Mickey Dearstone Fired

#151
#151
Radio is on life support like newspapers (sports talk radio is even worse). Doc was a pretty awful personality on the air--so I'm not sorry to see him go. He sure polished Holly's apples for a long period of time---I always knew WNML was UT's flagship station but he would defend every idiotic coaching decision she made. Heather Harrington I've never found entertaining or insightful in any way. Ainge is "meh"--he'll say something once in a while that I find interesting.
 
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#152
#152
gunner said:
Seth doesn't have the talent or credibility to be employed by real station with professional broadcasters.
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Looks like a radio station in Greenville, SC didn't take your advice.

Seth Stokes @SethStokesTSE Feb 9
Excited to announce that I am joining @1063WORD in Greenville, SC as a news reporter and digital content provider!
 
#153
#153
volswillrise12 said:
Radio is on life support like newspapers (sports talk radio is even worse). Doc was a pretty awful personality on the air--so I'm not sorry to see him go. He sure polished Holly's apples for a long period of time---I always knew WNML was UT's flagship station but he would defend every idiotic coaching decision she made. Heather Harrington I've never found entertaining or insightful in any way. Ainge is "meh"--he'll say something once in a while that I find interesting.
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Radio as an industry is still viable. The large consolidators are in trouble as businesses though because they've over paid for stations and taken on huge debt loads to make the purchases. Around 1999 James Dick sold his family's Knoxville, Nashville, and Birmingham stations to Citadel for about $350 million. About 10 stations. Cumulus owns hundreds of stations, including those 10 that were owned by Dick Broadcasting. However the entire company is worth well below $100 million because of the billions in debt that they took on to accumulate stations.

Newspaper companies are less viable maintaining their print/hard copy home delivery models. But... they do have an advantage over broadcasting. Radio and TV have a finite amount of advertising inventory that they can sell. Newspapers can sell an almost limitless number of ads by just printing more pages.

Radio, TV, and newspapers are converging with online operations. Newspaper now have video on their web properties while TV and radio post stories as text only.
 
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#154
#154
Thunder Good-Oil said:
Radio and TV have a finite amount of advertising inventory that they can sell. Newspapers can sell an almost limitless number of ads by just printing more pages.
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The cost of newsprint is any newspapers number two expense in the operational budget behind employee expense.

Budgeting "news hole" is something that is done for each edition. To "go up" pages just to print a few more ads costs a lot of money so it's not quite that easy.
 
#157
#157
I will agree with a lot of the opinions on Mickey. Much of the time he seemed to just take a staunchly opposing stance...just because. It drove me crazy. There were multiple times I turned the station because he refused to listen to reason from Heather or Jeff.

I go back and watch/listen Heather's earlier stuff, and I absolutely couldn't stand her. Look at Kiffin's final UT press conference for reference. I honestly think she's come a long way since then. I look at my performance the first week of my job to where i'm at now, and i've advanced and got better. Same with her....except she's had all of the Knoxville sports world critiquing her the entire way.

I miss Jeff.

Eff all you guys making fun of Roger.
 
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#159
#159
Thunder Good-Oil said:
That's what happens when radio station consolidators cut staff to try to make their bottom lines. After Cumulus bought WMNL it took them months to get all of the references to Citadel pulled out of their automation system.

Midwest puts people behind mics in other states pretending to be local live on-air staff on WIMZ and WJXB.
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That's not true about Midwest, btw. While it is true that out of market voicetracking is a very real thing, especially with larger radio groups like iHeart Media (Clear Channel) and Cumulus, and Midwest may do that in other markets, but the only things from WIMZ and WJXB that are not local are nationally syndicated shows. I.E. Delilah, John Tesh, John Boy & Billy, House of Hair with Dee Snyder, etc. When you hear announcers talking out of Knoxville, they are all here locally in Knoxville. While Midwest did buy into the Knoxville, Nashville and Evansville, IN markets when they purchased South Central Media, they've continued to allow, at least the Knoxville building to operate as it operated under SCM, as it was already profitable to begin with.
 
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#162
#162
I tried listening years ago, but could not take it anymore.

I was sad to hear Jeff passed away.

Who took Mickey's spot for now?
 
#164
#164
PeterNincompoop said:
That's not true about Midwest, btw. While it is true that out of market voicetracking is a very real thing, especially with larger radio groups like iHeart Media (Clear Channel) and Cumulus, and Midwest may do that in other markets, but the only things from WIMZ and WJXB that are not local are nationally syndicated shows. I.E. Delilah, John Tesh, John Boy & Billy, House of Hair with Dee Snyder, etc. When you hear announcers talking out of Knoxville, they are all here locally in Knoxville. While Midwest did buy into the Knoxville, Nashville and Evansville, IN markets when they purchased South Central Media, they've continued to allow, at least the Knoxville building to operate as it operated under SCM, as it was already profitable to begin with.
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Midwest did not buy South Central Media. SCM still operates as a digital media company based in Nashville. Midwest bought SCM's radio assets. They use the out of town "live" on-air to fill in for vacationing staff.
 
#165
#165
Thunder Good-Oil said:
Midwest did not buy South Central Media. SCM still operates as a digital media company based in Nashville. Midwest bought SCM's radio assets. They use the out of town "live" on-air to fill in for vacationing staff.
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My bad, in a thread entirely about radio, I left out the detail they only purchased the radio assets of a company that no longer is in the industry. Didn't really see what it would bring to the conversation. Can't say I've heard them do this. Maybe on WJXB, as I'm not very familiar with their weekend staff's experience. WIMZ has their own 'Vince Ferrara' already in house that's their go to fill in. Regardless, utilizing technology in a bind when you're short staffed is quite different from insinuating they're not fully staffed with on-air local talent.

Now WDKW, that's another story, of course. Not like the market needed another country station, but that's apparently Midwest's thing. Pretty sure they have a Duke FM in a good number of their markets, if I'm not mistaken.
 
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#170
#170
bignewt said:
Why is Pence getting involved?
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He finished all of his duties for the day and thought it would be prudent to inject himself into the Knoxville sports radio scene. He is a Vol fan and thought Holly should be fired. Micky took exception and nut punched him. Pence told him, in a high pitched voice, "You're fired".
 
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#171
#171
Thunder Good-Oil said:
That's what happens when radio station consolidators cut staff to try to make their bottom lines. After Cumulus bought WMNL it took them months to get all of the references to Citadel pulled out of their automation system.

Midwest puts people behind mics in other states pretending to be local live on-air staff on WIMZ and WJXB.
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I was a radio personality in Knoxville for many years. I've been through several changes just like this one. Just requires someone paying close attention to the details. At the very least, the traffic person should have caught it.
It's not a huge deal, I just found it unfortunate when I heard it Sunday morning.
 
#172
#172
Panthro said:
I was a radio personality in Knoxville for many years. I've been through several changes just like this one. Just requires someone paying close attention to the details. At the very least, the traffic person should have caught it.
It's not a huge deal, I just found it unfortunate when I heard it Sunday morning.
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wolfman.gif


Been wondering what happened to you?
 
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#174
#174
Panthro said:
I was a radio personality in Knoxville for many years. I've been through several changes just like this one. Just requires someone paying close attention to the details. At the very least, the traffic person should have caught it.
It's not a huge deal, I just found it unfortunate when I heard it Sunday morning.
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I'd put more blame on the PDs (but he was just fired, wasn't he?) than the Traffic folks. They've got their hands full fixing the sloppy contracts that some of the idiot sales people slap together and working in what they've over promised to the AD buyers. Traffic and Continuity are some if the least appreciated and compensated people in the building. Did I mention that some of the members of the sales staff are idiots?
 
#175
#175
Doc was terrible. Heather is terrible. I (like others) thought Jeff was the only bright spot of the morning show. Tried to listen to Heather and Vince this week and can't do it anymore. They both sound extremely amateur. They should probably just dump local content all together and pick up Clay Travis's show (I know that won't happen because he is affiliated with Fox).
 
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