Lew Dickey didn’t spend $260 million for Westwood One only to see it wither away like this.

Mary Berner all but announced everything is for sale at Cumulus publicly (except Dallas) but she artfully stayed away from commenting on the big elephant in the room – their underperforming radio network.

No statement of support and continued ownership.

No growth plans other than previously mentioned podcasting rep deals.

No sale sign.

Yet Westwood One has two big insurmountable problems begging the question – what are the Cumulus lenders currently overseeing the company going to do with Westwood One.

Are there any interested buyers remaining?

Why is their profit shrinking faster than anticipated?

Is there a plan for shedding Westwood One entirely in a breakup?

The mixed signals as described by those behind the scenes.

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Radio is fast adopting outsourcing as a business model.

Nothing is sacred. 

The newsroom at Entercom’s 1010 WINS for example is an expense so great that Entercom is urgently looking for ways to cut the head count down.

But now, faced with the inability to grow revenue, control costs and post a real profit that isn’t adjusted to look good, Entercom and Cumulus are ready to adopt new ways to run radio stations as if they were SiriusXM.

How programming, management and sales will be affected at these two radio groups.

Cumulus and Entercom both have ambitious outsourcing plans.

The time frame is aggressive.

Ignoring the risks they are fully aware of – one group has actually tried outsourcing experimentally and it didn’t work – how they are going through with it anyway.

The body count – first real numbers on just how many jobs will be lost in just one job description by year’s end.

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Radio buyers are hard to find these days.

Prices are going down but have yet to bottom out.

And lenders are vanishing – not high on financing radio acquisitions.

There’s EMF, Meruelo and then not too many more potential buyers available right now.

One potential buyer is Carl Parmer’s Summit Media, the company that originally bought a handful of smaller Cox market spinoffs and has been building from there.

With station prices going down, is Summit a player ready to pounce?

And what markets would they be interested in?

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