Citadel has let go two of its on air staff in recent days. KKGL night guy Jason Drew and KZMG morning host Valentine are no longer with the company. Val was the longest serving member of the Magic staff - and will be replaced by Dan Tooker in early 2008. Valentine shifted to AM drive after Citadel let Brad and Tara go earlier this fall.
It’ll be interesting to see if the change at KKGL signals less of a commitment by Citadel to have jocks live in the evening.
on Dec 16th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Wow!
I’m surprised to see Jason go. I think he is very talented he’ll land somewhere soon, I hope.
We’ll see what happens.
on Dec 16th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Where are all the nasty comments about Citaswell and their commitment to “Live” bodies and all the other cxxp that people are ready to throw on Clear Channel and Peak.
on Dec 16th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
If Citadel is as guilty of being cheap and cowardly as postings regarding Clear Channel and Peak suggested then they deserve the nasty comments as well. However, without being involved in radio to know the facts and without supporting evidence pro or con in the original posting, it is difficult to condemn anyone or anything without more information to support any conclusion.
on Dec 16th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
This is an easy one. Tooker costs a lot of money. Cut 2 to pay for 1. Done. Business as usual, nothing personal. Welcome to radio 101. Duh.
on Dec 16th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
Ah yes!!! The old two for one special. Also known as mini-max 101. Corporations minimizing the established, well paid talent in order to minimize their expenses and increase the profit margin. Sounds like education where they are minimizing the quality of education and the expectations of the students in order to maximize educational profits by standardizing the curriculum and testing so it will be cheaper to educate. Give it time. The whole thing will flop and a major revolution will take place in things like health care, education, and the corporate attitude. It’s just a matter of time.
on Dec 17th, 2007 at 3:03 am
“The whole thing will flop and a major revolution will take place in things like health care, education, and the corporate attitude. It’s just a matter of time.”
I’d say it’s already begun, at least in broadcasting. Seen the numbers on the shrinking audience for radio recently?
The executives will resist the obvious evidence until the industry collapses around them. Keep milking that cash cow, boys. Don’t worry about the teats going dry.
on Dec 17th, 2007 at 3:19 am
Sorry to know you wont be there, Jason. I always enjoyed your presence on the air on the Eagle. Consider the old adage… as one door swings shut, a better one opens up. I am sure something better will come your way when the time is right… And we can only hope that those who were responsible for your demise will one day find the door knob for them becomes embedded in their butt on their way out the door….
on Dec 17th, 2007 at 9:42 am
I would agree the revolution has started in broadcasting, education, and health care. We have outlined what corporate radio has done to the local stations and talent. At least in the Treasure Valley, corporate ownership of health care has been replaced by St. Al’s and St. Luke’s. In 1975, Caldwell Memorial Hospital is purchased by HCA. In 2000, the hospital forms a partnership with Saint Alphonsus to open Caldwell Cancer Center. Since then, St. Al’s has increased their role in in Canyon County. It took a quarter century for people to comprehend the impact of corporate health care in the West Valley. However, when the full impact was realized it was overwhelmingly rejected in favor of community oriented health care.
The same is happening in education. Home and charter schools are being created at a feverish pace because parents and teachers are increasingly rejecting the corporate attitudes, ideals, and philosophies.
I could drone on forever. However, I think RadioActive said it best, “…we can only hope that those who were responsible…will one day find the door knob for them becomes embedded in their butt on their way out the door.”
on Dec 17th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Citadel stock is $1.98 today.
(12/17/07)
It used to be near $25.00.
You can not take that kind of beating and stay Citadel. (Some one or company will scoop it up)
As far as Magic is concerned, face the reality, they should have dropped this format long ago.
The magic is dead!
…stay tuned!
on Dec 17th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Another question about Citadel. With their stock being so low is there any money/interest in bidding on the upcoming Broncos radio contract to keep them on KBOI? The logos on the website and on billboards seem to have dropped a lot of the Bronco branding. And, if they drop the Broncos, is the I-man far behind?
on Dec 17th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Assuming Citadel is really taking a financial beating as suggested and Imus is picked up by KBOI, what is the probability of Paul J. Chris going to KBSU and BSU Radio becoming the new home of the Broncos?
If Imus goes on and Paul J. and C-Dub got o KBSU, my radio button will be set to BSU Radio. If no Paul J. & Chris, then Jon & Chris on KFXD.
on Dec 17th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
hey…Citadel is selling some stations..mayyyyyyybe they won’t bid and sell the cluster.
OR are the stations they are selling the ones that were put in trust after the abc deal…citadel had to off some stations in some markets…
I looked at the stock and feel for those that were gullible enough to buy at the IPO of 18. They were pushing it…and now look at it. 2 bucks. OUCH.
I DO remember being there when the stock fell to 8 and then Uncle Larry sold out at 26!!!! Dang…I had NO extra money to buy…shoot in 6 weeks you could have made 3x the $$$$$
I’d buy now at two and hope it goes to 6. that ain’t too shabby…3x the $$ again.
on Dec 17th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
That leaves magic and kizn as the only stations with night jocks live….
on Dec 17th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Add it up…..Citadel is up now for sale, word is they are going to get rid of markets just like CLear Channel did and keep the Large markets. Citadel Boise as well as other markets like Boise are cutting people already….not even waiting till after the first of the year, doing it before holidays, so do they really care how it affects moral….no…they aren’t going to be running the place with in 6 months anyway….add that to the fact that revenue for the upcoming year is already trending below last year at this same time by about 10 percent, In addition, the credit markets have dried up, so no more easy cheap cash available to keep expanding………now add it up….you do the math, and you can see as the all the bigwigs at citadel do…..it’s time to cut losses and make as much money on their smaller operations while they can, just like Clear Channel did. One of their top rated Major Market stations makes more money in one month, than Citadel Boise does in an entire year….so who do you think is more important to them…..it’s a business, no matter how much they try and say, employees are their number one assett……they are a publicly traded company and their number one assett is their shareholders period…..don’t be fooled by all the other BS.
on Dec 17th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Does anyone have the feeling that given the economy and the trends we are “feeling in our bones” that those of us not in the business anymore either by design or by other reason, might be the lucky ones. In retrospect, its kind of nice to be able to sit back and watch all this unfold from a distance. Most of have of course, “been there-done that and have the T-shirt to prove it.” Regardless, it should be very interesting to watch all this pan out.
on Dec 17th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Will the last “talent” out of the radio business please turn off the lights?
on Dec 17th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
There was an article that I read when I was looking up the stock price…kiplingers i think…that said that the company is finding out that the abc stations were not “run as well” as they could have been and are under performers. I was thinking that the small markets are taking hte hit for the lack of performance of the bigs…
OR
makes you wonder if abc really even “tried” to run them…instead used them for a write off of the huge $$$ made in the company elsewhere…disney…movies…etc. I remember that the mark and brian show and klos were a LOT different after disney took over…that was like mid 90’s
on Dec 17th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Let’s follow along in this…
You have Citadel which has virtually worthless stock. Lost nearly 80% of it’s value. Coupled with the fact that they spent billions buying the ABC O &O stations (LA, San Fran, Chicago, New York) and the ABC Radio Network. Now, who did they just spend tens of millions of dollars on as talent in New York?
Now, I am not sure who they have and have not dumped. One show I know was dumped was Mark Furhman at 1510 KGA in Spokane. Not exactly a huge market, but there was a local show replaced with network. Citadel is SLASHING. My guess is there will be a new player with BSU, regardless. I don’t think they can afford it anymore. And what if they DID get it? What will they have to cut to make it happen?
I agree with the above statement from Ray M… You all are far too kind to Citadel. You sling mud at Peak, who is NOT a major corporation, when they make some cuts, but let’s all protect Citadel. There must be some real disgruntled folks here. One could only wonder why.
on Dec 17th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
I stand somewhat corrected… Mapleton owns KGA. Anyone know when The C sold them off?? I know they just dropped Furhman about 2 months ago…
on Dec 17th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Mapleton closed on the sale monday Dec 3rd. By the way…FIVE people were fired the day of the closing…the APD mid day guy for kdrk…the promo dir for kdrk…one of hte am guys on the Oldies station…and both the prod dir and asst prod director. and if you count Mark F…that is 6. Heck..Mark did his show from his house anyway…oops…I think that the business mgr was out too up there…Those were Mapleton cuts….
It was a month ago…11/15
Quote from mark…”They said our show just wasn’t part of the buy,” Fuhrman said. “Obviously, it became a condition of the sale.”
Mack said management cited the show’s “failure to monetize” – i.e., make enough money – as one reason for the decision.
Not sure of the contract cost…If I remember right…Godwin re-negotiated that deal for him about a year/yeah and a half ago…
on Dec 17th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Was that Oldies station mentioned in the comment the same Spokane station that Big Jack was voice tracking (for a while or still is?)
on Dec 17th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Interesting. It went from Drew and Valentine being cut, to a business thesis.
on Dec 18th, 2007 at 4:53 am
Yikes… That is quite the housecleaning! I know Furhman was let go well before the sale closed… So I’m not sure if that was done by Citadel to make the sale more attractive or what. But looking at their schedule they have live in the morning, then one hour live in the afternon. Nothing at all on the weekend.
on Dec 18th, 2007 at 5:47 am
Either way Jason, as a fellow KSFC alum, I’m sorry you’re on the streets. Please let me know if there is something I can do to help you find the next, and better, gig!
on Dec 18th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Wouldn’t it be interesting if, in 20 years or so that generation looked back in history at this moment in time and said that THIS was the golden age of radio.
It seems that the “bean counters” want the most revenue from the fewest properties on the assumption that they are easier to manage and control.
I was introduced to the “thread” concept of management - that is create revenue from lots of smaller sources and use them as profit centers (just like classifieds for newspapers). Larger broadcast properties, while they generate lots of income, are more expensive to run and manage than those “in the sticks”.
If I were a radio god I would keep all my smaller clusters and give local management the responsibility they need to make them as profitable as possible. The company would be much healthier overall. The larger stations would be required to be in the top 10 at all times and represent the best of the best in terms of management and revenue for the company. Moving up to manage or be a personality on one of those stations would be the goal of any employee with the guts to try.
In short, I would go back to the “farm team” concept and develop management and talent from the bottom up.
I’m not sure this idea would fly in todays corporate environment, but it would be fun to try. Any body got a few mill to toss around to give it a shot?
on Dec 18th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
The “farm team” concept of business management is definitely an interesting approach to radio and television management as well as sports and education. Wikipedia tells us Branch “…Rickey, a keen judge of talent, became frustrated when the players he had scouted at the A and AA levels were sold by those independent clubs to wealthier rivals such as the Chicago Cubs and the New York Giants. With the support of Cardinal owner Sam Breadon, Rickey devised a plan whereby St. Louis would purchase and control minor league teams from Class D to Class AA (the highest level at the time), thus allowing them to promote or demote players as they developed, and “grow” their own talent.
The talent pipeline began at tryout camps that St. Louis scouts conducted throughout the U.S. “From quantity comes quality,” Rickey once observed, and, during the 1930s, with as many as 40 owned or affiliated farm teams, the Cardinals controlled the destinies of hundreds of players each year. (The reserve clause then bound players to their teams in perpetuity.)
The Cardinals would win nine National League pennants and six World Series championships between 1926 and 1946, proving the effectiveness of the farm system concept. Indeed, the second club to fully embrace such a system, the New York Yankees, used it to sustain their dynasty from the mid-1930s through the middle of the 1960s. When Rickey moved to the Brooklyn Dodgers as president, general manager and part-owner in 1943, he proceeded to build a hugely successful farm system there as well. Moreover, the teams that ignored the farm system in the 1930s and early 1940s (such as the Philadelphia Phillies and Athletics and the Washington Senators) found themselves falling on hard times.”
In the era of free agency (starting in 1976), sports teams have not been as successful keeping players in one system. Often, players negotiate higher paying contracts with other organizations and their allegiances switch from one team to another. However, the farm clubs do exist and are doing relatively well. Older managers (e.g. Lou Piniella, Joe Torre, Tony LaRussa, and others find themselves returning to Branch Rickey’s management model in their organizations. The NBA has recently developed the NBADL (National Basketball Association Developmental League), the NFL has the arena gane and, to some extent the collegiate game, and the NHL has created the American Hockey League and the East Coast Hockey League in the Rickey model.
Media and education could develop this model as well. College students could be trained for positions in education or media and then give a job for a mandatory period of time by a cooperating school district or media outlet. A friend of mine had this experience where he works. The sugar factory discovered he had talent in the electrical field. They paid his way to college and then told him he needed to work for them for a period of two years. He joined the company in 1994 and is now a senior electrician.
In summary, I think the farm system approach would be successful if the wisenheimer’s of the corporate world would vacate their thrones and give it a chance.
on Dec 21st, 2007 at 10:09 am
Branch Rickey is widely remembered as being this innovative general manager & creating the farm system for baseball. But dig a little closer beyond the surface, and he was more like the Clear Channel or Wal-Mart of baseball.
Branch Rickey did more to keep salaries of baseball players squashed. Babe Ruth made $80,000 a year in 1927. Joe DiMaggio in the 1940’s made $100,000 a year, and so did Mickey Mantle. So, in a 20 year period, the top baseball player got a $20,000 raise, and from the 1940s to the 1970s, during the Branch Rickey era, nobody got a raise.
Branch’s farm system was thought of as being SO blatently unfair that the commissioner of baseball concluded he was hoarding good players (Most clubs now have between 10-15 farm teams; Branch Rickey’s Cardinals had over 40.) The commissioner forced Rickey to give a number of those players their unconditional release, and many clubs signed those players and a number of them played in the majors, where under the Branch Rickey system, they never would’ve gotten a taste of the bigs.
Oh, and forget asking for a raise. If you dared cross Branch, and do something really silly, like refuse to sign a contract or decide not to show up to training camp under Branch’s terms, then he traded you to a team so poor they could probably only offer you HALF of what you were making under Rickey.
Yogi Berra is the reason players now have agents. He would get asked to speak at different functions, and they always gave him a watch to say thank you. He gave a friend one of the watches, and told him he had hundreds. That friend became his agent, and started having these organizations pay Berra a nominal fee instead of another watch. But once Berra’s agent saw how the Branch Rickey’s of the world were purposefully keeping salaries down, he started helping players like Curt Flood sue to become free agents.
Branch Rickey and Yankees GM George Weiss made 10% of whatever saved the ballclub in salaries. George Weiss was given $1 million every year to spend on salaries, but if he kept salaries down to $900,000 a year, he ended up with a $10,000 bonus every year. A nice way to make money off the backs of your employees.
So if moving to a system where you could end up being stuck in Yakima making $25,000 a year with little to no chance of moving up sounds like a great idea, then by all means. The farm system is a good thought, but a bad idea.
Personally, I didn’t mind the days when each radio station was owned by a different ownership group. The money may have been crap, but there always seemed to be PLENTY of opportunities to make of what you were willing to give for your radio career.
I’m going to go cue up a 45 and eat some Hamburger Helper & go remember those “good old days!”
on Dec 23rd, 2007 at 2:04 am
Cale said:
“Personally, I didn’t mind the days when each radio station was owned by a different ownership group. The money may have been crap, but there always seemed to be PLENTY of opportunities to make of what you were willing to give for your radio career.”
What are you, some kind of Commie? Joke. I agree with you. With so few companies owning the big stations, there’s less competition, which drives wages down (the cost of living, meanwhile, continues to go up.) That’s a good thing? Sorry, don’t think so.
on Dec 24th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Cale,
I have taken some time to research Branch Rickey and his role in salary caps, the development of the farm system, monopoly, sports agents, and economic competition in baseball. Did Mr. Rickey utilize blatantly unfair tactics in order to keep the Cardinals financially solvent and able to compete with the more prosperous clubs? The evidence is clear he did. However, he did it in the best interest of keeping his club financially secure in a era when wealthy teams dominated the baseball scene. He was not going to allow the rich clubs to become richer and monopolize the game. His interest was solely and completely in giving less wealthy teams an opportunity to compete and achieve success as the wealthier teams were doing. In short, he busted the stranglehold the rich teams had on baseball at the time. One cannot do so without ruffling a few feathers and stepping on toes with the status quo.
In the long run, he established a baseball system that allowed fair competition between teams to exist thereby increasing salaries. As competition increased resulting in expansion of Major League Baseball, wages increased. The Baseball Almanac provides a graphic showing the minimum wage of the major league player increasing from $12,000 in 1970 to $316,000 in 2005. The average salary also increased from $29,303 in 1970 to $2.6 million in 2005. During this period, the number of major league teams increased from 16 teams from in about 1900 to the current thirty teams (16 in NL, 14 in AL) today.
Therefore, it is clear that as competition increased so did the minimum wage and average salary. The more competition there is, the higher the salary. The same is true in media. There is more competition in Denver & Seattle radio than in Boise. Therefore, Denver and Seattle salaries are higher than in Boise. However, as the population of the Treasure Valley increases and more radio stations infiltrate the market, the competition will increase resulting in higher salaries. Let’s hope the cost of living decreases at some point so we can actually save some money and not have to spend everything we earn.
on Dec 25th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Now I’ve seen it all. Somebody used the words “fair” and “Branch Rickey” in the same basic sentence.
What’s next, “George Steinbrenner” and “thrifty”? “Barry Bonds” and “the nicest guy you’ll ever meet”? “Joan Crawford” and “a great babysitter?”
Increased competition didn’t increase baseball wages. Free agency did. The graphic you speak starts in 1970, a full five years before the true start of free agency. If expansion were affect baseball salaries, they would’ve gone up in 1963, when baseball expanded in 1961 and in 1962. It really wasn’t until a maverick baseball owner named George Steinbrenner overpaid for Jim “Catfish” Hunter that salaries started to rise.
I still believe if I had to choose between being in the “Clear Channel farm system”, and waiting for my call-up while toiling my wears in Flagstaff, or being a free agent & making my own decisions on where I’ll go and for what amount, I say long live Curt Flood!!
on Dec 26th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
Cale,
Let me see if I understand your point correctly. You are claiming free agency increased baseball wages. Therefore, you are saying that the opportunities human beings (e.g. baseball players) have to choose for themselves what is right and wrong by choosing to be employed or not employed by the team he originally contracted with and perhaps signing with another team has increased wages.
If that is true, I detect capitalism working within the free agency market since, by definition, capitalism generally refers to an economic and social system in which the means of production are all or mostly privately[1][2] owned and operated for profit, and in which investments, distribution, income, production and pricing of goods and services are determined through the operation of a market economy. It is usually considered to involve the right of individuals and groups of individuals acting as “legal persons” or corporations to trade capital goods, labor, land and money (see finance and credit).
Given the contemporary economics of professional sports, radio, television, and other entities, it can be debated whether or not the means of production is privately or corporately owned. However, it is clear baseball and the other entities are operated for profit. Therefore, this creates a free market economy allowing for free agency among players and employees. However, within the free market system is competition for a certain player or employee that, in conjunction with the free market economy (at least in the United States), has helped increase wages.