"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.

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.

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.


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.

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.

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.