Reply #1: It's Real Ugly Out There...What This Article Doesn't Say...

[KharmaTrain]

The other day Cheap Channel fired 600 MORE employees...add that to the 1,200 that were given their notice the day President Obama was inaugurated (nice move, John Hogan) and this company has cut nearly 25% of an already bare bones operation. All of these cuts have come at the local level where Cheap Channel is now turning once proud and profitable local stations into repeaters of national shows. Not only are jobs gone, but so are local news departments, weather and important emergency information...there's no one left...just satellite dishes and hard drives. And hints are there are more cuts coming.

For those not familiar with Bain Capital...that was the investment firm founded by Mittens and is now a subsidiary of the Carlyle Group. Bain tried to bail out Cheap Channel prinicpals who were all boooooosh backers (Pioneers to be exact). Cheap Channel's empire was built similar to the real estate bubble...inflated prices on their stations that didn't reflect what kind of revenues the operations were bringing in. Thanks to Telcom '96, they were able to buy out competitors right and left...building up bigger debts, but also manipulating their stock price. So while operations began to decline, the principals were taking their dividends and huge bonuses (sound familiar?). Now the bill collector has come knocking, advertising revenues (what are left) have vanished and the next move the company has is to shut down statiosn (which it already did a week ago in Scranton, PA).

Others are following Cheap Channel's lead...CBS fired several dozen people yesterday and rumors are rife of cut backs ahead at the near bankrupt Citadel and Cumulus. "Deregulation" has turned our public airwaves into a trash heap.