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!!

“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.

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!”

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?