FISHER CEO AND OTHER EXECS ARE TAKING PAY CUTS

[SeattleRadioPro]

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Fisher-Communications-Inc-Issues-Interim/story.aspx?guid={14AE338E-9B6F-4B4E-BEF4-10FFE5565558}

Short version: CEO Colleen Brown takes a 10% pay cut and other "selected key employees" take a 5% cut. Yeah, it's not a lot, but I didn't hear about upper management at other Seattle radio stations taking pay cuts...maybe Fisher is on to something!

 

[Bongwater]

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Fisher-Communications-Inc-Issues-Interim/story.aspx?guid={14AE338E-9B6F-4B4E-BEF4-10FFE5565558}

Short version: CEO Colleen Brown takes a 10% pay cut and other "selected key employees" take a 5% cut. Yeah, it's not a lot, but I didn't hear about upper management at other Seattle radio stations taking pay cuts...maybe Fisher is on to something!

It's a start....Kudos to Fisher!

 

[TVradioguru]

Let's see...10% of 1.6 million is how much?? I would argue the range should be 20-25% to make an impact.

But seriously, I suspect this is a preemptive PR strike under the guise of shareholder communication prior to the rank-and-file RIF hatchet falling.

 

[LITTLEBOYBLUE]

They had board meeting last week. This may not be as "voluntary" as it seems.

 

[AQH]

Let's see...10% of 1.6 million is how much?? I would argue the range should be 20-25% to make an impact.

But seriously, I suspect this is a preemptive PR strike under the guise of shareholder communication prior to the rank-and-file RIF hatchet falling.

Exactly.

 

[Fornax]

Short version: CEO Colleen Brown takes a 10% pay cut and other "selected key employees" take a 5% cut. Yeah, it's not a lot, but I didn't hear about upper management at other Seattle radio stations taking pay cuts...maybe Fisher is on to something!
[/quote]

It's a start....Kudos to Fisher!
[/quote]

You guys are pretty naive. They've already cut 10% of staff, frozen 2008 wages and won't give any 2009 salary increases to the (non-union/contract) people who need it the most. And they've suspended 401(k) matching. These managers were out of the minds before the ad market tanked (paying WAY too much for baseball rights) and should thanking their lucky stars they're still around this Christmas and didn't drag the whole company into the ground. Clearly the whole lot has been overpaid a lot more than 10%!

 

[TVradioguru]

What's naive is to think that any broadcast group is not going to be forced into more cuts. This is only the first round.

I predict that by the end of January, TV stations will need to make deep expense cuts into the 25+% range and radio around 30+% just to survive. If things don't start turning around by August 2009, there will be several more groups filing Chapter 11, and some individual stations will be forced to go silent. By this time next year, stations will have to shift their past goals of becoming a market or demographic leader, to that of keeping the lights on and making debt payments.

In the case of Fisher in Seattle, they have two disadvantaged operations in KOMO and KVI radio. All-news is the most expensive and labor intensive format one can run, combined with being located on the listener-diminishing AM dial. It's going to be impossible to keep a traditional radio 24/7 news operation going in 2009, and I'm willing to bet they're going to need to closely couple their TV news operation with radio. KVI should just go all syndicated, and hope that another niche political talk format comes along in the future. That is assuming the AM band has a future.