the FCC for such a ruling.

For the naysayers who say staffing every station 24/7 would cost too much, OK... a compromise. At least one station in each cluster would be staffed 24/7. Beyond that, other stations would be staffed on a proportional basis, depending on how many stations you have in the cluster. If you have 1-3 stations, one needs to be staffed at all times. Four to six stations, you need to have live operators present on two stations at all times. If you have 7-9 stations in the market, then at least three need to be staffed all the time.

Perhaps the only defense for WSEN is the fact Buckley simply has a crappy cluster. They have one FM and two AMs, all airing oldies. They'll always have modest success, being the only oldies stations in the market. But they'll never be ultra-profitable because oldies doesn't attract the "money demos" that advertisers love to pursue. Selling oldies, oldies and nothing else but oldies is an uphill battle to begin with... add in the current economic problems, and it's not so surprising that Buckley has had to make so many cutbacks lately. Would be tough to change to a different format, seeing as how just about anything profitable is already taken by one or more other clusters... and abandoning oldies would open a chance for someone else to pick up the format. Buckley would be better off if they had a second FM signal and the ability to launch a more profitable format, while at the same time, keeping WSEN intact. Too bad they missed out on the WWDG sale.

 

[Radknowski]

Salient observations, Bob. Although I'm out of the market, I can "hear" the effects of what you're describing in Syracuse happening in markets all over New York state and the country.

I can also anticipate a few posters reading your post and responding with, "nobody calls requests lines anymore" or "if people want the name of a song, they'll look it up on the station's website" or "people don't care what a station plays as long as it plays the hits."

Disagree.

It's always been the role of a DJ-Air Personality-Jock is to tell the listener what's been/being/will be played and relate that to what's going on. Simple, huh? But it doesn't happen enough, if at all in some cases these days. It sure doesn't happen with John Tesh, one of the most disconnected radio shows on the radio. That some stations run Tesh in afternoon drive is testimony to just how sorry things have become. "Intelligence for your life," he calls it. It's something any experienced jock in America can do just as well if not better. Why Tesh? Why not the live, local jock, whether it's Brian Bennet or Bonnie Bell?

Oh, because the company has to pay Brian and Bonnie. Has to pay benefits. Has to pay Social Security and unemployment taxes. Has to contirubute (at least until recently) to Brian and Bonnie's 401(k).

ATTENTION RADIO COMPANIES​

Good, live jocks are NOT an EXPENSE, they're an INVESTMENT in your FUTURE!​

John Tesh and others like him are eminently boring. Sure, Tesh has a recognizable name, a brand, a good voice and a couple of Grammies. How does he RELATE to a listener in Syracuse? How does he relate to a listenr in Syracuse any differently than he relates to a listener in Richmond? He doesn't. He's lame, limp, vapid, unexciting, detached. He ain't local and he ain't live. If this guy is getting any kind of respectable ratings in PM drive against whatever the competition in Syracuse puts up against him, it's a sad commentary. Worse, it's an indictment of the losing PD and the air personality as much as it is the station.

In Buffalo, Tesh is on the gold based AC at night. He gets his butt handed to him by another satellite siren, the cheese-twit known as Delilah and Tesh gets beaten by lame-dame, Kim Iverson, who hosts a brutally disconnected train wreck that passes for a radio show. AC radio in Buffalo at night is a steaming plate of dog dung.

Any wonder Regent's COUNTRY station in Buffalo, which is live and local, smokes the AC competition in just about every demo?

Back to Syracuse. It used to be a great "feeder market." It used to be a great market, period. With great personalities on great AM and FM radio stations. Where radio men and women would settle in, become part of the community. Raise a family. Contribute to the quality of life. Stimulate the economy. Now, Syracuse is just a speck on the corporate map for nearly bankrupt (and long ago morally bankrupt) companies like Clear Channel and Citadel.

So this is what radio's become. Anybody under 30 thinks radio is irrelevant because the CEO's of radio companies have done just about everything to BE irrelevant.

Radio. Used to be Red Hot. Now just Red. As in embarrassing and broke. It's not the fault of the jocks.

It's the CEO's. Dumb as a stump.

 

[wallywilcox]

There is nothing new here. Station owners have long ago forgotten how to sell radio and quite frankly so have station programmers. In an attempt to increase sales stations have increased the size of their sales departments. They have brought in guys who sell cell phone at kiosks in the mall and the girls who answers the phones in car dealerships to sell radio time. The theory being that a 10 person sales team with less experience but paid less can produce a larger profit margin than a 5 person experienced sales team earning twice as much. Great theory but these owners and stations have forgotten one thing...they need a decent product to sell and they don't have it.

The commodity, the product in radio has always been programming and the people who are in the programming department. The on-air talent, the production talent, the promotion people and road warriors. The sales department used to sell the programming, the personalities, the stations position and committment to the community, now they sell the group, the artificial reach, the imagined impact, the illusion of success.

There seems to be an epidemic of program directors that have no idea how to program and the ones that do aren't willing to stand up and be counted they are just happy to be employed. The thought of programmers wearing ties and spending their days on conference calls and in daily meetings with GMs, SMs, GSMs and so on is laughable and is costing the industry money and quality people. Program Directors program. That is the job. Program the station. Protect the product. Be the leader and the go to guy. Make sure the product is of the highest quality. Aircheck your jocks, tell sales no, tell the GM no when necessary, do your job until they walk you out the door. At least you leave with your dignity and with your integrity.

I have been fired from more than one station for refusing to compromise the product. It was my job as a programmer to give the people who signed my paycheck the best I could give them and not to cave because they wanted something different. If they new how to program they wouldn't have hired me. It was my job as a PD they listen to them and to either agree or disagree. Most times I disagreed.

All this talk about people getting fired and people being let go is sickening. It is sickening to think that PDs aren't standing up for their staff and doing what they get paid to do. Enough CYA (covering your ass). Do your job and produce the best product possible while protecting the product and the people you have surrounded yourself with to produce that product.

You guys seem to have some respect for Steve Lawrence and for Kiss 102 and you should. In the Summer of 1994 I took Steve Lawrence and a few other green kids who were interested in radio and designed from the bottom up Kiss 102. Steve was my right hand man. He was my friend. I think Steve may have been 20 or so at the time. He was doing a little on-air work at Rock 107 while it was CHR and I was programming it after JR and before big ED changed the format. Mostly though Steve was in the van and working in promotions.

I had been at the station for about 3 months when WRCK was sold. I will never forget how this happened. I had moved up from Cortland where I was programming Yes-FM to program Rock 107. I found a house in New Hartford, my wife and 2 kids were still in Cortland because my son was in school. The Friday school finished in Cortland I was in Cortland to move the family into our new place. We unpacked the truck and got the house in order on Saturday and Sunday. On Monday I walked into WRCK and was told my services were no longer needed, along with just about everyone else. Dead broken not a cent to our names we lamented our situation.

I wasn't laying down and taking this easy. I am a program director I came to the market t program and that is what I was giong to do. I had a plan. I was going to design a radio station from the ground up and I was going to approach the worst station in the market and pitch them the idea of changing their format and going with mine. I started working on my plan. I created a basic format template, I created clocks, I designed logos and slogons and then I called Steve. I needed a right hand man, I needed someone not afraid to work for nothing and who could bring the kind of energy Steve had to the project. Steve was in. I told Steve that we were going to create a kick-ass CHR station that would take the market by storm. Steve along with the promotions girl and sometimes air talent Becky and JJ (who ended up going to WOW instead of hanging with us) sat in my kitchen and restyled the station I had started to design. We came up with new slogons, new liners, we created the playlist, we designed the logo, we came up with the color scheme, we did it all from top to bottom. It took us two weeks. When we were happy with what we had done I called the worst station in the market, the dead last Country sh#t-hole WKDY. A 50,000 watt flame thrower that sounded like a cb radio. I talked to the owner, Norma Eilenberg and told here I could turn around her station and I could do it in a year. We met, and she wasn't buying it. We met a second time and a third and on the third meeting she said okay she would do it.

I walked into the station the following Monday, I brought my own computer and got to work. I met with the staff. I told the current PD that he was no longer the PD and that there was going to be some changes. I had planned on keeping as many of the staff as possible but it didn't work out that way. The only people who were left when the smoke cleared were Diane Chase the midday girl and Estelle (Nicky Knight) the over night girl. The rest were gone. Steve and I worked tirelessly leading up to their departure. We put in 18 and even 24 hour days. Becky was right there with us. Here was our plan. Myself and a couple of young promotions people were going to go on air and take the market over.

For those of you who are radio buffs...KISS 102 was the second choice for naming the station...THE PLANET was our first choice but at the last minute we went with KISS instead. The original night guy was going to be JJ but when he decided that WOW was a better deal Steve and I decided that Steve would do the job. The first song played on KISS 102 that Friday Afternoon was Pop Musik by M. On Monday morning I went on the air with Jess, who had graduated from Ithaca College just a few weeks before, Diane was on in Middays and I am pretty sure Becky did PM drive and The Roadrunner hit the airwaves at 7pm and tore the place up.

For the entire Summer we hit the streets every day whether we had anything to give away or not. We just showed up to places and did our Kiss 102 thing. Steve and I worked tirelessly at improving the station. When Becky left we brought in Sharon Steele. She would be our music director. The puzle was complete with her in place. In less than a year Kiss had gone from being a last place station in the market to top 5 or better across the board. Sales were up 300 percent. Steve and I taught the sales team how to sell and trust me it was no easy task I don't think we had a single "feet on the street" sales person under the age of 55. They sold the hell out of that CHR station.

When Steve wasn't getting us in trouble with something he said on the air he was kicking the crap out of every other station in the market. There were times when we were pulling better than 40 shares of the market. We were cruising. I can tell you now that we suceeded for two reasons...Me and Steve. We would not compromise the product. When I was pressured to fire Steve I refused. When I was pressured to put the overnights on the bird I refused. When the owner went to Steve to try and alter his show he refused, becuase he knew I had his back.

I was eventually fired from Kiss for refusing to make programming changes for a prospective buyer. I stood my ground, I stood on principal and I stood behind and in front of the people who worked their asses off for me.

Some may remember the first ever Kiss Bash we had. We had it at the State Park. People weren't sure that anyone would show up. The State Park personell estimated that over 10,000 people showed up to the Kiss Bash. Traffic was backed up for over 5 miles with people trying to get into the park. In over 20 years of on air and programming I don't think I was ever prouder of a radio event or group of radio professionals than that day when we pulled off the first Kiss Bash.

I am willing to bet that everyone involved with Kiss during that 2 year period would say that it was perhaps the most fun they ever had in radio. I still talk with Jess regularly. She is a program director in Maryland and agrees that those 2 years were the funnest times she has ever had in radio. Sharon Steele went on to progarm as well and I believe she is programming in PA, I went on to program in Syracuse, Burlington, Lewiston and Portland.

I have been able to duplicate the success we had at Kiss in 1994 and 1995 but not the fun. It was a great ride. For those who have said that Rock 107 was the best CHR in the market I beg to differ. JR was a good programmer no doubt, but Rock 107 never had what Kiss had. We owned the streets. We owned the community. We were the funnest, most invigorating, most innovative station on the air at that time. Rock 107 when it was CHR was good for sure but it wasn't fun, not Kiss fun. It was just a station playing CHR music. Kiss was a whole attitude, the station oozed with personality from the liners and jingles to the jocks and the commericals. If put up against each other head to head Kiss would have had no problem handling Rock 107. The Kiss staff was younger, quicker, more in touch with the listeners and the community and on the cutting edge of the format and in thinking.

For example...At night and during the day Kiss had unusually high 18-34 and even 25-54 male numbers. Noone could figure out why but we knew why. It was in the format. It was by design. We recognized that there was a very large gay population not being served by radio. In particular a very large gay male population. So we did our job and programmed for that population. Diane was loved by the gay community, the music mix at night was designed not just for kids but also keeping in mind our gay male listeners and women listeners. Play an extra Melissa Etheridge song and you don't lose kids (at that time) but you do gain gay females. Play a throwback Petshop boys song or the Weathergirls and you didn't lose kids (at that time) and you gained gay males. It wasn't as simple as that a lot more thought and technique went into it but it is at it's core the way it was done. We brought the aids quilt into Utica (Diane worked on that) because we believed in the cause and we knew it would give us good press with the gay community.

Programming a station is not about opening up R&R and looking at the charts. It's about knowing your community and we knew our community and we programmed to them and for them. I have always just a three mantras for programming. KISS (keep it simple studpid) it was on on signs in the studio at Kiss, program to the available audience, no matter the format if the audience is not there for a particular song or artist that is core to the format don't play it. You necessarily play Miley Cyrus at 10am on Tuesday because the kids are in school but you do play a 20 year old Def Leppard wow song because the kid who old who loved Def Leppard 20 years ago is now 35 and working in an office or in an autobody shop at 10am.

If you are so angry with what is going on with radio in your community stand up and say someting in your community. Do a tv editorial, write an editorial for the paper. Get others to do the same. Do something more than complain with like minded people on a board. Talk to the people who buy the advertising and who don't know what is really going on. Sorry for the long history of Kiss but it needed to be said that Kiss started out as a kick-ass, take no prisoners radio station with attitude, conviction and with a leader and staff that stood up and took no crap from anyone when it came to protecting the product and the producers of the product even if they knew it meant their ass was on the line. You will have to look for a long time to find that PD and staff in the current radio culture.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Short Cut

He's lame, limp, vapid, unexciting, detached.

Are you sure you're not describing the typical radio CEO?

 

[TheBigA]

Any wonder Regent's COUNTRY station in Buffalo, which is live and local, smokes the AC competition in just about every demo?

I wouldn't give the credit to the fact that the station is live and local. The fact is that WYRK was #1 even when ALL the stations were live & local.

Here's the real question: How accessible are your local DJs? How many local events do they host? Can you send them emails and expect a direct response (not from one of their peeps)? Do they answer the phone when you call the request line? How do they allow interaction with the listeners? Are they on MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter? Those are just a few questions.

Radio is more than just sitting in a dark studio and talking AT people. If that's all a DJ is doing, they can be easily replaced by an out-of-town voicetracker. And most of the time, it's the DJ who decides how accessible they are, not the station.

Being a local DJ is more than just talking about Erie Boulevard or knowing how to pronounce Onondaga or Chittenango. It's about being accessible. I know local DJs who do nothing besides their show. When their shift is over, they go home and stay there. They don't attend civic meetings or take part in local events. They don't do personal appearances or build their own fan base. These folks are dead DJs walking. When they go, no one will miss them because no one knew them when they were there.

 

[wallywilcox]

Right on BigA...hit the streets and bring the streets to you. There is never a reason why the station vehicle shouldn't be on the street and why a jock shouldn't be with it...back in the day we used the van for everything and it was required that jocks got out and where visable...I used to give jocks time off to be visable...I would put a part-timer on the air on occasion and send the night guy out to hit a Club(s) on a Wednesday or a Friday night so he would be visable...and so the station would be visable...it is all about the guy or girl at the helm...if the PD comes in and does his 8 and goes home what do you expect the rest of the troops are going to do. You have to lead by example.

Our front end people were known in the commmunity. They went out and represented the station. The truth is that jocks are important but a well represented station can survive the loss of a top notch jock as long as the station is bigger than the jock and the replacement is good and understands the game and plays it right.

 

[BobRoss]

@Wally - No need to apologize for the long post about Kiss 102's beginnings. Being only in high school at the time, I read your post with great interest. I even remember going down to the studios on Muck Road one summer evening with a friend to be "guest DJs" on the nightly countdown (top 8 at 8 or whatever it was called back then). That's an inspiring story, and it would be great if more PDs followed your example. Things could be much better if programmers and jocks would be more defensive about what's best for the station.

But I can also empathize with those who take the CYA approach. It sucks, and most would probably rather NOT go that direction. But if the OM, the GM, or anyone at corporate doesn't like you... they know they'll be able to kick you out, and they'll have a dozen resumes in their hands by the end of the day. That may have been a risk worth taking 20 years go, but supply far outnumbers demand today. It's really a shame what's happened to radio under corporate ownership... but most people are simply lucky they still have their jobs, and they basically have to be "yes men" to keep the lights and heat on.

@TheBigA - You're also absolutely right. Many DJs have nobody to blame but themselves. When I was in the business, I understood the importance of getting out there to meet your audience face-to-face. Most jocks will only go out to appear in public if they're doing a paid remote. But if the sales department isn't lining up enough remotes (in most cases, the reps don't make anything more from a remote, and they hate taking 2 hours of their own Saturday to be there) then it's up to the PD and the jocks to find other ways to get themselves out there -- even if they're not making a talent fee from it, and even if they're not even really going on the air from the location.

Show up at a charity event... there are tons of walk/run events and other major fundraising events out there. You might have to call and ask for permission to be there, but 9 times out of 10, the hosting organization would be THRILLED to have a radio station there. It's a win-win -- because the organization may benefit from your presence bringing more listeners to the event... and you benefit as a personality and as a station by showing listeners you "care" by "being there." You also might get the chance to meet listeners you normally wouldn't see at a sales-driven remote, because they're the types who know better than to fall for the lure of a radio station at a car dealership or an appliance store.

Heck, it might even be worth going back to the "old" way of doing remotes. Instead of having the remote jock appear only at commercial breaks, they should do their entire show from the road. It sounds more impressive on the radio, and it looks more impressive to listeners who show up at the remote.

In many ways, running a radio station is like running a political campaign... and you're running for re-election every day. You have to have your name out there, you have to be shaking hands and kissing babies. I agree 100% with Wally... it's a great idea to give someone a few hours away from their normal duties to cruise around in the station van. It's a giant, moving billboard, being seen by many people -- and your only expense is the gas.

And some jocks may argue -- they won't want to take time to do free remotes at charity events. But they need to realize... the talent fee they're NOT getting today will pay off many times over in the future... in the form of better ratings, better job security, and so on.

 

[doctorcomputer3]

Diane is a good sounding air talent.
The problem started a long time ago. The last time I was in a James Street studio was over 10 years ago and the talent was proud to say he was able to program his entire show in 20 minutes, then walk around the building monitoring for 4.5 hours. This is not the same as 10 years previous to that. A room full of records and 45's, changing speeds on turntables, mixing music live on the air. Does anyone here know what backtiming is and why you would need the talent to do it?
I also remember a time when I was playing regularly on Friday Night at Woodcrest Golf Course outside of Manlius. I had first started using a laptop to play music and was able to walk around the club, letting the music play on auto pilot. The owner, who was a very experienced night club owner told me after a few nights of doing this that "it wasnt the same". He said "you look better to people when they see you doing the activity". He was absolutely right. I didnt ditch the laptop but mixed the music manually and put cd's back out for people to leaf through.
From my observations it's not just the sales team, or the way the air talent sounds on the air. It's the whole package for music radio. Many of us have been saying we need to get back to the basics for years. I bet if someone found a big collection of old records and did a live remote with it, people would talk about it a lot. Not permanently using records, but put on a show once in a while. Show people the whole carnival act, ya know. That would stir the pot a bit.

 

[ThePickleReport]

My thoughts are with Diane. A class act as far as I'm concerned.

 

[wallywilcox]

BobRoss if you know Steve Lawrence at all ask him how many time he and I would be sitting around the office writing liners (my favorite of all time is one that Steve mentioned) We've listened to the competition for you and WOW they suck....anyway Steve and I would be writing liners or coming up with promo ideas and we would hit the wall...collective writers block...to ease get the creative juices flowing again we would jump in the station van, ride into Utica and do our version of a Chinese fire drill...when we got stopped at a traffic light we jumped out and handed out T's and CD's and whatever chachki crap we had laying around the station...I will tell you that Steve Lawrence is one of the absolute best radio guys I have ever known...he loved the game and he played to win...You brought back some memories mentioning Muck Road...we didn't have great equipment, we were all crammed in that quonset hut...there were no offices...we had the bare minimum but none of us cared about that we just wanted to get on air and crush...and not for nothing (such a Utica term) most every day for 2 straight years we crushed...

If you do chat with Steve ask him about how many times I was told to fire him...it was no less than a dozen times...ask him about the comment that got him some pretty bad press but ended up giving us a huge gay community following...Steve had no fear...partly because he just let it all hang out and partly (at least while I was his PD) because I was a jocks PD and had his back.

 

[Element9]

Any wonder Regent's COUNTRY station in Buffalo, which is live and local, smokes the AC competition in just about every demo?

I wouldn't give the credit to the fact that the station is live and local. The fact is that WYRK was #1 even when ALL the stations were live & local.

Not to Buffalo-ize the 'Cuse board, but FACT is, 97 Rock and WBLK were often #1 in that 7-Midnight daypart, even when all stations were live and local.

Here's the real question: How accessible are your local DJs? How many local events do they host? Can you send them emails and expect a direct response (not from one of their peeps)? Do they answer the phone when you call the request line? How do they allow interaction with the listeners? Are they on MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter? Those are just a few questions.

Good points, especially as to answering the request lines and simply "being there" applies: To which the answer for John Tesh would be NO.

Radio is more than just sitting in a dark studio and talking AT people. If that's all a DJ is doing, they can be easily replaced by an out-of-town voicetracker. And most of the time, it's the DJ who decides how accessible they are, not the station.

Being a local DJ is more than just talking about Erie Boulevard or knowing how to pronounce Onondaga or Chittenango. It's about being accessible. I know local DJs who do nothing besides their show. When their shift is over, they go home and stay there. They don't attend civic meetings or take part in local events. They don't do personal appearances or build their own fan base. These folks are dead DJs walking. When they go, no one will miss them because no one knew them when they were there.

Thanks for the condescending tutorial, A. I also know jocks who worked their asses off, performed above and beyond the call of duty, put up strong ratings in drive time, did good production, blogged regularly on the station website, went out and made calls with sales people, worked promotions and still got thrown under the bus. AND they could correctly pronounce Cheektowaga, Scajaquada, Onondaga, Chittenango, Fabius, Pompey and Tully.
_________________________________________________

Nice narrative Wally. Sounds like you did a bang-up job at Kiss. Hope you were rewarded for your hard work and now call a larger market than Utica-Rome your home. But as to "taking a stand and saying no," you no doubt have noticed that there are about 20 PD's for every one opening these days and paying the mortgage and feeding the family take priority over getting into a pissing match with the GM. You can win the battle and lose the war. Diplomacy and compromise are the order of the day, as is judiciously picking one's battle. These days, even good PDs, like good air talent, are getting the short end of the stick.

Probably won't be long before Tesh, Iverson and Delilah are programming radio stations too. [/sarcasm]

-9-

 

[TheBigA]

Thanks for the condescending tutorial, A. I also know jocks who worked their asses off, performed above and beyond the call of duty, put up strong ratings in drive time, did good production, blogged regularly on the station website, went out and made calls with sales people, worked promotions and still got thrown under the bus. AND they could correctly pronounce Cheektowaga, Scajaquada, Onondaga, Chittenango, Fabius, Pompey and Tully.

Funny...when I moved to Syracuse, I thought Liverpool was where The Beatles were from. )

And it's Sa-LI-na, not Sa-LEE-na.

By the way, how about a hand for the best college basketball team in the USA! Go SU! I'll be rooting for my Orangemen all the way to Detroit.

 

[DaveBullard]

Not to put too fine a point on things, but the basic problem is this:

Profit margin.

Even the people who get slammed on this board day in and day out have some passion for radio. Why the hell would anyone go into radio otherwise? They'd make the best radio they were able to if they had the resources. I cannot imagine a PD, even the worst one you can name, finding voicetracking anything other than a coping strategy. Certainly, I've never heard one say how wonderful VT'ers are.

The villain is profit margin.

The radio consolidators require obscene margins in order to pay debt. And debt has never won a single ratings point, anywhere.

Absent debt, it is possible that some owners would be able to accept lower margins in tough times in order to maintain a quality program and avoid layoffs. This is where radio's train began to go off the tracks -- when deregulation of broadcasting and the elimination of ownership limits created a need to buy that could only be satisfied by taking on massive amounts of debt.

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I LOVE the story about the passion behind KISS in Utica. Regardless of the outcome, that's how these things should be done -- with passion, energy and commitment.

I live in Fulton, a city (and now, a county) without a local radio station any more. I remember the local AM, WOSC. They were there during the Blizzard of 66, I saw them broadcasting local little league baseball games, doing request shows and remotes. Was it the world's greatest radio? Of course not. But it was local, and the folks there played the game like it mattered.

What strikes me now about commercial radio is that so much of it lacks passion, and YOU CAN HEAR IT. Jocks used to be prized for their ability to connect to an audience. Now, they connect songs to commercials in 7 seconds or less. They used to bring diverse musical tastes to the public. Now, the music has been researched to hell-and-gone.

Jumping media for a moment, there's one reason never mentioned for the rise of The Daily Show on Comedy Central -- passion. You can feel it, see it, know that every single person on that show lives and breathes what they do. There's still some radio like that -- talk radio, primarily -- but not much.

The demand for outsized profits will drain the passion out of the best of us. Already has.

 

[Adman4120]

Sorry to hear that WSEN has made further cuts. And to Wally Wilcox...great post. Could not agree with you more. Had many opportunities to work with Steve, even until Clear Channel pushed his patience, which led him to leave. KISS did work for several of our clients for whom we placed ads for.

Even though the current KISS is working hard to be a top station, it does not have the same characteristics from when you were at the station.

 

[TheBigA]

This is where radio's train began to go off the tracks -- when deregulation of broadcasting and the elimination of ownership limits created a need to buy that could only be satisfied by taking on massive amounts of debt.

Nope. You're wrong. They accumulated debt long before deregulation. The game they played before was moving up in markets. Start out in mediums, sell them for a profit, and buy stations in larger markets. Keep moving up til you own two stations in five of the Top 10. Along the way, they accumulated debt. Lots of it.

Debt isn't a problem when interest rates are low. They were for a long time. Cash flow is enough to cover them. Then the rates spiked a couple years ago, and those who had to renegotiate then had problems. If companies could renegotiate now given extremely low Fed rates, it would be fine. But the banks are the ones who have the debt problems. Because the banks have huge multi-billion dollar debts, they are not passing along the discounts they're receiving from the Fed. So Karmazin has to pay a 40% interest rate to stay in business.

It's not radio companies who have debt problems. It's the banks and companies radio owes money to. If you ever owed money to a bad Las Vegas gambler, who had a string of bad luck, you'd understand what this is like.

 

[SirRoxalot]

If the radio companies had taken on a reasonable amount of debt when they purchased their properties, they shouldn't be in trouble. They didn't. They promised ever-growing profits to investors, then failed to deliver.

Why are radio owners trying to borrow now, or even two years ago? If the deals they struck originally were realistic, they'd have no need to borrow. Why did Karmazin borrow? Because he has NEVER made a profit, and satellite radio is STILL bleeding money.

The radio companies have debt problems. They just can't sell more stock because investors have no interest in them, and they can't borrow because the banks want no part of them. Anybody looking at the industry knows that the consolidators seriously overpaid, and station values are sinking to a more realistic level. They can't sell their way out of debt, and they can't borrow to forestall the inevitable. Even Vegas offers better odds than the consolidators right now.

 

[TheBigA]

If the radio companies had taken on a reasonable amount of debt when they purchased their properties, they shouldn't be in trouble.

Not true. In this current economy, the amount of debt isn't the issue. Small debt is as bad as big debt. The reason is that no one is lending money. So any amount of debt is a problem.

Why are radio owners trying to borrow now, or even two years ago? If the deals they struck originally were realistic, they'd have no need to borrow.

Why do people refinance their house? They change their debt structure, maybe pay off a chunk, or feel they can get a better rate. It's an on-going process. Except right now, no one's lending.

The radio companies have debt problems. They just can't sell more stock because investors have no interest in them, and they can't borrow because the banks want no part of them.

The banks want no part of anybody. They're the ones in trouble. They're taking federal baleout money, and using it to pay off their own debts. Which leaves nothing left to lend anyone. But they also can't foreclose on radio debts. So it's just a waiting game. Wait until this situation passes.