MORE KJLL TURMOIL: SCOTT ESCORTED FROM BUILDING; ENGINEER FIRED
The drama at KJLL AM 1330 continued last week as company management pulled the plug on The John C. Scott Show and fired chief engineer Randy Howard.
It is the latest upheaval brought on by new vice president Dawn Avalon, who has overseen the dismissal of four long-time employees and Scott, who was stripped of his general-manager title once Avalon took over in mid-February. Scott's show was off the air for two weeks, but returned in a brokered (paid-time) capacity on May 16—until he and his staff were escorted from the property last Thursday, June 16.
"We had a verbal agreement, which my attorney says is as binding as anything else," Scott said. "That's why they put me back on the air. I went and sold about a dozen accounts, and I can't fulfill my contract with these clients, so I'm obviously damaged."
As of Monday, June 20, Scott was raising the prospect of legal action against Hudson Communications, which owns KJLL. This comes on the heels of a lawsuit filed by former business manager Nicole Cox. And that might not be the end of Hudson's legal concerns: Howard says he is owed $19,000 in radio-station expenses dating back to the Jolt's money woes under previous general managers before Scott took the reins in 2009.
KJLL did not broadcast on Friday and Saturday, but did return to the air Sunday. The reason may have been Scott's voice, and an inability to operate computer equipment.
"After they threw me out, I left a message and told them they have to take my voice off the air, and every time it plays, I'm going to charge you $100, because you can't keep hearing my voice and not pay me," said Scott. "I was on four commercials. They could have cleared that in 30 minutes."
Except that Howard maintained the logs.
"I could have had his voice out of the system for the day in 10 minutes, and out permanently in another 30," said Howard, the man who turned on the Jolt when it debuted in the late-'90s. "Instead, they shut the station down, and two people who don't know how to do logs anyway spent seven hours going through all the stuff that was in all the libraries, to search for all the John C. Scott voice stuff."
Howard was the last of the long-time employees who had weathered the Jolt's past woes.
"We did nothing but try to keep the station afloat, and we were actually managing to do that," Howard said. "Then all of a sudden, the dragon lady took it all down."
Attempts to reach Avalon for comment were unsuccessful.
