Offload the HR and administrative costs onto the employee.
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iHeartMedia Initiates Round Of Cuts Across The Country
- Thread starter johnster
- Start date
As for the smaller list of cuts this time around...if you're going eliminate employees, it helps if there is still enough employees left around that can be eliminated. The pool of "expendables" must be drying up. Have heard, in the smaller markets, the building staff is down to 1 employee for every 1 or 2 stations in the cluster.
Could it reach a point where everything is done at a hub location, and the only employee needed for that cluster would handle the onsite maintenance, engineering, and anything else to ensure things run smoothly at the transmitter site. If that can be done, it'll probably happen.
Could it reach a point where everything is done at a hub location, and the only employee needed for that cluster would handle the onsite maintenance, engineering, and anything else to ensure things run smoothly at the transmitter site. If that can be done, it'll probably happen.
Programming out of a "network" main studio is the way radio worked for most of its first 30 years. That's the way broadcast TV has always worked.
Local TV stations, outside of a few hours of local newscasts each day, take all their programming from a network or syndicated show providers. There is nearly no local programming other than news, in fact.
It's being done all over Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America and nearly all of Europe.
The issue in the US is that no company owns comparable formatted stations in all the top 150 to 200 markets to make a simulcast or zoned multicast format work. So we are limited to "national" networks of 30 or 30 stations of a specific format under single owners.
Once could envision some of the big radio companies buying and selling properties amongst themselves to get sets of national coverage stations that could take one format. However, that kind of negotiation would be on the distinct border of collusion and that in itself might prevent "reverse consolidation".
The technology exists and is in use even in many so-called third world nations. I am involved with a project in a less developed Latin American nation to build close to 80 transmitters covering over 90% of the population out of a single studio location so it can be done.
Even these small attempts at nationalizing a format in the US has been challenging. NASH comes to mind as one failure. ALT and KISS are still around. We have too many stations in the US with successful individual identities. There is certainly a fear of messing with that by the large radio groups, especially if it's a top biller. Another problem, is trying to eliminate a popular local morning show that draws listeners to their station. I can only imagine the listener revolt, if Beth and Friends on KEZ in Phoenix, for example was dumped and replaced with the national host of a new AC network. The ratings would tank, with valuable revenue gone.
Radio would have to reach the point of decline, that only nationalizing would be the only way for it's continued existence. I don't see US radio becoming the way it is in Latin America and Europe. Don't forget, there's also the difficulty of bringing what works in LA to Omaha, and the overall diversity of the country
What you miss is that when the advertising situation returns to normal, a lot of the laid off people are offered their old jobs back, or they get hired in other cities. If you look at the overall company staffing at iHeart, it really hasn't changed much in the last 20 years.
These latest layoffs are at about 25-30 people nationally out of an employee base of 18,000.
But since we are pretty much "certified" as of today as being in a recession, we will see that businesses do the first thing they always to in a recession: cut the easiest expense which is advertising.
And since advertising is the only revenue stream in radio, that means staff cuts.
Sure, that's the way the industry is going. Centralize content production, and pay contract engineers to maintain a bunch of transmitter (content delivery) sites. The company shifts expenses from many expensive studio and office leases full of staffers all over the country, to spending those savings on hiring the best and the brightest to create content from regional or central headquarters. The higher quality content is what listeners and advertisers, ultimately appreciate.
How many of those 18,000 people are employed at their broadcasting stations as on air staff, station management, programming, production, promotion, engineering, sales , and digital content roles at the clusters. Not very many. A conglomerate the size of iHeart, surprised it's not more than 18,000. What with all the people required for those big music festivals, concerts, the iheart app, all the umbrella businesses, like the huge outdoor billboard business they have, and the multitude of other businesses they have bought, with the staff of all of those combined. That is a lot iHeart employees with no connection to the radio stations themselves.
So let's bring this back to radio, since that is the focus of this discussion board. How many of those "laid off" radio people do you think will actually be offered back their former job?
Outdoor is a separate company. Wikipedia: "Following a separation from its former parent company, iHeartMedia, Inc., in May 2019, CCOH, Inc., has operated as an independent, publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: CCO).[5][6]"
For events, they hire outside production staffs.
iHeart owns around 850 stations. The number of employees in the roles I specifically mentioned is WAY, WAY, WAY less than 18,000. Once again, I was interested in keeping the focus on that specific group of employees, which is not the same number who were employed 20 years ago. It's far less...
Do you know how many employees there were 20 years ago? What if I told you the number is about the same now as it was then.
There's no rule that requires a company to retain the same staffing it had 20 years ago. Staffing of any company adjusts to the revenue and to the need for those employees. Banks don't need as many tellers because of ATMs. Grocery stores don't need as many checkout clerks because of self checkout. I was in a restaurant tonight, and they don't need any waitresses because we order on our phones. Same with radio.
The wait staff's work doesn't end with taking your order, you know? They bring it to your table, ask if everything's OK at least once, refill your drinks on request, accommodate requests for additional sides, desserts, etc. Who's doing all that at this waitressless pit of corporate greed that you call a restaurant you're going to?
Very good point. Technology has reduced radio's need for people over the decades.
I was looking through some early 50's transmitter maintenance manuals for WOR in New York City this month. They had at least one engineer on duty at the transmitter every hour of the day, and in the principal hours they had several as well as a chief transmitter engineer. The maintenance manuals were in about 10 5" loose-leaf binder, and many of the daily procedures required two people to do.
In the studios, they had three to five technicians on duty for show production, switching, studio maintenance, tape recording, disk recording, phone lines, etc. In one place, it shows over 100 on the technical staff.
Today, the transmitter sits alone and can be remote controlled. The studios need one person "on the board" for live shows and perhaps nobody for network ones.
It took a team to do logs. Today, logs for multiple stations can be done from a remote location by one person. Accounting and billing are centralized and computerized. And so on. The need for the staff size that was mandatory 30 or 40 years ago is often cut by half today.
And small stations can run with one person... the owner... and a contract engineer.
With few people wanting to work as wait staff,and those who might being priced out of housing, that will be the future.
The order taking and payment are done in advance, so the service work is cut to bussing the tables after the meal and taking any extra orders or requests. That cuts the labor down by at least half.
Many people today, accustomed to online ordering and purchasing, don't like traditional restaurant service. They want to be left alone to enjoy the meal and don't want interruptions.
And the restaurant business is the absolute worst business field in the country. Something like 70% of new independent ones fail in the first two years. Chains are losing money all over due to the increased minimum wage and the rising costs of food, insurance, rent and the like as well as increased government health controls and the like.
Several of the major chains of mid-price restaurants are showing lower earnings and closing marginal locations.
We've quit going to any so-called "fast foods" here in CA as a simple sandwich with fries or a couple of tacos and beans and a soft drink are now around $20.
It depends on the restaurant. The place tonight delivered the food to my table, but they didn't do "service," such as ask if I needed anything, or refilled drinks. They were merely who shuttled food from the kitchen to the table. But at another place, I received a text telling me my meal was ready for pickup at the kitchen, and I brought my meal to the table. The transaction is all done on my phone. Any additional food is ordered on the phone. Some places will leave the tab open until you close out the transaction. They tell me this process began during covid in order to eliminate contact with other people. But apparently this is how service will be rendered moving forward,
A lot of people get their start working in bars and restaurants. Most of the musicians and movie stars we know got their start waiting tables. Carrie Underwood was waiting tables in a Pizzaria when she entered American Idol.
I hear people say that radio has eliminated its farm team. But one by one we are eliminating those kinds of jobs that kids do while waiting for the actual career to begin. Waiting tables is one of those jobs.
I'm told by a family member in that field that the "newer generation" does not like to be hovered over and finds buying via an app much more pleasant. In other words, they do not like table service and love places where you order online and then have the meal brought to your table or available at a pickup location.
I find that such systems are far less prone to mistaken orders than the verbal process, so I welcome it. Obviously, if I go to Ruth's Chris or Morton's or even Outback, I do not expect to go to a window for my food.
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