Radio Daze

"Radio's Worst Week Ever." Veteran Chicago media scribe Robert Feder on radio giant Clear Channel's permanent beaching of hundreds of employees in mostly small and medium markets.  Feder quotes a CC spox in the industry bible, Inside Radio (owned by Clear Channel): “We’re making these changes to improve the quality of what we provide to each of our local communities,” a company spokesperson told Inside Radio. “There will be more localization, not less.”

One Iowa radio suit had enough and quit rather than swing the axe. He was immediately hired by a Milwaukee station. Radio Info is keeping a national tally of those canned. So is All Access:

 NYT media star Brian Stelter wrongly claimed "dozens of local D.J.'s" :

CC riffed hundreds of producers, reporters, managment, on-air talent, refusing to reveal how many.

All Access Thursday Oct. 27

How about Occupy San Antonio? Hundreds of angry CC employees converge on CC's TX HQ protesting CC blithely blowing them away.  CC Thursday Oct. 27 press release quoting CC's Tom Poleman, new president of National Programming Platforms:  "I’m proud to say that we’ve assembled an equally unmatched group of talent to lead our new National Programming Platforms division. This division will enable us to be even more relevant and effective for our audiences, partners and advertisers, and build our national scale and reach by putting together products, events and relationships that nobody else can.”

In 2009 CC canned 11% (nearly 2,000) following the completion in 2008 of CC's 2006 $20 bil merger deal with Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners, and, as part of the deal, $400 mil in cuts. At the time  CC CEO Mark Mays vowed: "We will get through this together." Media Daily News

Blame the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) 1996 Telecommunications Act that cleared the way for Clear Channel to gobble up stations like the 1950s horror movie The Blob: 

SEC. 202. BROADCAST OWNERSHIP.

(a) NATIONAL RADIO STATION OWNERSHIP RULE CHANGES REQUIRED- The

Commission shall modify section 73.3555 of its regulations (47
C.F.R. 73.3555) by eliminating any provisions limiting the number
of AM or FM broadcast stations which may be owned or controlled by
one entity nationally.

 "The world is watching Clear Channel." Tom Taylor Radio-Info