Last May many of you joined in the celebration of my twenty-fifth year doing morning radio in St. Louis. The reason I’ve been around that long is because I’ve had a huge audience, satisfied advertisers and big ratings. In May we were in third place in our target demo of 25 to 54 year-olds, and in second place in the secondary target of 35 to 64 year-olds. These kinds of numbers were typical during my eight-year stint at the station, and reflective of the success we achieved dating back to my arrival here in 1984. Additionally, our website hit a record-high number of page-views in May, due largely to the traffic generated by the activities on the morning show. Radio station management was so delighted they congratulated me with a weeklong trip to Chicago in a luxury hotel and arranged for a special mayoral proclamation. In late August our corporate president of programming came to St. Louis and re-stated his desire that I continue with the company for the remainder of my career.
But as many of you know, three months ago the broadcast industry implemented its first new ratings measurement system in fifty years. It wasn’t until just a few weeks ago that we began to hear rumblings that something didn’t seem right. Then, last Monday (10-26), station management stunned everyone with the news they were canceling our show and replacing it with an all-music presentation. The question I’ve been asked repeatedly since then is why three months of inexplicably peculiar ratings generated by a new (and many believe highly questionable) system would trump the previous eight years of outstanding ratings success? This is a question I don’t have an answer to.
On one hand the news of this development has produced an avalanche of e-mail, a zillion calls, and is lighting up local, and even national message boards and websites like a Christmas tree. The story has appeared on the front page of the St. Louis Business Journal, the Post Dispatch, and was the number-two story on KSDK’s ten o’clock news. Our story was a runaway #1 on the Fox2 website and comment page even on a day when Tony LaRussa and Mark McGwire were announcing their return to the Cardinals. Just the magnitude in which this story is being covered should tell you something about the impact our show has had on the community.
The people responsible for the new “PPM” rating system want you to believe very few people were listening to our show, and that all of the cars, concert tickets, books, vacations, lasik procedures, heating and air conditioning units, restaurant meals, furniture, beer, soft drinks, theatre tickets and mortgage re-finances we helped sell all just happened by coincidence. They want you to believe all of the advertisers that saw dramatic increases in sales and foot traffic after being on our show, all of the jammed phone lines during on-air giveaways, and all of the huge crowds of people we looked out over at various events we staged were all just an illusion.
Instead of following the principles of mass communication, and instead of providing solid entertainment in a compelling fashion, the people responsible for the new rating system are telling broadcasters to focus all their attention on individuals that have been chosen to wear a new electronic device called a “PPM.” If you’re listening to the station but you don’t have one…you don’t count. It would be like NBC telling the writers and producers of “The Office” to write jokes and develop storylines about Topeka, Kansas because the network found out a guy there had a “PPM” device and they hoped it would make him watch the show. Can you imagine a stand-up comedian being told his job was to make only four, unidentified people laugh in a crowd of three hundred?? Unbelievably, radio station companies are buying into this nonsense.
The truth is that I’ve been doing the best work of my career for the past eight years, and even the insinuation the new, untested rating system has produced an accurate depiction of our show’s audience size is ludicrous. I’m certain we could have devised a way to operate successfully under the new rating system had we been given the opportunity. But I also know that when you’re doing a good job and you still get whacked, it only means you’re in the wrong place. Many have insisted this was just a good, old-fashioned “salary dump.” Again, I have no idea. But what’s done is done. I’ll be paid in full through February of 2011 unless I choose to accept a job at another station before then.
Thanks to Emmis Broadcasting, Jeff Smulyan, Rick Cummings and John Beck for giving me a chance eight years ago following a long, sixteen-year estrangement. Also, I enjoyed, not only a great working relationship with Operations Manager Rick Balis, but a valuable friendship as well. The part that stings most, though, is losing the opportunity to share a studio and spend time everyday with my dear friends John Ulett, Laurie Mac and Carl Middleman. That’s the part that is just awful.
In the meantime, could someone please help Diane Toroian Keaggy of the Post Disptach get her head out of her ass? Her columns, normally riddled with mischaracterizations and inaccuracies, have been particularly laughable pertaining to this story. I know that I have a guaranteed paycheck coming for the next fifteen months. I wonder if she could make the same claim.
I’ve re-launched my website. Visit jcontheline.com. It’s a work in-progress so give me some time, OK? But this will give us the opportunity to keep connected until I have some idea what might be next. As always, thank you for your support and well wishes. I have to change the baby’s diaper now.
