Calling Out the Boss...
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Marc Jaromin
On Monday, FTVLive showed you parts on a scathing memo that new WKBW General Manager Marc Jaromin sent to the staff at the Scripps station and he did not pull any punches about the on-air product.
Jaromin went off after the Buffalo Bills played in primetime on WKBW and there were a number of technical errors and he thought poorly produced shows in and around the game.
In his memo he wrote:
“No polite way to say it, this past weekend WKBW, as a whole, did not deliver to even minimum professional expectations for our viewers, advertisers, and communities,” wrote Jaromin in part to the WKBW “team.” “We experienced significant issues, across multiple days, with marque content, basic delivery and viewer engagement. We need to, and will be, better than this past weekend.”
“Lowlights from this past weekend include Saturday, during the biggest Buffalo Bills broadcast of the year, we experienced lip-sync issues, as well as our local pre- and postgame editorial and production levels were well below NFL market expectations. Last night in prime, our audio was down for almost an hour and our viewer engagement was nonexistent.“
While he made some good points, a number of people emailed FTVLive and had a few questions of the new GM themselves.
One of those is a top market news executive that wrote this:
I read with interest the post on WKBW’s GM sending his blistering, some would say nasty, note to the staff about the station performance on a big weekend. I’d be curious to know several things:
-How involved was GM Marc Jaromin in the planning, testing and execution of the product such a big weekend?
-Did Marc call meetings ahead of time with all the key departments? -Did Marc insist all technical equipment, especially audio, was tested, retested and ready for “Primetime”
-Did Marc weigh in ahead of time on the rundowns for the local programming he calls, “below NFL Market standards”
-Was Marc at the station for this huge opportunity, leading the troops? -What exactly did Marc do when technical and production issues were occurring?
-Did Marc have all his best people scheduled for Saturday, insisting that the key department heads in engineering, news and creative services were on site?
-Did Marc arrange for food, water and other comforts for all the staffers who were in on an extra day?
If Marc Jaromin did all that as the General Manager, he has the right to be disappointed and write such a scathing note. If he didn’t, he has a lot to learn about being an effective GM and leading a station during a key moment.
Often times GM’s are great at playing Monday morning quarterback when they never played in the game.
