One of the first thing you will notice when EMMIS takes control of a station.

Translation-Work makes one free

After the radio company buys your station you will get a visit from Jeff

and a few of his long time employee's.( a vary few) This meeting will be held in one of your studios and Jeff will tell you how its the people that make the company, what he will not say is that the new people are not part of this equation. The HR person will be dragged out to show off a diamond watch she got after Ten years of service, you will never get one of these - you severance check was cut when they bought the station. Next Jeff will tell you how there will be no changes to staff for now, what he means is that the changes will start as soon as he leaves.They will give you a share of Emmis stock in a nice tube with your name on it, keep it until you die, they will send you all the cooperate quarterly reports for the rest of you life. Do not buy any stock as part of the employee stock purchase program, every one who has lost money and they do not pay any dividends on the stock. The HR person will tell you of all the company holidays, what they will not say is these are for all employee's NOT covered by a contract, if you have a contract,PSC or UNION you will only get what is in that contract. The next thing they will tell you about is the good medical coverage, they will not tell you they have been cutting this coverage and raising your co-pay since they bought into TV. Then you will hear about the 401K but when then tell you they match in EMMIS stock listen up-you just got screwed.

The General Manager will be the first to be cut and then your Bean counter.It will stabilize for a time and then you will lose a few employees from each department. The real warning sign is when you lose your Chief Engineer , they will be bringing in one of there own to install automation and fire a majority of the staff. Those who should start looking for new jobs when they (EMMIS) takes over are ,Operating engineers, Maintenance engineers, studio crew personal and a large part of news (if you have news). They will bring in a bunch of new toys ( hardware ) but do not let this fool you ,they need them to make the cuts. The first thing will be a large bunch of PC's for getting every one on line with e-mail , this is the first step to monitor you and get automation in place. Few will know that the long distance will be routed through the T1 to cooperate HQ so big brother can monitor your phone calls, big brother also monitor all your email. You can piss them off by installing PGP email encryption on you PC so they can not look at your mail.

You my think you have plenty of seniority and nothing to fear but even if you are under contract that has a seniority clause they will ignore it when it comes time for cuts. If you wish to stay with these folks (I would not advise this) suck up to the new bosses, go drinking with them and go to all the parties they through, you qualifications ,experience and seniority will have no barring on who goes first , the drinking buddies of the management team will stay the longest.

Drink,party and stay employed !! For a little longer.

The company will put a $1,500 Gateway PC on you desk to "help you" do your job better. They will be watching you wile building a wide area network to be used to replace you. The ultimate goal is to rid Emmis of those "paid" employee's in fovor of automation.

There are three ways you will leave EMMIS.

1: Your replaced by automation and escorted out.

2: You find a position with a real company and leave them.

3: They burn you out and then replace you.

Choice 1&3 are up to them, #2 is for you to use before they use 1&3.

For up to date info on the evil empire goto www.emmissucks.com