Sherry your summation is excellent.   I do feel it is missing "a mic drop", other than that you have hit the mark.

He should not have locked his poodle in his car

John Oakley would never own a poodle, let alone lock it in his car at this time of year

I"m glad you had the chance to pore over their financial statements.

Exactly.

Local is almost always a good ratings driver, but that doesn't guarantee it will even cover its costs. If that's the case, "best available" is obvious. 
 

sherry wrote:

Steve, If you want to take credit for CFRB’s success how about the fact that you helped mentor a young intern at CFRB many, many years ago.  Mike Bendixen later went on to learn the craft of talk radio at the most dominant talk station in the country, CJAD Montreal. 

And what did Mike do when he was wooed back to Toronto to programme CFRB, at the suggestion of Astral leadership?  Well, he hired Jerry Agar, who didn’t miss a beat, or a share point, replacing Bill Carroll, Mike convinced John Tory to do radio, he replaced the mayor with Ryan Doyle and a variety of hosts, and he hired Barb Digulio.  And of course before he even stepped into the market he had suggested John move to mornings!

Along the way he also cajoled all the top on air talent to do even more to help build weekends and then late night. Knowing the station had to be good 7 days a week.  

I am not suggesting the station is perfect, but it is light years from the product that was on air under Steve in 2009, and it needed to be.  PPM demanded more. .

You gotta love this radio forum, you never know who is reading and who may respond. Nice to hear from Sherry after all these years.

So lets play she says/he says:

First of all, it is true I mentored Mike Bendixen who was an intern. He was brought into the morning show by Ted Woloshyn. I hired him as the morning show producer but the mentorship continued until the day I left. Mike understood radio - especially news and talk radio. He was a quick learner and had great ideas. 

Mike was in my inner circle along with Ryan Doyle and one of the most talented technical producers at CFRB - Robert Turner - who I put in as host of the Early Edition, technical producer of the morning show and the chief op which put him in charge of all the operators. (I've been gone, what five or six years and Robert is still host of the Early Edition and the technical producer of the morning show).

Ryan Doyle was another one of those young talented producers I mentored and promoted him to the executive producer position of Canada's largest newstalk radio station. I put Ryan Doyle on the air - at times I had to battle with senior management (before Astral) to keep him on the air because they didn't like him on the radio.When Astral took over there was no longer any pushback to have Ryan on the air.

Let's go back to Bendixen for a moment.Ted Woloshyn suggested to Gary Slaight that Mike would be a good candidate as PD at CJAD in Montreal. When asked, I agreed. I also thought Ryan Doyle would have been a good candidate, but Ryan was more interested in chasing his dream to be on air so we concentrated on Mike to become the next CJAD PD. While Mike and I talked about the PD position, I purposely stayed at arms length on prepping him for the job. When he was asked to do a monitor of CJAD so they can see what his thoughts were, I refused to read his monitor before he submitted it, because I didn't want anyone to suggest it wasn't his own findings. 

Mike got the job on his own. All I did was involve him in all the major programming and news decisions during my time as PD at CFRB as his mentor. He used all that he learned at CFRB (from not just me, but from other staff members and the type of talk shows and breaking news coverage he helped produce) and applied it to his CJAD monitor and later as PD in Montreal.

By the way, I read his monitor AFTER he got the job and he was bang on with his findings.

And for the record, I want to state three things. 

First, managers were asked to state who should replace them if we were ever hit by a truck. Mike Bendixen was always (in my mind) the person on my list to take over from me if ever I left (on my own or pushed). 

Second, it was under Sherry's watch that CFRB started dropping live programming on weekends and during the week after 9pm or 10pm for cost savings. It was only after she left did evenings and weekends regain their importance.

Third, check the archives of this board and you will notice that I have never said anything negative about Mike Bendixen and the work he has done at CJAD and later at CFRB. In fact, I don't think I have said anything negative publicly about CFRB since I left. Who would be interested ... If I said anything negative it would be seen as sour grapes. I don't live in a world of sour grapes.

I'm breaking my rule now to respond to Sherry's post to set the record straight. 

That said, since it has been suggested by Sherry that Mike convinced John Tory to host a show at CFRB.  I'm sure if anyone asks John Tory he will be the first to say that I was the one who reached out to him to host a show on CFRB.

I texted John moments after he lost the by election to offer him a show on CFRB. 

In fact, his very first show on CFRB occurred while Mike was in Montreal. It was the day a tornado touched down in north end Toronto. When I put someone new on the air, I always was in master control to help produce their show and lend support. John did a terrific job with the tornado coverage and that show ended up winning an award for breaking news coverage. 

John Tory did some weekend shows and fill in shows to get him up to speed before I suggested he do afternoon drive to replace John Moore who I wanted to do mornings with Bill Carroll moving down to 9am to host a local talk show on CFRB and a syndicated talk show on Astral talk stations in Ontario during the noon hour.

It was my idea (gee I feel like a spoiled child looking for attention to have to write this sentence in response to Sherry's recollection of what happened) to move John Moore to mornings before Sherry was even hired.,  Senior management at Astral including Ross Davies was looking to redo the programming structure. They wanted John Oakley to do mornings. When I was asked my opinion I suggested that we move John Moore to mornings and hire Oakley away to do afternoons. Well nothing came of that, Pat retired, Ross was no longer with the company and Sherry took over.

But programming was in need of a change because PPMs were coming in and the station needed a boost. So I reintroduced my ideas to management to move John Moore to mornings. Sherry didn't like the idea because she liked listening to John on her drive home. I suggested she could listen to John on her drive to work in the morning.

Sherry didn't like The Motts and thought their time had come to an end at CFRB. I disagreed but lost that battle. So I suggested we move Jim Richards to afternoons, put John Tory in afternoon drive and Ryan Doyle in early evenings. 

To my surprise, management agreed to the new lineup that began with Bill Carroll moving back to hosting a talk show at 9am. (for the record, Bill and I discussed this first when he came to me and suggested that he would entertain the idea of moving out of mornings to host a show that could be syndicated. When I was able to make that arrangement, I put all the pieces together and presented it to management).

While all of this was going down, I began getting the feeling my time at CFRB was coming to an end. This was confirmed to me at a weekly manager's meeting where I was asked to unveil all the programming changes. They were received with enthusiasm but when the sales manager suggested I tell the sales reps at their weekly sales meeting, that idea was shot down by the operations manager who said he would tell the reps.

I wasn't going to be around for that sales meeting in a week's time. A new round of firings were planned for the following week and that just confirmed to me my name was also on the hit list.

Later, Mike Bendixen reacting to my taking credit for the new CFRB lineup (minus Jerry Agar) told me all my memos about the programming changes were sent to him at CJAD for his "approval". So I guess technically, Mike is the one responsible for the programming changes because he approved my ideas. Whatever!

Who put who where or who came up with the idea first, well I'll let the readers of this post come to their own conclusions. 

Like I said at the beginning of this post, this is a she says/he says kind of story.

I'm proud of the work I did at CFRB. Did I make mistakes. Of course I did. Was it time to go. Yes. I probably stayed two years longer than I should have. But in my mind, Mike was had just started at CJAD and was not ready to take over CFRB.

And one more Mike Bendixen story. The night I was fired they offered the PD job at CJAD to me. I initially refused it because I didn't want Mike to lose his job so that I could continue to be a PD in Montreal. However, it became very clear when I turned it down that Mike wouldn't be losing his job because he was replacing me at CFRB.

With management's permission, I called Mike that night and we had a very emotional conversation. Mike felt bad about my firing. I told Mike he was always my first choice to replace me and that it was to happen in one of three ways. I died, I quit or I got fired. Either way I told mike that night he was the right person for the job. All these years later I still believe Mike is the right person to be the PD at CFRB and he makes me proud of the work he is doing.

Enough said!