NOT....Re: [BC] Clear Channel Wants More?

[Mike Gideon]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rich Wood" <richwood at pobox.com>
To: "Broadcast Radio Mailing List" <broadcast at radiolists.net>
Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2005 8:20 PM
Subject: Re: NOT....Re: [BC] Clear Channel Wants More?


>
> Hmm. I recall you admitting that your people got things running a few 
> stations at a time. I'll have to check the archives. As I recall, 7 
> stations. You seem to have forgotten I know a lot of people within Clear 
> Channel. You're telling me none of your New Orleans stations were off the 
> air?

No need to check the archives. I dealt primarily with Hattiesburg, which was 
a whole different animal. Limited number of gensets, STL tower down, and 
almost 100% of the roads blocked by trees Those came up one at a time, 
because the engineering folks had to cut their way out.

As I recall from the first Triage conference call, all of the FM 
transmitters and the studios remained up on generator power.
>
>
> Was that what WWL was doing?

No, WWL did a great job, but they were not the only ones contributing vital 
content. The real issue is that you are sitting on the east coast judjing a 
bunch of broadcasters that performed above and beyond the call of duty, and 
somehow believe that the "journalists" are the only ones that were capable 
of providing the content. There was a large list of CC reporters distributed 
on our internal hurricane response mail list. More than enough to staff the 
microphones. You said earlier that you know Gabe. You know that he had the 
power and resources to put 40 reporters into the area if necessary. I agree 
with the alliance in New Orleans, but don't ever think we couldn't have 
paddled our own boat down there if the situation had been different.
>
>
>>They are only talking about a small number of markets. Instead of making 
>>stuff up as you go, read the transcript.
>
> I guess all the trades got it wrong. Misquoted. Yeah. That's the ticket.

If they said hundereds of stations, then they got it wrong. Think about 
it... Increasing the cap in the top three markets would mean 12 new CC 
stations. Below that level, I'm guessing that it drops to two per market. 
AFIK, the station count drops to below 60 somewhere in the top 20 markets. 
Again, I don't do mutiple ownership studies, and am not going to bother our 
people that do because some "journalist" pulled another fictitious number 
out of their butt. Oh yeah, all it takes is one,because the rest will 
reprint without any fact checking too.
>