In what seems to be a consolidation of the music departments of Sirius XM as Mel Karmazin seems to want to focus on the news-talk channels that take ads, over 50 employees have been laid off, a good number of them programmers and DJs for the satellite services' XM music channels:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/15/AR2008101503119.html Radio-Info's Tom Taylor elaborates (with credit to WaPo blogger Marc Fisher and Dave Hughes' dcrtv.com): Many XM programmers and talent have been clocked out. Though not all of them are gone immediately, and won’t be until November 5 – and I heard last night that there could be two additional waves of cuts, beyond this one. But for now, the Washington Post’s Marc Fisher says “many of the producers and deejays on XM’s highly creative Decades channels” are gone. DCRTV.com put some names on the screen: Decades Channel Senior PD Kurt Gilcrest, '50s Channel PD Ken Smith, '50s Channel MD Matt The Cat, '60s Channel PD Pat Clark, '80s Channel MD/afternooner Kandy Klutch, Cross-Country PD Jessie Scott, Cafe PD Bill Evans and Soul Street PD Bobby Bennett. Other casualties include George Taylor Morris of Deep Tracks, John Clay of '70s-On-7, Billy Zero and Tobi from XMU, Ethel's Erik Range and Fred’s Rick Lambert, the alternative Lucy Channel’s Bill Hutton. Also Soul Street MD Leigh Hamilton, Raw’s Mz Kitti, Viva’s Karla Rodriguez, The City’s DJ Xclusive and Lisa Ivery. Notice that these people are all from the music-based services, the ones that Sirius XM can’t sell spots on. Will Mel combine the similar XM and Sirius music lineups after November 5? Fisher says that would be “directly in opposition to [his] repeated and vehement promises to keep the two voices separate and distinct for some time to come.” But Mel must find big cost savings. The Post also confirms that the terminated employees “found out in the worst possible way: one worker routinely signed o nto the company’s payroll system and saw that his final day of employment was listed as October 15. Word spread like a virus through the building…” ------------------------- As an XM Online subscriber, thanks a lot Mel. It was bad enough that it seems like you're making the jocks on every break talk about the "Best of Sirius" plan. And it's interesting that a commenter on the WaPo story above said "Good--they talked too much. More music!" What I like about a lot of the XM channels is that they have live people talking on the air (and even the automated channels have a certain personality in their sweepers and production things that make them sound different). Why do so many people want more music and no humanity, except for the Morning Zookeepers? Even Bill Drake, who was accused of emasculating personality, realized the importance of strong personalities for radio stations--as long as they were genuinely entertaining or informative and didn't block the music too much (which a lot of the second-level Top 40 bellringers and drop-in kings of the 60s weren't). --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Like TV only smarter. You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
