• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Question About On-Air Talent Costs

TheBigA said:
A commitment to the industry is the willingness to volunteer for things, to give willingly and cheerfully, and help other talent in their endeavors. A commitment to the industry is attending industry functions, not because it's required or for payment, but because you're actually interested. I attend lots of regular industry functions. Some require me to pay my own travel. But I'm there because I'm committed to my industry. But I don't see a lot of others doing the same.
Click to expand...
And where, pray tell, are these already overworked, beleaguered employees going to find even more time to give to their stations? At the first station where I ever worked full time, unpaid overtime was basically required. The GM would yell and scream if work that he wasn't paying for anyway wasn't done! Needless to say, he killed morale at his own station, which is why turnover is through the roof there! There is a discussion on these boards right now about his station.

But those who don't have any dedication at all to radio (like the people you mentioned in the first paragraph here, that I didn't quote in this reply) usually don't make it. They usually read the writing on the wall and quit at the first sign of trouble, or they are quickly fired, hopefully BEFORE they can make their more dedicated coworkers miserable. I had to lobby management for the removal of a couple of deadbeats at my last station.
 
Bill Wolfenbarger said:
We run five stations in one building and have five times the utilities cost as a major market station, with a fraction of the revenues.
Click to expand...
If you have five stations in one building, you should NOT have five times the cost (of anything) as you would if you had five stations in five separate locations. It's all about the consolidation. You would not have five buildings in which to keep the lights on, for example. Sure, it would cost more to run five stations in one building than to operate one station in the same location, but because of consolidation, it should NOT cost five times as much.
 
Transmitter sites, dude. Five transmitters, each one using the same electricity as many major market stations. Studio building electricity cost is maybe only twice as much as a single station.
 
Not to pour kerosene on the campfire, but there's also that nasty little tax we pay this time of year--

regulatory "fees"

$5k on my credit card....more for three small stations than a Class B pays in much larger, rated markets.
 
IMHO The one thing radio (at least a large part of the industry) has missed the boat is social networking! You might not need the "back announce" part of the DJ's job, but if you are a music intensive format or do local news, and if you have email, Twitter or Facebook deal, or even a published phone number, someone should be around to answer it. I remember a PD stated that less than 10% of all people have ever call a radio station, but this small percentage are the "leaders". Even if you do not play the "song", at least write it down the request. That one caller is usually speaking for at least 100 people or more if in a large market. Now with social networking a prompt reply is more important than ever! If you do local news (another tread) you would be surprised how many "tips" come in via Email. Of course the news person has to verify. Stuff is happening a lot faster than we think.
 
TheBigA said:
A commitment to the industry is the willingness to volunteer for things, to give willingly and cheerfully, and help other talent in their endeavors. A commitment to the industry is attending industry functions, not because it's required or for payment, but because you're actually interested. I attend lots of regular industry functions. Some require me to pay my own travel. But I'm there because I'm committed to my industry. But I don't see a lot of others doing the same.
Click to expand...

Nobody I see on a day-to-day basis is more committed to their industry than on-air people. They work more hours than anybody else in the building - mostly because they have to. There is no - and never has been in my experience - "4 and out the door". Unless you mean "4 and out the door" to go to promotions, public appearances, and charity gigs. If they're out the door after 4 it's because management is paying them as part-timers, and they're on their way to their other jobs that allow them to stay in radio. That's also why they're not paying their own way to "industry functions". There are only so many hours in a day.

I've yet to meet talent that hasn't willingly given of themselves to other talent - especially younger people working their way up the ranks. Yeah, they may be gruff, crabby, and dismissive, but it ain't hard to get past that with most guys. Most of them will give you great insight as long as you're willing to listen, work to improve, and don't waste their time. Of course, there are exceptions, but there are exceptions in every HUMAN industry.

If you've experienced problems with talent, maybe you need to look in the mirror and carefully consider how you've treated THEM. Anybody who's been around long enough to call radio a career knows when some suit is trying to tell them that their leg is wet because of a freak indoor rain storm. Maybe they're just not as stupid as you think they are. Or, they're not interested in being friendly with the guy who's done his best to screw them in every negotiation.
 
Bill Wolfenbarger said:
Transmitter sites, dude. Five transmitters, each one using the same electricity as many major market stations. Studio building electricity cost is maybe only twice as much as a single station.
Click to expand...
Okay, well, that wasn't made clear in your last message.
 
SirRoxalot said:
Nobody I see on a day-to-day basis is more committed to their industry than on-air people. They work more hours than anybody else in the building - mostly because they have to.
Click to expand...

That's not commitment to the industry. That's maybe a commitment to their job.

Your post ignores all the morning teams, many of whom have very detailed contracts about what they will or won't do, that pay them six figure salaries. And every time they get a raise, the money gets taken away from staff in other dayparts or departments. A lot of them seek syndication deals that take jobs away from local staff. They're not being forced into these things. This is what they want. Their commitment isn't to the industry but to themselves.
 
TheBigA said:
Your post ignores all the morning teams, many of whom have very detailed contracts about what they will or won't do, that pay them six figure salaries. And every time they get a raise, the money gets taken away from staff in other dayparts or departments. A lot of them seek syndication deals that take jobs away from local staff. They're not being forced into these things. This is what they want. Their commitment isn't to the industry but to themselves.
Click to expand...

No, I don't ignore morning teams. Outside of a few teams in a few major markets, that's simply not true. And every time they get a raise, management chooses where to get the money from. Yes, there are only so many dollars coming through the door. If the morning team wasn't getting listeners to tune in, there would be a lot fewer dollars coming through the door. Ditto the mid-day people (the few that are left) and the rest of the air staff. And the sales people who actually sell the product in spite of the micromanagement and dirty dealing on commissions by some groups.

Who's more committed? The morning people who live their profession 24/7/365, or the GM who can disappear into a crowd in a NY minute if he or she chooses? The GM probably makes more money, along with the GSM, LSM, and several others in the building. The suits go home at 5, and on the weekend if the choose.

If the morning team has limitations on appearance written into their contracts, it's because they've been burned by managers who insisted that they do myriad public appearances for free "as part of their job". That means weekends, evenings, holidays, and other times that they might like to spend time with their families, staying up past 9PM, or sleeping in until 6PM.

If you think it's easy, try it, Bub. If somebody will hire you. BTW, even great ratings don't guarantee your job. Some suit from corporate just might bump you because they've "identified synergies with their syndication division".
 
SirRoxalot said:
No, I don't ignore morning teams. Outside of a few teams in a few major markets, that's simply not true.
Click to expand...

You'd really be surprised. I know of a morning team in a small market, outside the Top 100, that has a syndication deal, gets paid six figure salaries, and doesn't do personal appearances or sales calls. But you don't need a syndication deal to get six figures or a contract. At some point, the station has cut every other expense and needs to get the money from someplace. So it puts the show into syndication. Raises for morning teams have exceeded any increases in revenue. That's a fact. Radio stations went several years with negative growth, and lately it's been single digits. But the morning teams want raises greater than that. And to lose a team and start from scratch would cost even more money. So they bite the bullet and give the team what they want. This happens in market after market, and when it does, it gets reported in the trades.

And yes, you're right that great ratings don't guarantee a job if you're in any daypart except morning. If you're a highly rated morning show, you're the only on-air person with a contract and a guarantee. And every time your contract comes up for renewal, it's likely another local daypart will be cut, regardless of ratings.
 
Strange, I guess, that I know personally of multiple morning shows at different clusters who have taken pay cuts since 2008. There have also been plenty of stories of group-wide cuts, and morning shows blown out in favor of syndication. Obviously, your experience is either not current, or doesn't cover the great spectrum of radio in 2011.
 
What about the jock who repeatedly asks the public to send the jock money "<feverish giggle>, it's for a good cause" that amounts to nothing more than bumming money from the public for kicks and giggles for the jock, using a good cause as the excuse to bum that money for those kicks?

Always the same on-air person, always allegedly for a good cause, always needing a few hundred dollars. And always something that somebody else did just for fun (out of the person's own resources) several years ago. It never ends at one station.

Money for nothing, and the kicks are free.
 
Never heard of such a thing. I'd fire his ass in a NY minute if he wasn't soliciting money for a charity. And I don't mean the "I'm a DJ Early Retirement Fund".
 
Most PDs would probably fire that jock for straying from the liner cards, regardless of whether the charity was legit.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom