Lots of layoffs

[NewsStud]

The best way to explain this to someone who thinks sellers are somehow inferior to on-air and programming folks is to say that salespeople are best thought of as independent contractors. Their pay is based on what they bring in, of which they get a cut.

I understand how salespeople make their money. And it isn’t I who thinks salespeople are inferior to programming staff… but sales managers who ultimately run radio companies (programmers rarely do) think programming staff are expendable.

Salespeople are at high risk. If they don't bring in enough to justify the training and supervisory costs, they get cut loose. If they don't get enough business from the accounts they are assigned, they get cut loose. If they don't do well in training, they get cut loose. If they don't follow through on each sales and give good service, they get cut loose. So a station will have as many sellers as is needed to cover all the potential business. If there are not enough, then a station misses out on business, and revenue is lower than it should be.

The problem is that you have too many salespeople working for one company going after the same pool of potential clients. Instead of a tight team of great sellers who bring in good money while fighting for the best value for their clients, your top sellers are fighting with a surplus of twenty-somethings who can’t sell very well and who are let go after their six-month guarantee is up because they don’t make budget.

Again, it’s about management not seeing how to build and invest in a product. They simply thought more salespeople would multiply the amount of money coming in. What they didn’t want to accept was that each town only has so many money trees. Adding more people to shake the branches doesn’t mean the tree yields more fruit. It just means each shaker brings home a smaller bunch.

The commissions paid to sellers is very much related to what sellers can make selling the local cable system, the yellow pages, print, TV, deal of the day operators, etc. So what a good seller makes (and bad sellers don't make $100 k) is whatever it takes to make them interested in radio rather than some other medium or something outside of media.

The problem here with your reasoning is that local TV, the local cable system, the local print media and yellow pages still offer something that radio has been slowly (and is nearly done with) getting rid of: local compelling content. The sales force at the local TV station makes a heckuva lot of money selling spots during the Morning, 5:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. news… especially the weather adjacencies. See how well the sales staff is doing at that one station in town with no news department and no real compelling first-run programming.

What jocks and production people make is relative to what it would take to get a comparable person with the same qualifications. There is a bigger supply of programming people than good sellers. So guess who makes more?

Which is why programmers and talent get bonuses for ratings improvements and/or sustenance. Yet sales people can’t do shows that actually build and retain the audience that a sales force wishes to deliver to a potential advertiser. The sales folks in charge want to blame Pandora, iPods and everything else for the lack of listenership but never will they admit that they chose to spend less money building better programming. They’re too busy paying out six-month guarantees to underproductive superfluous salespeople who do nothing but make it harder for the good sellers to do good business.

Sales management trains, assigns accounts, does 4-legged calls, checks competitive monitors, sets rates, analyzes inventory usage and conveys avail data to sellers, works on late pays and collection accounts, works with local and corporate on budgets, helps prepare sales material, takes calls to resolve client issues such as "my copy did not run..." or "your salesperson said I'd get lots of spots in morning drive." And lots more, too.

And it takes six executives to do this? Yet on the programming side, one person making 25K will be doing the legwork, the quality control, and the last minute production changes the sales staff needs done because the client changed his mind on the copy.

I actually had one GM in a MAJOR market (both an Arbitron major market and one of Clear Channel’s big markets) tell me that programming was the filler between the important stuff. And he wasn’t busting my chops. He was serious.

Now that’s offensive. And that is the prevailing attitude at that place. And it makes the whole business suck for the programming side and for the sales side.

 

[TheBigA]

I understand how salespeople make their money. And it isn’t I who thinks salespeople are inferior to programming staff… but sales managers who ultimately run radio companies (programmers rarely do) think programming staff are expendable.

I don't think anyone thinks the programming staff is expendable. But that the idea of live staffs at every single radio station in this country isn't the most effective approach to serving an audience, especially in the context of all other media. Especially when they play the same music and talk about the same stuff. We do become accustomed to a certain way of doing things, and feel it's the best. But if the users change the way they use radio, then we in radio need to adapt to them.

We live in a world where people can interact directly with celebrities and recording artists. They no longer need an intermediary. It's also hard for a small town DJ to get exclusive interviews with the celebrities his listeners are interested in. But it's more likely a few centralized hosts will get those interviews and can share them with a broader audience.

A walk through the DJ Hall of Fame will confirm that great talent is a rare thing. You don't find it in every town in this country. If you are a great talent, you want to share that talent with a larger audience. It's only natural. If you're part of a big company, you can either work your way up to larger markets, or add several smaller ones to your audience, and maybe even add some extra cash to your wallet along the way. That way you can live where you like instead of where the work is. As you said, compelling content is hard to come by. Once you find someone who knows what they're doing, why not share them with more people? Why should someone in Elmira be stuck listening to some 22 year old kid struggle through his first news cast? Don't they deserve quality? Compelling content isn't strictly local. There simply aren't enough compelling things happening in most parts of this country to warrent 24/7 live & local talent. Most of these folks are using national prep sheets for their bits anyway. And if they're wrong, and the public hates what CC delivers, there are lots of other radio stations in town for them to listen to.

 

[davideduardo]

The problem is that you have too many salespeople working for one company going after the same pool of potential clients.

That's perhaps the core of the way you view things.

As I said, the number of sellers is self-regulating. Understanding that there is turnover is part of the situation, but the real point is that as long as adding staff increases revenues, stations will add or keep a certain level of sellers.

I've never seen sellers for the same station visit the same account, so the issue is simply how many sellers are needed to cover all potential revenue sources in a market.

Historically, sales management has been the source of general management. That's likely because the skills required to manage sales are quite similar to those required in general management, while much of the programming skillset is less related. There is no evil plot to keep programmer out of management, and there never has been.

As to the chimera that is localism, I'd remind you that to those who use social networks, "community" is not bound by geography and "local" has much less a finite meaning than it did a few decades ago. Similarly, the models for push-mode radio programming have been altered and are far less powerful when we can friend artists and celebrities and have what we view as direct contact with them. We don't need disk jockeys and news anchors to act as intermediaries any more.

Radio's issues are not about "localism." Cable systems with hundreds of channels are not local (or the top rated channels would be the public access ones). Newspapers are dying, as the most important local content they lived on was classified; how many pages of that does your paper run today vs. two decades ago? TV news is way off, as people get news on demand.... and yellow pages are just a book of ads.

As the "product" on the radio changes, management has to adapt to change. On top of that, management has to adapt to a very bad prolonged recession and more competition than ever.

As hard as it is to admit, advertising is the product of radio. We assemble audiences, and deliver them to advertisers who take slices of them to give their message to. We prefer to say we are in the entertainment business, just as life insurance companies don't like to say they are in the death business.

 

[firepoint525]

That's an important point. One major change in the media world has been the demise of strictly local business. In the old days, every town had several local department stores that were only in that town, and the owner lived in that town. Not any more. Now there's Macy's, Pennys, Sears, and Wal Mart. Which one is local? Used to be all the restaurants were local. Not any more. Same with hardware, furniture, and drug stores. Even barber & beauty shops are chains. The national chains buy their advertising from agencies, not local radio stations. The local sales people focus on the few remaining local businesses, like car dealerships (which are becoming regional) and lawyers offices. It's really a big problem, and one reason why radio stations are changing their focus from local origination to national.

Well, there's that, but there are also more ads for products now than for stores. Anything with a thrice-repeated 800 number, or a website to visit for more information.

 

[NewsStud]

As hard as it is to admit, advertising is the product of radio. We assemble audiences, and deliver them to advertisers who take slices of them to give their message to. We prefer to say we are in the entertainment business, just as life insurance companies don't like to say they are in the death business.

I think we're on the same side, David. We make our money through the commercials that are sold. I agree, completely.

But it's the talent who generate the audience of which you sell to the advertising client. We can't exist without the other. But for too long at CC, they've hacked away at programming in favor of bland regional or national syndicated fare because they simply don't want to spend the money. When the syndicated programming fails to keep the audience, they blame outside issues for the loss of ears.

You may not need an overnight DJ anymore on the AC station. But you can make your station worth listening to with local content. People still need news, traffic and weather... at least on station per market. That is the reason why Radio One in Houston is flipping a station to 24/7 News and building a news station from the ground up. It can make money and fill a void (even if only a perceived one) left by CC gutting much of KTRH's local news presentation.

(I really shouldn't just single out CC here. They're the lightening rod. Others do the same exact thing).

And to respond to TheBigA: I realize Houston isn't Elmira, NY... but why should the people of Elmira not have their own distinct programming, even if just between records? Even if a big market talent is recording a newscast for the Elmira station, do you think that much Elmira news actually makes it on that cast? The big market "hub" newsroom is understaffed due to budget cuts! They don't spend time on Elmira stories. They spend time on state-level stories that would apply to all the "spoke" newscasts. Elmira gets the same newscast as Plattsburgh. The big market talent just reads a different set of call letters. So the "big market" talent really goes to waste in that situation. If Elmira is snowed out, don't they deserve someone in-town focusing on their information... even if only a stuttering twenty-something with little experience?

I was a stuttering twenty-something once too. I read enough snow closings consistently well enough to get a job in a major market... where I had to then read snow closings for three small towns I knew nothing about and lived/worked nowhere near. And I went drinking with a veteran sales guy who saw his billing go down because he was fighting for clients with his own sales colleagues - the aforementioned youngins who last as long as their guarantee. His six managers encouraged the kids to go after his existing business. The end result? The cluster did the same billing as before, but paid less in commissions to everybody because everybody was doing less business because more people were fighting for the same number of buyers.

I agree the landscape is changing, but gutting programming in favor of bland nationalized or regionalized stuff while beefing up sales forces hasn't done much to save anything. Citadel went bankrupt. Clear Channel has insurmountable debt. Even when they cut enough people to bounce back into the black, they always end up in the red. Please tell me we, as an industry, are capable of thinking more than one day at time.

 

[TheBigA]

And to respond to TheBigA: I realize Houston isn't Elmira, NY... but why should the people of Elmira not have their own distinct programming, even if just between records? Even if a big market talent is recording a newscast for the Elmira station, do you think that much Elmira news actually makes it on that cast?

My answer is that the programming that Elmira gets really isn't distinct even if it's done by someone local. The music doesn't come from Elmira. Most of the material the host uses isn't about Elmira. It's either about Hollywood gossip or American Idol or something else. And a lot of the advertising isn't coming from Elmira either, since most of the stores are national chains. So why not create some really exciting and compelling regional shows that are big enough to attract celebrities, and every ten minutes have a local traffic&weather update from the local guy? That's what NPR does and it's working for them.

I often use the sports analogy, but when the NHL expanded, there simply weren't enough quality players to fill the league. Today in the music business, anyone can record and release a CD. But not all of the recording artists make compelling music. The number of people has diluted the field and has cheapened the product. That's the problem now with radio. Too many people all doing basically the same thing, and most of them are not very compelling. So get rid of the weak ones, expand the territory and audience of those who actually have talent, and give the people something worthwhile to listen to, regardless of where the talent is based. What's more important? Compelling content or geography?

All national programming doesn't have to be bland. Howard Stern proved that. And CC isn't doing national programming, but more like regional programming. Who knows...maybe some of these people are the next Howard Stern. We won't know until they get a chance.

 

[NewsStud]

So why not create some really exciting and compelling regional shows that are big enough to attract celebrities, and every ten minutes have a local traffic&weather update from the local guy? That's what NPR does and it's working for them.

I'm okay with that. I can work with that. I really don't think we need a person in every city talking about what happened on last night's episode of "Real Housewives of Dubuque."

It looks great in theory, but we've seen two different models take effect in practicality...

1) The "local" guy isn't local either. He's doing news/traffic/weather from out of market with little to no understanding of the local needs. He's doing this for many markets so he really has no time to even learn what he needs to do. He also has no real point of contact in the local market to help guide him, save for a maybe a police department contact.

2) The "local" guy is local, but also does IT repair, drives the promotions van, and after 5:00 p.m. cleans the bathrooms. (I'm not kidding about this. This happens. And I'm not diminishing those who do janitorial work, either).

How is stretching someone that thin showing a commitment to the local audience's needs?

NPR does this very well, but operates on a completely different model. Member stations often have staffs far greater than we see in commercial radio these days. But member stations get operating capital from underwriting and donations, and for now public funding.

 

[TheBigA]

1) The "local" guy isn't local either. He's doing news/traffic/weather from out of market with little to no understanding of the local needs. He's doing this for many markets so he really has no time to even learn what he needs to do.

Then teach him. I've heard local guys screw up street names too. The system isn't the problem. It's the person. That person would screw up if he was just doing traffic for one station. Get rid of him. But don't give up on something because of the potential for screw-ups, because it's happening with local folks. And the public knows who's dependable and who's not. If you're not giving useful information, you will lose.

Here's the other perspective on the local guy who isn't local: He moved there to take a job. So maybe he lives in the community, but he doesn't know it. I see it with DJs all the time. It's like Dr. Johnny Fever in WKRP. He worked at so many stations in so many markets, he's lost count.

As for multi-tasking, welcome to the 21st century. It happens in every line of work. Get used to it. When I started, I was part engineer, part DJ, part news reader, and part secretary. The training served me well.

 

[NewsStud]

Then teach him.

I agree, he should be taught. But that doesn't happen. Management hires the guy and says, get to work. Aside from showing him what buttons to push, they don't give any contextual direction. Maybe they hand him a haphazard write-up from the guy they just replaced but it doesn't answer the questions. And the manager himself has never done the job of the new hire, so he really doesn't know the details either. The new hire is told "Just do the traffic and do it in less than thirty seconds. Just say anything. Don't forget to say you're reporting from the 'Wally's Car Wash Traffic Center' though."

I once proposed to my superiors that we could anchor news for each of the stations in the state. We should have a "producer/editor" type in each market. We were going to have to start doing work for the smaller cities anyway. The local producer could cull the localism for us (make the calls, have a relationship with the police/fire/schools, maybe cut some audio and even a write up a script) and funnel back the info for the "big market" talent to turn around custom newscasts for the little city. My co-big market anchors were all for it. The boss told me the cost of one person in each of those clusters (Not one person per station in the cluster. Not one person per drive shift in the cluster. Just one person in each cluster) could not be justified.

We weren't talking high salaries. Hell, we probably weren't even talking full time work... maybe a person who did a split shift and whose hours didn't tally forty each week and who didn't get benefits. They wouldn't even consider it. One manager loved the idea but said San Antonio would never allow it.

I get that we need to do more with less, but we're just at the point where we have too little get to the work done in a serious fashion.

As for multi-tasking, welcome to the 21st century. It happens in every line of work. Get used to it. When I started, I was part engineer, part DJ, part news reader, and part secretary. The training served me well.

Agreed. I did it too. But there's multi-tasking and then there's getting bogged down with too much. Each year they lay off people, those who stay behind pick up the slack. Eventually something suffers quality. The higher-ups will live with diminished product, but they will blame iPods for dwindling audiences.

I don't mean to keep arguing here. I am just one person (of many) who feels the sales half of the business doesn't see value in us. We need you guys to sell the product that we create... But you need us to create the product you sell. When our hands are tied our product suffers. Yet it is the sales half tying our hands (again, general management comes from sales, not programming), and then we bear the brunt of corporate restructuring.

 

[TheBigA]

I don't mean to keep arguing here. I am just one person (of many) who feels the sales half of the business doesn't see value in us. We need you guys to sell the product that we create... But you need us to create the product you sell. When our hands are tied our product suffers. Yet it is the sales half tying our hands (again, general management comes from sales, not programming), and then we bear the brunt of corporate restructuring.

The one thought I've had in this thread is there's no rule preventing programming people from selling advertising. I know you're inundated already. No one wants to do even more. But there was a time when DJs like Alan Freed, Wolfman Jack, and others sold their own radio shows. No one knows the product better than the person doing it. Back in the old days, Shadow Traffic reporters also did sales. I'd feel better about a programmer doing sales than the other way around.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

The one thought I've had in this thread is there's no rule preventing programming people from selling advertising.

Is anyone currently doing that inside a major broadcasting corporation? I've heard of it happening in rinky-dink towns owned by Ma and Pa, but not at any of the big players.

I like the idea for a personal selling environment.

 

[TheBigA]

Is anyone currently doing that inside a major broadcasting corporation? I've heard of it happening in rinky-dink towns owned by Ma and Pa, but not at any of the big players.

Probably not....they tend to be very segmented into what people do. But I think it's a good idea.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Of course you like the idea. If you add sales to the on-air, production, promo, and public service, show prep, and other duties that most on-air people already have, you might be able to cut a few more jobs.

 

[TheBigA]

Of course you like the idea. If you add sales to the on-air, production, promo, and public service, show prep, and other duties that most on-air people already have, you might be able to cut a few more jobs.

Yep, terrible idea to make one's self more valuable to one's employer. If they all think like you, it's no wonder they got laid off.

 

[SirRoxalot]

You see it as "more valuable". Are they really more valuable if they do a few things very well, and a bunch of other things poorly? Most jocks are not great sales people - and vice-versa. A skilled sales person will not only get a buy, but get a bigger budget than a jock trying to play salesperson. Yes, there are exceptions, but they're few and far between. Then again, maybe you and Farid agree that you don't really need sales people, you just need order-takers. I guess that most jocks are capable of that.

It's the same with one-man-banding on TV. Very few reporters are also good producers and videographers. Very few videographers are good reporters and producers. The skill sets are very different.

 

[TheBigA]

You see it as "more valuable". Are they really more valuable if they do a few things very well, and a bunch of other things poorly? Most jocks are not great sales people - and vice-versa.

Most jocks aren't great jocks. That's the first problem. But a good jock knows the value of what he does, and knows how to explain what he brings to the table to potential sponsors. I've been on sales calls with jocks. The clients are often starstruck, because the DJ is as close as they'll ever come to a celebrity. That's a powerful tool. It's not about "one man banding." It's about putting programmers in a more powerful position. I keep hearing over and over about these hypothetical "great broadcasters" who exist, and one day they'll come back to fix radio. As long as on-air folks think the money side isn't their problem, radio will always be this way. It will never change until SOMEONE who knows programming gets the courage to sell his own stuff. If it was good enough for the Wolfman, why is it so below anyone today?

 

[SirRoxalot]

"Most jocks aren't great jocks." "The clients are often starstruck, because the DJ is as close as they'll ever come to a celebrity."

C'mon, which is it, A? You can't have it both ways. But programming and sales are very different skills. Very few people do both well. It's not a question of being "below" anybody. It's a question of business vs. talent. Some jocks do great radio, but are not the most personable and accomodating people when it comes to schmoozing a client. And many clients need plenty of schmooze.

The plain fact is that both sales and programming are required for this business to continue. So, let programming people do what they do best, and let sales people do what they do best.

 

[TheBigA]

C'mon, which is it, A? You can't have it both ways.

Sure I can. I'm not talking about the same people. The DJs I work with are good. Otherwise I wouldn't work with them. But I threw out a whole lot of prunes before I found a few plums.

The plain fact is that both sales and programming are required for this business to continue. So, let programming people do what they do best, and let sales people do what they do best.

It's a Venus & Mars thing. But your problem is that the CEOs are sales people. If you want a programming person to become CEO (and I've known a few, including Pittman), you have to learn how to sell & schmooze. If programming people can't schmooze a client, they're probably not too good with their audience.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Wow. You really don't get it, do you?

People who love a smart-ass when they're in on the joke really hate a smart-ass when they're the butt of a joke. My guess is that you've had that experience, which is why you hate talent so much.

Not everyone has all gifts, but it doesn't take a genius to recognize genius in others. Good managers pick the best people they can find and put them in the jobs they do best. They don't expect one person to have multiple skill sets.

Cutting personel may cut expenses, but its likely to cut revenue even more. Hire a great jock, and a great sales person, and you'll make more money than if you hire a jock who tries to sell, or (God forbid), a great sales person who thinks that they're air talent. Good management used to understand that.

 

[TheBigA]

Cutting personel may cut expenses, but its likely to cut revenue even more. Hire a great jock, and a great sales person, and you'll make more money than if you hire a jock who tries to sell, or (God forbid), a great sales person who thinks that they're air talent. Good management used to understand that.

It's not the 1950s any more. You want a real broadcaster to run a radio company. When one who qualifies gets there, you attack him because he doesn't act like you want him to act. But Bob Pittman is a real broadcaster who knows it's not the 1950s any more. The funny part is that back in the 50s, there were a lot of old time radio guys who couldn't understand why the station owners were ditching their live orchestras and radio drama, and instead playing recorded music. Why play something you don't own? Made no sense. It looked like they were taking the cheap way out. They were, and they lived on it for 50 years. But that time has ended. Time for something new.