Metro Networks Slashing

[naughtytalker]

Westwood One will reportedly consolidiate 60 national studio's into 13 regional offices sometime in 2009. Metro Traffic studio's at Tampa Airport Mariott are apparently slated to close with operations moving to Miami.

Most of Tampa Bay's broadcast TV stations still get their live video feeds and highway reporting content from Metro, although in recent years channel's 8-10-13 and 28 have all have supplemented or dumped Metro talent for their own more photogenic traffic reporters/anchors. Bay News 9 has used Metro's reporters and helicopter from the beginning. Tampa's CBS Radio, 860 WGUL and a handful of other low rated stations still use Metro talent/content for news and traffic reporting.

Westwood One's $900 million dollar purchase of one man's brainchild [Metro Networks] was never very smart in 2000-2001. With Metro's commercial barter business model in place, Westwood One was suddenly negotiating for commercial inventory with direct programming competitors who owned the station, the stick and the ratings. Tampa's Cox owned radio stations dropped off the client list immediately.

Read more about Westwood One's corporate slant here.

[EDIT-The URL to the Bloomberg story has been included below as a courtesy from Radio-Info so that interested readers can read the story in its entirety.]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a3tlfF9PZli4&refer=home

Westwood One Inc., the largest producer and distributor of news, talk, traffic and sports programming to radio stations, is in talks with banks and bondholders about refinancing or extending the maturities of $85 million in debt due next year.

"We're talking first to banks about getting some room to move there, maybe some extension or a total refinancing,'' Chief Executive Officer Thomas Beusse said in an interview today. We'd like to remove the entire '09 overhang."

Westwood One expects $20 million to $25 million in cost savings next year from restructuring its traffic reporting operations to help pay down debt, Beusse said.

 

[Wazzie]

I know Tim Harper and Val Ingram got the axe a few weeks ago and Eben Brown is leaving soon for another gig. Closing a traffic outlet in Market #19 is absurb. But so is the broadcast business lately. My best to those that have lost their jobs.

 

[naughtytalker]

Sorry to hear about Tim Harper and Val Ingram... where's Eben Brown headed?

 

[MisterNews]

Westwood One will reportedly consolidate 60 national studio's into 13 regional offices sometime in 2009. Metro Traffic studio's at Tampa Airport Mariott are apparently slated to close with operations moving to Miami.

Yet another sign that the radio-owning corporations don't give a rat's tail about providing high-quality LOCAL information to radio listeners. Admittedly, these services are high-cost and low-profit, but they are part of what made the radio medium strong and unique. Without them (or outsourcing them to clueless non-local minimum-wage drones in distant "hubs"), radio is just a jukebox with mostly odious morons flapping their gums in AM Drive. And they serve the public interest HOW?....

But hey, if we can just get that stock price up a few dollars, we can sell the whole thing to a speculative capital investment company, take our millions (or billions!) to the bank, and retire surrounded by our grateful families. Listeners? Oh, you mean AQH share points and unique web clicks. And why the heck should we care about them?? They're not actually people, are they?

 

[MusicMan11]

another huge sign that radio stations don't care about local content. To the best of my knowledge, CBS and Cox clusters have no real 'news' staff members. Sure, they have on air folk who do news reports, but it's stuff they pull from the local papers or their websites. I was listening to a metro reporter on one of the CBS Fm stations one day last week and his TOP story was a story that i had heard three days before.

it's a shame that the cbs and cox clusters don't have a news director to pull together local content to provide to the readers. It would make sense and perhaps, folks would go to the radio for local news. at this point, probably not.

Even though i think 970 could do better, at least they have reporters who track down facts for local stories and make calls. They have legitimate journalists, wow don't hear that word much in radio these days, who have the local contacts and check out stories. they don't just rip and read from TBO.COM or the times website.

and another sign, weekends, how many of the clusters staff their stations on the weekends or overnights? are they all voicetracked?

my two cents.

 

[David Sharp]

Sorry to hear about Tim Harper and Val Ingram... where's Eben Brown headed?

Just had a look at this thread...I've known Tim Harper for years and at several stations and I knew Val during her tenure at 570 WHNZ (after which she left for a gig at 970 WFLA). Hope you two have already found jobs or will find something soon. :-[

 

[FiveStar]

Tim is one of the good guys in the business. He's also a survivor, which is a good trait these days for anyone in radio. Valerie has plenty of talent and hopefully will land something good soon. According to today's Taylor on Radio newsletter, Eben is joining Fox as their general assignment reporter. Eben should do very well in that spot, although it's a work your butt off type gig. Amazing how radio is just discarding people like that without a second thought. People with talent and a love for the industry don't grow on trees, although the suits obviously don't recognize the danger of eliminating or alienating those kinds of people and/or don't care.