One of the most difficult jobs in business is handling top talent. Managers must constantly decide how to deal with the many issues that surround those superstars who make your business special — and never fail to mention it.
You know the type. You want to hug them, but don’t because it might lead to strangulation. You want to give them a square kick in the pants even as you hand over that much deserved five-figure bonus check.
But you don’t know the type as well as L. Kevin Metheny, director of programming operations in Cleveland for Jacor Communications Inc. Metheny, who came to Cleveland last year from Jacor’s Jacksonville properties, manages Cleveland radio’s most notorious talent — among them, WMJI’s John Lanigan and WTAM’s Mike Trivisonno.
And his job has only gotten easier. One of Metheny’s first management assignments was handling the mother of all prima donnas, shock jock Howard Stern.
While Metheny insists that Stern has always exaggerated the friction that existed between them, Metheny came to be known on Stern’s show as “Pig Virus” (changed to “Pig Vomit” in Stern’s best-selling book Private Parts and the movie that followed).
Metheny laughed about it not long ago, when SBN met with him to discuss the challenges of working with people who, as Metheny puts it, “have the goods.”
Q: First off, does every prima donna need to be treated like a superstar?
A: There are the ones who are the genuine articles, like Lanigan and [Jimmy] Malone, like Trivisonno, like Howard Stern, like Don Imus … and then there are the wannabes. Fortunately, natural selection takes care of the difference between the wannabes and the genuine articles. The genuine article will have a vision, a commitment and a personal belief in what it is that they do. Typically, the genuine article is open to rational discussion about the program and what works and what might not work and what might work better.
Q: How do you sit down and talk with them about it?
A: It could be an intellectual thing. Some of the most high-bandwidth conversations I have ever had about a radio program I’ve had with Mike Trivisonno, which might surprise some people. He knows exactly why he is doing everything he is doing to an extraordinarily small incremental measurement. He knows why he uses every word that he uses.
I worked some years ago with Howard Stern and he was far less inclined to break it down to minute details. It was just a “This is what I do. This is what works. I can’t do it any other way. I have to do it the way that I do it.”
Q: So where do you find the common ground to bring the conversations to a constructive level?
A: It can be a struggle. Part of this role is being a link between the art process and the commerce process. I kind of break it out into the “evangelism” part of the job — the “keep the world a safe place for art to happen” part of the job and the “make sure that we are leveraging all the knowledge that we’ve identified in the world about how these things work” part of the job.
Q: How do you balance the commercial side with keeping the talent happy?
A: Three times a year, you have to keep the general manager and the general sales manager at bay and say, “I appreciate that what we have done has caused you some difficulties, but this is what we do.” And [another] three times a year, you have to explain to this talent or that talent that probably given the impact of this thing as measured against the upside, we probably could have done well enough without it.
But you know what? If you only have a half-dozen of those big train wrecks during the course of a year, it’s not bad.
I am fortunate to work in a company culture that understands that it is performers who bring ears in front of the speakers. And it is the ears that we manage to rent for a while that make the advertising part of the equation work.
Q: There’s probably a constant danger in your job of leaning too far to one side or the other. Have you ever found yourself off balance and in trouble?
A: [When working with Howard Stern], I was trying to keep the world a safe place for him to do his thing. However, we had an extraordinarily elaborate structure at NBC Standards and Practices, and we had the guarantees he’d given to RCA before he became our employee about how he would conduct himself.
He had a vision. His vision didn’t necessarily include conducting himself in the manner he assured us he would. And he was confident that once he got on the air, he would do what he needed to do — be successful — and we would get OK with it. He did go on the air and he was successful.
I had a breakthrough learning experience in that process. I was OK with it. NBC was not. And I left and went to the cable business, and NBC eventually let him go. And you know what? NBC was the wrong company for Howard at that time. He needed to work for somebody who would let him do his thing.
Q: What did you learn from Howard Stern that you’ve been able to apply at Jacor?
A: That there is no upside, whatsoever, in undermining a performer’s ability to do what the performer does. If you’re going to buy the act, buy into the act. And it’s different developing your own. This radio station employed Mike Trivisonno before he was as popular as he is now. The radio station has been good to Mike. It has helped him grow into the dominant factor he is. And Mike’s been very good for the radio station.
WTAM has done an extraordinary and somewhat unprecedented turnaround in the era we’re in. I can point to the extreme popularity of the Indians, the news operation, Rush Limbaugh. But Mike Trivisonno is the man when it comes to the rebuilding of this radio station. I know he gets that. I know he gets that we get that … and that’s important.
Q: So how does that affect contract negotiations, when he’s got all the leverage?
A: Hopefully, we’ve created an environment where he doesn’t want to work anywhere else, and we don’t want anybody else to do afternoons.
This is not to say that you can’t find Mike Trivisonno … and Kevin Metheny in each other’s faces in that conference room about something we’ve done or we’re gonna do. But that’s not a harsh conversation. That’s just a bunch of spirited, committed craftspeople trying to make sure we get all the blood out of the turnip.
In the part of the business I’m in, it’s kind of like Mike Hargrove. He doesn’t negotiate player deals. John Hart does. And I have a limited role in the opportunity to walk away from those negotiations if a hard line needs to be taken. That will be taken by a general manager.
Q: So as the manager of talent rather than payroll, how important is it that you buy into the performer’s act?
A: My roles are to be an advocate for the talent as well as for the listeners. And we get paid on profitability, so we’re not stupid. I think that matrix makes it a lot easier for us to sift out the small-minded inconsequential mid-course corrections that a lot of talent might be subjected to at a lot of places. Instead, let’s deal with the factors that have traction — what issues are really driving our success or undermining our success.
I think that these roles work better when you have genuine empathy for the performers and they have a certain level of genuine empathy for you. … I mean, there’s no doubt that I am a pain in Mike Trivisonno’s butt. There’s no doubt that Denny Sanders is a pain in John Lanigan’s butt. But I believe, and I hope, that they understand that we are here to support their success.
One of the personal rewards is that I get to work with — and have genuine relationships with, peopl
e of whom I am a fan.
Q: You mentioned wannabes earlier. How do you sift them out?
A: You’re looking for the ones with the goods all the time, because there aren’t enough. We want to find them and we want to find places for them and we want to support them.
But it is difficult to find enough room for them in this era. Do we find a kid who sounds pretty good doing a talk show in Lorain and put him on the air from noon to 3, or do we go with Rush Limbaugh?
If you run live commercials in a guy’s show and the cash register rings, whether the ratings are big or the ratings are small, there’s something there. Mike Trivisonno sold a lot of cars for Mentor Mitsubishi before he had the kind of ratings he has now. That gentleman there got it. He may well have known more about the future of our business than the broadcasters in charge may have known. He saw Mike move the meter on sales.
The new world order is going to present some challenges for talent development because the farm system is not as prolific as it was. It [isn’t] churning off lots of Rush Limbaughs and Don Imuses and Mike Trivisonnos and Rick Dees.
Hopefully, we have some intellectual and intuitive capabilities that we’ve developed over the years that help us identify who really is the goods. … If you hear it and you feel it, you try to support them. You can only cover for so long if the results don’t manifest themselves. Clearly, persistence is significant, but talent will beat out everything.
How to reach: Jacor Communications Inc. (216) 696-4444