If Cumulus Gets Citadel

[Hundredthousandwatts]

Predictions?

 

[Tennessee Cowboy]

Immediate proclamations that nothing will change. Then things will change.

 

[DoubleC]

LOL so True..after the 90 day holding period watch GMs,PDs etc change

 

[BRH]

Good, the Knoxville Citadel cluster is crappy. I'd love to see Cumulus come in & maybe shake things up. Since they have more cash, maybe they'll pick up a couple of more signals & shuffle some formats around or give us something new. Personally, I still wish Clear Channel had bought into the Knox. market. I think the Chattanooga market has better radio & more choices (largely due to CC being in the market). I think Citadel, South Central, & Journal are boring, stagnant, & slow to change or try anything new. (heck, we can't even get anyone to put HD2 formats on in this market. Even though many smaller markets have them).

 

[SuperQ]

If you wish history to be your guide, Cumulus will spend even less than Citadel. Cumulus is not big on three person morning shows (Cit Knox has two of them), and they virtually wiped the company clean of evening and overnight jocks.

The real winner of this in Knoxville will be the local sales manager of the Cintas Uniform Company. That's where Cumulus goes for its senior management.

 

[Tibbs4]

BRH -whatcha smokin up thar? Trust me --- your radio stations just saw their best days come to an end.

 

[Kent T]

Well, expect WIVK to be vunerable much more than ever in years. And their reputation took over 40 years to build, and only one boneheaded move by corporate to destroy it. Look for more automation.

 

[Kent]

If you wish history to be your guide, Cumulus will spend even less than Citadel. Cumulus is not big on three person morning shows (Cit Knox has two of them), and they virtually wiped the company clean of evening and overnight jocks.

Midday jocks are also few and far between at Cumulus. The post about Cumulus proclaiming nothing will change only to find they get their grubby hands on every little thing is spot on. Cumulus moves like a tornado, leveling some properties without harming others but never leaving anything quite the way it found it!

 

[Pratte4Life]

But wouldn't you say that with the exception of morning personalities and the like, jocks in their own right are becoming a dying breed?

Jocks no longer program their own music (when did that practice stop?) and, if given the opportunity to go back to when they could, probably would say it's too much work.

Furthermore, at the stations I've worked at, doing anything but time and temperature was discouraged. Exceptions may be made for the morning shows, but being able to be creative as a DJ is all but over.

If one wants to be involved in radio and wants the listener to listen to them, they have to be a talk show host. It's been that way for generations.

 

[Hundredthousandwatts]

Good, the Knoxville Citadel cluster is crappy. I'd love to see Cumulus come in & maybe shake things up. Since they have more cash, maybe they'll pick up a couple of more signals & shuffle some formats around or give us something new. Personally, I still wish Clear Channel had bought into the Knox. market. I think the Chattanooga market has better radio & more choices (largely due to CC being in the market). I think Citadel, South Central, & Journal are boring, stagnant, & slow to change or try anything new. (heck, we can't even get anyone to put HD2 formats on in this market. Even though many smaller markets have them).

Don't know what you're smoking, but Citadel Knox and South Central combined probably bills 2 or 3 times the entire Chattanooga market.

 

[Hundredthousandwatts]

Figure of speech, but still, Clear Channel and Cumulus can stay the hell out of Knoxville as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Kent]

But wouldn't you say that with the exception of morning personalities and the like, jocks in their own right are becoming a dying breed?

With the arrival of PPM, even morning jocks are being told to shut up and play the music. Radio has been in a state of contraction, by the way, for at least 20 years.

Jocks no longer program their own music (when did that practice stop?) and, if given the opportunity to go back to when they could, probably would say it's too much work.

There are still a handful of stations where that happens. The practice is still fairly common at community stations, and there's likely a commercial station in a utopian town or two that still let the jocks pick their music. So, in that sense, the practice hasn't stopped. It started to go away, however, long before most of us were even born let alone working in the business.

Furthermore, at the stations I've worked at, doing anything but time and temperature was discouraged. Exceptions may be made for the morning shows, but being able to be creative as a DJ is all but over.
If one wants to be involved in radio and wants the listener to listen to them, they have to be a talk show host. It's been that way for generations.

I think the bigger question is whether the industry is really better for all of these cost cutting moves. I've both worked for and competed against Cumulus. I was at a CHR competitor to Cumulus, and it was one of TWO top-40 stations that was competing against Cumulus and LOSING! Yes, you saw that correctly. At the time (2005), out of all the CHR's Cumulus owned, only TWO were beating their competitor. By the way, that CHR I used to work at is back on top over the Cumulus CHR. Obviously, the listener isn't liking the Cumulus approach to doing the CHR format either.

 

[Tennessee Cowboy]

But wouldn't you say that with the exception of morning personalities and the like, jocks in their own right are becoming a dying breed?

Jocks no longer program their own music (when did that practice stop?) and, if given the opportunity to go back to when they could, probably would say it's too much work.

Furthermore, at the stations I've worked at, doing anything but time and temperature was discouraged. Exceptions may be made for the morning shows, but being able to be creative as a DJ is all but over.

If one wants to be involved in radio and wants the listener to listen to them, they have to be a talk show host. It's been that way for generations.

Owners have been looking for ways to turn out a winning and consistent product for decades. It became obvious in Knoxville about 30 years ago this spring when U-102 signed on with talented jocks reading nothing but liner cards between overly-researched songs. Before and for years after, every station had a PD and an MD, and there were regular aircheck critiques. Then everybody collected multiple stations and started saving money by homogenizing everything to cut down on the amount of people having to keep them on the air.

Stations became dominant by doing things their competitors wouldn't spend to do. Stations stayed dominant by having experienced people in the building responsible for everything that went out over the air, and keeping everything (jocks, music, engineering, news, promotion) tuned on a daily basis. If you've never had to pick up the Bat Phone after stepping in it on the air, you'll never know what that was like.

I talked with one then-new GM several years back. He understood the importance of having a compelling on-air sound, but answered to an out of town owner that said "it's all about the music." Because, well, ya know, a station that plays Elton John, THEN Black-Eyed Peas, THEN Paula Abdul is infinitely superior to one that plays the same songs in some different order.

Nobody seems to have the money they need anymore. And, if they do, it's tough to put enough of it back to really put toward improving their product. And now that everything is done from some group of offices in God Knows Where, where would you really find a talented staff that could all play together and win?

/Well. That was certainly therapeutic. Even if it won't solve a dang thing.
//Time to re-stock the liquor cabinet.

 

[Pratte4Life]

Kent- I've programmed my own music before at a station like you name. But in this case, it was a small community station like you mentioned (and I have as well, on the "Worst Stations in Tennessee" thread).

Again, it comes down to money. This station could have hired a programmer, but if they did it would cost them. And they already were only paying us minimum wage, so by having the jocks program the music it was about cost and not the product.

Furthermore, I remember the guide they would give us to program music. It went from fast to medium to slow pace, then the commercials.

ONLY THE STATION ONLY HAD TWO FAST SONGS ON THE PLAYLIST!

 

[BRice16]

IF this happens, something I'll be interested to see is how low-budget Cumulus handles Citadel's sports talkers all across the south. 99.1/990 here, 104.5 Nashville 94.5 Birmingham are all live and local all day long (true Finebaum in Bham is syndicated, but it's syndicated from 94.5), and they all bill very well, especially for the clusters they're in. You would assume Cumulus would cut a daypart or two for a national show, but if the time slots are all billing better than what a national show would, I wonder if they would they actually do that? 99.1 and 104.5 have each shown that Jim Rome not only gets bad numbers in each market, but they couldn't sell it at all in either.

 

[Tennessee Cowboy]

Still wondering if Cumulus would reinstate the GM position here. There is no really appetizing choice for them: 1) Keep it the way it is. 2) Bring in somebody from out of town. 3) Move somebody up inside the building.

1) stations continue to become more and more faceless
2) no knowledge of the market or heritage, and no feel for what got them there
3) the likely internal candidates are weasels

Too bad nobody looks one step below the weasels. There's some incredible management talent in that building.

 

[Pratte4Life]

BRice- I've found that the more local a sports station is, the better it bills. So perhaps Cumulus wouldn't cut the shows per se, but rather other things.

 

[BillBattle]

IF this happens, something I'll be interested to see is how low-budget Cumulus handles Citadel's sports talkers all across the south. 99.1/990 here, 104.5 Nashville 94.5 Birmingham are all live and local all day long (true Finebaum in Bham is syndicated, but it's syndicated from 94.5), and they all bill very well, especially for the clusters they're in. You would assume Cumulus would cut a daypart or two for a national show, but if the time slots are all billing better than what a national show would, I wonder if they would they actually do that? 99.1 and 104.5 have each shown that Jim Rome not only gets bad numbers in each market, but they couldn't sell it at all in either.

How do you know what the billings are for those stations? That is closely guarded information and I question if you have that information.

 

[Hundredthousandwatts]

IF this happens, something I'll be interested to see is how low-budget Cumulus handles Citadel's sports talkers all across the south. 99.1/990 here, 104.5 Nashville 94.5 Birmingham are all live and local all day long (true Finebaum in Bham is syndicated, but it's syndicated from 94.5), and they all bill very well, especially for the clusters they're in. You would assume Cumulus would cut a daypart or two for a national show, but if the time slots are all billing better than what a national show would, I wonder if they would they actually do that? 99.1 and 104.5 have each shown that Jim Rome not only gets bad numbers in each market, but they couldn't sell it at all in either.

How do you know what the billings are for those stations? That is closely guarded information and I question if you have that information.

Coach I wouldn't sweat, he's probably making it up, like the rest of them on here.

 

[Tennessee Cowboy]

Lots of interesting (and not so interesting) fiction on these pages. Yours truly is a self-admitted liar, if not an exceptionally handsome, intelligent, wealthy, sober, and modest one. BRice16 tells what he believes is the truth apparently. Whether he was told this by a liar is anyone's guess.