What does the Harmony Gold staff do?

The three most-visible faces of Harmony Gold's staff are well-known to Robotech followers--Tommy Yune, commonly listed as "creative director;" Steve Yun, regularly cited as the head of Internet-related activity; and Kevin McKeever, a voice of media relations. All knowledge of past actions which some here may already hold aside, these three men can be well-reasoned to hold "jobs" and are regularly "paid" by Harmony Gold's owner, Frank Agrama. But the question is: What kind of "job" lets one do what these guys do?

Tommy Yune, the "creative director" must do something more than Robotech every day, else he would be coming-into work and just sitting in his chair. Harmony Gold's blanket of ownership passes across more than just Robotech, so perhaps his duties include being the "creative director" for... well, I honestly do not know for what else Harmony Gold would need a "creative director," as their media library consists primarily of licensing European media outlets' productions for re-release into the North American (and in some cases, worldwide) market. The "creative director," then left with little but Robotech, would be "directing the creative direction" of Robotech, but with Harmony Gold currently known to be in-production of no works related to the franchise, his daily work load would then consist of fielding calls from the only two outsourced companies (of which we are aware) related to actually producing new Robotech material--that is, Palladium Books and Warner Brothers. So if there's no questions from outsourced licensee, the "creative director" doesn't really do anything. Despite his past successes as a comic book artist, Yune is making no Robotech comics for release. Despite his involvement in designs for Robotech OVAs, Yune is releasing no designs for any series. And despite being the "creative director," there's not a lot to direct, it seems, right now.

Steve Yun, the webmaster and always-do-it-online specialist (ADIOS!), must also be very active with Robotech's online presence, else he'd just be coming into "work" everyday and making frequent trips to the coffee pot. Again, like the "creative director," the ADIOS has more to handle than just Robotech, and updating Harmony Gold's expanding library of new releases into the North American (and in some cases, worldwide) market requires potential buyers to know this on the company's website... except that Harmony Gold, in light of economic troubles affecting the market, has all but quit the business of sub-licensing. So with no big-company-related updates necessary, the ADIOS focuses primarily upon Harmony Gold's biggest cash-cow, Robotech, and brings himself into work everyday to be one-hundred percent focused upon the Robotech.com hub for all things Robotech. But there are no updated databases, there is no replacement for outmoded source code, and the content of the website is virtually the same "under construction" level of information it has possessed for eight years. Anyone who has run their own website, however small, understands the value of updates to the point where, if even out of sheer boredom, changes are made on a weekly basis, minimum. Yet despite this, the ADIOS seems to come-into work and do... something.

Kevin McKeever, the face of "media relations," has shown himself to be the kind of guy who will travel to different cities, post occasionally into open forums, and operate a personal blog all in the name of Robotech. When he comes-into work, the "media relations" man is an important piece of every company. Every new release, every deal with another company, every agreement of cooperation--these things are run through his filter and passed-on to the general public to increase their awareness and, hopefully, give them a positive view of any situation. With Robotech, this is exceptionally true, as it is Harmony Gold's most active property, and the "media relations" person must regularly... well, honestly, I am not so sure, but when something does happen, it is his job to be there. It could be that, perhaps, when people contact the company regarding an interest in becoming a licensee of Robotech, he deals with them, the problem with nobody wanting to do it because of Harmony Gold's horrible reputation notwithstanding the sheer potential for this to occur regularly. It could be that, when television stations need advertising after licensing Harmony Gold's syndicatable programs, they contact him, notwithstanding that no station advertises syndicated airtimes. Because Robotech has neither released any major works itself for over two years, it leads one to wonder exactly how much time the "media relations" man has each day due to little reason for Robotech.

So the three biggest faces of Robotech's production department--what do they do all day long? If you have a job, you understand that, most of the time, you cannot simply come-into work everyday and do almost nothing. If you run your own business, you definitely know that every minute one spends doing nothing is one which another company can use to gain a greater advantage over you in the industry. Since the release of The Shadow Chronicles over two years ago, Harmony Gold's staff has achieved close to nothing. There are small publishers running out of apartment buildings in the same city as this company's headquarters who produce more in a year than Harmony Gold does under this trio's watch. There seems to be no kind of energy, no pushing toward a greater goal. If it is because of Frank Agrama's decisions for the company, then Agrama needs to get rid of these guys because there's no need to pay people to sit around and do close-to-nothing. If it is because of their own lack of ambition, then those on Robotech's inner-circle are just as old as the lackadaisical fans who want nothing but pre-chewed and regurgitated mush for entertainment. But when one gets down to think about it, how is it that Robotech can produce no new material for years on end yet possess a full-time staff?

When the original Star Trek was being produced, the staff there had about six days to make an hour-long episode. People involved in the project said that the directors and producer Gene Roddenberry worked every day for months-on-end on four hours of sleep per night. When Gold Digger is being written and drawn, Fred Perry has twenty-five days or less to churn-out a new story, pencils, inks, pre-press, and organise the staff to create thirty-two pages of comics and he has done it for over one-hundred months, now. When Pygmy was set to become Chuck Palahniuk's most-audacious release in years, he had an industry-standard one year to make it no matter the sob-worthy circumstances and uncaring of what else there was to do. None of these groups could afford to let-up. They had a job. They were getting paid to do it. Harmony Gold's "noteworthy" staff has a job, yes, and they get paid to do it, certainly. But the difference is that there are no tangible results from these guys, and it makes one wonder exactly what they do all day long.

--Sentinel

They do nothing really, other than browse their hate sites and cry over the mean things people like us say about them. I mean what else can they do? Tommy is possibly working on more art but none of us would ever know. Steve.... don't even get me started on that dirt bag.... he's supposed to maintain the site right? Well the bastard can't even handle the site's own bullshit. Yes he's got moderators, but when people complain to him and not them, he doesnt do shit. He never responds to their emails especially if he's got a vendetta against them. Myself for example Even though I am hated and all, I still reported a case of a user which had "death to macross purists" in his signature and what happened with that? nothing, the user didn't even get banned for it.

If you look at it this way, it seems Kevin Mckeever is doing all the work (all the hard work anyways) while Tommy and Steve sit at the kool-aid stand where all their followers are standing in line, Memo and pizza the hutt are at the very front of course

Right now though, they really can't do much not even with Shadow Rising which is probably scrapped because no one knows when the live action movie is going to come out at all. There's been no news of that so it's easy to assume it's pretty much dead in the water.

All the staff of HG can do right now is brag about how great TSC is and how well its selling! (bargain bins don't count) and of course spy on their favorite people because they're obsessed with what we think of them! Silly really....

It's probably just tommy and steve, I doubt kevin even gives a shit!
oh and tommy and steve if you are reading this... I saw the script for Shadow Rising and its fucking terrible! Where did you learn how to write?
might I reccommend creative writing for dummies and for Tommy a book on human anatomy! Stop making your character designs look like they came out of a fucking marvel comic book!

Consider that when Robotech was originally being made, 3 or 4 episodes were being translated and rewritten at the same time, concurrently, which is one of the things that led to the occasional episode to episode inconsistency (especially with the narration, but also things like ranks doing a yo-yo...

Of the three people you list, only Steve is actually doing the job he's paid for, and then only at the most basic level, sitting back doing little other than having a group of users do it for him on the forums. Tommy SHOULD be, but isn't, providing Steve with the raw material to use for site updates, since he's not doing anything else. McKeever acts more like a forum moderator than a media guy, as well, from what I've heard - since when does the media relations guy do the grunt work for the webmaster? It is supposed to be the other way around. He's doing a job, but not the one in his job description - and one that the other moderators aren't being paid for.

It's especially ironic considering that the only reason that Steve has his job, was that it was a condition that Tommy had in his contract...

Kevin.

He is the Operations Manager for the Creative team. Sounds important, but its not. His main focus is to organize the tools needed for the operation. Arranges the cons, travel, the network for the team to visit clients, or v/v. Glorified Travel exec.

Steve.

The website has and always will be his spare-time project. Steve works in the Licensing Department for HG, and as part of the team behind Robotech, deals with all licensing issues. Tom Bateman used to do some of this, primarily on the RT products, like the toys.

Tommy Yune.

As the creative Director, he sits and draws things, then moans, throws it away and copy whatever is on the TV. Or so I was told. lol

All I know is if they wanted someone who can sit around and do nothing for money I'm their guy. It's what I've done my past few jobs, lol.