• 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

WBEB PD Chuck Knight Exits

AbrahamJSimpson said:
PDs, among other staffers, changed under Jerrry Lee’s ownership. The name changed under his ownership. Air personalities were let go. The music evolved. It battled competition.

The station was never frozen in carbonite. (Hi Star Wars fans.) It wasn’t realistic to expect that no matter who owns the station. But aside from wondering if the name change back was a tad hastily executed as the breeze began to blow, has there been anything all that unusual in the on air product? (Switching from Fox 29 to CBS 3 weather in the morning notwithstanding). Time will tell post Christmas, but even if they do something perceived as reaction to 106, let’s remember the fascination they had with the 70s when Sunny was shining.
Click to expand...

My take was that the name change happened hastily because WBEB's Christmas imaging refers to the station as B101...and WBEB rushed to get Christmas on in reaction to the stunting over at 106.1.

I'm anxious about how they're going to foul-up their practically-perfect library by trying to compete with a station that may not even be a factor to begin with. I suppose they could skew a little older to drive The Breeze off the air and then revert to the current approach. But by then, they'll have alienated the younger listeners and they'll be starting back at square one. They may as well re-name it "More FM" at that point.
 
Last edited:
DavidEduardo said:


All of the broadcasters who took on debt before those events based their projections on decades of radio growth.
Click to expand...

I would hope that radio companies were seeing the writing on the wall many, many years ago and weren't as recently as 10 years ago basing future performance goals on past decades of growth. With or without the failures of the too-big-to-fails, that ship had sailed long before and the upcoming challenges had become pretty clear.
 
Miguelito said:
I would hope that radio companies were seeing the writing on the wall many, many years ago and weren't as recently as 10 years ago basing future performance goals on past decades of growth. With or without the failures of the too-big-to-fails, that ship had sailed long before and the upcoming challenges had become pretty clear.
Click to expand...

Other than hedge fund managers and other professional "what if" contrarians, the crash of 10 years ago was not anticipated.

Companies, whether they were Clear Channel's LBO acquirers or Washington Mutual or General Motors, did economic modeling based on normal business cycles that included up and down swings in the market, but not one of the deepest recessions in a century.

Most business use borrowing as part of their business model. As long as the return on borrowed capital exceeds the cost of that capital, it is often much better to use "other people's money" to fund growth and to remain competitive.

What was impossible to factor in was the recession combined with smart phones and the PPM (with well over half of all radio revenue being in the PPM markets). Combined, it was a perfect storm.

Remember, too, that the purchasers of Clear Channel in that LBO tried to back out of the deal as they saw the economy in a downturn, but they were enjoined by the courts from withdrawing from the deal.

Cumulus was a slightly different issue: a poorly managed merger of some hastily acquired mid-market stations, the failed Citadel station group, and the over-priced and generally decrepit ABC o&o group that was created without apparent market strategies. That was a case of less than adept management coupled with a crippling recession.

Less visible were the small group and single market acquisitions, often by first time owners or minority groups like Bustos Media and Abel de Luna. They did not have the sophistication needed to do deep economic projections, but they found financing for their plans from lenders who also did not foresee the coming crash.

Before 2008, radio looked like a slow growth business with little to fear other than occasional bumps in the road.
 
Is it possible that we’re way over romanticizing small (or single) ownsership, and way overstating the supposed horrors of “big radio?” Bad owners (and management) in all industries come in all sizes, as do good ones. Not to mention good or bad can vary widely in perception.

I’m not knocking Jerry Lee here, but let’s not canonize someone either. He ran a business based on the numbers and did it well. Entercom, to stick with the B, isn’t automatically destroying said station because of a personnel change. They look at the numbers too, and those numbers will change just as they did under Lee. In and of itself, I’m not seeing how this makes the B inherently different.

Some folks complained for prolonged periods when Chris McCoy, and later Tiffany Hill, were let go. Entercom obviously didn’t do that, but would it somehow be a case of being a “cog” if a current morning host were replaced? Or just part of the business no matter who signs the checks?

It just seems like much gnashing of teeth over very little.
 
DavidEduardo said:


Other than hedge fund managers and other professional "what if" contrarians, the crash of 10 years ago was not anticipated.
Click to expand...


I'm talking aside from the crash. It was clear, regardless of the crash, that the industry was not going to be as easy and profitable as it had been in the '70s and '80s.
 
AbrahamJSimpson said:
Is it possible that we’re way over romanticizing small (or single) ownsership, and way overstating the supposed horrors of “big radio?” Bad owners (and management) in all industries come in all sizes, as do good ones. Not to mention good or bad can vary widely in perception.

I’m not knocking Jerry Lee here, but let’s not canonize someone either. He ran a business based on the numbers and did it well. Entercom, to stick with the B, isn’t automatically destroying said station because of a personnel change. They look at the numbers too, and those numbers will change just as they did under Lee. In and of itself, I’m not seeing how this makes the B inherently different.

Some folks complained for prolonged periods when Chris McCoy, and later Tiffany Hill, were let go. Entercom obviously didn’t do that, but would it somehow be a case of being a “cog” if a current morning host were replaced? Or just part of the business no matter who signs the checks?

It just seems like much gnashing of teeth over very little.
Click to expand...

No. That wouldn't at all fit into the "cog" example. Unless they replaced a current jock with a VT from someone else already in their employ.

I agree Jerry Lee sold because he had to but I do think it's fair to "canonize" him, as many in the industry have been doing for years. He did something few others were interested in doing--and for which there wasn't much of a blueprint for the time--and he did it amazingly well. But in the context of this conversation, I'm not so interested in that angle.

To answer part of your question directly: In the current industry climate, I don't think it's possible to over-romanticize independent owners/operators. And the comparative horrors of big radio are well documented so, no, I don't really think they're being overstated. For just one example: A lot of people who would have remained employed instead lost their jobs to cost-cutting once the conglomerate took over. And now we add Chuck Knight to that list.
 
Last edited:
However, people did lose their jobs under previous ownership. They dropped overnight personalities (before adding weekdays back in several years later). They jettisoned two members of the morning show, reducing it to two. Are we going to try to parse it so that jobs jettisoned under an independent are regrettable but understandable, but the departure of the PD is a sign of the end of days?

To be fair, yes, Jerry Lee did his thing very well. That doesn’t mean larger companies are automatically precluded from doing things well by virtue of being a group.

Having worked for both large and small employers, both have good and bad points, apart from variances by individuals. “Horrors” happen regardless of size. Opportunities may exist with larger companies that can’t with smaller ones. And the reverse can be true. But “big radio” as some kind of automatic condemnation seems over the top.
 
Miguelito said:
I'm talking aside from the crash. It was clear, regardless of the crash, that the industry was not going to be as easy and profitable as it had been in the '70s and '80s.
Click to expand...

But all projections... and I was involved in making many at the time... showed sustainable lower growth and economies of scale through consolidation.

Remember, consolidation too place in the 90's in no small part due to the FCC becoming convinced that it was necessary. When half the stations in the country were not profitable, it became obvious that groups with many stations and significant local market clusters were the only way to proceed into the future. And that was more than a decade before the 2008 recession.
 
TheBigA said:
How did you conclude it was cost cutting?
Click to expand...

Miguelito said:
Sorry, I guess it was his crummy performance. LOL. C'mon, man.
Click to expand...

I've lived through more mergers, acquisitions and the like than I'd probably ever care to repeat in a million years, and known plenty of colleagues and friends who have done the same across industries. I can say it's rarely so "black and white." Sometimes the "name" departs, but the budget ends up being reinvested elsewhere. A savings? Perhaps, but not necessarily the motivating factor, and not necessarily true in all cases.

It may be simple, but it's also simplistic, to paint everything with the "old owner good, new owner bad" brush.
 
Miguelito said:
It was clear, regardless of the crash, that the industry was not going to be as easy and profitable as it had been in the '70s and '80s.
Click to expand...

You think it was easy & profitable in the 80s? You had a lot more stations, thanks to the FM explosion and docket 80-90, spread among the same audience and ad money. That caused heritage companies like GE and NBC to get out of radio. When the 92 recession hit, the question was who would save the industry?
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom