Let the Firings Begin
By Jerry Del Colliano

The bane of Lee and Bain!

According to the dictionary the word bane means "a cause of great
distress or annoyance". That being said, the word Bain as in Lee and
Bain, the investment bankers who will make Clear Channel's
privatization possible is firings -- massive firings.

Ten in Los Angeles alone last week.

What better time for consolidators that can't get their share price up
like Clear Channel to pink slip people than right before Christmas.
Families love to have their breadwinners come home and say, "honey, I
shrunk our incomes".

You might think it harsh for me to blame Lee and Bain for these
actions since they just entered the picture albeit it enabling the
Clear Channel deal, but they did recently express public confidence in
the present Clear Channel management team including John Hogan. One
thing is true of suits -- empty or not -- they usually don't do what
their future bosses would disapprove of.

So, game on.

Let the firings begin.

Here's a glimpse of the decimation of radio 2008 according to John
Rook's excellent site (click and scroll down to "Radio Games -- 'Tis
the Season to Be...) or this account from one of my favorite radio
websites Don Barrett's LARadio.com:


10 Clear Channel Personalities Exit

(November 30, 2007) It was a tough day for the people at KOST in
particular and Clear Channel in general. Mike Sakellarides has been
the only midday personality since the inception of the KOST format in
1982. Today was his last day on the air as the AC station makes
significant adjustments to its on-air line-up. This morning we
announced that Kim Amidon, half of the long-running Mark & Kim team,
exited the station.

A familiar voice in morning and afternoon drive with airborne traffic
reports has been Mike Nolan. Mike has been grounded and exits the
station.

KOST promotion director, Julie Kertes, also left the station today.

At HOT 92.3/fm, middayer Sean Andre will exit the r&b Oldies station.

At AirWatch, the news and traffic service owned by Clear Channel, let
go Mike Baez (Taylor), Barbara Brooks, Jim Curran, Walt Darocha
(Jackson), Alan LaGreen, and Sharon Reardon.

On Monday, details to these changes, the philosophical shift to multi-
platforms to complement the programming, and perspective from Greg
Ashlock, market chief from Clear Channel.
It's been getting ugly out there as Clear Channel has been nipping and
tucking. I can't imagine this is going to get any better.

I'm not a Pollyanna. I know radio consolidators have to cut costs ---
after all, they have to try to bury their mistakes in the bottom line.
But what we're going to see in the year ahead if I am calling it right
is radio stepping beyond the point of no return.

I've long been a critic of the so called efficiencies of
consolidation. After the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed,
consolidators couldn't wait to have everyone in one building, one PD
for several stations in each market where possible, one market manager
who could double running a station or two to save on high-priced GMs
at every station, one group sales whatever and even one receptionist
(if they even had one).

But radio consolidators have not been able to come up with one
improvement in their programming in the past ten years.

No innovation.

Nothing to keep listeners listening or to attract the next generation
of radio listeners. Instead, why not attack the Arbitron People Meter
in front of the very media buyers who they have to rely on for revenue
and knock it down a peg or two?

Sound sick?

Not in the world of radio consolidation.

So, we have seen the future and it is (as I have said in recent
pieces) syndicated morning shows, vanilla voice tracks in one or more
dayparts and on weekends and as few real people on the payroll as
possible.

No growth company can win without real people.

Google is dominant in its field because it hires as many good people
as possible and, by the way, is reported to be a great employer.

Apple is taking over the world not by making headlines with cutbacks,
but by staffing up with qualified people.

New age companies like Facebook aren't taking over the next generation
by employing efficiencies of scale. People are the resources needed
for success -- not chips, not cutbacks, not duplication of jobs.

The losers cutback.

They can't make their numbers without a little help from their
corporate bean counter friends. They under-employ, let solid winners
get away and actually think they can entertain people, make
advertisers happy and do more for less. And every once in a while they
save a few insignificant pennies by cutting the employee salary of a
cancer patient while publicly saying they are holding his job.

This mentality doesn't work.

That is, of course, unless their game plan is to trim costs and resell
the assets they just purchased for billions for an even greater price
than they paid.

Isn't that what investment bankers do? They profit.

The tragedy of radio consolidation is that it was the exact worst
solution at the exact worst time in the media business when online was
coming of age and a new generation larger than baby boomers was being
neglected.

I should be giving my condolences to all the radio people fired so far
in the name of corporate incompetency and insensitivity. I do feel
awful for these fine folks and their families especially at this time
of the year. But they will get through this and move on to new
horizons where content, management and sales talent will be
appreciated and rewarded -- in new media, perhaps.

Consolidators, on the other hand, should enjoy their holidays with the
knowledge that they continue to reap financial rewards for failure
under a system passed by your Congress, espoused by your NAB and
supported by investment dollars from banking firms that sometimes have
to be bailed out from their own poor decisions (witness sub prime woes
and the coming hedge fund debacle).

If you ever wonder why I have a hard time being optimistic about the
future of terrestrial radio it is not because the talented radio
executives can't figure out the problems they face. It's because as I
said over ten years ago -- consolidation doesn't work. The system is
rigged against success except for the principals.

And for those of you who are fond of saying that even the non-public
and smaller radio groups are laying off people as well, I say -- look
to your leaders and see what they are doing.

See you here a year from today Good Lord willing and I'll bet radio
stocks will still be in the toilet which means that while the program
directors are getting ratings through antiquated listener diaries,
consolidators are getting their ratings from another kind of "People
Meter".

It's called the stock market.

When your ratings are down on the stock market, it means potential
investors don't think investing in your company builds shareholder
value.

If any of these consolidators' program directors delivered such poor
numbers for radio listening -- wouldn't it be grounds for firing?

Just asking.

So let the firings begin, but start in San Antonio and other corporate
offices where mismanagement has wrecked lives, devalued talented
people and stiffed the shareholders who were led to believe radio was
a growth industry.

http://insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com...ngs-begin.html

On Dec 3, 3:33 am, wrote:
Let the Firings Begin
By Jerry Del Colliano

The bane of Lee and Bain!

According to the dictionary the word bane means "a cause of great
distress or annoyance". That being said, the word Bain as in Lee and
Bain, the investment bankers who will make Clear Channel's
privatization possible is firings -- massive firings.

Ten in Los Angeles alone last week.

What better time for consolidators that can't get their share price up
like Clear Channel to pink slip people than right before Christmas.
Families love to have their breadwinners come home and say, "honey, I
shrunk our incomes".

You might think it harsh for me to blame Lee and Bain for these
actions since they just entered the picture albeit it enabling the
Clear Channel deal, but they did recently express public confidence in
the present Clear Channel management team including John Hogan. One
thing is true of suits -- empty or not -- they usually don't do what
their future bosses would disapprove of.

So, game on.

Let the firings begin.

Here's a glimpse of the decimation of radio 2008 according to John
Rook's excellent site (click and scroll down to "Radio Games -- 'Tis
the Season to Be...) or this account from one of my favorite radio
websites Don Barrett's LARadio.com:

10 Clear Channel Personalities Exit

(November 30, 2007) It was a tough day for the people at KOST in
particular and Clear Channel in general. Mike Sakellarides has been
the only midday personality since the inception of the KOST format in
1982. Today was his last day on the air as the AC station makes
significant adjustments to its on-air line-up. This morning we
announced that Kim Amidon, half of the long-running Mark & Kim team,
exited the station.

A familiar voice in morning and afternoon drive with airborne traffic
reports has been Mike Nolan. Mike has been grounded and exits the
station.

KOST promotion director, Julie Kertes, also left the station today.

At HOT 92.3/fm, middayer Sean Andre will exit the r&b Oldies station.

At AirWatch, the news and traffic service owned by Clear Channel, let
go Mike Baez (Taylor), Barbara Brooks, Jim Curran, Walt Darocha
(Jackson), Alan LaGreen, and Sharon Reardon.

On Monday, details to these changes, the philosophical shift to multi-
platforms to complement the programming, and perspective from Greg
Ashlock, market chief from Clear Channel.
It's been getting ugly out there as Clear Channel has been nipping and
tucking. I can't imagine this is going to get any better.

I'm not a Pollyanna. I know radio consolidators have to cut costs ---
after all, they have to try to bury their mistakes in the bottom line.
But what we're going to see in the year ahead if I am calling it right
is radio stepping beyond the point of no return.

I've long been a critic of the so called efficiencies of
consolidation. After the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed,
consolidators couldn't wait to have everyone in one building, one PD
for several stations in each market where possible, one market manager
who could double running a station or two to save on high-priced GMs
at every station, one group sales whatever and even one receptionist
(if they even had one).

But radio consolidators have not been able to come up with one
improvement in their programming in the past ten years.

No innovation.

Nothing to keep listeners listening or to attract the next generation
of radio listeners. Instead, why not attack the Arbitron People Meter
in front of the very media buyers who they have to rely on for revenue
and knock it down a peg or two?

Sound sick?

Not in the world of radio consolidation.

So, we have seen the future and it is (as I have said in recent
pieces) syndicated morning shows, vanilla voice tracks in one or more
dayparts and on weekends and as few real people on the payroll as
possible.

No growth company can win without real people.

Google is dominant in its field because it hires as many good people
as possible and, by the way, is reported to be a great employer.

Apple is taking over the world not by making headlines with cutbacks,
but by staffing up with qualified people.

New age companies like Facebook aren't taking over the next generation
by employing efficiencies of scale. People are the resources needed
for success -- not chips, not cutbacks, not duplication of jobs.

The losers cutback.

They can't make their numbers without a little help from their
corporate bean counter friends. They under-employ, let solid winners
get away and actually think they can entertain people, make
advertisers happy and do more for less. And every once in a while they
save a few insignificant pennies by cutting the employee salary of a
cancer patient while publicly saying they are holding his job.

This mentality doesn't work.

That is, of course, unless their game plan is to trim costs and resell
the assets they just purchased for billions for an even greater price
than they paid.

Isn't that what investment bankers do? They profit.

The tragedy of radio consolidation is that it was the exact worst
solution at the exact worst time in the media business when online was
coming of age and a new generation larger than baby boomers was being
neglected.

I should be giving my condolences to all the radio people fired so far
in the name of corporate incompetency and insensitivity. I do feel
awful for these fine folks and their families especially at this time
of the year. But they will get through this and move on to new
horizons where content, management and sales talent will be
appreciated and rewarded -- in new media, perhaps.

Consolidators, on the other hand, should enjoy their holidays with the
knowledge that they continue to reap financial rewards for failure
under a system passed by your Congress, espoused by your NAB and
supported by investment dollars from banking firms that sometimes have
to be bailed out from their own poor decisions (witness sub prime woes
and the coming hedge fund debacle).

If you ever wonder why I have a hard time being optimistic about the
future of terrestrial radio it is not because the talented radio
executives can't figure out the problems they face. It's because as I
said over ten years ago -- consolidation doesn't work. The system is
rigged against success except for the principals.

And for those of you who are fond of saying that even the non-public
and smaller radio groups are laying off people as well, I say -- look
to your leaders and see what they are doing.

See you here a year from today Good Lord willing and I'll bet radio
stocks will still be in the toilet which means that while the program
directors are getting ratings through antiquated listener diaries,
consolidators are getting their ratings from another kind of "People
Meter".

It's called the stock market.

When your ratings are down on the stock market, it means potential
investors don't think investing in your company builds shareholder
value.

If any of these consolidators' program directors delivered such poor
numbers for radio listening -- wouldn't it be grounds for firing?

Just asking.

So let the firings begin, but start in San Antonio and other corporate
offices where mismanagement has wrecked lives, devalued talented
people and stiffed the shareholders who were led to believe radio was
a growth industry.

http://insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com...ngs-begin.html

Pocket-less-Radio,

Dang - You Are A Real Head-Up-Your-Ass SICKO !

It's Christmas Season*
-cause- There is Christmas Music on the Radio !
* Let the Hirings Begin !

who revels in people losing their jobs ~ RHF

On Dec 3, 7:27 am, RHF wrote:
On Dec 3, 3:33 am, wrote:





Let the Firings Begin
By Jerry Del Colliano

The bane of Lee and Bain!

According to the dictionary the word bane means "a cause of great
distress or annoyance". That being said, the word Bain as in Lee and
Bain, the investment bankers who will make Clear Channel's
privatization possible is firings -- massive firings.

Ten in Los Angeles alone last week.

What better time for consolidators that can't get their share price up
like Clear Channel to pink slip people than right before Christmas.
Families love to have their breadwinners come home and say, "honey, I
shrunk our incomes".

You might think it harsh for me to blame Lee and Bain for these
actions since they just entered the picture albeit it enabling the
Clear Channel deal, but they did recently express public confidence in
the present Clear Channel management team including John Hogan. One
thing is true of suits -- empty or not -- they usually don't do what
their future bosses would disapprove of.

So, game on.

Let the firings begin.

Here's a glimpse of the decimation of radio 2008 according to John
Rook's excellent site (click and scroll down to "Radio Games -- 'Tis
the Season to Be...) or this account from one of my favorite radio
websites Don Barrett's LARadio.com:

10 Clear Channel Personalities Exit

(November 30, 2007) It was a tough day for the people at KOST in
particular and Clear Channel in general. Mike Sakellarides has been
the only midday personality since the inception of the KOST format in
1982. Today was his last day on the air as the AC station makes
significant adjustments to its on-air line-up. This morning we
announced that Kim Amidon, half of the long-running Mark & Kim team,
exited the station.

A familiar voice in morning and afternoon drive with airborne traffic
reports has been Mike Nolan. Mike has been grounded and exits the
station.

KOST promotion director, Julie Kertes, also left the station today.

At HOT 92.3/fm, middayer Sean Andre will exit the r&b Oldies station.

At AirWatch, the news and traffic service owned by Clear Channel, let
go Mike Baez (Taylor), Barbara Brooks, Jim Curran, Walt Darocha
(Jackson), Alan LaGreen, and Sharon Reardon.

On Monday, details to these changes, the philosophical shift to multi-
platforms to complement the programming, and perspective from Greg
Ashlock, market chief from Clear Channel.
It's been getting ugly out there as Clear Channel has been nipping and
tucking. I can't imagine this is going to get any better.

I'm not a Pollyanna. I know radio consolidators have to cut costs ---
after all, they have to try to bury their mistakes in the bottom line.
But what we're going to see in the year ahead if I am calling it right
is radio stepping beyond the point of no return.

I've long been a critic of the so called efficiencies of
consolidation. After the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed,
consolidators couldn't wait to have everyone in one building, one PD
for several stations in each market where possible, one market manager
who could double running a station or two to save on high-priced GMs
at every station, one group sales whatever and even one receptionist
(if they even had one).

But radio consolidators have not been able to come up with one
improvement in their programming in the past ten years.

No innovation.

Nothing to keep listeners listening or to attract the next generation
of radio listeners. Instead, why not attack the Arbitron People Meter
in front of the very media buyers who they have to rely on for revenue
and knock it down a peg or two?

Sound sick?

Not in the world of radio consolidation.

So, we have seen the future and it is (as I have said in recent
pieces) syndicated morning shows, vanilla voice tracks in one or more
dayparts and on weekends and as few real people on the payroll as
possible.

No growth company can win without real people.

Google is dominant in its field because it hires as many good people
as possible and, by the way, is reported to be a great employer.

Apple is taking over the world not by making headlines with cutbacks,
but by staffing up with qualified people.

New age companies like Facebook aren't taking over the next generation
by employing efficiencies of scale. People are the resources needed
for success -- not chips, not cutbacks, not duplication of jobs.

The losers cutback.

They can't make their numbers without a little help from their
corporate bean counter friends. They under-employ, let solid winners
get away and actually think they can entertain people, make
advertisers happy and do more for less. And every once in a while they
save a few insignificant pennies by cutting the employee salary of a
cancer patient while publicly saying they are holding his job.

This mentality doesn't work.

That is, of course, unless their game plan is to trim costs and resell
the assets they just purchased for billions for an even greater price
than they paid.

Isn't that what investment bankers do? They profit.

The tragedy of radio consolidation is that it was the exact worst
solution at the exact worst time in the media business when online was
coming of age and a new generation larger than baby boomers was being
neglected.

I should be giving my condolences to all the radio people fired so far
in the name of corporate incompetency and insensitivity. I do feel
awful for these fine folks and their families especially at this time
of the year. But they will get through this and move on to new
horizons where content, management and sales talent will be
appreciated and rewarded -- in new media, perhaps.

Consolidators, on the other hand, should enjoy their holidays with the
knowledge that they continue to reap financial rewards for failure
under a system passed by your Congress, espoused by your NAB and
supported by investment dollars from banking firms that sometimes have
to be bailed out from their own poor decisions (witness sub prime woes
and the coming hedge fund debacle).

If you ever wonder why I have a hard time being optimistic about the
future of terrestrial radio it is not because the talented radio
executives can't figure out the problems they face. It's because as I
said over ten years ago -- consolidation doesn't work. The system is
rigged against success except for the principals.

And for those of you who are fond of saying that even the non-public
and smaller radio groups are laying off people as well, I say -- look
to your leaders and see what they are doing.

See you here a year from today Good Lord willing and I'll bet radio
stocks will still be in the toilet which means that while the program
directors are getting ratings through antiquated listener diaries,
consolidators are getting their ratings from another kind of "People
Meter".

It's called the stock market.

When your ratings are down on the stock market, it means potential
investors don't think investing in your company builds shareholder
value.

If any of these consolidators' program directors delivered such poor
numbers for radio listening -- wouldn't it be grounds for firing?

Just asking.

So let the firings begin, but start in San Antonio and other corporate
offices where mismanagement has wrecked lives, devalued talented
people and stiffed the shareholders who were led to believe radio was
a growth industry.

http://insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com...ngs-begin.html

Pocket-less-Radio,

Dang - You Are A Real Head-Up-Your-Ass SICKO !

It's Christmas Season*
-cause- There is Christmas Music on the Radio !
* Let the Hirings Begin !

who revels in people losing their jobs ~ RHF
.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

iBiquity not only has consumer and broadcast radio GMs and PDs apathy
towards HD Radio to deal with, but also a dying radio industry (I bet
that wasn't in Struble's equations).

With all of these layoffs/firings in the radio industry, I can't wait
for the next stockholders' meetings, when they ask the "suits" about
the ROI on their $300,000/station HD Radio investments. Stations
refuse to invest in HD, not only because they know it is a non-
starter, but they just can't plain afford to throw more money after
this destructive, stillborn technology. The $680,000,000 investment in
HD was only unsold air-time - what does that say about this dying
industry, with all of that unsold air-time? HD is simply a scam to
attempt to bilk the public into buying new HD radios, in order to save
the dying radio industry. Too bad, the public has figured out tha HD
doesn't even work:

"Is HD Radio Toast?"

"There are serious issues of coverage. Early adopters who bought HD
radios report serious drop-outs, poor coverage, and interference. The
engineers of Ibiquity may argue otherwise and defend the system, but
the industry has a serious PR problem with the very people we need to
get the word out on HD... In other words, everything you can find on
the regular FM dial... The word has already gotten out about HD Radio.
People who have already bought an HD Radio are telling others of their
experience (mostly bad) and no amount of marketing will reverse this."

http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=487772

At some point, there may be a Congesssional investigation into this
sham:

"HD Radio: Fun with Math"

"I think it is fair to say that the audiophile community, those people
who take their FM seriously, is dead set AGAINST HDRadio. Not only do
most people never intend to buy a radio, unless as a plaything for
early adopters and collectors, but are aghast at the FCC for even
allowing IBOC to thrash up the FM bandwidth. Plus, people with enough
technical savvy to read the specs are insulted by the false claims of
"CD sound quality" or even "near-CD sound quality." These are
transparent marketing hype, beyond mean puffery. Sorry, but HDRadio
has sworn enemies. This goes beyond just business but has political
eprecussions for FCC and for Congress. This has the whiff of
political scandal - and I'm a rock-ribbed Republican! The Corporation
for Public Broadcasting is especially vulnerable. My advice for any
businessman is to avoid any association with HDRadio."

http://www.hear2.com/2006/06/hd_radio_fun_wi.html

On Dec 3, 5:18 am, IBOCcrock wrote:
With all of these layoffs/firings in the radio industry, I can't wait
for the next stockholders' meetings, when they ask the "suits" about
the ROI on their $300,000/station HD Radio investments. Stations
refuse to invest in HD, not only because they know it is a non-
starter, but they just can't plain afford to throw more money after
this destructive, stillborn technology. The $680,000,000 investment in
HD was only unsold air-time - what does that say about this dying
industry, with all of that unsold air-time? HD is simply a scam to
attempt to bilk the public into buying new HD radios, in order to save
the dying radio industry. Too bad, the public has figured out tha HD
doesn't even work:

"Is HD Radio Toast?"

"There are serious issues of coverage. Early adopters who bought HD
radios report serious drop-outs, poor coverage, and interference. The
engineers of Ibiquity may argue otherwise and defend the system, but
the industry has a serious PR problem with the very people we need to
get the word out on HD... In other words, everything you can find on
the regular FM dial... The word has already gotten out about HD Radio.
People who have already bought an HD Radio are telling others of their
experience (mostly bad) and no amount of marketing will reverse this."

http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=487772

At some point, there may be a Congesssional investigation into this
sham:

"HD Radio: Fun with Math"

"I think it is fair to say that the audiophile community, those people
who take their FM seriously, is dead set AGAINST HDRadio. Not only do
most people never intend to buy a radio, unless as a plaything for
early adopters and collectors, but are aghast at the FCC for even
allowing IBOC to thrash up the FM bandwidth. Plus, people with enough
technical savvy to read the specs are insulted by the false claims of
"CD sound quality" or even "near-CD sound quality." These are
transparent marketing hype, beyond mean puffery. Sorry, but HDRadio
has sworn enemies. This goes beyond just business but has political
eprecussions for FCC and for Congress. This has the whiff of
political scandal - and I'm a rock-ribbed Republican! The Corporation
for Public Broadcasting is especially vulnerable. My advice for any
businessman is to avoid any association with HDRadio."

http://www.hear2.com/2006/06/hd_radio_fun_wi.html

I B OC'd and Half-Crocked,

Dang - You Are A Real Head-Up-Your-Ass SICKO !

It's Christmas Season*
-cause- There is Christmas Music
on the Free Over-the-Air Radio !
* Let the Hirings Begin !

iboc crock - you are a sad sick human being
for revelling in the fact that people are
losing their jobs ~ RHF