[BC] Changes at CBS?

[Mike McCarthy]

Be careful there.  I'm not going to suggest Joel didn't make some bad 
decisions. But...there are two issues here

MLB has been playing with broadcast rights for some time and essentially 
usurped the team's "rights" to control the exclusive radio broadcasts when 
they did a deal with XM requiring the feeds be sent to XM.  MLB actually 
took a cue from the NBA which did this about 10 years ago when they took 
control of the broadcast rights of all their TV games in response to super 
stations WGN and WTBS carrying the Bulls and Hawks (and Cubs and Braves) 
whenever they wanted and against other teams broadcasts.

Everyone to the manager has balked about both situation and many stations 
have walked away from long term relationships because they no longer have 
an exclusive franchise and will loose money in new deals. In many cases, 
the stations have decided the legal extortion the teams are exerting is 
also not worth the revenue they generate. WBBM's broadcasts of the Bears is 
SO cluttered with live reads that you have to wonder if there is a game 
being played because the rights fees are so high.  The pre/post games show 
have no less than 20 minutes of spots per hour and is no different in many 
NFL markets. KDKA and WCCO didn't want to pay the astronomical rights fees.

Additionally, in the case of KMOX, the TEAM bought into a station and 
decided to end the deal with KMOX. The station really didn't have a say in 
the matter. The same is true in Washington and the Redskins. The teams are 
realizing they have the resources to produce the broadcasts and simply feed 
them to desirable affiliates if they don't already have interests in the 
licensees. Case in point, we do the deal with the White Sox for their games 
and THEY provide the satellite receiver.

As for Hollender, this really doesn't surprise me.  He took two well cash 
flowing cows and turned them into dead sticks with the conversion of the 
oldies format to Jack in Chicago and NYC.  CBS has a 2nd station full 
market station here which is really fallen to what is considered to be a 
2nd tier running lots of brokered programming when it's not running the 
"Free-FM" format of Opie and Anthony, et al. It was at one time a classic 
rocker with a 3 share doing 8 digits.

Final note...Hollender inherited a sinking ship from Mel.  Mel ran the 
station group with such an iron fist (in more ways than one) that stations 
were under funded and lacking for essential promotional campaigns (among 
other things) that in the end resulted in declining ratings.  Mel also 
didn't consolidate the stations in the same manner CC (and others) did as 
they moved/consolidated studios, offices, and transmitter sites. Mel wanted 
each station to be functionally separate with only a few common players, 
such as market or cluster managers. (Thus if a deal came along, the 
separation process would not be painful to the remaining stations.)

In the end, that proved to be a bad strategic decision as we have 
found  the cost to build out after a sale is announced is far less than 
sustaining long term duplicative operations. Especially in today's world of 
easy importing digital quality audio from afar, switcher based studios, IP 
phones, etc.  One can find space and build something to commence operations 
in a few months.  Whereas years ago, it would have taken a year or more to 
build and split.

Hollander started to correct that error, but the configuration of the 
stations made it difficult to consolidate operations, thus keeping 
operating costs high. Here in Chicago, all the CBS stations have separate 
studios on sometimes separate floors and sometimes buildings.  That and you 
have two distinct technical operations...union and non-union. Union at the 
legacy original O&O stations and non-union at the stations they have 
acquired in the past 20 years.

So...in a nut shell...he in part dug his own grave. In others, the coffin 
was already open.  I don't have any envy for the person who would replace 
him.  It is not going to be a simple job to operate/navigate that ship 
through the end of the Mel era leases.

MM

At 10:28 PM 3/16/2007 -0500, Mark Durenberger wrote
>Not to mention what he did to help disrupt three major sports 
>relationships: KMOX, WCCO, KDKA, who collectively had more than 150 years 
>of partnerships with major league baseball teams.
>
>Mark Durenberger
>
>
>----- Original Message ----- From: "Gary Blau" <gblau at w3am.com>
>To: "Broadcasters' Mailing List" <broadcast at radiolists.net>
>Sent: Friday, March 16, 2007 10:16 PM
>Subject: Re: [BC] Changes at CBS?
>
>
>>IMHO, how he lasted this long after tanking so many major stations and
>>so much revenue and having no major successes remains a mystery.  I can
>>only assume I'm stupid.
>>
>>g
>>
>>Reader wrote:
>>
>>>It looks like Joel Hollander may be on the way out.
>>>
>>>The first result of search on the NY Post site was "Hollander for
>>>Less. Looking for Hollander?"
>>>
>>>http://www.nypost.com/seven/03162007/business/hollander_grew_sick_of_moonves_radio_ga_ga_business_peter_lauria.htm