Belo Reviews

Pros

Lots of very friendly people willing to show you the ropes and teach the nuts and bolts or marketing, the online sales side in particular. Fairly progressive and accommodating as a department,

Cons

The TV side of sales is fraught with politics and very grinding busy work. The structure is very conservative and it is almost impossible to advance if you do not want to cold call your life away.

Advice to Senior Management

Make a bigger effort to develop your employees and make an investment in them to grow in the company and increase the retention rate.

Pros

PTO program allows for adequate time off. Producers are paid time and a half for overtime.

Cons

very little room for development. Does not make diversity a priority in hiring... especially on the management level.

Advice to Senior Management

Allow for more development programs and mentoring across affiliates. Consider that every person good in one field... may not make a great manager

Pros

Great training; legacy broadcast station in Seattle. Recognizable brand, and talented news staffl

Cons

Micromanagement; compensation plan, high turnover.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide better people-skills training or get rid of ineffective managers more quickly.

Pros

Sales training is the best in the market. Product is amazing and easy to sell. Compensation packages are very fair.

Cons

Very insulated environment, little to no interaction outside of ones department, no encouragement to network with ones peers. Positive feedback is consciously withheld.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue with your amazing training programs. But migrate from less of a factory and manufactured sales person. Allow for more flexibility for training sales skill, instead of applying a sales mold that ae's are expected to fit into

Pros

You have the ability to move throughout the US
Good benefits, health, dental, vision, vacation

Cons

Management is clueless about cablilties of station
Will cutback on anything to save a buck
no direction from higher ups
Sadly with the economy and declination of the need of local media, management has become more about quantity than quality.
no suggestions or negative situations allowed.
Management refuses to replace malfunctioning equipment.
ZERO communication from top down

Advice to Senior Management

You get what you pay for. If you try to cut costs on important items, it eventually comes back to bite you in the butt.
Listen to those that use the equipment daily to know what does and doesnt work.
COMMUNICATE

Pros

Recognizeable name in the industry, pretty good product, good co-workers, team atmosphere

Cons

very long hours, tough market conditions, poorly managed from the top down

Advice to Senior Management

Be less conservative, don't mandate the sale of products that are not permanent

Pros

Good employees, free parking, 50% off bus passes, always an entertaining place to be. That's about all I can think of right now

Cons

Bad pay, little respect for the plebes, benefits are barely adequate, no loyalty to long-time employees. Blah Blah Blah.

Advice to Senior Management

Please consider losing the old school management structure. There are too many managers and too many layers of management to get things done quickly. Your products are outdated.

Pros

Wonderful co-workers, work that is generally easy if you know what you're doing, as well as know what to expect from those that don't.

Cons

Especially since the economic downturn, management has made decisions that haven't panned out, or at the very least demoralized employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Consider how your positions regarding part time and full time employees and the benefits offered to them are affecting your bottom line and the morale of your employees.

Pros

Prior to the current downturn in the media advertising markets, Belo Corp. treated its corporate employees very well. Work was not particularly demanding and was mostly focused on ensuring that periodic reporting was completed on time. Management was very supportive of maintaining a good work-life balance, with there seldom being any difficulty in scheduling vacations or personal time. Compensation was well above market for similar positions.

The company is very proud of its place in the community as a journalistic entity. It commited significant resources to being first adopters of broadcast technology.

The reader is cautioned that these impressions were formed prior to the current downturn in television advertising markets and prior to the spin-off of the company's newspaper properties into A. H. Belo Corporation.

Cons

Being a small company that existed to consolidate financial results from geographically diverse media holdings, the corporate structure was very compact. Movement between corporate and the operating units, or between operating units, is rare. There are no clear advancement paths within the company, and opportunities to move up in one's field are highly dependent on others vacating their positions through attrition. Many employees were effectively promoted in place, or given title promotions and increased pay without receiving any additional responsibilities. The company was slow to dismiss non-performing employees.

The company was very lax in developing and enforcing policies related to performance reviews and promotion. In four years with the company I was given only one cursory performance review, that coming after my first six months.

The company developed, and then later dropped, MBA recruitment, emerging talent and executive development programs. No follow-on programs were adopted to replace those efforts.

The company was not focused on innovation or growth, but rather on maintaining the operations of its media properties. The company's stated strategic goals were extremely wishy-washy to the point of meaning everything and nothing at the same time. Nobody in management appeared to be capable of the type of vision necessary to address the declining consumption of network television news and programming.

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to develop an actionable strategic vision, communicate it and hold employees accountable to it. Bonus policy should be decoupled from simple revenue or net income achievement and be made dependent, in some part, on achieving operational improvements or developing new businesses. More and concerted effort should be placed on identifying growth areas for the company.

The company needs to develop advancement paths for employees to give them exposure to more aspects of the business, including assignments in different areas of operations and corporate. Compensation should be more closely tied to performance and achievement of discernable goals and be less dependent on managers' whims.

Pros

top stations in top markets, decent to good feel for news...but giving in to consultant speak and just following the flock

Cons

too often takes their eye off the ball, as easily distracted as kid with adhd...see 'cue cat'
doing too much to change already successful stations and bringing them down...hard in some cases
mindlessly following the pack i.e., big push toward internet sites for stations---fine, yes...but only doing it because its the future for television and gutting the money maker -- tv -- for an empty half-hearted and weak product, the station web sites are generic, with little meaningful content...just there because everyone has to have web sites now in business

Advice to Senior Management

get out of the way, stop overmanaging and let the workers do their thing
if you're going to pump and try to drive the web sites...then put some investment -- $$$ -- into it and stop cutting from the tv in such weak manners