Clear Channel is in so deep with racial discrimination in some of their markets that they’ll have to buy their way out of it.

Win in court?

They can’t afford to lose there or the floodgates will open.

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1. How Clear Channel is shamelessly using a Black employee to wittingly or unwittingly help them with their racial discrimination suits.
2. Why there is racial discrimination at Clear Channel at the exact worst time --- they’re mulling going public.
3. If you’ve ever sued Clear Channel or want to, here is their Achilles heel to use against them.
4. Three solid and honest things Clear Channel could do tomorrow to end discrimination at The Evil Empire. 
5. What those who have been wronged by Clear Channel should be prepared to do to be successful.

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A number of my readers contacted me about the recent Jacobs Media blog post-titled “Party On, Bob”.

It’s short and worth the read but it may not go down well with you, either.

In the article, Fred Jacobs – a very good guy who I know loves the radio industry – rationalizes all the good things that Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman is doing when he wines and dines ad executives in the South of France.

According to Fred:

“Clear Channel bashers may take the opportunity to criticize this kind of high-priced social networking.  Some might even calculate how many lost radio jobs might be restored for the cost of the hors d’oeuvres and place settings.  Others might wonder why these same funds aren’t being used to throw some marketing dollars at some of the company’s premier stations”.

Who is Fred talking about?  I have no idea.

I wrote Fred an email the other day because this article seemed awfully insensitive to me. 

It’s one thing to look the other way while Clear Channel is being ravaged and it’s quite another to put your credibility on the line by taking up in defense of the arrogance of Pittman and his company.

Yes, it is important to have great relationships with advertisers and media buyers.

But Fred leaves out that Pittman’s plan is also about digital ad buying which may tend to bid down spot rates and regional sales centers.

At least mention that, Fred!

Wait!

He did.

“While some advocated for radio to take more of an automated approach to selling (because that is where the world is moving), others pointed out that the personal touch continues to play an important role in making connections, telling stories, and positioning brands in an environment where advertisers are often more confused than we are”.

Huh!

Pittman is all for the personal touch as long as he is the one personally touching the power brokers.

A better way is to be a strong advocate for local sellers who already have great relationships with buyers and advertisers if Pittman would get out of the way.

It’s the local sellers relationships that matter.

Not Pittman’s.

Fred links to some favorable press that Pittman got because of the swine and wine parties at Cannes.

“Someone has to throw their weight around” Jacobs argues.

I thought he was joking, but he isn’t.

Look, I don’t want to get into a pissing match.

I just think a major figure like Jacobs should not prop up this clown.

Pittman will be gone sooners than most people think.

I’ll make it easy.

Clear Channel has fired over 10,000 people since consolidation.

Over a thousand in the last 12 months.

And at holidays.

These are our brethren.

Radio people raising families and not lucky enough to work for themselves.

The company is $21.5 billion in debt and the debt is growing with no chance of paying it down significantly.

Pittman renovated his offices to the tune of $21 million recently that included his infamous “mist tunnel”.

They were paying John Hogan $25,000 a month for expense money to move to New York until they decided to fire him – but they are still paying him the new contract they offered.

Clear Channel employees are the cream of the crop – they deserve better leadership and more from those of us who “observe” what’s right and wrong with the industry.

So, respectfully, I say – stop partying on, Bob.

You’re not Bob Sillerman.

Now he can party!

And you’ll never be Bruce Reese or Ginny Hubbard or Ed Christian or Dan Mason.

Dan Mason has forgotten more about radio than Bob Pittman can remember and Dan doesn’t do this kind of stuff.

Stop sucking up to these people and speak up in defense of our brethren who are forced to suffer fools silently while Bob entertains and overspends.

$100 is awarded for the Best News Tip of the Month.  And my anonymous Witness Protection Program has never revealed a source.  Report news or share emails and memos in confidence here.

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The more we learn, the more we see why Townsquare is rushing to do an IPO.

Business is in the shitter.

The egos managing Oaktree’s investment capital are spending money on their perks excessively.

And they’re already “right-sizing” the company.

Whatever happened to fattening up pigs before the slaughter?

Now the pigs are running the show.

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1. The TS tactic right out of the Clear Channel playbook for screwing managers and market managers.
2. The dirty little secret the company won’t be playing up in their IPO about who really makes all the radio decisions.
3. Cutbacks everywhere but not in India – that’s right, India.
4. Why the “Babe of the Day” website is so important to Townsquare – this is unbelievable.
5. How the company is actively breaking small market sales and programming traditional relationships in favor of this.
6. TS execs ugly corporate perks and what employees are forbidden to do about them.
7. How corporate descends on local markets reportedly to bully executives and employees.
8. Who many employees now consider the Bully-in-Chief at TS.
9. The truth about their much-heralded events division.
10. How the TS sales compensation model is backfiring.

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Entercom is the first major company to actually try to reduce burdensome commercial stop sets – and for that they should be congratulated.

But will it actually work?

Read on before deciding to make changes before the 2-minute promise comes to your market – which it will.

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1. What is better than reducing your two long stop sets to 2 minutes, three times an hour.  Yes, better.
2. How to get advertisers to pay more for less instead of allowing them to bid down your spot rate by adding digital – this works, jump on it.
3. The one mistake not to make under any circumstances when you decide to cut your commercial loads – and you’ll have to or else you don’t have a chance competing with pure plays.
4. What type of advertising Millennials will actually listen to and even crave.
5. The thing that is even more important than cutting commercial loads – you must do both to remain viable but don’t overlook this.

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Sell Apple!

Buy Townsquare!

The crappy little company that couldn’t is going public.

For all the “thrills” and “excitement”, turn to your favorite free happy talk radio trade publication.

For the ugly truth about the fleecing that is coming, scroll down.

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1. How will CEO Steven Price do an IPO with a company that is underperforming in radio and missed its digital goals by a ton.
2. What prompted the panic move to go public now when no radio group will go there.
3. Will Townsquare be sold as a digital play or as the third biggest owner of shitty little market stations.
4. Why employees will now face two separate and giant layoffs rather than the one bloodbath that was planned.
5. When the first mass firing begins and how the second one will be structured.
6. After TS, which radio group goes public next.  I’m on a hot streak.

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Townsquare is the new Clear Channel.

God knows we have enough Evil Empires in radio.

Signs are all pointing to a bloodbath at Townsquare.

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1. What has gone so wrong with Townsquare’s game plan.
2. Why employees who drank the TS Kool-Aid just two years ago are suddenly pissed – and worried.  Should they be?
3. How did that 40% digital mandate by 2014 thing work out for Townsquare?
4. How Townsquare is now firing just like Clear Channel – even using the same lame excuses.
5. Why the company’s billing is in the toilet even though small market radio is outperforming the majors.
6. Oh no!  How their principle investment bank is getting impatient.
7. Oh yeah!  When does this all come down?

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Bob Pittman’s office “mist tunnel” – now that’s funny.

After all, pompous asses need to be exposed.

But installing secret software to spy on your advertisers?

That’s NOT funny.

Nor is the Clear Channel corporate memo just sent to test markets explaining how this devious invasion of privacy is going to proceed.

If you work for Clear Channel, you can see what is being beta tested in some markets because it’s coming to you next.

If you’re a competing radio company, as I’m about to explain, this is going to ruin things for you, too.

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1. How far the secret Clear Channel software goes in snooping on their station advertisers, prospects and sales proposals.  This can’t be legal.
2. How the Clear Channel sales spy software invades the privacy of market competitors.
3. The main screen Bob Pittman’s henchmen can now view and what they can click on to tracks sales activity.
4. Why Clear Channel competitors had better stop this latest Pittman brain fart in its tracks and how it will ruin things for them, too.  In fact, that may be one of the reasons Clear Channel is doing this.
5. Even creepier – how the spy software even allows sellers to snoop on each other.
6. The stern warning that Clear Channel gave its employees in the secret memo.

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Prepare for Bob Pittman’s plan to reduce debt and get owners Lee & Bain’s money off the table.

You’re thinking, wait a minute Jerry, their revenue is declining and they are deep in debt.

No problem.

Pittman is beginning to signal to the investment community his big move.

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1. The plan to turn the declining revenue of his radio group into a positive.
2. How the Pittman exit plan for Clear Channel will affect those still employed.
3. What Clear Channel is tantalizing Wall Street with.
4. The giveaway – here’s how Pittman will rescue Clear Channel from $21.5 billion in debt.
5. What’s up with Pittman talking so much about Pandora lately. 
6. What Clear Channel radio will look like by the end of 2015.
7. And the biggest revelation of all?  How the bailout plan impacts employees in the radio division.

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Numbers don’t lie, but the RAB well, changes the rules.

For the best glimpse at the year that killed the radio industry, look what they are covering up.

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1. How the RAB has skillfully but erroneously misled the industry total revenue.
2. The three random categories that did not get counted in 2008 but are propping up in first quarter figures for 2014.
3. Why the radio industry is tanking when it should be on fire.
4. The most deceitful number that cannibalizes spot radio to create a new category of revenue.
5. The startling amount radio groups are spending on the one source of revenue that is skyrocketing.

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Quarterly firings are here.

Employees on the ground at Clear Channel stations are reporting some of the most bizarre behavior in screwing employees.

Documented and worth keeping an eye out for.

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1. What Clear Channel corporate started doing just weeks before the sales RIF that they hadn’t done in over 20 years.
2. The sneaky tactic that was used to get individuals who have been targeted for the RIF that played right into the Evil Empire’s hands.
3. How Clear Channel took out a virtual insurance policy on RIFed employees before they fired them.
4. What’s worse than being escorted to the door minutes after you’ve been fired – here is how Clear Channel did it in the words of a fired seller.
5. New impediments from Clear Channel for fired employees looking for new jobs.
6. How Clear Channel is in effect broadening its definition of “competitor” in mandatory non-compete agreements – one fired employee’s bad experience with HR.
7. The one type of employee you never thought even Clear Channel would fire – now they are targeting them.

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TEASER

To paraphrase the theme from Shaft: “Who's the private dick / That's a sex machine to all the chicks?”

Not Shaft! 

Bob Pittman.

Forget the sex machine part.

SpongeBob Bossy Pants who is still paying for his $21 million “mist tunnel” office renovation and is racking up $21.5 billion in corporate debt is apparently not too broke to spend money on two more private eyes to spy on the spouse of current high visibility employee.

Bobby’s mad.

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1. How Cincinnati police confirmed the Clear Channel stake out.
2. Pittman’s M.O. – how the Eye in the Sky has now become The Private Eye in the Sky.
3. All the details of how Clear Channel’s private eyes were caught in the act in broad daylight.
4. The other dirty tricks were confirmed by reputable sources in law enforcement.
5. If you have family members you are concerned about in the company, you’ll want to see how low Clear Channel will go to spy on families of current employees.
6. The big Clear Channel exec who has been caught spying on LinkedIn not once – 47 times!  I’ll out him.

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It’s such a freaky scene.

CEO Bob Pittman is fiddling while Clear Channel burns and debt continues to strangle the company’s future.

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1. A new dress code that may be spreading to individual markets very soon.
2. Da-Plane.  Da-Plane.  How “The Eye in the Sky” is changing how he flies private because of Clear Channel employees.
3. The three suck-ups who Clear Channel employees now call “McHam” and their growing influence.
4. A secret corporate edict from Clear Channel sales that screws over market managers who carry Rush Limbaugh’s show.
5. Plus the Feel Good Story of the Summer (for Pittman):  How local markets will have to make up another new revenue shortfall from now on.

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I’ll be speaking on radio’s digital future at Michael Harrison’s Talkers Conference in New York Friday, June 20^th.  Hope you can make it.  Details here.   

I’ve been saying that Bob Pittman’s days at Clear Channel may be numbered and now I am certain.

Pittman and co-conspirator Richard Bressler are floating puff piece stories in financial publications that infer that Bain thinks Pittman is doing a great job.

The only problem is – Bain isn’t saying it. 

It’s like the sports team saying the manager won’t get fired just before he or she is fired.

Uncertain times ahead for Clear Channel employees as the owners anticipate big changes.

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1. Why is Pittman suddenly defending himself publicly.
2. His desperate plan that will take down more Clear Channel employees as he fights for his job.
3. Pittman’s replacement.
4. The end game plan to get Clear Channel venture investors money off the table and taking iHeartRadio public is, well – you be the judge.
5. Plus the question everyone wants answered:  will Lee and Bain sell Clear Channel.

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This is the toughest list to make in radio.

One major group fell way off the previous list.

One surprise group made it for the first time.

There are now three up and coming radio groups to watch.

And one big one has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

And I’m not even going to talk about Clear Channel and Cumulus who didn’t make the list (surprise!).  I mean, why even bother?

I can be a harsh critic because I try to keep it real, so perhaps it means a little more when I say these groups are the best in radio.

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1. The hot new owner that sneaked up on the others to make the list because they are just doing so many things right.
2. Which major group not called Clear Channel or Cumulus is starting to go down like Clear Channel and Cumulus – you don’t want to work there.
3. If you think you’ll be looking for a new radio job soon, here are three good prospects I would apply to now.
4. Why you should use caution if you are working at these groups I have named.
5. There are 8 top groups and 5 trending up, if you work in radio you’ll want to know them.

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NOTE:  I am always grateful for your input about all radio groups.  It helps me get a real feel for what happens behind the scenes and impacts my assessment of top groups for the next ranking.  It’s also a way to hold major groups accountable.  Send confirmation of how good these groups are, condemnation of how bad they are (with evidence) and suggest other groups that I should be watching.  Confidential as always.  Contact me here.

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Panera the high-flying bread and restaurant chain with 1,800 stores has decided to get rid of all food additives by 2016.

Yes, Panera is the chain that ten years ago decided to serve only chicken that was not fed antibiotics.

The market was speaking and Panera listened.

No wonder the company has been so successful and why it is appealing to the changing youth market before they technically have to.

Consumers wanted it.

Panera cooperated with the inevitable.

A recent USA Today story also pointed out other companies that paid attention to changing consumer wants and needs.

Starbucks and Chipotle acting to get rid of food additives.

McDonalds has done little to deal with a changing consumer market and maybe thinks it doesn’t have to but when consumers speak, it is best to listen and act quickly.

But not radio.

Two eight-minute commercials breaks per hour with more junk and promotions built in are hated by listeners. Radio knows this and ignores it. How stupid is that? Deal with it. They hate it.

These things are black eyes for radio yet owners are content to go down with something their listeners hate.

Listeners love morning personalities.

Owners love to cut them out and save salaries.

Listeners want music discovery but will never find it on a radio because in their infinite wisdom they believe playing the same hits over and over is the only way to win with PPM. It was always that way and always will be – they incorrectly posit.

Younger money demos don’t like hype.

Radio loves to tell their listeners their stations are the best. Why openly irritate the audience you want to attract?

Millennials – 95 million of them with the oldest being over 30 and firmly in the money demo radio needs – crave things that are authentic.

Radio doesn’t care – it is going down being a figment of the 60’s.

Consumers get news from their phones and mobile devices.

Radio – when it does news at all – sounds like the listener doesn’t already know what happened. But now they do. Why not find news that no one else has and report it? When audiences didn’t have cellphones in their hands maybe all-news stations were the first source for a story.

It is inevitable.

Why is everything to do with radio starting at the top of the hour when in the digital age there are no hours?

Listeners love live-read commercials that are authentic and believable.

Radio makes the worst commercials on the face of the earth. I’m sorry for having to say that but radio commercials stink. And they generally don’t work.

What if they didn’t stink and stations cared about their advertiser’s ads working?

See, radio cannot get it into its head to cooperate with the inevitable.

The inevitable is, well – inevitable – certain to happen, unavoidable.

If it’s certain to happen and unavoidable, why is the radio industry refusing to get with it and adapt?

Talk radio has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

Younger audiences don’t care about politics. They don’t want to hear any arguing about Obamacare. They want health insurance and maybe don’t like the version President Obama signed. In the past talk radio would throw that red meat on the fire.

But today, younger audiences care about conciliation and compromise not a battle to the end like baby boomers love.

To keep self-absorbed talkers on the air when there are hundreds of topics that would compel younger listeners to listen to talk radio is a self-inflicted fatal wound.

When I speak at Michael Harrison’s Talkers Conference in New York, Friday, June 20^th I am going to share a list of hot buttons that young listeners really care about.

That’s a start.

This could change what we do and how we talk to a new generation of listeners.

We could respect it.

Use our creativity to deliver it to audiences.

And act positively before it is too late.

Register for the Talkers Conference here.  

Now I’ve heard everything.

The radio industry continues to treat employees like slaves.

A radio group that has its lawyers poised to force employees to stay at their stations or else a $100,000 fine kicks in – for each time someone leaves!

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1. Who this Simon Legree company is. 
2. How long employees will be effectively sold into bondage – go ahead, your best guess will be wrong – that bad.
3. Read the actual two unbelievable paragraphs drafted by this radio groups lawyers that can’t be legal, can it?
4. Worse yet – how a new gag order will now affect employees.
5. Why it will only be a matter of time before this type of slave labor spreads to stations near you.

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It’s not nice to fire salespeople when you’re having trouble making budget.

Eye-popping info on just how bad things are getting at Clear Channel.

This is why Bob Pittman is sweating.

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1. From sources close to Clear Channel, the real tracking as the second quarter ends.
2. Why it is corporate that is letting Pittman down not the major markets.
3. Some high level heads that will roll if this continues.
4. The Clear Channel competitor that is getting into their shorts.
5. What is likely now after Clear Channel revenue continues to dive while their debt continues to grow.

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This is disgusting even by Clear Channel’s low standards.

A man works for them a year without pay.

And then they fire him.

That’s not possible, is it?

With The Evil Empire all mean and hurtful things are possible.

But this time the wronged employee has Clear Channel by the balls.

Here’s how you stand up to these people.

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1. What triggered this employees firing who wasn’t even asking for a raise.  It’s even worse.
2. The corporate tactic you should be aware of that set him up for a “lawful” firing in short order.
3. What made Clear Channel’s gruesome HR department blink. 
4. How to hit a radio consolidator where it hurts the most if they try to penny pinch your salary.
5. Who this person is – yes, he is asking me to reveal his name to prevent Clear Channel from saying the story was made up. 

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