it hits the fan

[Punk]

Rumor has it that the budget axe has started to fall at Entercom here in NEPA...some IT guys, Psycho Mike and Randy Snedeker may all be gone.

Again RUMOR has it!!!!

 

[ThomasCarten]

It's no rumor, unfortunately.

 

[plooker]

This is just the start. With the present state of the economy, one of the first type of budget cuts come in advertising. This trickle down effect, plus the already weakened state of Terrestrial radios economy is going to really hammer radio this next year. Its unfortunate. I've already lost 1 client due to the economic downturn, and have been hearing from several sources in the industry that this is just the tip of the iceberg. 2009 is not going to be a good year for our industry. The IT guys Entercom let go should have no problem finding other jobs, since IT is one area that is still relatively stable.
If this is in fact true, best wishes to the affected parties, keep your chin up guys, collect your unemployment, and try to sit out the storm. Hopefully with a new administration in the White House, things should stabilize sometimes next year.

 

[normhill007]

Sad to say this is history repeating itself again but with a twist. Citadel won't be able to find a buyer to rid themselves of underperforming properties because buyers won't be able to raise the cash, and to be honest, broadcast properties aren't much of an investment anymore. Car dealers have a better profit margin than radio. I don't know what it is these days but when I left the biz 10 years ago, net profit was running about 1 percent of gross, and the gross for most stations wasn't all that much. Radio guys (and gals) wouldn't let go of their baby for anything, but bean counters and people who think that owning a radio station is cool will bail in a heartbeat, or just shut it down. Ours is a very labor intensive industry with too many layers of management that is non-producing and most of the time, their decisions are counter-productive. We rely on a sales staff that can be shown the door the first week they don't make quota. There's some pressure, and an incentive to cheat the customer. There are more outlets for music and entertainment, and if you want music you can get your stuff with the ol' Ipod without the hiss of the subcarrier. Newer luxury cars will give you traffic reports, weather, sports, etc anytime you want it. People say radio has to re-invent itself...To What. Advertisers always want the most bang for their buck, but if that buck is getting smaller and they need it for inventory or payroll, they will scale back, even the big boys. I miss the days when the days were good. I feel sorry for those whose General Manager smiles and tells them what a great job they're doing, days before he plunges a knife in their back.

 

[ColorRadio]

No Psycho Mike this morning on KRZ.

 

[wirelessinnepa]

Interesting statistic was pointed out to me by a peer today from the most recent issue of Advertising Age magazine.....

A recent online study from Paragon Research polling more than 400 14- to 24-year-olds about their music-consumption habits found that the youth demo has increased its time spent listening to radio 11% this year, while its time spent listening to iPods has actually decreased 13%. The study coincides with the Radio Advertising Bureau's annual RADAR report, which shows that AM/FM radio listeners increased by 3 million in 2008, bringing the number of weekly radio listeners to 235 million.

link to the article on Advertising Age's website is here :http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=131835

Of course the article goes on to say that radio isn't making hay out of these large, double digit increases in listenership...but that is probably due to people being let go by the larger corporations and the general (flawed) opinion that we're somehow sitting on death's doorstep here in the radio industry with one foot on a banana peel....nothing could be further than the truth! Listenership is up. People are responding to radio advertising....especially in a world where there are 100 billion websites and newspaper readership is down sharply every single year, this is THE time to be in radio, and ON the radio!

Ben

 

[scmidlapp]

Somebody told me a couple minutes ago that the entire full time staff at Froggy was let go. That seems ridiculous but they claimed it to be true. Can anyone back that up????

 

[waunderlust]

Geez. First D & W are without a producer. Now Rocky and Sue. Oh wait, let's not forget the local traffax/metro office closed. What's next a jock has to drive the company vehicle, set up their remote, fix the marti, do the remote and collect the fees all by themselves?

Good luck to those who lost their jobs. I wish you well.

 

[wirelessinnepa]

With my above post about the good things that are happening in radio now, I didn't mean to be insensitive to those who are feeling the stress of unemployment right now. Sorry to those who have lost jobs.

It's too bad that so many large companies are so overleveraged that they are letting good people go. The silver lining to this story is that maybe more local owners will buy properties from consolidators as time goes on, and the credit crunch WILL improve, and then maybe we can have local people being in charge of radio again, the way it should be. It appears from the above statistic, AND the fact that satellite radio, I think, has less than a 50/50 chance of being in business next year, that the future is bright for local radio.

Ben

 

[berniek]

Doc and the gang on the air this morning as usual.

 

[DRx]

Geez. First D & W are without a producer. Now Rocky and Sue. Oh wait, let's not forget the local traffax/metro office closed. What's next a jock has to drive the company vehicle, set up their remote, fix the marti, do the remote and collect the fees all by themselves? Good luck to those who lost their jobs. I wish you well.

Well, duh!! There are people in this market that actually have to do that and not get extra!
Maybe it's about time some of those in the "biz" in "the valley" get off their asses and quit being the "prima donnas" that they think they are.

 

[Aramondo]

What does "prima donnas" have to do with engineers and promotions people doing engineering and promotional work? At the circus they don't expect the monkeys to put up the tents. All the monkeys have to do is their little banana tricks once the tent is ready to go. Let's not get all high and mighty because you've had to lug a marti somewhere.

 

[12 In a Row]

With my above post about the good things that are happening in radio now, I didn't mean to be insensitive to those who are feeling the stress of unemployment right now. Sorry to those who have lost jobs.

It's too bad that so many large companies are so overleveraged that they are letting good people go. The silver lining to this story is that maybe more local owners will buy properties from consolidators as time goes on, and the credit crunch WILL improve, and then maybe we can have local people being in charge of radio again, the way it should be. It appears from the above statistic, AND the fact that satellite radio, I think, has less than a 50/50 chance of being in business next year, that the future is bright for local radio.

Ben

It's human nature to look back in the past with rose colored glasses.

The bulk of "local radio ownership" was pretty awful.
The local owner(s) were for the most part, clueless and cheap!

Crappy equipment, failing transmitters, you name it.
If they couldn't trade it, you went without.

 

[12 In a Row]

And considering the state of the economy, if the local owners were still in charge their stations would:

a. have NO staff
b. pulled the plug

 

[emo474]

Let me preface this by saying that I love local radio... but the ship is sinking fast. The internet, IPods, satellite radio are all creeping in... local HD radio is a bust... with Kid Karddick in the morning taking over for a live local personality and more cutbacks on the horizon, things are looking mighty bleak. I just bought an Ipod Touch and it features no AM/FM radio, but does offer an application to provider streaming internet radio to owners of different formats across the US.. so from Hard Rock, to Lite Rock, Talk, and Sports.. there's another application that's taking away from the local market. Even the satellite jocks are poking fun and downplaying local radio. I just heard a spot on BHT that knocked the contest on KRZ (or was if Froggy), where you have to find the hidden cash... they said that "We're not hiding our money.. we're giving away 1-thousand dollars an hour to our listners"... trouble is local listeners do not realize that they're playing against listners in HOW MANY OTHER MARKETS??? KRZ is having a fun local contest, yet the satellite competition is promoting someting as bigger and better with out telling listeners that they have "jack squat" chances of winning anything! By the way.. the Office at WARM still have at the reception desk a huge sign with all their station's promoted on the wall... nice to see that WARM is considered so important that it still says NEWS TALK RADIO---WARM 590!

 

[ThomasCarten]

Things are tough all over. Here is one item from an internal memo at ABC News Radio:

"5. The company is cancelling this year's holiday parties."

****! I used to love bringing in the nets the last working day before Christmas and hear a half-blitzed announcer try to do the news.

 

[leekobus]

I'm responding to 12 in a row's assessment of local owners. Having been an employee of some of those owners, yes, they were peculiar people in some respects. But individual stations were actually doing things in their communities. That's because the owners of the stations not only owned businesses in a town, they had to live there too. They visited other LOCAL businesses, attended LOCAL churches, belong to the LOCAL Chamber of Commerce. They had a sense of what was happening in the communites, whether they voluntarily developed it or had it handed to them by community members. Did Mel Karmazin ever do that when he was the head of a large broadcast radio group? Think he cared? Do you think it's the same for the current management of Clear Channel?

The other important aspect of being local is BEING THERE in times of need. When Hurricaine (sp? sorry, dictionary is not handy) Agnes flooded Wyoming Valley in 1972, those cheap, peculiar people rose to the occasion, stayed at their studios and provided live coverage and emergency information until the waters knocked out the last gas generator at the last radio station. Fast forward to the beginning of this decade in New Jersey. An out of control wild fire closed the Garden State Parkway on a summer Sunday, forcing thousands onto Route 9 (ever travelled that awful road?) Roads clogged, hundred forced to leave their homes. All the voice tracked dee jays at the LOCAL radio stations could talk about was: "what a beautiful Sunday at the Jersey Shore..." it was.

At least, local owners had some plan for responding to emergencies and would show up at the stations themselves, if need be. Yes, people have many options for their entertainment and news. But when something bad happens, it's instinctive to say: "turn on the radio or the TV...they'll tell us what's happening." This instict will be intact for some time...that is...until bloated corporate owners completely kill the original mission of broadcasters (...the public interest, necessity and convenience...)

No, those local owners were not business giants. Many of them were dee-jays who climbed the company ladder. But they had a handle on what towns they served and how to serve them. No corporate animal who know of our communities as merely a ledger entry in an annual report will ever have that kind of handle on their customers...and never want to. It's about sucking out as much profit as possible from these stations and selling them at an obscenely higher price than they paid for them. Small broadcast managers indeed need to update their programming ideas and business models. Personally, however, I'd like to give the next generation of Dr. Roy Morgans and Jim Wards a chance at the helm.

 

[Keeth]

I have to agree somewhat. I once worked for a Mom & Pop station the owners of which were very generous to their employees. I remember one particular week when my morning show partner and I had to work seven straight days. The owners' wife showed up in the control room on Sunday morning...that's right, we were working a Sunday morning shift...with breakfast from Mickey D's for us. When we opened the non-bio-degradable styrofoam boxes there was a $100 bill in there for each of us. But that was 1986---and it was in Montana. The first guy I worked for when I moved here is in JAIL now.

 

[Vince Sweeney]

When we opened the non-bio-degradable styrofoam boxes there was a $100 bill in there for each of us. But that was 1986---and it was in Montana.

Oddly, my first job was at a group-owned station, although the group was largely unknown to most of us. We thought it great good fortune if they managed to make payroll on time.

So, my first Mom and Pop was my second job, and it was more Pop than Mom. "Pop" had in his younger years been a bear to work for, but the time I got there the wind was out of his sails and he was largely a no-show around the property.

 

[berniek]

My first two jobs were Mom and Pop stations, WNAK and WARD. Bob Neilson and Charmaine Grove ran WNAK out of an old funeral home in Nanticoke. Half of the place was the station, the other half was Bob's house. I remember at Christmas the listerner, mostly older women, would bake cookies and sent them to the air staff with cards or send you a card with a dollar in it, to go have a coffee.

WARD was a bit different, mostly because Jim was the heart and soul of the place. I remember time Jim would be short on cash for payroll, pick up the phone and call Pittson Tire to by a bunch of spots just cover things....