Layoffs Hit KGO Mainstays Gregg Jarrett, Greg Edmonds

[oldiesfan6479]

Medford, Oregon's Mapleton and Opus radio clusters sometimes spreads its air talent over three stations in their respective clusters. What's stopping major market clusters from doing the same?

It has started at the C(BS) cluster in Phoenix, where they made several rounds
of job cuts during 2008.

I don't know if it's just temporary or is now a regular thing, but the PM drive jock
on country KMLE has recently been heard voicetracking overnights on oldies
classic hits KOOL.

 

[DavidKaye]

But where does one draw the line, David? How about treating air personalities in a similar vein?

Would it be safe to say, based on the KNEW/KKGN traffic example above, that one sees nothing
wrong with - as a thought - Don Bleu doing morning-show inserts for both 101.3 and 103.7?

It is standard practice for one traffic reporter to present reports on many stations. The only argument seems to be about doing it live or recorded. Why does it have to be live? Traffic conditions do not change significantly in 5, 10, or even 20 minutes. Even if an accident is cleared the legacy traffic jam remains for a long time. So, time is not of the essence here.

Medford, Oregon's Mapleton and Opus radio clusters sometimes spreads its air talent over three
stations in their respective clusters. What's stopping major market clusters from doing the same?

Unions, where workers haven't voted to dissolve them.

And how would one rate listener loyalty now? With the constant change in personnel and formats,
I believe that listener loyalty is nowhere near what it was, and never will be...which will likely encourage
the cheapening mentality that Newsperson succintly pointed out: "Congratulations, Metro, on figuring
out how to be the cheapest of the cheap!"

I don't recall that listeners are especially loyal to traffic reporters, and that's what's being talked about here.

Your only argument is with whether it's live or recorded. It's not with the fact that Metro uses the same talent to do multiple reports because this has gone on for well over a decade. Clue: KGO's Joe Vincent is KQED's Joe McConnell. According to one of his bios: "Over the years, Joe has reported traffic or news on several radio stations in the Bay Area, including KGO, KBLX, KQED, KABL, KTCT, KFOG, KSAN, KNEW, KSFO, KYA, KFRC, KBAY, K101, KSOL, and KVON/KVYN in the Napa Valley"

I'm not sure what his schedule is currently, except for KGO and KQED but he's always been in multiple places, just not all at once. The other Metro traffic people, the same.

 

[LKellerIII]

It is standard practice for one traffic reporter to present reports on many stations. The only argument seems to be about doing it live or recorded. Why does it have to be live? Traffic conditions do not change significantly in 5, 10, or even 20 minutes. Even if an accident is cleared the legacy traffic jam remains for a long time. So, time is not of the essence here.

Medford, Oregon's Mapleton and Opus radio clusters sometimes spreads its air talent over three
stations in their respective clusters. What's stopping major market clusters from doing the same?

Unions, where workers haven't voted to dissolve them.

And how would one rate listener loyalty now? With the constant change in personnel and formats,
I believe that listener loyalty is nowhere near what it was, and never will be...which will likely encourage
the cheapening mentality that Newsperson succintly pointed out: "Congratulations, Metro, on figuring
out how to be the cheapest of the cheap!"

I don't recall that listeners are especially loyal to traffic reporters, and that's what's being talked about here.

Your only argument is with whether it's live or recorded. It's not with the fact that Metro uses the same talent to do multiple reports because this has gone on for well over a decade. Clue: KGO's Joe Vincent is KQED's Joe McConnell. According to one of his bios: "Over the years, Joe has reported traffic or news on several radio stations in the Bay Area, including KGO, KBLX, KQED, KABL, KTCT, KFOG, KSAN, KNEW, KSFO, KYA, KFRC, KBAY, K101, KSOL, and KVON/KVYN in the Napa Valley"

I'm not sure what his schedule is currently, except for KGO and KQED but he's always been in multiple places, just not all at once. The other Metro traffic people, the same.

Metro Traffic reporters doing multiple stations has been the norm for a couple of decades. I remember Joe doing a traffic report on KGO ago and signing off with "Joe McConnell, KYA Traffic." Wrong name, wrong station. Occupational hazard, I guess

Why KGO makes the reporters use different names is beyond me. If you pay attention, you know the two Joes are the same guy, if you're not paying attention, who cares?

As for radio loyalty - growing up in LA in the late 60s, we had 4 Top 40 stations. Being a radio nerd even then, I liked listening to the jocks talk, and even the news reports, and I had my favorites. But most of my friends changed stations when the stop set started, or when they heard a song they didn't like. It got even worse when we were able to drive, and had pre-set buttons. There wasn't much loyalty to any one station.

 

[samizdat]

To paraphrase Production Boy, "Stop"!

All this gushing about KGO, what a swell guy Mickey Luckoff is, whether June 12 is a Looming Dark Day...it all misses the point.

The Gregs et al did not work for KGO. They worked for Citadel Broadcasting, and this is a company whose financial mess makes Clear Channel look like your rich uncle.

It's not about ratings, or even revenue. No doubt Mickey and his hardworking team of classy people send bushels of cash back to Las Vegas (Citadel HQ) every quarter. All this largesse might even buy the Front Street Gang a little special treatment.

But just go read the financial pages. Citadel is now, essentially, a penny stock (.20 a share as I write) and is on the verge of being delisted by the NYSE. The market cap of this company is a pathetic $55 million (you read that correctly, and by comparison, CBS Corp. has a market cap of over $4.7 billion), Citadel is neck-deep in debt, and it would take a hundred KGO's to spin off the kind of cash this company needs to dig its way out.

Radio is not a dead industry. But there are dying companies like Citadel, and their death throes will be painful.

 

[DavidKaye]

Citadel is now, essentially, a penny stock (.20 a share as I write) and is on the verge of being delisted by the NYSE. The market cap of this company is a pathetic $55 million (you read that correctly, and by comparison, CBS Corp. has a market cap of over $4.7 billion), Citadel is neck-deep in debt, and it would take a hundred KGO's to spin off the kind of cash this company needs to dig its way out.

Not that this time I am not the one singing the praises of CBS stock. It's a good stock, given the problems of the broadcasting industry. I expect it'll do just fine. Even with an expected 15-18% downturn in revenues factored in CBS plans to continue to pay dividends.

 

[samizdat]

IMHO, one of the saddest things about broadcasting is the naivete of the people who work in it. I'll bet fender-pounders in Detroit have a better idea of the workings of their industry than your average radio station employee.

If you work in radio and don't know how to read quarterly financials, you're just asking for trouble. Clear Channel and Citadel are the proof.

Sure, there's a lot of romance in this whole "I talk here, you hear it there" business. But it's a business, people. Until you're running it, you're just being run by it.

 

[DavidKaye]

IMHO, one of the saddest things about broadcasting is the naivete of the people who work in it. I'll bet fender-pounders in Detroit have a better idea of the workings of their industry than your average radio station employee.

I agree. Broadcasting, especially radio, suffers from star mentality. People want to be radio stars and that's all they see. They wish for personality formats that no longer work because of their starry-eyed memories of their youth. They think that people with track records in radio management are automatically stupid, etc.

However I will make one concession, and that's that Bay Area radio is different from other areas of the country. We tend to be better educated and have less tolerance for cookie-cutter formats, especially those playing boring music. The Bay Area has a long history of format innovation including the first all-jazz station (KJAZ), the first "progressive" or "underground" format (KMPX, later KSAN), the first listener-supported radio station (KPFA), one of the most successful talk stations (KGO), the highest rated NPR station (KQED), one of the most popular commercial classical music stations in the country (KDFC), and a successful "dance music" station (KNGY).

At this time station owners would best evaluate what they're doing here and be very careful about programming changes they make. It's very easy to drive people to MP3 players.

In the meanwhile, owners have to contend with dropping revenues. What do they do?

 

[samizdat]

Once upon a time, being a blacksmith or an iceman was a very good career choice. Now? Not so much.

While it is true that radio remains a very viable (and potentially profitable) medium and that we are blessed here in the Bay Area with some terrific examples of creativity, foresight, etc., the fact remains that the industry is in trouble. If you run up the kind of debt Citadel ran up buying stations at the top of a superheated market, you'd better head for Washington and try to get some of that TARP pie.

Hell, if I was Mickey Luckoff, I'd be trying to figure out some kind of LBO so I could get that money-printing factory he runs out of Citadel's soon-to-be-illiquid hands.

 

[weav]

Hell, if I was Mickey Luckoff, I'd be trying to figure out some kind of LBO so I could get that money-printing factory he runs out of Citadel's soon-to-be-illiquid hands.

I expect he has it lined up and is just waiting for the Citadel fire sale.

 

[norcalreps]

most real radio people know that already!!