A reader forwarded me this article about why Cumulus is in the crapper. Sometimes, you get the feeling that you're the lone wolf in the forest and that what you've been kvetching about for almost a year is in the minority.
This piece confirms and only reinforces what I've said all along. The Atlanta misfits have no clue how to run a business. They have no tact. Their people skills are preposterous. They are the Titanic of leadership and a few of their outlets only have thrived not because of them, but in spite of them.
"He was specifically referring to salespeople and managers, but the same could be said for on-air talent."
ReplyDeleteand it is not just the on-air talent. It is a problem in every department. From Accounting on to everything else. Even in areas where Cumulus was not planning to cut now, or in the near future, people jump when new opportunities open just because of the uncertainty (translation: corp management no one trusts).
Is Mattress Man still EXCITED about the changes at KGONE? Does he still think ”changes needed to be made”? I still laugh about how the Cumulus henchmen spun the changes as something the audience wanted: ”our research indicates YOU wanted more news, so we listened!”. I get the feeling Paul Ryan would fit right in as a Cumulus executive..
ReplyDeleteThe rest of your post is great with exception of your ad hominem Paul Ryan commentary. Can't some of you talk about radio without injecting lame political rhetoric?
DeletePaul Ryan is a disingenuous prick. He is a sleezy salesman, I've been around enough corporate types to spot his ilk a mile away. It is as if they read the same manual, they all think they are smarter than everyone else. They are not, just sleazier...he could fit right in at Cumulus.
DeleteWhat am I not getting. They pay big bucks for a station then immediately cheapen its value by policies that lose market share (ex: KGO). So they have a bunch of stations that are now worth less than they paid for them and no detectable plan for turning them around. Is it buy high-sell low or are they already underwater? Is this the business plan they teach in college now?
ReplyDeleteMaybe they've taken a page from Fagreed's playbook: run the company into the ground, take it into bankruptcy, wipe out the small shareholders, then sell it off to the next bigger fool and pocket the profits yourself. (Or share it with your hedge fund partners, not all those pesky small investors.)
DeleteWhat's the deal with Ronn being out most of the week? Was he really sick?
ReplyDeleteNo way to know unless you're close to Ronn, but let me ask you: IF (a) you weren't happy with your employer, and (b) you didn't trust that employer to fully honor the remainder of your employment agreement (having observed up close how they treated The Razor a few months previous), and (c) said agreement was due to expire soon, and (d) you had sick time on the books that you felt would be lost if/when your employment was terminated, wouldn't you preemptively try to use up all or most of it?
Deletemaybe they are connected to Bain and they are just planning to borrow money on the station and file bankruptcy. I mean why destroy it as they are working so hard to do?
ReplyDeleteYou couldn't leave politics out of this, could you? Fine. Although I doubt your peanut brain can absorb this, Obama's vaunted rescue of the automotive industry is a political farce. In the end, after billions of taxpayer dollars, GM filed bankruptcy. This is exactly what Mitt Romney said they should have done billions of taxpayer dollars ago. Bankruptcy doesn't mean everyone gets laid off, it means the company is restructured under court protection. In the end, as it turned out, Romney was right all along.
DeleteBain Capital was a major success in seeding early phase companies many of which became major successes. This is a tough business. Some failed, as all VC firms would admit, but their record was better than most. Why don't you just call for the black shirts and fascists to march down the streets of America proclaiming your vision for the future. People like you disgust me. You are why I despise most liberal democrats.
If it hadn't been for George Romney's helmsmanship at American Motors.......Mitt Romney wouldn't have his fortune.
Delete"A capitalist will sell you the rope you use to hang him in KGO AND KNBR's Cumulus hallways"---Groucho Marx.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the article virtually all Cumulus major market radio stations are in revenue decline. The question-will all the cuts in personnel make up for the loss in revenue and pay the debt on the money they borrowed to buy all these stations? If not I smell bankruptcy in the future unless they grow revenue. Of course, it's hard to grow revenue when you fire all the talent/sales who generated the add revenue..
ReplyDeleteTo anon 9:07 am. Cumulus doesn't care! Haven't you figured it out by now!
ReplyDeleteOh, I've already figured that they don't care what WE think. I just wonder if they care what shareholders think. Shareholders might think differently.
DeleteI've noticed when a station is going into the dumper they start playing ads that repeat an 800 number 3+ times in one ad. Is Alice, KLLC, next?
ReplyDeleteMickey Luckoff and Jack Swanson used to have a clear boundary: no toenail fungus ads, no screaming 800 number schlock, etc. Respect the audience. In those days we could afford to say 'no' to an advertiser.
DeleteCumulus will not say 'no' to anyone who waves a check. Cumulus runs the stations as a flock advertising whores. Remember that "Charity" broadcast that turned out to be bought and paid for a few weeks ago? They sold a whole day of KGO and attempted to dupe the audience into giving money, all for a fat check.
In short, there are no "broadcast standards" and there is no "quality control" when it comes to paid content. None, other than the 7 forbidden words.
@ 12:02
DeleteThank you so much for explaining the policies that existed under Luckoff and Swanson. Boy, do I miss those days! Back then, you'd only hear the crap ads running at 1 a.m. in the morning, if you heard them at all; now they run all day and night.
Sadly, it seems that most stations in our market are now willing to take advertising dollars from any kind of fraudulent snake-oil sales operation that exists.
I'm so sick of million-bottle giveaways that I could hurl. And how about 800-numbers and Web addresses that are repeated ad nauseum?
And how about that homeopathic remedy for tinnitus? Search for Quietus on Google and see what you learn. They're selling a hundred-dollar bottle of pills that simply don't work.
And I won't even tunnel into the subject of the half-dozen different scam operators that are selling penis pills of different names and types. Generally, the tout is for increased masculinity, but one even has the football-sized cajones of their own to claim that you should use their pills to remove belly fat. Give me a break!
Anyone with an average IQ can see what scams these ads are. But the radio sales departments keep taking in the scamsters' money and helping them to dupe the station's own listeners into buying the scamster's crap products. I find that morally repugnant.
In the end, toenail fungus seems a pleasant subject, by comparison to some of the other obscenely expensive and fraudulent crap that's being peddled.
Radio is not a dying medium. Good broadcasting people who run radio stations however are a near extinct species. And the listeners
ReplyDelete(outside of most of the people who read this blog), don't even seem to notice.
Why is that?
1.) They've given up and will listen to nothing but NPR (which isn't a bad idea!)
2.) They're not interesting in radio to begin with and would rather listen to ipods or their cd players.
And 3.) They're too busy facebooking, texting, tweeting, and working or playing in front of their own
screens (big screen TVs, I-pads kindles, home computers etc. Hey I'm doing it right now!)
It's the 21st century, and the world has taken a sharp turn for the worse. Face to face conversation is rare, and the majority young people today seem to have been brought up without the basic skill of actually knowing how to converse face to face, both personally and professionally. I'm am shocked a the poor grammar, poor pronunciation, and lack of concentration on the part of some young people I meet. They're easily distracted, and seem have a massive case of attention deficit syndrome. They're buried
and addicted in their electronic toys. A lot of people over 35 are as well! (and not just in America!)
Everybody wants to be a 'star' so they're taking videos and pictures of everything that involves them and telling the world:
"Look at me!" Why is this? Could it be because there are now 7 billion of us on the planet and life is less precious so each one of us is more anonymous? Could it be because our society is so
fractured and people move around so much (job to job, city to city) and change their scenery so frequently that there's no sense of permanence?
Food for thought!
Hmmm... lets do a radio format where we auction off programming blocks an hour at a time online. We can capitalize on this, and find a new way to monetize radio! Could make for some "interesting" programming!
DeleteIf Cumulus dont care then I dont care. I listen to KCBS and KVHS!
ReplyDeletePer Inquiry ads where the station gets a fee for everyone who responds can be quite profitable. However, the station(s) actually need to have a large audience for this to work. Even in San Francisco, I'm not sure a 1 share (or less) is a large enough sample.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, when all the best sales people are fired and the local business community no longer wants to support the station (why should they) these are about the only ads a station can get. Sad in a freaky kind of way.
P.S. Can someone find and shoot whoever wrote the KARS for KIDS spot? PPPPlllllleeeease! (or at least have it redone with a kid who can actually sing.)
Just curious. If Cumulus were to sell their San Francisco assets today, what would they be worth? Anyone care to take an educated guess? A penny for your thoughts...
ReplyDeleteHard for me to believe, but I'd argue newspapers have actually handled their situations better than radio. Yes, they have cut costs and newshole and aren't as good as they once were, but they continue to deliver the product that their audience expects, if in reduced form. They are still getting ad dollars through the print while continuing its attempts to develop the on-line product.
ReplyDeleteCumulus though figures radio is crashing, so we'll invest heavily in it, then throw away the one thing radio does seem to lend itself to - audience loyalty - and then act surprised when the ratings go away?
In a perfect world, old KGO would still be doing what they did - but if they cut one or two of the hosts and kept its identity, maybe replace Ray with a "best of" the local shows overnight. They would have been able to cut costs and maintain their identity. Fans would have been sorry to see some hosts leave, but they would have adjusted if - say Thurston was moved to a weekday slot.
Don't expect today's radio management to be that astute. The biggest problem with radio, is that for years, radio sales and marketing people basically ran the business (which was frustrating by for those of us on the air, but in the long term, probably necessary.)
ReplyDeleteNow radio is mostly being run by corporate bean counters who cream in their jeans when they see a big fat number where they want it. They kind of remind me of some of the stats people who go
over all of the numbers in baseball, and think that they can tell everything about an individual based on those numbers.
If only life were that simple! Instead of enlightened people, we've got simpletons running radio. Very sad!