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Pappas Files For Chapter 11 - The Death of a Top 25 Group

D

DubbaDon

Lots of stories about the fall of Pappas Telecasting this morning. The company had many different facets, i.e. business units - all deals within deals. Pappas Telecasting was an umbrella of different companies which Mr. Pappas owned along with others. So the stories of full and partial sell-offs are confusing - no more than the structure of a privately held company.

As a former employee, I hate to see how the company has fallen. Mr. Pappas had some great ideas; but, it started going south when he lets others (not in California) run the company for him. Pappas went from a company that rarely purchased new technology, instead letting others work of the bugs before they made the upgrades, to a company that purchased products introduced at NAB with un-certain delivery dates - cutting edge technology. There were lots of Pappas stations in the press about getting equipment, you know the PR-stuff used to sell equipment you see in the engineering rags.

Unfortunately, buying CUTTING EDGE technology ended up cutting the company to shreds. They bought equipment that was new, expensive and un-usable because of extremely high learning curves for equipment operation.

As the news about the bankruptcy filing indicate, there were other items - mostly out of their hands. But the company was weakened by poor management choices and issues using the head-hunter services of the firing/hiring corporate manager's wife. When the guy can fire a manager and use his wife's company to fill the position, you have a serious conflict of interest - far beyond Mr. Pappas's employment of his relatives (who all actually worked for their jobs and were liked by other employees).
 
Ya,Ya,Ya.
And we know that success of any company is tied around making the little peons in the back room who never meet the public wear a nice shirt and tie. After all it's better to "Look Good" than to work good. ::)
 
CW20 surely has no new equipment. On air quality is the worst in the market. At least they're number 1 in something :)
 
I was the former CE in Greensboro. I had a budget to convert the station to digital, then the VP of Engineering stepped in and told me we were buying his choices of equipment. Unfortunately, WCWG operates behind the Topless Carwash in an older building with BAD HVAC and Electrical. None of the VP's choices of equipment could operate under those environmental conditions - so $600,000 in equipment sat in boxes for 2 years.

They are still operating on MII video tape - Panasonic barely supports it and new video tape stock is impossible to find.

They also purchased equipment that had extremely high learning curves. Once we had someone who could operate it, they would leave for more money.
 
I salute you D Don :) I was in in the SF market for 12 years and Pappas always has a problems. This really effect like 13 of the tv stations andthe blame goes on The CW. Go to SF Board. Amazing the Pappas web site has no press releases on it for 2008 period. Sad to see another in the dumpster :(
 
The CW is such a disaster. There was no thought in how to combine operations or staff. I got in hot water because I emailed Dawn Ostroff directly because with less than a few months to go - they had not worked out the satellite details. For me that was critical because I only had two usable fixed satellite dishes, if CW was going on a different satellite - there was NO WAY for me (and others) to get the CW satellite feed. I had gone up and down the chain with no answers, so I guessed as Ostroff's email address and sent off my concerns.

They launched a High Definition feed with NO GRAPHICS. The HD Feed did not have the Synpes, Crawls and Supers that the Analog Feed contained. I don't even think they realized that was important.

They failed to comprehend the importance of the web with their target audience.

BUT WITH ALL THIS... The CW only accounted for 4 hours of the broadcast day and less than 30 minutes of local commercial inventory. If CW was so bad, why are other groups filing for bankruptcy. Pappas was well insulated from the CW situation because he had multiple network affiliations in the group.
 
Time for CW to be buried! Anyone at all watch? Guess it's a planned tax write off between WB & CBS. It's worse than the MY
 
;D What Goat..The website or the Oliver oil?? I looked at both and they are useless!
 
Don,

If the trustee does not release funds to continue with the completion of the transition to digital broadcasting, how is that going to affect WTWB post-analog shutoff? Since I don't have a digital TV yet, I don't know whether or not they have gone full-power on their digital transmitter.

Assuming that they're still running low-power on an STA, and the capital is not available for them to build out the full-power transmitter, can they remain viable in the market post-analog shutoff?

Later...
Matt Smith
WGSR-TV
 
WCWG fired me ("went in a different direction") after I completed the DTV Transmitter install. They are ANALOG at the studio, milking Panasonic MII decks until the bitter end and thanks to a $100,000 Digital Make-Over Prize I won at the 2004 NAB, they convert the analog studio signal to digital before it is delivered via microwave to the transmitter.

So they have been full Power DTV since April 2007. FYI, WCWG has the most powerful DTV signal in the market according to the FCC - the transmitter covers more square miles and is available to more people than ANY other television station the market. ONLY PROBLEM is that most people are watching on cable or satellite.

Pappas's real problem is he allowed his new management team to take the company in a direction much different that the one he had started. Instead of waiting for HD equipment to be tested and a sizable percentage of the audience being HD ready, they went out and purchased millions of dollars in cutting edge HD equipment for TV markets that didn't even make a Million a month. They were attracted to shiny bright lights like moths to a flame. They were burned and in the process destroyed a man and the company he had built.
 
The beaches of Figure Eight Island (an other exclusive locations) are littered with "broken men" who lost their shirts in radio or television! I suspect Mr. Pappas will do just fine.

Someone will get a bargain at the fire sale of the TV stations. Viewers will not notice much difference. The bankruptcy court will appoint a receiver to operate the company until a buyer is found. That receiver will have the mandate of "protect the investment best you can" and life will go on.

One day, owners will realize that piling on layers of corporate execs is just not the way to make money in the broadcasting business!
 
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