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KTRH Scolded By Former Listener

I am going to try, once again, to extend an olive branch. FilioScotia and I are closer in thought than he realizes. We concur the corporate bean-counters have destroyed this market. In reading about Laura Morris, another name comes to mind. Bryan Erickson. Erickson is a CC hack from San Anton who, to his credit, is a 'radio guy' who started out running a board, taking out the trash, ripping the wire and being a general go-fer. Ole Bryan sucked his way up and is now the 'suit' on the West Loop. Erickson who KNOWS radio (having come up through it) has sold his soul for a job. He governs KTRH much like the descriptions of Ms. Morris. 'Shotgun meetings' were commonplace. (SHOTGUN MEETING DEFINED: Call in an entire department and rip everyone's ass when you are really talking about 1 or 2 people but lack the balls to talk to their face one on one.)

Low wages, management by intimidation, no people skills, bad attitude, radio hell? YUP! Not much has changed at Cheap Channel Houston.
 
I don't know when Bryan Erickson became News Director, but the staff meetings you describe sound exactly like the ones I had to sit through under Laura Morris. She taught her "Rip and Ream" technique to her acolyte News Director Melanie Miller, who taught it to her assistant Joe Izbrand, who continued it when he became News Director.

Management by intimidation has become a tradition at KTRH.

I accept your olive branch, and I hope you'll accept mine. I haven't been the easiest person to get along with here in these spaces. I have a knack for saying things that p-iss people off, and I apologize for that. I'm also apologizing for my uncanny knack for making every topic "about me." That's making me an obnoxious bore, and I'm getting tired of it myself.
 
FilioScotia said:
I don't know when Bryan Erickson became News Director, but the staff meetings you describe sound exactly like the ones I had to sit through under Laura Morris. She taught her "Rip and Ream" technique to her acolyte News Director Melanie Miller, who taught it to her assistant Joe Izbrand, who continued it when he became News Director.

Management by intimidation has become a tradition at KTRH.

I accept your olive branch, and I hope you'll accept mine. I haven't been the easiest person to get along with here in these spaces. I have a knack for saying things that p-iss people off, and I apologize for that. I'm also apologizing for my uncanny knack for making every topic "about me." That's making me an obnoxious bore, and I'm getting tired of it myself.
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Accepted. Perhaps we should sing a chorus of Kumbaya! Just kidding. I suspected we were saying the same basic things from different perspectives. ;)
 
FilioScotia said:
If you don't like what KTRH is doing, why do you still listen to it and complain about it constantly?
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Well I was hoping that the new change was going to be for the better. I gave it every possible chance I could. I can tolerate a more laid back approach to news reporting, but phone calls from idiots I cannot.

This board is a good way to vent and it gives me the false sense that KTRH gives a rat's behind what listeners think!!
 
I guess now I can officially thank John Julitz and Roger Hudson for doing me the biggest favor of my career. Roger hired John instead of me for an opening last year. Because of that, John has to work for Cheap Channel and I don't. (I eventually landed a job with a Cox radio station, not in Houston, and I am quite thankful for that.)
 
AZAndrewG said:
I guess now I can officially thank John Julitz and Roger Hudson for doing me the biggest favor of my career. Roger hired John instead of me for an opening last year. Because of that, John has to work for Cheap Channel and I don't. (I eventually landed a job with a Cox radio station, not in Houston, and I am quite thankful for that.)
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A enjoyed working for COX! (Did I say that?) :D
 
I enjoyed reading all the give and take in the prvious posts. It was spirited but not mean and sprited is good. My eyes popped out reading about Mrs. Morris. As best I can determine, she was out of radio when some genuis at CBS gave her the Houston cluster. And that was the end of at least two historic legend stations and another boat load of talented people tossed away like trash. Isn't it odd that a person can devote decades to a station and be a major part of its success, but when they are thrown away, no mention is ever made of them again. That's sick, really sick. I looked forward to returning to Houston and the vibrant radio town I grew up in, but it was gone. God bless this board and being able to pay respects to all who have worked, and work now, in this formerly great art form.
 
Those of us who grew up with and worked with a bunch of them still remember them. It's gratifying to see some of them being inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame each year. Even without that honor; some of the more legendary ones will never be forgotten.
 
concept4141 said:
...I can tolerate a more laid back approach to news reporting, but phone calls from idiots I cannot...
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If that's the vibe you get from a news/talk station, I wonder what you'd say about any of Houston's four sports radio stations, or sports radio in general...

20ozwilliehoppe said:
...I looked forward to returning to Houston and the vibrant radio town I grew up in, but it was gone...
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Replace "Houston" with "Ohio" and you've got the theme song for the KTRH midday show... :D
 
"We're gonna go .... and take over those rock and rollers if things get much worse" is the phrase I heard during hurricane Alicia coverage. A few years later, I flip over from KLOL to find out what exploded to the East of me and quickly decided not to take 225 in to work. Syndicated political interest programs provide nothing for the community. After a disaster is long over and the threat has passed, we can watch the video on TV which negates the whole intent and purpose of radio.
 
Kendromedia said:
"We're gonna go .... and take over those rock and rollers if things get much worse" is the phrase I heard during hurricane Alicia coverage. A few years later, I flip over from KLOL to find out what exploded to the East of me and quickly decided not to take 225 in to work. Syndicated political interest programs provide nothing for the community. After a disaster is long over and the threat has passed, we can watch the video on TV which negates the whole intent and purpose of radio.
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Excellent points. If I want syndicated crap, I can download it on my ipod.
 
Drucifer said:
Kendromedia said:
"We're gonna go .... and take over those rock and rollers if things get much worse" is the phrase I heard during hurricane Alicia coverage. A few years later, I flip over from KLOL to find out what exploded to the East of me and quickly decided not to take 225 in to work. Syndicated political interest programs provide nothing for the community. After a disaster is long over and the threat has passed, we can watch the video on TV which negates the whole intent and purpose of radio.
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Excellent points. If I want syndicated crap, I can download it on my ipod.
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Agreed. I also agree with the former listener's scolding of KTRH. I used to enjoy that station, but will now only listen to them during an emergency, as long as they are the official emergency station for the greater Houston area. I'd love an all-news station. I can live without rant radio, which is what KTRH has become.
 
It's doubtful that you'll get any news from KTRH in an emergency because they'll be too busy yukking it up with their wingnut hosts.
 
Sort of like that big five-alarm fire. Even giving money hand-over-fist in the form of advertising doesn't guarantee that your fire will be deemed important enough to break in to syndication.

Remember Ike? Sure you do. By the time we got back on the power grid to see the storm footage, the rest of the country had been over it for almost two weeks. KTRH coverage of that was pretty good, but who's left to do it, if/when we get hit again?
 
During Rita and Ike, I believe we actually got better information from the local TV news operations. As I remember KTRH's coverage, leading up to landfall, it largely consisted of telephone interviews with area emergency managers and city officials telling people to get out of town but, they couldn't tell them how. During the lead-up to Rita, this created the runaway scrape that clogged Texas highways for hundreds of miles in every direction. Most didn't buy into that panic during Ike. Sadly, some should have paid better attention, though.

Then you had the occassional weather person calling in to tell us a hurricane was coming. Really?

Once the storms were actually on the doorstep and gone; TV was the best bet for up-to-date information.
 
Sure, assuming there was power. We were out for about 18 days. I haven't seen a battery-operated television in years. Our cell phone batteries died and stayed dead for several days. We were conserving our gasoline (not that the streets were clear enough to drive anywhere) and the first television coverage we saw happened about 16 days after Ike hit. Radio really was the only viable source of information during that time. Your mileage, of course, may have varied.
 
aunti-terrestrial said:
Sure, assuming there was power. We were out for about 18 days. I haven't seen a battery-operated television in years. Our cell phone batteries died and stayed dead for several days. We were conserving our gasoline (not that the streets were clear enough to drive anywhere) and the first television coverage we saw happened about 16 days after Ike hit. Radio really was the only viable source of information during that time. Your mileage, of course, may have varied.
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KTRH absolutely infuriated me when they had JD interview Michael Chertoff in the days after Ike, pitching softball question after softball question to rewrite history about FEMA's botched response to Katrina. Fox News would have been proud. I have refused to listen to them since.

I now have a battery powered digital TV and some alternate power sources. Between that and other radio stations who don't have a partisan identity, I expect to be well informed without KTRH.

Give me the freaking news. Don't tell me what to think about it. I can think for myself.
 
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