Clear Channel, which has 10 radio stations in the Bay Area, will layoff 1,500 of its 20,000-employee national work force on Tuesday, with most of the cuts coming in sales, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Low performing reps will lose their jobs and their accounts will go to the surviving top performers, resulting in boost in their compensation, the WSJ says.

“On the radio side, the company is likely to eliminate chunks of local programming and replace it with national programming, much as it has brought Ryan Seacrest’s Los Angeles-based radio show to other markets in recent months. If a local show seems successful, the company will try to syndicate it faster than it might have in the past, a person familiar with the situation said.”

Locally, Program Director John Scott at CC’s “Green 960” (KKGN-AM) told KTRB’s Rich Lieberman that he’s optimistic:

“This is the best of times for radio. Anybody who thinks this is the worst is sticking their heads in the sand. The window is open for creative managers to throw the long ball, to take some risks, that in an ordinary economic time would never get a chance,” Scott told Lieberman.

“We have an extremely valuable asset: hundreds of thousands of fans who have already committed to receiving information from us. They’re called listeners. Now we get to figure out how to earn the right to deliver precisely the information they crave, using modern media to deliver it.”

Clear Channel operates seven stations out of this building at 340 Townsend St. in San Francisco: KNEW-AM 910, “Green 960” KKGN-AM, “Star 101.3” KIOI-FM, “98.1 KISS-FM” (KISQ-FM), 103.7 KKSF-FM, 106 KMEL-FM and “Wild 94.9” KYLD-FM. In San Jose, CC operates “Channel 104.9” KCNL-FM, “KFOX 98.5” (actually KUFX-FM) and KSJO-FM 92.3 “La Preciosa,” Spanish. (Photo credit: Press Club file)