The Future Of: Send This to Wilpon

Before I was a Mets blogger, I spent 30+ years in broadcast management. I was President of Specter Broadcast, which owned and operated radio stations in the southeast, and ended my career as Executive Vice President of Capstar Broadcasting (NYSE: CBR), which now is named Clear Channel Broadcasting (NYSE: CCU).

More important, I was known as a workout man. I was hired by many companies to “turnaround” broadcast properties that the institution owned the paper on, so they could sell it to a new bank and rid themselves of the nightmare that was created by the management before me. A good example of that would be Austin, Texas, where I was hired by General Electric to operate, stop the bleeding, and sell off, the radio properties they held the paper on there.

There’s no fanfare in being a workout man. You fire a lot of good people, change a lot of direction, and bring in a fresh outlook to an organization that usually was pretty comfortable being sort of average.

The point I’m trying to make is I’ve been in the same position that the Wilpon family is in right now. It may have been the radio industry, but a failed business is a failed business.

As in the case of the Mets, profit and loss has been replaced by win and loss. Sure , the Mets make a bunch of money, but they haven’t won the division, no less the World Series, in quite awhile, and a tremendous amount of money has been spent turning this club into a second place team from a third place one.

As you know, I just outlined the future of the Mets, by position, and by management. In my broadcast world, Omar Minaya hasn’t “made the budget” in a couple of years now, and either my boss, partners, or investors, depending upon what my title is, want this turned around.

Exit Omar… enter Mack.

I will outline over the next seven day what I would do if I was the General Manager of the Mets. Again, I have the chops to figure this out, and will apply the same criteria I used to use when I did this in the radio industry.

But this time, I’m doing it for grins, as a blogger. And, I welcome any of you that have a direct line to one of the Wilpons to pass this on.

Oh, I have a paypal (JMAde2@aol.com) account if they’d like to make a donation for my services.