"David Eduardo" wrote in message
. com...

"Michael Lawson" wrote in message
...

"David Eduardo" wrote in message
et...

There is no such facility. Never has been. When out of market
talent
is used
to voice track specific shifts, the only thing sent to the
station
are the
voice "clips" which are sent over a WAN from one digital
workstation
to
another. The clips are played, along with music, local
commercials,
and
whatever else the local station does, in each market.

Sounds to me like you described the scenario
perfectly. It's all run remotely, only minimal
staff is needed at the site to keep things running.

No, the stations are run locally. they play thier own locally
researched
music lists, their own commercials done by thier own local traffic
director,
and are usually live in most dayparts, using voice tracking to do
non-critical dayparts, like overnghts and weekends. One shift may be
done by
a fulltimer in one bigger market, and another by someoen in a
totally
different market. There is no central place wehre formats are
assembled
(except for satellite delivered formats, which run in very small
markets
mostly)

The local station is significantly staffed in every case, with a
manager,
engineering, sales management, traffic, jocks for most shifts
accounting,
promotion and street team, office staff, lots of sellers, etc. Al
most all
commercial production in smaller markets is done locally (in LA, for
4
formats, we have 150 employees... in McAllen, for 2 fomrats, we have
over
40.

However, the net product is remarkably the same
coast to coast, which is part of the problem.

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/200...irs_sound.html

Here's a story on their recent move to a newer
studio around town:

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/200...iz1aclear.html

With 40 studios, one would assume they have lots of live and local
shows,
and lots of local production and imaging to do. This article
dis-prooves
your point. Because Cincy is a large market, they can have each of
thier
talents do voice tracking for another station or two, and send them
out of
that facility. Howeve, to do 4 stations in LA, we have 18 studios
and
production bays, and are building more. we do not do any voice
tracking at
all.

Actually, there are very few live and local shows.
WLW has them, as does 1360 Homer, but outside
of the morning shows (and Jerry Springer on the
Air America outlet), not much is done other than
standard DJ clips.

More stations were voice traced in the 70's than today, as a
percentage of
total stations... we just called it by a different name then.

They had to sell it when Jacor and Clear merged, as it put them
over
the
maximum locl market cap. This happened in about 20 markets, in
fact.

No, it was before then, back when you were
allowed to only own one FM and one AM
station in a market.

So, what is the difference. If two companies combien, and are over
the
limits, they have to sell the excess. That is normal.

Of course, they sold it after
they converted the format to country, so they
wouldn't have any competition.

What prevented the owner from flipping back? Or another station
form
changing? There are no restrictions on format changes in the USA:

The new owners changed it back 3 years later
when the country format wasn't selling. Jacor
tried to buy it then, but was rebuffed. Jacor
then signed a deal to program a small third station
with that station's owners, and programmed
a similar format two the first two stations. The
attrition between the three competing stations
caused the owners of the station that Jacor wanted
gone to change formats and sell the station. Then,
the third station changed format to keep from
drawing listeners from their big rock station.

So? That is competition. Normal. I did the same sort of thing in the
60's
when I would pick up an extra station and use it as a competive tool
to
protect my other stations. There is nothing new about this. It is
like Time
Magazien seeing there was a market for gossip news and not wanting
anyone
else to take the major share, thus launching People.

Normal, yes, but if you were a listener of the losing
station, it was not fun to see your station
blown apart with the only alternative being a
station 50 miles away in another market. Or listen
to WRNO in certain parts of the day via shortwave.

Yeah, I know. Tough potatoes. But if listeners had
as much clout as the arbitron ratings imply, you'd
think that homogeneity wouldn't be the order of
the day.

And they took
the best DJs, too.

Maybe they _wanted_ to continue to work for the company. If they
didn't,
they could have resigned and been hired elsewhere. There are no
slaves in US
radio.

Tsk tsk. There are no slaves anywhere, last
I checked. I presume that like anywhere else
there's a merger, there is a "Black Monday"
when heads roll and some few people are
allowed to keep their job if they join the
new company.

I have been through 3 mergers at one company over the last 12 years.
There
were ZERO firings at the closing. In fact, in each case, the stated
reason
for the merger was to gain access to our people, talent and
experience...
and revenue generating abilities The ones that occasionally get
fired are
the top, top management which is sometimes duplicated. But that is
not that
common either.

Having been in three myself, I've seen the company
doing the buying stating that they want the people,
but then they lay off half of the development staff.
Or, in the most recent case, relocate the jobs to India
and Slovakia, and lay off most of the development
staff.

In a merger, the old company IS hte new company. The two unite; that
is what
"merger" means. Generally, there are no extra people. If both
companies had
stations in the same market, only duplicated positions are sometimes
eliminated, but usually the work load can not be reduced.

Maybe that's the case in radio, but not in a lot of
other cases. I know of a company that I used to
work for who'd use a merger as an excuse
to dump a lot of low performers on the street.

Otherwise, the new owners
might decide to "go in a different direction"
and can the lot of them. Having survived
several Black Mondays myself, you're just
relieved to have a job.

I have never seen a merger or major acquisition in radio where there
was a
wholesale dismissal of people on closing. In fact, most of what is
paid for
a radio staiton is for the intellectual property and billing, and
only about
5% is for plant and facilities. Only when a very bad station is
bought to
totally reformat it would there be a house cleaning, but to have it
happen
at multiple staitons is nearly unheard of. These turnarounds are
exceptions,
where the buyer is only interested in the frequency, not the
billing. An
example would be HBC's LMA/purchase of KSCA in LA, in 1997. The AAA
format
could barely get a 1 share, and the station had been a losing dog
for
decades. It was sold, and went Spanish. All the air staff was let
go, as
well as promotions and copy and such, but that was because the
station was
doing so badly. In most cases, staitons are bought for thier ongoing
value.

I've seen it happen several times in the Cincy area,
the most recent one being the switch of 1530 from
50's-60's easy listening to 50's-60's pop. (It's now
an Air America outlet, with all of those DJ's now
gone, too.) Most of the easy listening DJ's left or
were canned, and a bunch of DJ's who happened
to be available when 103.5 went from 50's-60's pop
to 70's pop joined the station.

Another scenario is when a station decides to go
to a talk format like Air America or the standard
conservative fare of Rush, Hannity and Co. The
DJ's aren't needed, so sayonara to the DJs.

--Mike L.