"Michael Lawson" wrote in message
...

"David Eduardo" wrote in message

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.

So? The hits in America are cosat to coast hits, in most cases. Local
differences are more due to the competitive arrray than any fundamental
difference between regions and zones, so the big AC hits are the same, the
big urban hits are the same, the big CHR and country hits are the same.
Sure, each market has differing ethnicities and lifestyle groups, but the
songs played on a staiton in a specific format are going to be very similar
all over. This goes back decades and decades and decades.
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.

The "DJ clips" in Cincy are live in most cases. they are just not very long,
and are what the format requires. They are not coming from San Antonioo or
someplace else. they are live in the market. Don't you understand taht,
outside of mornings, FM music listeners do not want talk, they want music?
This is why off-prime shifts can be pre-prepared with voicetraced jocks in
smaller markets.


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.

When stations are "blown apart" it means that they were not successful. It
means they were losing money. From the mid-50's through the mid-90's, fully
half of all US radio stations did not make money, you know. Technology and
consolidation have mitigated this situation to some extent, but there are
many bad facilities and many overly-radioed markets where money will not be
made.

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.

If a station tanks in Arbitron, and stays tanked, it changes format.

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.

That is not usual in radio, as it is hard to get those Hungarians and Sikhs
to sepak American English over the WAN to record the voice tracks. Most
radio staff is sales, which is necessarily live and local.

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.

We are talking about radio. What you describe is far less prevalent in radio
as radio staitons can not centralize.

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.

This is normal when formats shift. But the formats shift due to the
inability of the existing one to get good ratings. This has been the case
since Top 40 was invented in August of 1952... jocks who get bad ratings get
fired. Stations that get bad ratings change format. In the end, the total
employment does not change much... but the individuals change as the formats
change. All of us in radio knew this when we started in radio. It is, like
all entertainment businesses, inherently volitile. How many TV shows get
cancelled in thier first season? the folks working on them go on to other
shows, or wait tables in Studio City or Burbank.

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.

It may surprise you to know that DJs are a small percentage of station
staff. there are always more sellers than jocks, and more office staff than
jocks. And many of the behind the scenes jobs continue irrespective of the
format. There is nothing inherently bad about this... it is just part of
being in an entertainment-related business. In TV, the technicians,
accountants, managers best boys, gaffers, Foley operators and such don't get
fired. They just go on to the production company's next project. It is the
talent that moves around... just like radio.