Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Not So Clear.


Think things are tough on this side of the Atlantic?
Spare a thought for the ex-employess of ClearChannel in the States who were let go - all 1,850 of them ! That's One Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty!!! Or to put it another way: 9% of the company's entire workforce. This number did include presenters and programming staff (some high profile) along with sales and admin personnel.
Guess what? Some local shows will be replaced by 'Syndicated Programming'...hey, don't they have access to a little known presenter by the name of Seacrest???
The human side of all this is well presented by the Chicago Tribune story about 20 year WNUA-FM veteran, Rick O'Dell:
"With the industry being as short-staffed as it is, this might be a case where the survivors have it worse than the people let go," said O'Dell, who hosted a 9 a.m.-to-2 p.m. weekday show and a one-hour weekend program while also serving as music director and program director at the smooth jazz station.
O'Dell had updated his page on the WNUA Web site and was pre-taping the final hour of what would have been today's broadcast ostensibly so he could attend a scheduled staff meeting to discuss the cuts when he was asked to see Tony Coles, his direct boss.It was only when O'Dell saw a human resources representative bringing Coles a stack of envelopes, which turned out to be termination packets, that he began to realize what was happening. Coles told him he would be escorted from the building.
Here's the memo (thanks to Jacobs Media) sent to surviving staff members speaking about "shared commitment" and being "innovative". ClearChannel obviously believe the best way to get sales is to fire sales people and the best way to achieve ratings is to rid yourself of presenters and programmers.
As SpongeBob would say..."Eh, good luck with that"!