Take Some Time Off
Unpaid, voluntary “furloughs” for LIN TV (KXAN and KNVA TV) Austin/Central Texas employees were announced Wednesday (May 27, 2009) in email from the LIN Corporate office in Providence, Rhode Island. Locally, Eric Lassberg broke the bad news in the routine quarterly staff meeting today before the emails hit the inboxes.
Earlier this month in a post entitled “Cuts at KXAN” NewsMcNabb quoted ominous predictions included in the LIN TV annual report. ““Given the state of the economy and the level of uncertainty in predicting advertising revenue, the Company has defined a series of further cost reduction actions that the Company could potentially enact and largely realize during the remainder of 2009,” according to Vincent L. Sadusky, LIN TV chief operating officer.
The first evidence of these cost reductions is apparently the voluntary furloughs. “It’s typical stuff in tough times,” said Eric Lassberg, KXAN president and general manager. The voluntary unpaid furloughs will be subject to specific criteria and applicable to all departments, according to Lassberg. “They are open to any employee,” Lassberg said.
The announcement of the furloughs was sent via email to all LIN TV employees nationwide. LIN TV owns and operates or programs 27 full power television stations in 17 mid-sized markets. Austin is the nation’s 49th market.
© Jim McNabb, 2009
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3 comments:
Funny that they want their employees to go unpaid close to the same time they roll out an iphone ap. My station is looking at doing the same thing and we've been told it'll cost us $12k.
just glad we're no longer there...as well as many of those we worked with. My heart goes out to those still there.
Gray
Happy Birthday Jim!
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