“The message being sent is, if you succeed in your job, you succeed in your craft, look out! You’re too expensive.” – Tom Petner, TVSpy.com, quoted in “CBS layoffs signal in a financial squeeze on TV stations” article in the Los Angeles Times today. That quote can be attributed to any industry these days, but nowhere where it rings more […]
A vanishing breed in the business nowadays, TV critics are being the odd individuals out in newspaper cutbacks (with an example being the recent departure of Sun-Times critic Doug Elfman.) If this keeps up, we might not have enough critics to participate in the semi-annual TV Critics’ Poll in TV Week… While Hollywood may be happier over this, a local […]
This is really getting sad… – Chicago: This time, coming from the radio side: two female on-air personalities are out at WBBM-FM (B96) – overnighter Candi Gomez and midday jock Roxanne Steele, with their contracts not being renewed. A new personality from Miami is going to take Steele’s place, while the overnight position is not being filled. Anyone want to […]
Back to serious business: The causality list at CBS just keeps on coming. In addition to the cuts at WBBM-TV on Monday: – New York: WCBS-TV (which was home to “Black Wednesday” in 1996 when seven on-air personalities were laid off) dropped two correspondents, and canceled its Sports Sunday wrap-up show. – Dallas: More layoffs at KTVT/KTXA, where several more […]
Burns, Childers, Malone out at Channel 2; layoffs at other CBS O&Os The ax fell at CBS-owned WBBM-TV on Monday, with eighteen people either laid off or their contracts not being renewed. The causalities include on-air veterans Mary Ann Childers, Diann Burns, and Mark Malone. Burns was the highest-paid anchor at the station, making a reported $2 million per year. […]
Today’s feedback in Robert Feder’s column in today’s Sun-Times was about the recent corporate cutbacks at Citadel’s WLS-AM and WZZN-FM. Among the universally critical letters of Citadel were three former WLS staffers – one of which (Jake Hartford) was fired Friday. If the Citadel firings are any indication, the radio business has taken a major step backwards (again) and has […]
Robert Feder of the Sun-Times wrote a pretty good article today, analyzing WLS-AM and WZZN-FM’s firing spree on Friday, in which fourteen people lost their jobs – a dead-on piece that pretty much sums up the state of the media business today, especially radio. And that’s not all: On top of that, Feder reported that four employees at CBS-owned WBBM-TV […]
Cuts at Clear Channel Chicago and 65 layoffs at Oxygen, which was taken over by NBC Universal over the weekend. Among the cuts at CC Chicago: Armando Rivera, a mixer-turned-assistant program director and music director at WVAZ (V103); WGCI’s nighttime jock Victor “The Diz” Blackful; and overnighter Alexx Dupri at Top 40 WKSC-FM. The cuts at Clear Channel mirror those […]
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