Is Opportunity Knocking?

[T_Magoo]

From All Access...

ALL ACCESS has learned that CLEAR CHANNEL has handed down a Q1 clampdown on spending and instituted a hiring freeze. Translation: no promotions, no hiring, and no music research until APRIL 1st.

I know this doesn't really pertain to the Buff, but in Rochester, and anywhere else where the Mays family has peed in the dirt. I'd see this as a HUGE opportunity to not only prosper in the short run, but also on the long haul. Think what the atmosphere is in these stations after yet another round of personnel cuts. The latest in some of the smaller markets like Milwaukee and Salisbury/Ocean City, MD. I know the OM/PD there. He was just shown the door, even though his stations are #1 & #2 in the market. Someone needs to show me the foresight in that move.

Hell, I was seeing some of it in Dallas last year. Who can be creative in an atmosphere like that. Talk longer than 30 seconds and an email is sent to the control room, because if we're talking, we're losing. "When's the other shoe dropping?"

Now, if I was across the street, I'd be doing bake sales, baby-sitting, starting a paper route...anything to out talent; out promote; out contest; out hustle the CC's, because once you get them on their backs...you don't want them getting up again. Now's the time to put your foot on their throat.

And after April...then what? IMO, it won't change anything because there is a new name on the company letterhead. Are they going to replace that 2001 Chevy van that has been looking like crap for 4 years, will they be able to hire that news guy that they canned from the morning show, the OM/PD that they fired cause he was making almost as much as the LSM? Anyone taking bets that the money will flow again?

With what's going on at CC, and with the news from Wall Street that radio stocks will perform like one of the old-school strippers that we could see on Thursday night on the "old Chippewa Street," I think that all over the country, guys like Dick Greene will emerge to scoop up signals that will either go dark, or for as much as a tank of gas and a carton of smokes. I'm saving my Raleigh coupons and Dollar Doublers again just in case!

One more thing...how long before the Senecas become owners? I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. I'd come home to work for Barry Snider.

 

[ThePickleReport]

Great post Tony.

I said ten years ago that the "big guys' would be in trouble and see the error of their big-spending ways. Ok, I didn't forsee C.C. selling the entire company off and going private. But when they started buying up stations in market #250 and beyond I knew there would be a problem down the line. Owners with more of a local stake can read and react before the rest can get that memo back from corporate saying "there might be money in the budget for that in Spring 2009".

Are there opportunities out there? Heck, yeah.

The problem is that history is doomed to repeat itself. The next guys are assembling war chests of a couple hundred million to buy stations in twenty states, bleed them dry, and try to eventually sell them at a profit and make the investors happy. I have a feeling that the next round of entities that attempt this are going to end up in a flaming heap wondering where it all went wrong.

If you were an owner and wanted to put a couple of regional clusters together (say in Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse) or just one nice cluster somewhere in one city, think of the talent pool of sales/management and on-air you could choose from.

Local ownership will rise again!