Successful businesses constantly evaluate whether an employee is doing an adequate job, should they be retained, let go, or given a raise. In radio, sales employees are evaluated in dollars, the money they bring in. Don't sell, you go, end of story. GMs are evaluated by profit after sales minus expenses. And for air and programming, employees are evaluated by Arbitron ratings. I know it's not fair - Arbitron does a terrible job of sampling, but how else do we determine whether a PD or talent is doing the job, or deserves more money? Better ratings translate into more money for the company. Unless something better comes along, we will always be judged by our numbers.
Nick Giorno's Arbitron record is a classic case of an underperforming OM. Since his takeover of all three stations in the local Access 1 cluster, the numbers have been a disaster. According to Arbitron, KOOL has lost over half it's listeners. No power problems here, a great cume this past book, but horrible TSL. JSE has lost even more listeners, so many that it's truly shocking. And you can't blame all the loss on losing Stern - that was what, three years ago? And, flagship WMGM's numbers have fallen dramatically. Yes, they were at a lower power after the fire, but frankly the signal that McNally got them on top of the Taj was better than KOOL's or JSE's. And haven't they been at 20k for the last year? They cume like gangbusters. So maybe they didn't reach Brick, but they covered the metro very well. The only station Nick was not directly involved with was WOND, which has had some amazing ratings success.
Granted, Nick did not get any help from the consultant. Having personally worked with the man, I can tell you that he contributed very little to the programming successes at our stations. And some truly horrible ideas that fortunately never saw the light of day. He's the kind of guy who takes all the credit when things are going good, sells you out to management if things go sour. I saw him do this to two PDs/MDs. There are much better consultants out there.
But I would never in my wildest dreams call Nick Giorno a "brilliant" PD. His work record was abysmal (how often did he blow off his airshift), he bullied his co-workers and "was a man of his word" only when it personally benefited him. He took every advantage of the system that he could.
The truth is that Access 1 made the right move (finally). They are better off without him. WMGM has sounded better this week with their new PD, than EVER! I don't know the new guy, but I wish him well. And amfmsw, be careful who you flame. Call Allison W and ask her about an aircheck review of a young part timer many years ago.