Regarding the retroactive raise for Radio One’s CEO

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It is indeed a cancer that permeates ALL of corporate America, but I’ll stick with just the business that I know and love…radio broadcasting.


How can a CEO, under whose stewardship the company stock has plummeted in value by over 80% be considered UNDERPAID? If I was employed as…oh, I dunno…a Radio One GM, and I managed to show an 80% decline in my station revenue would I get a raise and bonus too? Somehow, I don’t think so.

I don’t think there’s a radio executive in the entire country that deserves a raise…not one cent. Most should have their salaries slashed, return their bonuses and be forced to hand over the keys to the corporate jet.
And yet somehow, from John Hogan to Alfred Liggins, UNDER-performing executives manage to get themselves OVER-paid. This in spite of budget cuts, precipitous declines in stock values and layoffs.

We have been sold a bill of goods…that these men are living the dream. That they are just success stories who through hard work and the All-American system of capitalism have managed to better themselves.

But the fact is that the path to their success more closely resembles that of the robber barons of old who allowed their people to starve and exist in squalor while they lived their opulent lifestyles.

So to Al and John and all the rest of the greedy bastards that have managed to steer the radio bus to the edge of the precipice, here is an addendum to your contracts;

1) If your company’s stock declines in value, so does your salary.

2) Any and all budget cuts are across the board…this means for you and the rest of your executive cronies.

3) If even one single person has to laid off, downsized, consolidated or in any other way put in the unemployment line for the purpose of "meeting the budget" or "improving the bottom line" you get no bonus. None. Zero, zip, nada, nothing.

I challenge every radio executive to hold themselves to these standards of performance based pay…the same standards that are enforced on those in the trenches. If they had to live by their own rules, we’d see a new golden age of radio.

J. "Harley" Pummill

Owner-Voicebox Productions