What’s going on at Tribune?
Cory Bergman April 8th, 2008
Seriously? Tribune is hiring radio execs from Clear Channel left and right. The latest hire is senior VP of programming at Clear Channel, Marc Chase, to be president of Tribune Interactive. And this is the real press release. “Marc Chase obviously blackmailed his way into a position he is not remotely qualified to hold,” it reads as a joke. B&C asked why the press release looks like an April Fool’s joke, and a Tribune spokesman said it was designed to demonstrate a “new Tribune and a new way of thinking about things.”
So you have to wonder if hiring a radio guy with little or no internet experience is a good idea (let alone pointing out that fact in glaring fashion in a press release that even a silly startup wouldn’t issue). MediaPost quotes some analyst who says hiring radio execs “makes sense” since Tribune’s focus is online video — something Clear Channel has been investing in lately. But if you ask me, hiring execs with no internet experience to head up internet units is about as dumb as that press release. (And Tribune isn’t the only one to do it.) The web is not TV. And the web is definitely not radio.
7 Comments Add your own
1. Rocker | April 8th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Wasn’t aware that Clear Channel was such a reservoir of digital media brilliance.
2. Jeremy | April 8th, 2008 at 8:45 am
This is friends hiring friends - Randy Michaels and Marc Chase go WAY back in their years at Clear Channel.
3. Anonymous | April 8th, 2008 at 9:26 am
In point of fact, most Clear Channel sites are hideous.
4. tdc | April 8th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
does it really matter who they hire?
tv until now hasn’t done much online, so what can it hurt?
EXAMPLE: tv newcasts have no shelf life and are content already being produced, why not stream them?
not just the noon one, but ALL of them?
can’t make no$ at the commercial breaks? that’ll have to change at contract time or tv newscasts become even less relevant.
afraid “your audience” will choose the computer over the tv set? hardly. if the choice is a comfy couch and a wide screen or the office chair and a laptop, most will opt for their ass-groove in the couch. BUT, if the viewer is out-of-town on bus/vacation or whatever, and the choice is a laptop or NOTHING then the laptop will be just fine.
best be first here because they won’t remember who was second or third.
maybe the ‘new’ radio guy will suggest this to his higher-ups.
so far no tv guy in charge of the internet has.
5. Anonymous | April 8th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
This is a group of idiots.
They don’t understand how people consume media.
They have no web experience.
They have Ed Wilson leading the stations
sums it up.
6. Dan | April 8th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
A buddy of mine who knows these guys told me this:
Randy Michaels is a smart dude. He is waiting around for Clear Channel to crumble and will slect his favorite properties from the wreckage..That goes for people too. With Tribune, he may very well revive radio as we knew it.
Same type of situations for Citadel, and Cumulus..they all followed CC’s lead, and fired key people, devalued stations to the point of near worthlessness, and now Randy is waiting with an army of investors, and a THICK checkbook to buy his pick. He has already reassigned key people like Marc Chase to Tribune..Lot’s of savvy radio guys are getting “the call” from Randy..Many many more before it’s over.
Reviving local programming and polishing the faded paint of many of America’s formerly great radio properties.
That’s Randy..just watch the fun
7. Frank Catalano | April 9th, 2008 at 5:57 am
The Web is far more like radio than it is TV.
Folks with radio news experience know how to do a lot with little, are used to one-man bands doing everything, and communicate more effectively one-to-one than TV broadcasters who communicate one-to-many. Radio is a more intimate medium than TV. Radio narrowcasts where TV broadcasts. Those are key similarities with the Web.
If these execs can bring that sensibility to Tribune’s Web properties, more power to them.
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