Doug’s Place

I got an e-mail from her husband, Dave, earlier. He noted they got results for her scans from earlier this morning – and she’s cancer free and needs no further chemo. As he put it, “no cancer showing is great news for Christmas!!!”

Great news indeed.

Like ‘em or not, it’s all over the news.

What does it mean for us? The Associated Press reports Clear Channel plans to sell more than 400 stations ranked outside of the top 100 American media markets. In layman’s terms, my old station, SL-100, and its sister stations are up for sale.

Now, these aren’t necessarily predictions. These are at best hypothetical results as to what’s going to happen on the dial when all’s said and done…

All of them: Any syndicated programming they receive through Premiere Radio Networks, a CC subsidiary, may be gone as a result. More on this in a bit.

WFOR: I can’t imagine them being a Fox Sports Radio affil much longer. All FSR programming plus Jim Rome’s “jungle” come through Premiere. If there’s one CC station I listen to with any regularity, it’s FOR. The Mrs. and I usually run errands and/or go out on the town on Saturdays. So, in order to catch up on college football scores, I’m either listening to Rock 104 for the Southern Miss game or “The Score”.

WUSW: Fans of “The Fox”, have the hankie handy and prepare to weep. This station is probably the most vulnerable to on-air changes. There are only two or three local jocks and everyone else is either syndicated or “piped in” from out-of-market. I certainly can’t imagine those from out-of-town CC stations who “work” for USW (and, sadly, it’s a practice that happens throughout CC) doing anything for USW much longer. Further, Corey and Jay’s morning show, based in Little Rock, will likely disappear. Will this all lead to a format change on USW? Too early to say. I’d say there’s a 90% chance “The Fox” you know now will be drastically different.

…the only way all of the above will be wrong is if all CC/Premiere-related programming will be kept as a condition of sale. But, I’m going to go out on a limb and say the stations’ new owners would want things done their way and not the CC way. That’s why I think all CC/Premiere programming on these stations is in jeopardy.

This much is for sure. Today was not an easy day to be working at the CC cluster on Highway 98. Some folks may have been working on that resume and aircheck after preliminarily deciding to get while the gettin’s good — while others will decide to ride out the storm to come.

‘Twill be a few interesting weeks and months on the local airwaves.

For this post, reactions may be e-mailed to doug at doug morris dot org; should you decide to e-mail me a reply, please be sure to include “Clear Channel Changes” or something to that effect in the subject line. -D.M.

Yeah, I know, I blogged about this last summer. It deserves a follow-up.

Turns out we have a name of the producer who booked “Borat Sagdiyev” and, in the process, was “tricked” into thinking he really was a Kazakhstan-born journalist – when he’s really a fictional character on an HBO show and now a related hit movie.

Her name: Dharma Arthur. Not long after the incident, she was reassigned from her morning producer duties to a similar capacity in the station’s 5:00pm newscast. Arthur and WAPT parted company this past spring.

While she reportedly has found work at a station in Florida, I sincerely hope she’s learned a valuable lesson from the whole “Borat” situation.
My fear, though, is she hasn’t learned anything.

She recently wrote to Newsweek, “Because of (“Borat”), my boss lost faith in my abilities and second-guessed everything I did thereafter.” Well, sheesh, if I were her boss, I’d put her under the microscope, too. “I spiraled into depression,” she continued to whine, “and before I could recover, I was released from my contract early. It took me three months to find another job, and now I’m thousands of dollars in debt and struggling to keep my house out of foreclosure.”

Uh, excuse me, Dharma. If you really want to know who’s at fault for all of this, look in the mirror. Now, I’m sorry you’ve gone through so much hardship; nightmares I wish on no one. But if you had done just a little extra bit of research instead of, apparently, basing you booking just on what “Borat’s” people gave you, you would have saved yourself headaches and you would’ve also spared WAPT a black eye.

In another article, Dharma was quoted as saying, “I don’t have cable. I have two mortgages.” Well, I hope you had internet access in your WAPT days. If so, all you had to do was enter the name “Borat Sagdiyev” into any internet search engine and I promise you would’ve discovered “Borat” was a work of fiction.

Then as now, may this be a lesson for all of us in the media.