The Coup (or how to kill off three managers)

A long time ago I mentioned in passing a "Coup" that took place at WENY Inc. and promised to expand on it. This chapter explores the seamier side of broadcasting and broadcast corporations, believe me the "Green Group" was not the exception.

A bit of history, WENY AM TV, WLEZ FM were owned by "The Green Group" of Atlantic city, N.J. Partners were Howard Green, Donald Simmons, and John Steahers, by the time I got to WENY, Howard and Don were the only stockholders left as Mr. Seathers had either passed away or retired and sold his interest to the other two. We seldom saw Don Simmons, who was really a quite nice person, as he owned Sayre Lingere that made undergarments for some of the top names like Fruit of the Loom. Howard ruled from Atlantic City and the go between when I was hired was Mike Steele. As I said in an earlier post I had and still do have a great admiration for Mike as a manager. Mike, like a lot of the golden age of radio people came up through the ranks, the difference is that Mike NEVER forgot were he came from and treated his employees fairly.
Ok, the ground work is laid, I had taken over WLEZ in 1982 on the retirement of Ted Hodge. The station was failing, but with lots of hard work by my staff and looking ahead to the coming domination of FM, we turned it around. When Mike left and Howard hired Pat Parish it was the beginning of the end for me. To be sure, I had a great contract deal, a percentage of the annual increase, a car, gasoline and other trades that I am sure was far better deal than Pat had.

Each Department Manager had a somewhat limited scope of authority, to a certain extent I was used to pretty much running my own show and reporting to the owner directly as in the case of working for Dave Castlebury at WMPT and WKAD. Working with Mike was not always easy, BUT I could talk to him and he would listen to a reasonable argument. If you could prove to Mike, it would make the station sound better, run more efficiently, or save money and time, he would give you the go ahead. Pat Parish would not listen to anything, nor would he give you a decision. Instead he would let things hang for weeks on end, that forced me several times to go around him or just go ahead and do what needed to be done and let the crap fly, that more than anything was probably my undoing as I ran WLEZ like it was MINE!

Pat violated my contract on several occasions one in particular was when the local Avis Franchise was sold and the new owners did not want to continue with the barter deal for my car. My contract specifically said the station would furnish a vehicle, so I started to drive one of the company cars. Pat and I had a rather loud and ugly argument one day about that with him stomping off and finding out I was right.

Each Manager was meeting with the same frustration as I was. Things went from worse to critical after Pat convinced Howard to buy a "loser" AM FM combo in Rome, N.Y. Pat was spending all his time up there causing the hand picked Rome Manager to quit in frustration. Meanwhile Elmira was suffering and no one could do anything. Finally Don, Lew and myself got together and called Howard and said we needed to talk. We met Howard and laid out our complaints and frustrations and walked out of the meeting feeling that maybe Pat would be gone. Howard gave each of us area's of total responsibility, I had buildings and grounds, Don had the vehicle fleet, and Lew had equipment. We set about getting things done! BUT, IN TYPICAL Pat fashion he out and out lied about each of us to Howard and eventually each one of us were told that we were not allowed to do anything without approval from Pat. I have to wonder IF that really was the case as we never were told that by Howard. Anyway, withing 6 months following the Coup we were all gone. Lew retired bringing on Meade Murtland who had been at the station a long time and Don went to running his own advertising agency and selling cars and yours truly dismissed on a Friday Morning as Pat's clone Art Kendall the manager of WENY AM took over both departments.

In the over 4 decades I spent active in broadcasting I have worked for a variety of bosses some good, but some were VERY BAD, like Pat Parish.