FROM FORT WAYNE MEDIA WATCH - Their "guess" as to what happened and then a reply from someone a little closer to the situation.
Ad sales at Federated Media, like those in all of Fort Wayne radio, are down.
Salaries, for long-timers like Pat White, Jack Hammer, et al. were somewhat high (comparatively).
The bottom-line rules at FedMed, and in most of corporate America nowadays; seniority, talent, popularity do not.
Thus Mr. White was given the heave-ho, not because he was derelict in his broadcasting -- he had a following and his ratings
were rather good, compared to others in local radio -- but be- cause his salary was larger than that of his replacement: Pat Miller.
FedMed was skanky in how it canned Mr. White, we all know that, and management there should be ashamed of itself.
The company stinks as an employer and radio operation, in our estimation.
(We were not big fans of Mr. White, but he did a good job for FedMed, and we give him props for that, as we wish him the best, now and in his next radio job, hopefully in the Fort Wayne market.)
An e-mail response (4/26) to our view above:
You are a bit off the mark on why Pat was fired. Pat was a contract employee and derived the vaast majority of his income from the testimonial endorsements at $25 a pop. There were at least 6 of those spots per hour...do the match and you can see he was generating over $100K when sold out. He was a cash cow for fedmed in a time when ad revenues are down. Even Fed Med isn't that short-sighted. Besides, it's in the middle of a ratings book which is not a time to make such a major change without provocation.
No, Pat was fired because of his off-color, Don Imus-like comment Thursday regarding blacks not having red hair. TR and Deprez most likely received calls threatening bad publicity ala Imus if he was not fired. This was the third strike, for those keeping count. Pat was repremanded twice before for pissing off advertisers; First when he was critcal of Dimenson Ford's service department and Big Bucks Bob Thomas pulled six figures of ad revenue from all fed med stations and the second when Pat stirred his listeners into being critical of McDonalds and McDonald threatened to pull ad revenue from the group.
By the way, I do not work for Fedmed...just an observor of the industry.
