Donnie Simpson left the airwaves at 12:10pm EST in the Washington area on WPGC; he exuded class, he didn't utter one negative word about his now-former employers, and for six hours this morning, I listened to free-to-air radio that was riveting, emotional, funny, sad, and touching.
12:10pm, January 29, 2010. Mark this date down. The last, best DJ in the CBS Radio wheelhouse in the Washington Metropolitan Area or the DMV is gone. And with it, goes CBS Radio's credibility in the Mainstream Urban format in this area, too.
Today, a legend left the air, because of meddling mid-management hellbent on generating profit and chasing audience cumes. Yes, that's the radio business, as I understand it. And if I understand the business the way I think I do, I also understand this: CBS Radio is terrible at it.
Because if this is how you treat a person, your biggest on-air talent, on his way out the door, how good are you at this business?
From The Washington Post:
Simpson said he had thought about not doing Friday's show. He stayed off the air on Thursday to protest the firing of one of his production assistants, DJ Rico, a 19-year station employee. Rico said he was fired for playing music, including a Prince song, that Simpson had asked for on Wednesday, but had not been approved by the station's management. Samuel V. Rogers, the CBS Radio executive who oversees WPGC, declined to comment.
The station also forbade Simpson to reminisce on the air with two former sidekicks, Chris Paul and Huggy Lowdown, who now work for rival programs. However, Simpson did converse with two current morning rivals, Russ Parr of WKYS-FM and Harvey, who predicted that "WPGC is going to be sorry" that it lost its iconic morning man.--Paul Farhi, 1/30/2010
This is a cruel joke.
They fired a production assistant that played a song that hadn't been approved by management?
They forbade their departing morning man to even call the two former sidekicks that worked with the guy?
And that management's response is a tepid, yellow, “no comment”?
Stay classy, CBS Radio. Watch your ratings tank into the ground.
Frankly, what message does that send to the rest of the staff at that station, now charged with the impossible task of filling that four-hour void in the morning? It's a simple one:
"When we fail to get ratings, everyone's expendable. We know more than the people on the microphone do, and when we tell you to do something, you're damn well going to do it, or it's your job.”
And, of course, in the classiest move of all, they served Simpson with their classic 13-month non-compete clause, so that they can keep him off the air, and sink WPGC into the Earth at the same time.
Is it wrong for me to think that, had it been anyone other than Donnie Simpson, who has had three-plus decades in this market, they wouldn't have even allowed a farewell show, let alone allow that show six full hours of billable time on its air?
Let's just briefly recap the superior decision making of CBS Radio since 2004.
- They lost Howard Stern to a fledgling niche pay-radio market, then tried to sue him for promoting it too much on their air. That failed.
- They tried to replace Stern with random hacks like David Lee Roth. That failed.
- They changed the entire formats of several stations to try and push the idea that free radio was better than pay radio. That failed.
- They tried bringing back guys they previously fired, leasing them from another pay-radio market to shore up a flagging national format. That failed so bad, by the time it was all over, they were still on sattelite, and their flagship station—only having changed formats twice in three years—changed the format again.
- They changed the format of a well-performing oldies station—CBS-FM—in the #1 market in America to a niche, iPod Shuffle-esque station. That failed, and they changed it back within two years.
- They tried doing classic rock in this market. That failed.
- They used to have a top-performing mainstream urban station in this market. Then Arbitron puts out PPM, and now they can't get ahead of an NPR station that consistently rates in the top five.
And they have the nerve, after this astounding record of failure, to fire a 19 year-old production assistant because he played something not on the Pre-Approved by CBS Suits List? To force off a DJ like Simpson because they want to skew younger? To not let two other people on the air because they work elsewhere?
There is no excuse for this pettiness. None. But it's classic, petty, and petulant CBS Radio. And if there's any karmic justice in this at all—and I say this not to disrespect the talented people that work at WPGC, but as a criticism of the overseers and overthinkers that run the place—WPGC will fail, they'll change formats, the talent will get better jobs with better and smarter companies, and CBS will be left chasing money they will never see.
Donnie Simpson is the classiest guy in the world for not going on the air and torching these folks, or just walking out; he's a professional. He knows what he's doing. He's done it since he was 15.
Not that CBS Radio cares. I hope they're real proud of themselves, today. They ought to be.
They've failed. Again. And what's troubling is that they are so arrogant, they don't even know it yet.
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