Article as it appeared in the now defunct Free Times.
Published August 9 - 15, 2000

Music News

CONTRACT DISPUTE SILENCES AN OVERNIGHT VOICE by Franklin Soults

If Cleveland has any claim to being a rock and roll capital, it's not any homegrown band that put the city on the musical map but the area's homegrown radio disc jockeys, from Alan Freed to Kid Leo. No one knows it better than Joe Kleon.

"Rock radio when I was a kid totally changed my life," says the former WNCX overnight DJ. "If you look at my website there's some pictures of me seven, eight, nine years old, playing radio. I've just always wanted to do that for a living, and always wanted to be on the air in my hometown. There's nothing better for me than to have people call me up and tell me I turned them on to an album or song. But maybe that's the wrong reason to be into it these days. I don't know."

In 1997, this 15-year veteran of radio stations in Vermont, Georgia and Cleveland landed a part-time slot filling in for overnight DJs at WNCX, a classic rock station at 98.5 FM. Last August, he was finally promoted to a full-time overnight slot, from 12-6 am, earning the same rate he had made as a part-timer. "After I'd been there a little less than a year, I was bumped up to 10 dollars an hour," he says. "And that's pretty much where I've stayed ever since."

Working a full shift at that rate, Kleon was earning approximately $19,000 a year at this major local radio station in this "major market" metropolis. Recently, the station approached him to sign a five-year contract that, according to Kleon, would have cemented his salary at that rate, with minor yearly increases that would amount to no more than $18 a week per year. Kleon reports that the contract also contained language which denied him the right to take any second job to augment his earnings, to promote his own website, or even to take any better job offer while the contract remained in effect.

"Everyone says, "Well, if you got a better job and just left, they really couldn't do anything about it." But if you read the contract, it'd be breach of contract. I could be sued like anybody else. Tthey might not actually decide to follow through with it, but I wasn't going to put my name on a piece of paper for five years with that in the contract. The legal advice that I took, the couple of lawyers that I showed this contract to, told me absolutely not to sign it. [Even so], if they had bumped me up a few more thousand dollars I might have agreed to those terms."

Kleon's counterpart in the bargaining was WNCX general manager Walt Tiburski, who returned a phone call with a fax that made "no comment" on the disagreement since "the station considers employment terms to be a confidential matter between the station and the employee." According to Kleon, however, it appeared that Tiburski was taking instructions from higher up. "I think he was also handed down the orders from corporate. I don't know who made the decision. They can give away $15,000 for the millionth song, but he made it seem like coming up with an extra thousand was just impossible. The budget couldn't handle it."

WNCX is currently one of four area stations owned by Infinity Broadcasting, which in turn is one of the nation's three largest radio franchises, owning a total of 160 stations in the U.S. and Great Britain. On August 3, Infinity reported record financial results for the second quarter of this year, including increases of net revenues by 63 percent, operating cash flow by 73 percent and net free cash flow by 59 percent. An employee of Infinity Broadcasting in New York, who declined to be publicly named or directly quoted, said that the company does not hire any radio DJs itself, and that each station's employees were directly employed by the affiliates. According to Kleon, however, his contract clearly stated it was an agreement with Infinity. If the document is standard, it might help explain those massive earnings increases.

"A lot of stations have computers running overnight or syndicated programs, but I was there, I was putting people on the air, I was talking to people, I was playing the music they wanted to hear. I would hope that's the reason for the increase in the ratings [from a 2.9 to a whopping 10.7 over the past year]. I was there to celebrate music with them. But the one thing I had to my advantage they said didn't matter. I was told overnight ratings donŐt count. ... Yeah, overnight ratings don't count."

For the first time in our discussion, Kleon laughs.

Contact Joe Kleon at joekleon@yahoo.com or his website, http://www.joekleon.com

 © 1986-2002 Joe Kleon/Metalmorphosis Productions
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