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Local Layoffs at Audacy (and a Resignation), the 2025 Edition

TheBigA said:
Just last week, WFMT announcers voted to join AFTRA. The point of the union is to be united. It doesn't have the strength to negotiate if employees aren't united.
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Isn't that the station where the response of management was to reduce the staff size considerably? You can't tell me that management did not know that a union vote was coming, so this looks to be a response to avoiding increased costs and regulations due to a union "agreement".

There are so many instances in radio where unions have done nothing but perpetuate over-staffing that I am inherently skeptical of the "benefits" that are achieved under most agreements.

My example of "over-staffing" lies in the multitude of stations required to have a union board op when the format and the technology did not require one... and having one just made the operation less dynamic and agile.

At a station in LA in the 70's, I showed up for a "surprise visit" on a Sunday. I was going to meet the PD in the parking lot and go to get a meal together. But I arrived a bit early, and was surprised to see a big cable extending from the studio exit door to a car in the parking lot. When I went in, the union board op was not there, but the mike would be opened and close and carts triggered.

At the other end of the cable, the board op was working under his car in the parking lot. He had rigged up a long remote control and was "running the board" from under his car. When the PD arrived, I was told to ignore it as a complaint might trigger a union work stoppage or fabricated grievance.

In factories, large warehouses, mines, oil fields, ports, major retail companies and the like unions give a voice to big groups of people who could never negotiate on their own. In radio, in most cases, unions make management harder and less productive.
 
DavidEduardo said:
My example of "over-staffing" lies in the multitude of stations required to have a union board op when the format and the technology did not require one... and having one just made the operation less dynamic and agile.
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Every union contract has an expiration date. The way unions justify themselves to members is by getting them more money. The way they get more money is by negotiating and giving up some things. So that may mean they get members more money, and next week there are fewer members. The budget is the budget. We've seen that happen in a lot of places. There was a time when unions had jurisdiction over all technical facilities. Every contract, they get more money, and give up some jurisdiction. After a while, the workplace rules change. The budget is the budget.
 
KMan said:
Silverman's changes at KNX have really freshened up the station, even after he was forced to go to a solo anchor format in middays and PM drive due to prior cuts.

Better imaging, stronger anchor line-up, cleaned up the infomercials on the weekend (now only on 1070 while 97.1 keeps the news format), etc. He's done a great job. This is a big loss.
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Agreed. Silverman went from weekend anchor and Asst. News Director at WCBS to ND at KYW to PD at KNX. I worked with him and liked him. Hope he is headed to TV as said above. Check out his video on You Tube. Aerobatic Flight over Jones Beach.
 
TheBigA said:
Audacy has a whole lot less debt than iHeart. My view is the amount of debt doesn't matter when you're not making money. There are discussions in other threads that there's a deal in the works to merge Audacy & Cumulus. I really don't see who benefits from that. Unless there's a big pile of money somewhere that I can't see. The difference between the companies is the people who ran Audacy are gone.
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iHeart has had a formula since it was Clear Channel to constantly keep their books "in the red." They're the largest radio company in the United States if not the world. They are not, in actuality, losing money.
 
Audacy fired people who made money I believe. If you’re there a while and have a decent salary…like Johnny dare in KC, gave him the axe most likely because he pulled down a healthy income. They kept all the mediocre DJ’s that work for cheap, sadly.
 
MarkW said:
His work on KROQ may very well have been excellent (I've only listened to pieces of his KROQ on-air shift on two occasions), but his voicetracking on other Audacy alt stations left a lot to be desired. On average, he spoke for a total of 60 seconds in each hour on my local station.

Nonetheless, it is certainly disappointing to see yet another round of on-air and programming layoffs hit large & major market stations.

I still remember him comparing the Lumineers to Pearl Jam in one of his voicetracks a couple years back; I thought that comparison was an insult to Pearl Jam (albeit an unintended one), and still do.
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I always try and listen to air talent and they literally talk for ten seconds and it’s boring banter. So talking less than a minute sounds accurate, seems boring if you’re a real talent. It’s insulting to relegate you to a song announcer. I got told by a PD once that I’m supposed to be the grout between the tiles not the tiles. That made me hate radio! I’m not grout! :)
 
Emerson12 said:
Audacy fired people who made money I believe. If you’re there a while and have a decent salary…like Johnny dare in KC, gave him the axe most likely because he pulled down a healthy income. They kept all the mediocre DJ’s that work for cheap, sadly.
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Sadly, this the mgmt/corp attitude in many professions...
 
According to one of our "sacred" American documents, the purpose of govt is to "...establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty..." Since when is business supposed to do that?
And further, too bad our current govt has stopped doing any of these things.
 
TomásEstefan said:
Sadly, this the mgmt/corp attitude in many professions...
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Cutting costs in an industry that is billing 70% below Y2K levels is hard to avoid.
 
Emerson12 said:
Audacy fired people who made money I believe. If you’re there a while and have a decent salary…like Johnny dare in KC, gave him the axe most likely because he pulled down a healthy income. They kept all the mediocre DJ’s that work for cheap, sadly.
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The Cult of Deejay Worship is dead, and has been for decades. As long as there weren’t convenient alternatives, this was obscured. When consumers began to have choices for audio programming, particularly on-demand programming, they voted with their ears. No one personality is bigger than the radio station they work for.
 
TheBigA said:
The situation is more complicated than that, and has been for 25 years.
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Radio had no problem bombarding listeners with 9 minute commercial breaks, annoying jocks who only blathered on about themselves, and stale playlists. The money flowed in. Of course, they preferred the days before the Internet.

It's harder now and they haven't found a way to pivot.
They can keep cutting their way to Obsolescence...
 
tbolt909 said:
It's harder now and they haven't found a way to pivot.
They can keep cutting their way to Obsolescence...
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This is not a content problem. There is no format that will cause people to throw away their phones and computers and seek out radios. That device has been replaced. Everybody knows it. So for now, the only solution is budget for the audience that's left, and transition them to other platforms that you hopefully control.
 
TheBigA said:
There is no format that will cause people to throw away their phones and computers and seek out radios. That device has been replaced. Everybody knows it.
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In other words, the radio is obsolete. And I don't know if "everybody knows it." The flip side of tbolt909's point is that you also cannot cut your way to relevance. Cutting the budget to serve "the audience that's left" and hoping they'll transition to other platforms that maybe you can control doesn't seem to be a path forward. It's more like "okay, how long can we keep the patient on life support until the rest of the family gets to the hospital?" It seems (to me) like some of the family members don't grasp that Grandma ("the radio") has had another stroke and is not going to recover.
 
Deus Ex Machiato said:
In other words, the radio is obsolete. And I don't know if "everybody knows it."
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The device we know as a radio is obsolete. The content can translate to other devices. Radio companies are not in the device business. The original radio companies were. That's a big difference. Radio companies today are in the content business. They're cutting expenses at broadcast stations, and transferring resources to growing areas. That's where the future is. In it's latest quarterly call with investors, iHeart said their digital business is almost 50% of all company revenues. Soon it will overtake broadcast. That will be a big change for a company that was primarily a station owner.
 
TheBigA said:
They're cutting expenses at broadcast stations, and transferring resources to growing areas. That's where the future is.
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I'm not seeing how Audacy is "transferring resources to growing areas" let alone investing in the future. They're just cutting. To their credit, iHeart figured this out to a certain degree. I don't know that Audacy has.
 


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