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KIRO Turfs more staff
- Thread starter TowerLamp
- Start date
Good! Now I'm waiting for Ron and Don. You know, those lunch bucket clowns that sound like they're from Auburn or Buckley(no offense if you live in Buckely, but come on, if you've got a college degree you won't live there). I heard they got a Christmas bonus. Oh....pleasssseee.
KIRO, as the primary Emergency Alert station for Western Washington, has violated a public trust, plain and simple. They need to hire some smart guys a la KSL and tighten up their shop and go after KUOW's big numbers. Just do it.
KIRO, as the primary Emergency Alert station for Western Washington, has violated a public trust, plain and simple. They need to hire some smart guys a la KSL and tighten up their shop and go after KUOW's big numbers. Just do it.
Right now they're all still on the new Bonneville MyNorthwest.com site ... any news on what they'll be replacing all those hours of programming with?
GEEZ! It's not even the 4th of July yet and we already got fire-works going off everywhere.
Here's a quick and easy solution for the radio industry that will make it a lot less painless for all in the long run - fire EVERYBODY.
From consultants and managers down to janitors and groundskeepers, just get rid of them. If it has a pulse, fire it. Turn off all transmitters (the power bill is another thing to cut) ditch that HD crap, terminate leases, sell equipment on eBay and even then, will THAT be enough?
Or will they need to cut back some MORE? I mean, it's like tax cuts. If taxes are such a damn problem, then why not end all taxes altogether? If budgets are such a crisis, then make it so you won't have one to worry about? Why tiptoe around it?
Overkill you say? Well maybe, but I'm only illustrating the point that this is an industry on it's deathbed (and by the way, the vultures circling over Seattle radio station buildings are getting pretty hard to ignore.) and if nobody knows when the cuts are going to stop, then why even go on? Is it THAT hard off? Second, why put everybody in terror? They got lives too you know. Like they NEED the stress?
Fear doesn't work, it's a lousy motivator and with radio-alternative technologies booming everywhere, why even bother working in such an unstable environment as corporate terrestrial radio? Even fast food restaurants have a lower employee turnover than most corporately owned radio stations these days.
You'll never see a heyday of mega revenues with the lousy way stations have been programmed and mismanaged since the '90s. Corporate radio REFUSES to innovate and evolve beyond the conventional or have a bigger vision for stations beyond mere $$$-like keeping the very medium alive and at least HALFWAY relevant. And it's only reaction to it's own debacles is to fire the people who had nothing to do with their own bad decisions in the first place. So death to it. There's better, more rewarding things to do in life.
Here's a quick and easy solution for the radio industry that will make it a lot less painless for all in the long run - fire EVERYBODY.
From consultants and managers down to janitors and groundskeepers, just get rid of them. If it has a pulse, fire it. Turn off all transmitters (the power bill is another thing to cut) ditch that HD crap, terminate leases, sell equipment on eBay and even then, will THAT be enough?
Or will they need to cut back some MORE? I mean, it's like tax cuts. If taxes are such a damn problem, then why not end all taxes altogether? If budgets are such a crisis, then make it so you won't have one to worry about? Why tiptoe around it?
Overkill you say? Well maybe, but I'm only illustrating the point that this is an industry on it's deathbed (and by the way, the vultures circling over Seattle radio station buildings are getting pretty hard to ignore.) and if nobody knows when the cuts are going to stop, then why even go on? Is it THAT hard off? Second, why put everybody in terror? They got lives too you know. Like they NEED the stress?
Fear doesn't work, it's a lousy motivator and with radio-alternative technologies booming everywhere, why even bother working in such an unstable environment as corporate terrestrial radio? Even fast food restaurants have a lower employee turnover than most corporately owned radio stations these days.
You'll never see a heyday of mega revenues with the lousy way stations have been programmed and mismanaged since the '90s. Corporate radio REFUSES to innovate and evolve beyond the conventional or have a bigger vision for stations beyond mere $$$-like keeping the very medium alive and at least HALFWAY relevant. And it's only reaction to it's own debacles is to fire the people who had nothing to do with their own bad decisions in the first place. So death to it. There's better, more rewarding things to do in life.
State of the Union
Most industry pieces are saying "unlikely radio will ever return to yesterday's revenue threshholds". That debt service albatross from the 1980's is making a lot of companies dump some of the properties, and the rest of the operations ... larry not that far off with the cut to the bone mindset.
For TV this year, outlook SLIGHTLY better for the bigger players, as the political revenue kicks in. But that's only good for the company ... sometimes A/E's get shafted because all the political spots (usually "house" accounts) soak up the avail's so many local clients get stiffed. If your income depends heavily on commissions .....
As I have suggested to many people around here, though, we're MUCH MUCH luckier than so many other markets. Around here you can start knocking on doors of influential companies who are involved in the technology side of convergence and find a way to keep those hot dogs on the table. Not as easy if you're in Little Rock and the morning team has to lose the traffic person and the producer/sidekick.
As much as I jump on the bandwagon of "good old days" ... those days were not really all that much different. You STILL had huge companies owning radio properties, staffed with executives who didn't know shine-ola about running radio stations. General Tire (RKO) ... Nationwide Insurance ... Westinghouse all had killer stations, but it was because SOME exec's were smart enough to bring in programming people to turn those properties into something. At the end of the day, the companies still had the same expectations for "better fill out a BIG deposit slip for us or plan on getting out". It's just in those days not as OBVIOUS to jocks, etc. because we were lucky enough to have some insulation. But the MINDSET at the top was absolutely no different (but it WAS easier to make money so you could generally be SOMEWHAT sloppy and still do OKAY -- not so much the case now).
I just think radio at this stage is no different than almost any other industry. Culturally, there is SO MUCH focus on "pleasing the higher ups" ... and the higher ups are all about pleasing shareholders ... and shareholders have little tolerance for a long-term vision. Even all that stuff tends to come down to ill-informed analysts making predictions that, like Renner and everyone else, have to be retracted two days later when the actual performance differs significantly from forecast. All that stuff much more transparent since the 1980's (remember Michael Douglas ... "greed ... is good"!!) when we suddenly had this huge obsession with every company being a Wall Street cash cow and haven't looked back since.
All this rambling to say that if the whole performance is measured in hours and not decades ... unlikely the thought process is going to be much different than that which leads to the outcome we're seeing this quarter. Lots of bloodshed ahead, I suspect.....
Most industry pieces are saying "unlikely radio will ever return to yesterday's revenue threshholds". That debt service albatross from the 1980's is making a lot of companies dump some of the properties, and the rest of the operations ... larry not that far off with the cut to the bone mindset.
For TV this year, outlook SLIGHTLY better for the bigger players, as the political revenue kicks in. But that's only good for the company ... sometimes A/E's get shafted because all the political spots (usually "house" accounts) soak up the avail's so many local clients get stiffed. If your income depends heavily on commissions .....
As I have suggested to many people around here, though, we're MUCH MUCH luckier than so many other markets. Around here you can start knocking on doors of influential companies who are involved in the technology side of convergence and find a way to keep those hot dogs on the table. Not as easy if you're in Little Rock and the morning team has to lose the traffic person and the producer/sidekick.
As much as I jump on the bandwagon of "good old days" ... those days were not really all that much different. You STILL had huge companies owning radio properties, staffed with executives who didn't know shine-ola about running radio stations. General Tire (RKO) ... Nationwide Insurance ... Westinghouse all had killer stations, but it was because SOME exec's were smart enough to bring in programming people to turn those properties into something. At the end of the day, the companies still had the same expectations for "better fill out a BIG deposit slip for us or plan on getting out". It's just in those days not as OBVIOUS to jocks, etc. because we were lucky enough to have some insulation. But the MINDSET at the top was absolutely no different (but it WAS easier to make money so you could generally be SOMEWHAT sloppy and still do OKAY -- not so much the case now).
I just think radio at this stage is no different than almost any other industry. Culturally, there is SO MUCH focus on "pleasing the higher ups" ... and the higher ups are all about pleasing shareholders ... and shareholders have little tolerance for a long-term vision. Even all that stuff tends to come down to ill-informed analysts making predictions that, like Renner and everyone else, have to be retracted two days later when the actual performance differs significantly from forecast. All that stuff much more transparent since the 1980's (remember Michael Douglas ... "greed ... is good"!!) when we suddenly had this huge obsession with every company being a Wall Street cash cow and haven't looked back since.
All this rambling to say that if the whole performance is measured in hours and not decades ... unlikely the thought process is going to be much different than that which leads to the outcome we're seeing this quarter. Lots of bloodshed ahead, I suspect.....
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