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Al Keck Compares It To Entering The Tampa Bay Pirates Locker Room After A Stinging Loss : Not Something He Needed To Do, But Something He Had To Do.
Al Keck compares it to entering the Tampa Bay Buccaneers locker room after a stinging loss : not something he needed to do, but something he had to do.
For Keck, once the top sports anchor at two local TV stations WFTS-Ch. 28 (ABC Action Reports) and WTSP-Ch. Ten (ten Reports) that's saying something. When he walked into the Fox Jazz Caf in Tampa a few months back, Keck wasn't reporting a tale. He was selling something.
Himself.
More precisely, he was selling The Al Keck show, a radio broadcast focused on sports news that he was planning to host each Friday on WTAN-AM (1340).
shows on WTAN work slightly differently from those on commercial radio, where an enormous co. owns the radio stations, hires talent{ sells the advertisements and makes almost all of the profit. WTAN offers what radio insiders call "brokered" radio programs, where any person can buy airtime for a set fee, go sell advertising and create the show.
Whatever profit they make goes in their pockets, but the workload from gathering material to booking guests and, yes, selling commercial spots usually falls on whoever is cutting the check.
Years back, this kind of radio was the province of churches, Realtors and widget peddlers ; people with a little taste for showbiz who didn't care promoting themselves right to a small audience. But as large media outlets pare their staffs in challenging commercial times, large names like Keck have been made to reinvent themselves in places such as WTAN.
"Quite truthfully, I didn't truly enjoy it ; I'd rather have somebody else out there selling Al Keck than me," announced the sportscaster, who turned to brokered radio about two years after WFTS failed to replenish his contract. In spite of his terror, Keck left his meeting at the Fox Caf with a title sponsorship that right away put his fledgling show in the black.
"I'm finding folk will buy in to a vision if they know you and trust you," he added . "I know I am not on the largest radio station on Earth, but I have a known name and a voice that's pushing a brilliant product. To a mean consumer, you're no different" than a traditional radio anchor.
Keck's show airs weekly on WTAN at three p.m. Fridays. 2 other names from the area's radio scene onetime SportsChix member Brenda Lee (a.k.a. B.L.) and previous Clear Channel Radio star Skip Mahaffey bracket him at 2 and 4 p.m.
Like Keck, B.L. And Mahaffey lost standard media jobs awhile back and are using brokered radio to take advantage of a personal brand that still draws some fans.
"Will it work? Who knows? This is an one-man operation that I am paying for out of my very own pocket," said Mahaffey, who endeavored to find new work after Clear Channel took him off country music station WFUS-FM in 2009. He returned to Tampa in February after 8 months in Oklahoma.
Now he has got a brokered show displaying at three p.m. Weekdays (except Fridays) on WTAN and 2 other radio stations, reinventing himself as a decidedly nonpartisan talker.
Some pros say this is a trend which will only accelerate, as the big commercial radio stations keep cutting midcareer and entry level talent to save money.
"Clear Channel owes something like $16 billion. I don't remember anyone owing that much for anything," said Gabe Hobbs, a former senior VP in charge of talk news and sports at the company, who was among 1,850 folk laid off in 2009.
"These corporations are panicking over debt and the economy ; they are a bit a slave to that," recounted Hobbs, who now runs his very own radio consulting firm. "They're forgetting what they used to drill into our heads when I started in this business : It's what occurs between the records that counts. "
Radio 'ate itself '
After thirty years in the Tampa Bay area radio scene, WRBQ-FM morning character Mason Dixon sees radio's current Problems simply.
Dixon related gigantic corporations like Clear Channel acquired up most of the mom-and-pop radio stations in small and midlevel markets, using computerized audio systems to feature one staffer on shows at three or more stations in a day. Centralized programming eliminated lots of roles.
Syndicated shows, for example American Idol host Ryan Seacrest's On air, appeared to eat up huge bits of morning and mid-day programming.
And new ratings calculated by info from the pager-sized devices worn by listeners have hurt DJs who talk too often during their songs, leading Cox Radio, CBS and others to form hit music-centered stations like Hot 101.5 and Play 98.7.
Once, Tampa Bay was a melting pot for developing huge trends in radio, from the cheeky "morning zoo" idea started at WRBQ in the '80s to signature skills like Glenn Beck, Lionel and Scott Shannon.
today, name performers like Mahaffey and onetime WMTX-FM star Nancy Alexander have been downsized while younger abilities struggle for new possibilities.
"The business ate itself," declared Dixon, who latterly hosted a reunion of personalities from WRBQ's nadir on his morning show. "At one point, we had between seventy and 80 workers at Q105. There are at present 5 full-time workers, not counting the sales staff, and three of them work on the morning show."
Longtime Tampa Bay area radio character Jack Harris makes a distinction between shows that mostly feature talk like his AM Tampa Bay program with Tedd Webb on WFLA-AM (970) and music shows starring personalities. The new ratings technology has forced more focus, he announced, as fans of music radio migrate to stations with a minimum of talk. He fears that radio will founder without the bond that local DJs provide.
"People don't say, 'I listen to (WHPT-FM) the Bone' ; they say, 'I hear Bubba the love Sponge or I listen to MJ, '" Harris expounded. "But if the firms are disloyal to the personalities, listeners will be faithless to (the stations) ."
Still, there's one radio star who doesn't see much issue with the present transition : top-rated WHPT morning character Bubba the Love Sponge Clem.
"Big personalities will always have a spot. And your ratings control your destiny," said Clem, who was fired by Clear Channel in 2004 after earning record indecency fines and returned to Cox Radio's WHPT with a show more concentrated on talk about politics, sports and crime. "It's raised the stakes, but if you're good and classic and can hold an audience, you'll be okay. " as reported tagza.com.
Senate Session 2011-06-16 (14:44:57-15:56:33)
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