[BC] Negativity

[Scott Fybush]

Steve Newman wrote:
> Sure wish you would respect people who have experience. I respected my 
> teachers in the business and still do. I didn't know it all at 23. I've 
> never met Richard but read between the lines. His reality may not be 
> yours but he's been down some great roads. I hope you go down some good 
> ones as well and remember to be mindful of what you see during those 
> journeys.

I'm somewhere on the age and experience spectrum between Paul and 
Richard, and while I respect Richard's experience and have learned a lot 
by reading his posts, I do (again, respectfully) disagree with him where 
CC's corporate engineering is concerned.

I've been to a lot of CC stations in my travels, and my experience is 
that "a satellite dish and tower surrounded by unmowed weeds" is a much 
more apt description of where a lot of those small stations were BEFORE 
CC came to town, not afterward.

It's been my experience that CC's stations are generally well above the 
national average in terms of quality engineering, especially in smaller 
markets where they can tap corporate resources that simply don't exist 
for the mom-and-pop guys. (The mom-and-pop owners don't send a dozen 
local engineers to Vegas for winning "Engineer of the Year," as CC did 
last week - and that's a level of support I've got to think any engineer 
would like to have from corporate.)

One certainly can't argue with the FCC record - it's exceedingly rare to 
see any CC station cited for the FCC's usual violations (unpainted/unlit 
towers, missing ASRNs, missing EAS, day power at night, etc.)

As with any large corporation, what's true in one market and under one 
local manager may not apply in every market or under every local 
manager, and I certainly know a few folks who've had less-than-happy 
experiences with the company, but that's par for the course with any 
company that has that many stations and that many people working for it.

But to tar CC, by name, with the "sloppy engineering" brush just doesn't 
fit with what I see as I visit stations and transmitter sites.

I'm pretty sure Steve Davis and Jeff Littlejohn at least lurk on this 
list from time to time. If there are really CC sites that are as bad as 
Richard describes, I know they'd like to know about them so they can get 
them cleaned up.

s