Day #94 - 1/16/98

The Cleveland Arbirtons came out today. Of course, I was morbidly curious to see how the old WLTF-FM would do as the new WMVX-FM. So, let's review:

1. They dumped their morning show - the one that busted it's butt for two years under previous management and ownership - but managed to hold onto a some ratings even though we were working against the wrong music, no promotion or support and "The Morning Show of the Week" game depending on whether the Consultant, GM or PD was holding the political leverage that week..

2. They spent a FORTUNE on TV ads.

3. They "Cleansed" the station by stripping it of it's personality.

4. And they changed the music again.

......so......

the Grand Total For the Fall Is....

THEY DROPPED!

The station, 12+ went from a 4.3 in the Summer to a 3.3 for the Fall. Mmmmm.....I don't think the corporate guys at JACOR are gonna be too happy about this. I don't blame them. I wish I had 5 minutes with Randy Michaels from JACOR. I don't think he's a bad guy. I hear he came up through radio from the programming side, so he has a balanced perspective. I wonder how that conversation might go? (Harp music/dream sequence into hypothetical fictional conversation....)

Corey: "Randy? Why did we get fired? We have so much to give as broadcasters?"

Randy: "I'm sure you do. But, those decisions are made on a local level."

Corey: "But Marc Chase even came in after you first purchased WLTF-FM and told us in a meeting that we had a good show and JACOR was going to free us from the old chains of SECRET to be ourselves. He even asked us for some of our bits to pass around to some other stations. He TOLD us JACOR KNEW the situation that had beset WLTF-FM was not our fault. Was he lying?"

Randy: "Well, no...I think he's a straight shooter."

Corey: "Well, Randy...if one of your best men KNEW none of the air-staff was to blame for the state of the station, why cast us off?"

Randy: "Like I said, these decisions are made on the local level."

Corey: "Okay, I understand. You're the CEO. You can't make all the decisions. But, you gotta know: no morning show every worked as hard to overcome obstacles. We were out there, everyday, doing it to the best of our ability. If you had looked at the trends, you would have seen that OUR morning show was up every month from the time you bought the station. You freed us to let us do the show we were hired to do in the first place...but somebody didn't have the insight to realize we really DID have a foot in the community and just needed a little support to make it happen big. If somebody had JUST sat down with the airstaff and ASKED, we could have told you what was wrong and right with the station. We could have helped you fix it. We wanted to. We could have saved you a lot of money. I'll bet when YOU were on the air, you felt the same way at times. Remember?"

Randy: "Well. Yeah.....maybe you're right. Maybe the nature of being a big company just has it's casualties. Maybe big companies just don't always make the best decisions.

Corey: "Maybe not."