Radio -- it's a tough business. Really tough. Lotta people want to get into show biz, and they'll do anything to get a foot in the door. Once there, they find they have to continue to work for non-celebrity wages to keep the gig.
Danny Balis, in my judgment one of the most compelling broadcasters in Dallas (and one of the most misunderstood -- I'll hit this topic another time) -- let slip a few days ago that he makes $30,000. I don't know if he was making a humorous point in the context of what they were discussing at the time, but it had the ring of truth. (I think he says he makes more from his music than from his Ticket engagement.) And I'm guessing, but I doubt Cumulus has included in his compensation package a piece of Hardline-generated profits. (Sometimes I wonder if Grubes has him on retainer.)
Anyone following the Greggo-Hammer-HeeHoo saga has already read Richie Whitt's (rather balanced) account of HeeHoo's phone call to him to report on the climactic meeting with John Clay Wolfe. Wolfe was offering $24,000 plus a share of the profits -- in other words, a piece of the show, a nice incentive for good behavior -- and some pretty stiff disincentives for bad behavior. Faithful Confessors are aware that I believe HeeHoo to be a genuine radio talent, but man -- nine days and he's out. Show of hands please -- how many of you out there think he put gasoline in the diesel's tank? Yeah, me too. And he and his Significant Frail held firm at $104,000.
Couple of questions:
How many stations did HeeHoo think Wolfe was going to sign up in nine days?
How did HeeHoo and the Significant Frail settle on $104,000?
What is the approximate magnitude of advertising revenue HeeHoo and S.F. believe to be generated by a one -- one, that is -- kilowatt AM station in the Seymour/Wichita Falls metroplex? Makes The Ticket's anemic collection of signals look like a freakin' blowtorch. I don't know KSEY's target demo other than guys trying to sell 2004 Sentras (not . . . that there's anything wrong with that), but I suspect Arbitron has detected a significant bovine share.
Sometime Confessor "insider" suggests in a comment that there's a Wolfe-to-HeeHoo email detailing additional Wolfe proposals to keep HeeHoo before the microphone.
I certainly hope so. Barb Smith seekers aren't going to drive traffic to this site forever.
Showing posts with label KSEY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label KSEY. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Greggo Dances with Wolfe
Your faithful Plainsman gets up early on Saturday so you don't have to. John Clay Wolfe reported on his website that he would comment on the end (for now) of his relationship with Greg "Greggo" "the Hammer" "HeeHoo" Williams. He said he would address it in the 7-7:30 segment of his Real Deal show on 97.1 KEGL today. He got to it at 7:38 and finished at 7:40. As Neil Young and The Hardline would say, innarestin.
First, a tip of the hat to my commenter "insider," who offered some additional information on the HeeHoo-Wolfe relationship in his comment to this article which Wolfe confirmed this morning. First, Wolfe said that had built out his FM studio, in part, in anticipation of HeeHoo doing a syndicated show from there. He suggested he'd built it out for other reasons, but that it was "overbuilt" now because the HeeHoo gig had fallen through. Second, one of Wolfe's sidekicks mentioned that HeeHoo had brought a "negotiator" with him, who "insider" identified as HeeHoo's girlfriend. Insider, my thanks.
There were a couple of other tidbits in the segment:
(1) Wolfe suggests that this was more than a handshake deal. He was pretty emphatic that this was an honest-to-god agreement, not just a "let's see how it goes." He didn't say anything about it being in writing, but it doesn't make sense that Wolfe would have made a big capital investment without an enforceable agreement. A little later in the program, he said that "Greggo is on contract strike."
[You know . . . if Wolfe and HeeHoo did have a contract that was more or less complete and definitive (i.e., with real dollar figures and and specific duties to be performed on both sides), and Greggo has walked out on the deal, Wolfe could sue him. He might be able to sue for lost profits, but even if those were regarded as too speculative, he might be able to recover his out-of-pockets in building out that studio (especially if building out the studio was part of the deal, or if HeeHoo understood that Wolfe was going to build it out in reliance on HeeHoo performing the contract). Although Wolfe is using it for his own show, so it's not like he didn't realize any value from the investment. Still, to the extent it was "overbuilt" for HeeHoo . . . .]
(2) Wolfe has the same love-hate relationship with HeeHoo that much of the P1 Nation has. He started out singing Greggo's praises, said how well the two-week trial run had gone, what a great talent the guy was, how much he likes him, how he wishes they could have done the deal, how he was welcome to join The Real Deal next Saturday. In the next sentence, he says that HeeHoo "might be a little greedy," although he acknowledged -- insincerely -- that maybe he (Wolfe) is cheap. And, of course, by his account HeeHoo walked out on a done deal.
Show-biz people. You never know where you stand with them.
Is this dance over? Will it matter to HeeHoo that his former partner called him "greedy" and a welcher on the air? Dunno.
But here's the deal about Greggo: Here we have this acknowledged broadcast talent, a lot of on-air fun when he's straight. People are still fond of him (your Plainsman, too), and even those who purport not to like the guy are fascinated by him (all the Ticket-influenced sites are still crowded with Greggo posts and comments years after his departure). Flawed guys with talent like his get multiple chances to succeed just because the gift is so rare. Somewhere in North Texas there is a program director or station manager who is thinking -- I can make a deal with this guy. Even on a non-sports station, a HeeHoo sports-and-general-interest show could easily find a home. It could even be a music station. And syndication was already in the air. But whatever the format, I guarantee you someone out there is thinking about reaching out. It might even be Wolfe. We're going to hear Greggo again. Maybe not for long, but again.
Even if that PD or SM has to deal with the girlfriend.
First, a tip of the hat to my commenter "insider," who offered some additional information on the HeeHoo-Wolfe relationship in his comment to this article which Wolfe confirmed this morning. First, Wolfe said that had built out his FM studio, in part, in anticipation of HeeHoo doing a syndicated show from there. He suggested he'd built it out for other reasons, but that it was "overbuilt" now because the HeeHoo gig had fallen through. Second, one of Wolfe's sidekicks mentioned that HeeHoo had brought a "negotiator" with him, who "insider" identified as HeeHoo's girlfriend. Insider, my thanks.
There were a couple of other tidbits in the segment:
(1) Wolfe suggests that this was more than a handshake deal. He was pretty emphatic that this was an honest-to-god agreement, not just a "let's see how it goes." He didn't say anything about it being in writing, but it doesn't make sense that Wolfe would have made a big capital investment without an enforceable agreement. A little later in the program, he said that "Greggo is on contract strike."
[You know . . . if Wolfe and HeeHoo did have a contract that was more or less complete and definitive (i.e., with real dollar figures and and specific duties to be performed on both sides), and Greggo has walked out on the deal, Wolfe could sue him. He might be able to sue for lost profits, but even if those were regarded as too speculative, he might be able to recover his out-of-pockets in building out that studio (especially if building out the studio was part of the deal, or if HeeHoo understood that Wolfe was going to build it out in reliance on HeeHoo performing the contract). Although Wolfe is using it for his own show, so it's not like he didn't realize any value from the investment. Still, to the extent it was "overbuilt" for HeeHoo . . . .]
(2) Wolfe has the same love-hate relationship with HeeHoo that much of the P1 Nation has. He started out singing Greggo's praises, said how well the two-week trial run had gone, what a great talent the guy was, how much he likes him, how he wishes they could have done the deal, how he was welcome to join The Real Deal next Saturday. In the next sentence, he says that HeeHoo "might be a little greedy," although he acknowledged -- insincerely -- that maybe he (Wolfe) is cheap. And, of course, by his account HeeHoo walked out on a done deal.
Show-biz people. You never know where you stand with them.
Is this dance over? Will it matter to HeeHoo that his former partner called him "greedy" and a welcher on the air? Dunno.
But here's the deal about Greggo: Here we have this acknowledged broadcast talent, a lot of on-air fun when he's straight. People are still fond of him (your Plainsman, too), and even those who purport not to like the guy are fascinated by him (all the Ticket-influenced sites are still crowded with Greggo posts and comments years after his departure). Flawed guys with talent like his get multiple chances to succeed just because the gift is so rare. Somewhere in North Texas there is a program director or station manager who is thinking -- I can make a deal with this guy. Even on a non-sports station, a HeeHoo sports-and-general-interest show could easily find a home. It could even be a music station. And syndication was already in the air. But whatever the format, I guarantee you someone out there is thinking about reaching out. It might even be Wolfe. We're going to hear Greggo again. Maybe not for long, but again.
Even if that PD or SM has to deal with the girlfriend.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
You Can Depend on Greggo -- He'll Always Let You Down
So it appears that the return of Greg “Greggo” “the Hammer” “HeeHoo” Williams to non-drop radio via KSEY-AM 1230 (Seymour/Wichita Falls) has run its course. John Clay Wolfe, his benefactor at KSEY, has announced that he and HeeHoo have parted company over HeeHoo's compensation, and he will once again vanish from the airwaves.
Key phrases from Wolfe's blog entry:
“he and I could not agree on the terms I believed we had ironed out in the beginning”
“we couldn’t have been any further apart from getting a deal done”
“the terms that I offered to Greg upon inception of this project . . . will still be on the table in the same form until further notice”
Sounds like an early handshake deal, a “let’s see how it goes” deal. It apprently goes good (according to Your Plainsman's commenter Anonymous, HeeHoo "sounded better than he has in a long time"). (Thanks to Anon for the report.)
Comes time to settle on more permanent terms. Turns out, there’s no agreement. Either there was an honest misunderstanding at the outset; or J.C. Wolfe is reneging; or HeeHoo is trying to leverage his good reviews into a better deal than the one he had agreed to in order to get his foot in the door.
We can’t know the right and wrong of this situation. Maybe the emerging talk of possible syndication of the show suggested to HeeHoo that the handshake deal needed to be enhanced. Maybe some HeeHoo behind-the-scenes unpleasantness suggested to Wolfe that he take some steps to minimize his risk. And maybe there was just a plain old misunderstanding.
One thing I don’t see in Wolfe’s account is any talk of an agent or a lawyer involved on HeeHoo's behalf. An agent eager to get his client back into live radio might have been expected to counsel his client that he was no longer commanding the attention of program directors at major metropolitan radio outlets (who don’t have a lot of mad money themselves these days), but instead was sitting across the table from a guy who is trying to make a go of a 1-kilowatt AM that only reaches about 23 of HeeHoo's old fans.
Somebody in this little drama is deluded. I join most – although, I sense, a declining percentage – of the P1 Nation in wishing HeeHoo the absolute best and an eventual return to broadcasting to something other than open prairie. But just like you just gotta start somewhere, sometimes you just gotta re-start somewhere.
Key phrases from Wolfe's blog entry:
“he and I could not agree on the terms I believed we had ironed out in the beginning”
“we couldn’t have been any further apart from getting a deal done”
“the terms that I offered to Greg upon inception of this project . . . will still be on the table in the same form until further notice”
Sounds like an early handshake deal, a “let’s see how it goes” deal. It apprently goes good (according to Your Plainsman's commenter Anonymous, HeeHoo "sounded better than he has in a long time"). (Thanks to Anon for the report.)
Comes time to settle on more permanent terms. Turns out, there’s no agreement. Either there was an honest misunderstanding at the outset; or J.C. Wolfe is reneging; or HeeHoo is trying to leverage his good reviews into a better deal than the one he had agreed to in order to get his foot in the door.
We can’t know the right and wrong of this situation. Maybe the emerging talk of possible syndication of the show suggested to HeeHoo that the handshake deal needed to be enhanced. Maybe some HeeHoo behind-the-scenes unpleasantness suggested to Wolfe that he take some steps to minimize his risk. And maybe there was just a plain old misunderstanding.
One thing I don’t see in Wolfe’s account is any talk of an agent or a lawyer involved on HeeHoo's behalf. An agent eager to get his client back into live radio might have been expected to counsel his client that he was no longer commanding the attention of program directors at major metropolitan radio outlets (who don’t have a lot of mad money themselves these days), but instead was sitting across the table from a guy who is trying to make a go of a 1-kilowatt AM that only reaches about 23 of HeeHoo's old fans.
Somebody in this little drama is deluded. I join most – although, I sense, a declining percentage – of the P1 Nation in wishing HeeHoo the absolute best and an eventual return to broadcasting to something other than open prairie. But just like you just gotta start somewhere, sometimes you just gotta re-start somewhere.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)