Published Articles
More Clear Channel layoffs announced
News rolls in today that CC Media Holdings Inc., the parent company of radio and billboard giant Clear Channel Communications Inc., will be laying off around 590 people in its radio division. This is another major blow to employees at the company as 1,850 were laid off in January.
The Clear Channel layoffs come paired with a suspension of its 401(k) company match, effective April 30. A spokeswoman for the company announced, however, that should Clear Channel hit 90% of its year-end targets, Clear Channel will retroactively restore the match.
This is tragic news for listeners who haven’t made the switch to satellite radio. Basically, syndicated radio is slowly but surely taking over the airwaves. I was particularly upset when the first set of cuts came in January, as one of my favorite local sports talk programs was almost immediately taken off the air and replaced with bland “all-encompassing” sports talk.
I have a few friends who work for Clear Channel; some in sales, some in programming. They have explained to me, many times, how a lot is changing very quickly in the radio industry and their own job security concerns that have come with those changes. For instance, there is a new system, very recently implemented, for measuring a radio station’s success with the listeners. I won’t go into exactly how it works (we’ll save that for another blog as it actually is quite interesting) but the bottom line is numbers their reps used to use, techniques they had in the past, etc. for selling radio stations advertising spots have been completely flipped upside down. Last year, even before the announced massive lay-offs, there were sales guys who had been at the company for 10+ years being let go, because with new numbers they could not sell like they used to. Couple that with the emergence of satellite radio, sprinkle in a bad economy, and you have an absolute recipe for major lay-offs. It is unfortunate, because if you ask anybody at the company they will tell you how upset they are with the changes. Look at the programming side for instance. They don’t want to take local personalities off the air. Stations use these guys to build camaraderie’s with their listeners. Think about it, if you were a sports fan who grew up in Los Angeles, or went to college in town, wouldn’t you much rather hear two L.A. guys debate on, say, whether USC or UCLA rules the town, than two random shmoe’s talk about A-Rod’s latest photo shoot? Plus the local guys tend to have personal relationships with members of the local teams and as a result can get far more interesting, in depth interviews with those players. Obviously the guys over at Clear Channel know this! The problem is, they just can’t afford to pay all the different personalities across the nation right now.
Let’s just hope that regular radio can survive through this recession and once America has bounced back, so can local radio. It would be horribly unfortunate to see radio die at the hands of our weak economy.
Related posts:
- Scripps Network will buy Travel Channel Scripps Networks has agreed to buy the Travel Channel from Cox Communications in a deal worth $975 million. It will be a joint venture between...
I survived the CC layoffs in January and again in April 2009.
The day of the latter I was told that I was one of the best and
the brightest and that further layoffs were very unlikely.
14 August 2009 I was laid off … I guess my $18,000 salary was
too high for them.