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Charlie Tuna Leaves KRTH
- Thread starter michael hagerty
- Start date
Steele would be 79, if he'd lived. Robert W. Morgan would be 78. I seriously doubt either of them would still be holding down drive time at KRTH. They'd have gone a long time ago, either voluntarily or in a dispute with management over the way radio changed between 1997 and now (I can hear Morgan's voice in my head: "I sent KRTH my resignation in a tweet. I had 137 characters left.").
Guys, the Huggy Boys and Art Laboes of the world have always been rarities. Charlie Tuna is 71 and almost made 48 years on the air in Southern California. That is a massive achievement. Heck, few personalities anywhere get the run at one station that Christina Kelly had. Times have changed. KRTH has found its new groove. Charlie has a successful business.
Ladies and gentlemen, the beat....goes on.
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
I was thinking symbolically, of course ... and now that you've brought up RWM, I just hear him doing that too.
And he's been gone almost seven years already, too. Doesn't seem possible.
Did you mean 17 years?
Semoochie: KM's seven-year reference followed my "The beat....goes on" reference. Bill Drake voiced that liner. Bill's been dead for seven years now.
Charlie posted on Facebook that leaving KRTH was not his decision; KRTH let him know that last weekend was his last and they'd be overnighting his final check. Someone posted on Facebook that deregulation was to blame (like no one was ever let go in radio before 1996). The thing is, CT will be selling programming to a lot of deregulated radio stations
I have never understood why both radio and TV stations, but particularly radio, terminate their on-air people without notice and in the dark of night. It isn't as if we, as listeners, don't understand that change is a part of life, and careers, and it would give the station time to promo the new replacement. Stations tend to treat their departing staff as lepers - even the most successful.
And sometimes it happens to a whole station. I remember, in 1966, I was at the beach on a warm summer afternoon listening to KEWB when the on-air jock casually mentioned it would be their last day. Not for him, for everyone. The entire staff was being replaced as the station flipped to all-news. That really bugged me because most of the on-air personnel on KEWB at the time had come from my favorite childhood station KTKT and I knew many of them personally.
I have never understood why radio management can't be up front and honest about personnel changes. They typically act like the jock was guilty of embezzlement and has a communicable disease to boot. No wonder the general public's opinion of "suits" rivals that of used car dealers.
And sometimes it happens to a whole station. I remember, in 1966, I was at the beach on a warm summer afternoon listening to KEWB when the on-air jock casually mentioned it would be their last day. Not for him, for everyone. The entire staff was being replaced as the station flipped to all-news. That really bugged me because most of the on-air personnel on KEWB at the time had come from my favorite childhood station KTKT and I knew many of them personally.
I have never understood why radio management can't be up front and honest about personnel changes. They typically act like the jock was guilty of embezzlement and has a communicable disease to boot. No wonder the general public's opinion of "suits" rivals that of used car dealers.
They don't want to give the Jock the opportunity to make any over-the-air negative comments about the station or management.
Same for terminations in TV.
Same for terminations in TV.
Thank you, Michael. There's no way I would have even known about that, let alone picked up on it. I figured that if he wasn't talking about Robert W., it must be Sonny Bono and that was 17 years ago too! While I was typing, Landtuna mentioned KEWB switching to All News. Again, were you referring to KFWB or did the San Francisco station do the same?
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We just had nice send-offs for John Landecker and the guy on WOGL who's name escapes me this minute on the same day. Jim Scott got a very nice send-off on his retirement. Most of the time it's not good to have a terminated or terminating employee on mic. Stations (any employer) has to be careful what they say to prevent lawsuits down the road.
Sadly, we just had an example in Roanoke.
In all candor, does anyone believe a class act such as Charlie would bad mouth or say anything negative about KRTH had they chosen to go about this in the right way? Charlie is much too professional to conduct himself in that manner.KRTH took the wrong approach in the manner they went about this.
One answer to that can be heard by the jocks who were let go a couple weeks ago by a America's Best Music, a satellite delivered standards format. Several of the DJs turned their final show into a personal pity party, where they played a bunch of sad, death like songs, and talked in every break about it being their final show. Just a bit too much, if you ask me. A nice thank you and goodbye in the last minute would have been enough. But it really depends on the situation and the person. There have been examples where a DJ has been told it's his final show, and he locks the door to the control room and creates a hostage-like situation. Others have used the opportunity to say negative things about their boss on the air. Not saying that would be the case here. But people ARE people, and they will react AS people when being told bad news.
No one forces people to work for others. Some time ago, companies came up with this phrase of "at will employees." It's typical lawyer language that means the company has no obligation, neither do you, and it's your choice and decision to work. The term came about after a number of people sued their former employers over various things when they got terminated. I often say it's not the 60s anymore, and the use of "at will employees" is just one example why it's not. It's not about you the listener, or that you don't understand. It's more about protecting the license and preventing a potentially embarrassing or even libelous situation. It's not just on-air people who get this treatment. I've seen it in all lines of work, where you get the news, and that's it, with no time to say goodbye to fellow employees. Some places attach severance to the way you behave. If you help train your successor, you get your severance. That's just the way some places do it.
Air talent in LA (even part time) is contract work, and usually covered by AFTRA rules. Termination is usually spelled out in advance.
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K
K.M. Richards
Guest
Finally, a statement from the man himself. That should end the speculation, at least.
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
And then there was the way a format and airstaff change was handled in 1989 at KMYX in the Oxnard-Ventura, CA market.
I was doing mornings and doubled as APD/MD/CE. We had been owned by a guy who had been in the market for decades, much of that time as a GSM or GM. His son, who had been PD of KMYX, had died in a head-on collision the previous year and he made the decision to sell the station and to flip from the Urban format his son had programmed to Country. We ran that format for most of that year until a sale was consummated. The new owners weren't ready to go yet, so we stayed on for another few weeks while they built new studios and got their new AC format together.
They made a decision to flip the Monday after Thanksgiving, and left it to us to tell the audience. My PD and I called a staff meeting and posted a memo that this was to be done in a dignified manner and anyone who badmouthed the new owners on the air would be removed mid-shift and forfeit their last check. Our guys were great ... not only calmly explaining this on the air and to request line callers, but also acknowledging to the audience that the new owners had every right to do whatever they wanted with the station.
The result was that we got to stay on all the way to midnight Saturday (when a 30-hour loop of construction sounds began, interspersed with "we're building a new radio station" liners ... yeah, a hokey stunt, but mercifully brief) with the provision that either my boss or I do the last shift. So we had "K.M. Richards In The Morning On A Saturday Night" with pretty much the entire airstaff as guest stars. It was fun, actually: We took down the format clock and played a lot of listener requests instead, had more than a few talk breaks that ran five minutes by themselves, and went commercial-free for the last four hours.
I am posting that narrative because a "last show" doesn't have to be a "pity party". It can be a celebration of what the jock (or in this case, the station) accomplished, it can acknowledge the listeners, and it can avoid negativity. In our case, all it took was the new owners' trust in us to not "make a scene" over it all, and our honoring that trust.
As I said earlier in this thread, I've known Charlie Tuna for at least 35 years now. On top of everything else I've said about him, he is the consummate professional, and CBS should have known that. KRTH was his second go-around with them ... he did mornings when what is now KCBS-FM (Jack) was oldies KODJ, back in 1989-90. I know for certain that, if he had been given the opportunity to do a final show, he would have done it with dignity. There is no question in my mind about that.
I'm sorry, CBS, but even as much as I understand this business, you crossed a line here that causes me to join those who say you blew it. And at this point, I'm going to have to start wondering how long Shotgun's term as "station ambassador" will last before you come up to him after some promotional appearance and tell him he just did his last one. I have even started to wonder if Jim Carson is as safe as I thought.
Michael, I think you were wrong in quoting the late Philip Yarborough. The beat no longer goes on at 101.1 FM. CBS has broken all the drums in the drumset.
It happens. KHJ took Charlie off the air a day early in 1972. He was being replaced in mornings by Robert W. Morgan, who was returning from Chicago. Charlie's last shift was supposed to be Saturday morning. On Friday, there was a story in the L.A. Times, and he thought he should at least confirm it. He also wanted to thank his (and Robert W.'s) engineer, Walt "Failsafe" Radke, who would be off on Saturday. Tape exists. Tuna was pure class, they were brief mentions, nothing negative and he did his usual excellent show, but just mentioning it was too much for KHJ, which let him go as soon as he was off the air and Charlie's fans who tuned in Saturday morning for his last show heard Bill Wade instead.
I've been blessed that in 44 years at eight radio stations and five TV stations, I've been allowed to say goodbye on-air at all but two. It's not common.
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A classic example of that is KMPC, in 1992, when they switched from music to sports. They did a two-day farewell celebration, bringing back every surviving jock for a shift (Gary Owens was on both days). I say every surviving jock....that's actually except two. Dick Whittinghill refused, still bitter over having been pushed out for Robert W. Morgan 13 years before. And Morgan himself, who was going to do mornings on the new format, went fishing that weekend. A couple of the older guys got a bit maudlin, but overall it was very upbeat and Geoff Edwards was devastatingly funny...though from a management perspective, his irreverence may have crossed the line.
We'll see if they have, K.M. I honestly don't know how much of KRTH's rating success can be tied to the air talent. I'd like to think it's a lot, but, like KHJ, the formatics are so strong, if you as a jock aren't downright awful, it still sounds like KRTH. The station has attracted a lot of new, younger adult listeners who may have little to no attachment to or appreciation of Christina, Shotgun and Charlie.
Barry Kaye wasn't The Real Don Steele, but KHJ's numbers in the afternoon actually went up for the nine months after Barry took his shift in 1973-74. We'll see what the July, 2016 PPM looks like.
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