pMaai The new owners of WNOL- TV have dropped station presi dent Hal Protter and general manager Gail Brekke from the st£ff and hired a former compet itor to replace them. | John Curren, for six years gen eral sales manager at WGNO and for the last 18 months general sales manager at WLOS in (Jrreenville-Spartanburg, S.C., is Scheduled to take over as tVNOL’s general manager before .£h$j&nd of the month. ) That announcement comes |fr6m Tim McDonald, president *of TVX Communications, which j has received Federal Communi- \ cations Commission app'roval * and completed its purchase of \ Channel 38 on April 26. i ©arren is a native of New ' Orleans and “has the kind of cre- tials I look for when I hire •to run one of my sta tions,” McDonald says. “He’s' young — in his early 40s — he’s experienced in independent tele •“-“•vision and he has been in the "mSrket. To be successful, you have to know your market.” Protter and Brekke learned of their dismissals last week. Sub- 38 owners make exec changes On the air Mark Lorando / sequently, Protter signed a 12- month “consultancy contract” with TVX. In his new job, Prot ter says that he will be responsi ble for “sitting around until TVX finds things for me to do.” McDonald says Protter’s. “tech nical expertise” will be called upon to assist TVX in the opera tion of its five other stations. McDonald says that he and Brekke will meet May 14 to dis cuss her future with TVX. “She’s a good general manager and a bright girl,” McDonald says. “I might like her to run a station for me.” So why doesn’t he want her, or hubby Hal Protter, to run his New Orleans station? To hear McDonald tell it, the decision to bring in new manage ment had nothing to do with Protter and Brekke and every thing to do with his own per sonal philosophy. “My feeling and my decision were to close the door on Chan nel 38 as it existed under Chan nel 38 Associates and to open the door as it will exist under TVX,” he says. “That means having a fresh start.” Protter had said previously that he expected to stay on board as station manager, leading to speculation that his future with the company was guaranteed in the sales agreement. But both Protter and McDonald deny such an agreement ever existed. “I would not have bought the station under those conditions,” McDonald says. “Hal was never, intended from day one to be active at this station.” Protter says that any chance he had of hooking on with the new ownership was shot down when some nasty allegations about his business practices turned up in the local business press. Foremost among the accu sations — many of which were made by disgruntled former employees — was that Protter squandered the company’s money on personal and professional extravagances. Protter was criticized, for instance, for using advertising trade outs — a practice by which a station receives goods or ser vices from a company, in lieu of cash, in exchange for advertising — for his personal benefit. “From then on,” Protter says of reports published in Decem ber, “I didn’t have a chance.” McDonald responds, “Maybe the accusations were true, maybe they weren’t; I really don’t care. I wasn’t here.” Using advertising trade-outs for personal gain is neither ille gal nor unethical, McDonald says,' and he has seen nothing in WNOL’s books to indicate that the privilege was being abused. “I’ve used them myself to give bonuses,” he says. “One time one of my managers was doing a good job and we said, ‘We want to reward you, tell us what you want.’ And he said he always wanted a swimming pool in his backyard for his family. So we' traded that out. It came off the company’s books as advertising time, but it was considered per sonal income for him.” McDonald also says that he has no problem with the fact that while station president Protter traded out advertising for Airfare Hotline, an airline booking ser vice in which Protter is an inves tor. “We do a lot of traveling,” he says. “Anything that serves the company, there’s no problem with it.” He does say that Protter was a lot looser with the purse strings than he likes. “Where Hal would spend two million dollars, I would spend one million,” he says. “But then again, where Hal would spend two million, some other guys would spend three. It’s all in your approach.” The approach, from now on, will be “zero-based budget with a vengeance,” McDonald says. ■^Triple