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Openings at CNN Radio

At the risk of getting in the middle of two individuals who obviously have differeing opinions I'll toss in my two cents:

All jobs have an absolute mininum pay range at the medium and large market level. In a nutshell, that range is the absolute bottom amount you can pay someone. No less. It is based on finding people to do the job and having them have enough money to eat and/or not have to live in a homeless shelter.

In Atlanta, no one is going to work for $12 an hour with no benefits. You can't eat and live unless you are living in an apartment with a million other people and the only thing you eat is rammen noodles.

My suggestion that the $25 was close to reality was not based on any inside knowledge of CNN. It is based on a fairly good knowledge of the Atlanta market and the costs associated with living there. Admittedly not scientific...just personal knowledge.

CNN would be incredibly hard pressed to pay people $12 and find anyone. If they did those people would not stay long and your turnover cost would exceed your salary savings very quickly. Simply put it is not good business sense to pay too little...it winds up costing you a lot....never mind a discussion about quality staff.

I stand by my $25 range. I submit CNN may or may not be a great place to work but the folks who run it are not fools.
 
Hello everyone, I was trying to ignore the rambling going on here because a message board is no place to talk about salary specifics. But there is a lot of misinformation here about CNN Radio, so here goes:

First of all, if you are interested in either of the jobs please contact someone at CNN Radio, who may be able to answer a few questions before letting you know all applicants must go through www.turnerjobs.com . Both of these positions are full time with benefits. I would like to say that overall, windreader is very well informed and pretty much on target.

Oaktree, you seem to be misinformed. I won't address them all point by point, but for starters CNN Radio does not have tape editors anywhere outside of Atlanta. Also, the journalism jobs link you posted is way off the mark.

Since you say you are a CNN Radio affiliate, I encourage you to contact me and find out what services are available to you as CNN Radio has obviously changed greatly since you last looked. If you're an affiliate, you'll know how to reach me, plus I'm posting here using my real name. I'm actually very interested to talk to you about your affiliation, what radio station you are running, what you're getting from Dial Global and how, and who you spoke to when you said you called CNN today. I have a lot of questions, and maybe some answers for you too.

- tm
 
justareporter said:
In Atlanta, no one is going to work for $12 an hour with no benefits. You can't eat and live unless you are living in an apartment with a million other people and the only thing you eat is rammen noodles.
Click to expand...

Actually lots of people do. WSB pays its part-timers $10/hour with no benes as do most stations. Now if you're talking exclusively fulltime, most stations here do offer some (limited) benefits, but depending on the station and your position, you're LUCKY if your salary equates to $25/hour.

Folks, let's face it; overall working in radio (and to only a slightly lesser extent, tv) is for the young and ambitious who either still live at home or don't mind sharing a 2 bedroom apt with 4 of their closest friends. It becomes increasingly more difficult to survive on broadcast salaries unless you're a salesperson (who then has NO job security at all) or one of the very, very few elite anchors.
 
First, my appreciation to Tyler for his personal reply, as I sent one to him as well.

Second, is there a gripe against the Radio TV News Directors Association ... the association for electronic journalists?

I didn't make up those numbers, nor design the page they were printed on. So, let's look at THIS year's numbers ...

http://www.rtnda.org/media/pdfs/communicator/2007/jun/062007-16-25.pdf

Now, I recognize there has been in increase in radio news salaries of 8.4% this year. Please note the pay scale across the board of producers, writers, editors, etc. You tell me that this is not a flame? I didn't make the numbers up. Your association did. (Though the poster mentioning about $10 an hour at WSB is right on for "freelance / part-timers."

Thirdly, the edit/write position is for ONE shift and one person, from its. I well know who Tyler is ... and I respect him. My thought, though, is why not just come out and say, "Look, the job's from 3-11 and it pays $xx.xx instead of the cagey way broadcasters (except NPR) tend to do it...out of embarrassment for the wage, the lack of benefits, or some other reason ... like "depending on experience.)

OK...so you don't want to "entice" particular potential job seekers? Then why not just come out and say it ... with a "range" of salary and benefits from minimum to high? That way, we avoid such trivialness.

I know lots of people who got caught in the Clear Channel hatchet cutting of late in lots of market ... as well as at Cumulus, Citadel, Emmis and other much smaller clusters. And it was unloading a lot of talented people, including a lot of $10 an hour voice trackers and board-ops ... many who show up here.

I don't blame them for their anger, nor do I not feel the right to justify mine.

Just be honest with the people. On both sides. No game playing. Thanks and a good and prosperous New Year to each person here.
 
??? Seriously, that last post gave me a headache. What ARE you talking about? Why don't you just admit that you were wrong, apologize for being snide, and leave it at that? The openings at CNN Radio have absolutely nothing to do with RTNDA or any "agenda" and there's a reason salary and shift arrangements are not always specified before hiring. CNN Radio management prefers to maintain some degree of flexibility with new hires.
 
I find the Ball State study hard to believe. There are statistics.....and damned statistics. Look at who has published these numbers.....
I have known engineering people at CNN Radio and they make above average money for engineers/technicians in the Atlanta area.
 
I looked at the Ball State numbers and have to conclude they are weighted heavily toward small and medium market radio stations. They bear no relevance whatsover to the salary structure at CNN Radio. I also have a vested interest in discrediting that report because, if my boss sees it, he's going to think I'm criminally overpaid compared to the rest of the industry. ;D
 
Why is it so hard to believe that in 2-0-0-7 we pay people $30-35k a year? Good God....how cheap have we become that we think THAT is acceptable?
 
justareporter said:
Why is it so hard to believe that in 2-0-0-7 we pay people $30-35k a year? Good God....how cheap have we become that we think THAT is acceptable?
Click to expand...

Agreed. But, instead of paying more and trying to retain people, companies are offering less and less salaries, or have been stagnant for a number of years. That's what I'm finding. It used to be, even if the salaries sucked, the benefits far outweighed bad salaries. But, now the salaries suck and the benefits suck!
 
You can thank clear channel for takin gall of the fun out of radio. They made it into **just another** business. We used to be talent. Now we are just "costs."

You know your business model is in troubl ewhen the bean counters refer to the talent in terms of "FTE" (full time equivalent) employees.
 
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