Al Keck Compares It To Entering The Tampa Bay Buccaneers Locker Room After A Stinging Loss : Not Something He Wanted 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 2 local Television stations WFTS-Ch. Twenty-eight (ABC Action Reports) and WTSP-Ch. Ten (10 Reports) that is announcing something. When he walked into the Fox Jazz Caf in Tampa a couple of months ago, Keck was not reporting a story. He was selling something.
Himself.
More exactly, he was selling The Al Keck Show, a radio broadcast targeted on sports reports that he was planning to host every 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 anyone can buy airtime for a set charge, 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 ago, this type of radio was the province of churches, Realtors and gizmo peddlers ; people with a little taste for showbiz who didn’t care promoting themselves to a small audience. But as enormous media outlets pare their staffs in challenging commercial times, large names like Keck have been forced to reinvent themselves in places like WTAN.
“Quite truthfully, I did not truly like it ; I’d much rather have someone else out there selling Al Keck than me,” said the sportscaster, who turned to brokered radio about 2 years after WFTS didn’t replenish his contract. Despite his terror, Keck left his meeting at the Fox Caf with a title funding that immediately put his fledgling show in the black.
“I’m finding people 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’ve got a known name and a voice that is pushing an excellent product. To an average consumer, you’re no different” than a conventional radio anchor.
Keck’s show airs weekly on WTAN at three p.m. Fridays. Two 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 four p.m.
Like Keck, B.L. And Mahaffey lost conventional media jobs awhile gone 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’m coughing up for out of my very own pocket,” said Mahaffey, who struggled to find new work after Clear Channel took him off country music station WFUS-FM in 2009. He came back to Tampa in Feb after eight months in Oklahoma.
Now he has a brokered show airing at three p.m. Weekdays (except Fridays) on WTAN and 2 other radio stations, reinventing himself as a decidedly nonpartisan talker.
Some professionals say this is a trend which will only accelerate, as the big commercial radio stations keep cutting midcareer and starter-level talent to save cash.
“Clear Channel owes something similar to $16 bn.. I do not remember anyone owing that much for anything,” related Gabe Hobbs, a previous senior VP in command of talk reports and sports at the company, who was among 1,850 people laid off in 2009.
“These corporations are panicking over debt and the economy ; they’re 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 happens between the records that counts. “
Radio ‘ate itself ‘
After 30 years in the Tampa Bay area radio scene, WRBQ-FM morning personality Mason Dixon sees radio’s current issues simply.
Dixon recounted massive 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 even more stations in a day. Focused programming eliminated tons of roles.
Syndicated shows, such as American Idol host Ryan Seacrest’s On Air, emerged to eat up big chunks of morning and noon programming.
And new ratings figured out by data 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 make hit music-centered stations like Hot 101.5 and Play 98.7.
Once, Tampa Bay was a cooking pot for developing big trends in radio, from the flippant “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 laid off while younger talents struggle for new opportunities .
“The business ate itself,” said Dixon, who recently hosted a reunion of personalities from WRBQ’s heyday on his morning show. “At one point, we had between 70 and eighty staff at Q105. There are presently five full time staff, not counting the sales staff, and three of them work on the morning show.”
Longtime Tampa Bay area radio personality Jack Harris makes a distinction between shows that usually feature talk like his AM Tampa Bay programme 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 are saying, ‘I listen to Bubba the Love Sponge or I listen to MJ, ‘” Harris declared. “But if the companies are faithless to the personalities, listeners will be faithless to (the stations) .”
Still, there’s one radio star who does not see much problem with the current transition : highly rated WHPT morning personality Bubba the Love Sponge Clem.
“Big personalities will always have a spot. And your ratings control your destiny,” related 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 iconic and can hold an audience, you’ll be okay. ” as reported tagza.com.
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