EVEN MORE LAYOFFS COMING?

[austingeezer]

Jerry Del Colliano in his Inside Music Media says:

"Major layoffs are coming to radio within months. I’ve had a strong record of predicting cutbacks and firings over the years and now it’s time to warn you about what’s next. I’m hearing increased chatter that the two largest employers – Clear Channel and Cumulus – are getting set for what will turn out to be a major dilution of its workforce over the next couple of months. What I’m talking about is massive and, when completed, will help owners attain their goal of nationalizing local radio."

 

[CTHank]

Can't say it's all that surprising. Anyone who couldn't see this coming has had their head buried in the sand.

 

[captex]

they will fall (clear channel , cumulus and others) becuase they gotten to big and uncaring about others. thier mindset is for themselves only.

 

[jras20]

they will fall (clear channel , cumulus and others) becuase they gotten to big and uncaring about others. thier mindset is for themselves only.

Funny thing is, they seem to be trying to get FM to sound like XM/Sirius and XM/Sirius is trying to sound like FM.

 

[daypart]

Another thread here suggested that PPMs are disproving the audience's interest in localism. Why pay people to continue to produce what the audience seems not to want?

 

[kewgardens]

Maybe they'll have sales folk phone in voice tracks every hour in between calls. Due to their primary sales duties they of course would be limited to two or three stations each. Or maybe CC finally figured out a way to automate the sales departments completely

 

[grantchester]

automate the sales departments completely

You're not far from the mark. As I understand it, CC is putting emphasis on agency sales over local direct sales. Thus, any loyalty KVET/KASE sponsors might still feel just won't matter any more.

 

[CTHank]

Well if you think about it, eliminating most local sales people would make economic sense. Especially if they're concentrating on agency sales. After all, if you're planning on national formats it's far easier to sell a national ad plan than adding small local buys and you only need one or two sales people to focus on trying to get morning show ads and they'll work mostly on commission.

CC (and not only CC but the other behemoths of the industry) are like the Mickey D's of radio. Put together a menu of bland, non-offensive type of music playing stations (iPod on shuffle) and since there are few if any alternatives they know that with enough repetition people will accept it.

Let the computer generate the playlist, keep a few low paid humans around to input new data and sit back and wait. Agencies traditionally don't have any idea what local markets are like, they only care about metrics and the bigger the total market is, the better. Whether or not people are actually are listening is mostly irrelevant.

 

[mmnassour]

Whether or not people are actually are listening is mostly irrelevant.

I think that pretty much sums up the state of radio broadcasting in early 21st Century America.

Wow.

 

[TheBigA]

Whether or not people are actually are listening is mostly irrelevant.

It's EXTREMELY relevant. Ad prices are based on the size of the audience, not program quality or localism. As you said, more people like consistent, dependable, and regular programming. More cars line up for Big Macs than a local sushi hut. It's all about getting people to listen in large numbers. Now if you're talking about the fact that the People Meter doesn't measure actual listening, you're right. But that's not something radio can control. The idea of a family sitting around the living room paying attention to every word said on the radio are long gone. Radio companies don't make the rules. Advertisers do.

 

[davideduardo]

Well if you think about it, eliminating most local sales people would make economic sense. Especially if they're concentrating on agency sales. After all, if you're planning on national formats it's far easier to sell a national ad plan than adding small local buys and you only need one or two sales people to focus on trying to get morning show ads and they'll work mostly on commission.

In San Antonio, 2/3 of market-wide sales is local. National revenue is divided into network sales and national spot sales.

Networks are usually unwired sales nets, where a client gets a collection of stations for a usually cut-rate price for having to buy them all. National spot buys market by market, station by station, just like local sales.

National network is by far the smaller segment, and often much or most of the revenue is taken by syndicators who keep the money as compensation for programming they deliver to stations.

National network sales can only cover those products and services that are truly national in scope... Coca Cola, Home Depot, etc. The regional and local operators... including the mega-category of automotive... is mostly locally placed.

While the whole new media mentality may change the way buys are made from market-by-market to national, until that fully happens radio can not live on the smaller portion of revenue that comes from nation-wide network advertising

 

[TheBigA]

Keep in mind that critics like Del Colliano have been predicting this for ten years. The fact that it's taken this long for some of these changes to trickle down has given a lot of employees time to know what's going on. Of course no one likes to get a pink slip, and when the news comes, it's a huge shock. But the writing has been written on the wall for a long time. If you work at either of these companies, it's just another day at the office. There will still be lots of local radio, even at these two companies. And it will give their competitors something to work with. If audiences actually want local DJs, and if there's an advantage to local staffs, there are lots of competitors available to take advantage. Cox is one company that's been very strict about staying local. Same with Entercom, Beasley, and CBS. My advice to people concerned about layoffs is to reinvent themselves. There is a market for talent, for music presentation, for personal interaction, and the skills radio people have are transferable to many other jobs, some even within broadcasting, if you're willing to learn and adapt.

 

[kewgardens]

Maybe. But there are a lot less of those jobs now, and there will be likely less in the future. The BIA/Kelsey projections in a bar graph on their web site seem to indicate that revenue for radio will not come back to 2007 levels until 2016 - and that apprently includes online efforts. (Of course there will be exceptions on a market-by-market basis). With most all other operating costs fixed or rising, personnel is one of the few places left to cut.

Another board had the topic that careercast.com listed broadcasting as one of the 10 worst jobs. No wonder.

 

[TheBigA]

I don't expect on air revenue to be be coming back at all. Too much competition from other media. Radio stations need to look to diversifying their platforms for growth. That's where the jobs are going. If you can do both on air and online, that gives you an edge. If your main talent is slip cues, talking up the post, and live segues, you'll be joining the buggy whip makers in the unemployment line.

 

[daypart]

Whether or not people are actually are listening is mostly irrelevant.

If the people are older than 54, you're quite correct.

 

[fredcantu]

Whether or not people are actually are listening is mostly irrelevant.

If the people are older than 54, you're quite correct.

Some listeners actually do keep listening to their favorite station as they get older. It's called "loyalty." If a listener has made a life-long connection with the station, they're not going away just because they've reach some arbitrary age limit. The only way to lose them is a format change. But that's a case of the station leaving them, not them leaving the station.

Someday technology will give stations the ability to put a hard age limit on their signal or stream. Of course, it's going to piss off some loyal listeners when they hit that birthday. But they didn't want them listening anyway.

 

[davideduardo]

Some listeners actually do keep listening to their favorite station as they get older. It's called "loyalty." If a listener has made a life-long connection with the station, they're not going away just because they've reach some arbitrary age limit. The only way to lose them is a format change. But that's a case of the station leaving them, not them leaving the station.

But most stations that keep the same format generally have a "front door - back door" approach. To stay in the same demo, they freshen content to appeal to people who come into the young end of the demo while at the same time removing content that only appeals to the now out-of-demo upper end.

So, even if a station has not changed format, they have changed the ingredients. The station that was a 25-54 leader 20 years ago can manage to be a 25-54 leader today but those who were over 35 back then are now not being programmed to, while yesterday's 5-year-olds are now part of the core.

In AC, it's about no longer playing Chicago and Manilow. In talk, it is avoiding discussions of Medicare and joking about "blue haired old women" as I actually heard WFLA do back when Randy Michaels and Gabe Hobbs had moved in to "Casa de Geezer" in the early 90's.