CBS Radio’s Pre-IPO Surprise

  • The thing CBS could do to shock the industry just before they begin their radio IPO.
  • You have no idea – and neither do their loyal managers, programmers or sellers.       Blindsided.
  • How far will CBS go to make it appear that their new radio IPO shares are underpriced.
  • Careers interrupted – not necessarily layoffs, worse.
  • Stealth moves under the radar that will shakeup the IPO and some radio competitors all at once.

Read the full article now.

iHeart’s Secret Plan To Reduce Cluster Size

You will not believe what iHeart is thinking of doing to reduce debt.

I fell off my chair when I heard.

Because it’s not just about selling a few stations here and there.

It’s worse.

I’ve got the plan they are kicking around and scarier yet – investment bankers appear to be cool with it.

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  1. The “optimum” size of an iHeart cluster in the future.
  2. Some of their big, iconic moneymaking stations are safe under this plan, right? Well, not so fast.
  3. Would this apply to all size markets or just the crappy little markets they don’t care about.
  4. How iHeart is being so careful to let investment bankers think this plan is their idea.
  5. I reveal the rules of engagement – who gets what they’re selling and how they plan to make sure none of the buyers could ever hurt them going forward.
  6. What happens to the newly reorganized regional markets – where do they fit into this plan?

If you would like to see iHeart’s secret plan to reduce cluster size, how they will proceed and strict rules for who they will sell to, touch “read more” below.

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Apple & Twitter

All Tim Cook needed to do when he announced disappointing quarterly results this past week was to channel none other than our own media creepy clown Bob Pittman.

Talk about the many Apple platforms. 

The dominance.

Lie about the future.

And there you go.

Or for poor Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey who presides over one of the most beloved Internet innovations ever who had to actually suck up more losses, promise 9% layoffs and focus those layoffs on sellers (good grief!).

But a little touch of SpongeBob Bossy Pants and you would think that Twitter was out of the woods and ready to make money.

Even Mary Berner is not willing to do the Pittman shuffle when she will have to announce another losing quarter this November 8th.  And God knows Cumulus is taking it on the chin with its stock – down 0.5 to $1.55 yesterday – in anticipation of no good news.

So let’s see if we can cut through the optics and get down to the true future of Apple and Twitter because if we are to believe that 18-34 year old Millennials don’t want to listen to radio, then why are they starting to kill Apple and Twitter.

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  • So is Apple dead and is Twitter hopeless?
  • How Twitter could turn it all around with one decision.
  • How do you appeal to consumers and audiences who hate rules?
  • The big takeaway for radio about the changing landscape of social media.
  • The most important mission we in radio, records and video can undertake is to create lasting relationships. 
  • Read this if advertising is 90% or more of your profit.

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The Cumulus Decision on Year End Layoffs

The final decision has been made by management about whether to continue laying off employees ahead of the New Year.

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Pandora

The streaming service that started it all missed its revenue projections and closed down 4.8% yesterday and continued the free fall in after hours trading.

There was a lot to like in their third quarter results but shareholders were apparently having none of it.

Losses narrowed.

Listener hours grew by 5% (wouldn’t radio love that).  But active listeners fell slightly (still Bob Pittman would love to be Pandora).

Advertising without having to do Jingle Ball events and concerts was up 7.5%.

But paid subscriptions were down 1.4% at a time when Spotify is claiming 40 million paid subscribers worldwide and Apple just has to sneeze and comes up with 17 million subscribers to a just-okay Apple Music.

As of September Pandora had an estimated four million subscribers.

Pandora, therefore, is an ad based medium.

So Pandora is junk now, right?

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  • Pandora stock tanked yesterday, they have more competitors than ever – is this the end of Pandora?
  • Why their competition is not radio, satellite radio, Spotify, another streaming service or Apple – see what Pandora is missing.
  • Then why does Bob Pittman want iHeart to be Pandora?
  • What could make Pandora (or any streaming service) a hot company with this one listener approved idea.
  • The surprising thing that will happen if Pandora’s number one competitor, Spotify, eventually goes public.
  • Will Pandora’s recent Spotify-like enhancements cut into Spotify?

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AT&T/Time Warner

Don’t believe the hype.

The AT&T purchase of Time Warner for $85.4 billion is a fantasy.

A fantasy of old white men who don’t understand the Millennial world and think delivery systems solve their future problems.

So, outside of Game of Thrones, how many Millennials use a paid subscription to access the show?

Or how many share a friend or parent’s HBO subscription?

Is it that Millennials will want to see the 60-year old HBO star Bill Maher on new delivery systems or that somehow CNN’s Clinton News Network would appeal to a socialist generation that wants everyone to get a fair shake, something they won’t get on CNN.

The last innovation at CNN was created by Ted Turner when he invented 24-hour cable news and think about it, that’s true.

Watching AT&T spend their shareholders’ money can be very instructive to radio, an industry that stopped innovating over 20 years ago.

Remember?

Consolidation was going to give listeners more choices.

WRONG.

Consolidation was going to make radio a more attractive advertising vehicle.

WRONG.

I’m sounding like Donald Trump with that “wrong” comment, but you get the idea.

Consolidation, which is now officially underway in the television, media and phone business, has already proven what it can do to radio and records.

Choose “READ MORE” (below) for …

  • Look at the AT&T/Time Warner merger – any way this thing works?
  • If so, shouldn’t radio be watching very closely?
  • How Amazon is killing what’s left of the record business.
  • What is likely to happen to HBO now.
  • How about CNN under AT&T.
  • Why independent radio broadcasters have all the advantages over their consolidators and don’t even know it – what they should be doing.
  • How do you raise rates when your industry consolidates and is dominated by huge companies like iHeart – here you go.
  • The secret to attracting 18-34 Millennials and it is not coming up with new delivery systems like AT&T thinks it can do in TV.

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How Radio is Cooking the Books

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  • The latest crooked tactic to make it appear their financials are up to expectations when they’re falling short – and it’s all legal, kind of.
  • How they come up with money at the end of each quarter even when they don’t have it.
  • How radio groups are creating “phantom billing” – billing that is not really there and it’s happening increasingly.
  • Sleazy consolidators’ dishonest solutions to declining spot revenue.
  • How groups like iHeart, Entercom and Clownsquare are pivoting from declining ad revenue to event marketing.
  • How they’re lying about digital revenue.
  • A list of 7 ways radio groups are cooking the books and it’s not pretty.

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Bartered Cash Infusions Killing Local Ad Spending

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  • How the 3 radio groups are ruining rates for everyone else including themselves by trading for cash infusions while mortgaging the future.
  • The radio groups that still have rate integrity left but are fighting an uphill battle.
  • How it’s possible that perfectly good radio markets are making 17% LESS revenue, being forced to run 13½% more spots even while attracting 4% more radio advertisers. 
  • I’ll tell you about a nice size market that was doing $2.5 million with topnotch advertisers just 3 years ago that is doing only $340,000 today.
  • The sham being used by buying services and agencies who are playing desperate radio stations for fools – does the client even know? 

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EXPOSED: $100 Million CBS Radio Losses On a $2 Million Quick Revenue Deal

CBS Radio quarterly revenue was short $2 million and what they did to get the money by the deadline turned into a whopping $100 million loss just to dress up their Miller Kaplan’s.

They chose to compromise their rates and revenue growth by taking deals that are so bad – well, you don’t even know how bad they are.

You’ve no doubt heard rumors about the barter house known as ICON International.

Today you’ll find out. 

Now it can be known thanks to sources close to the situation who are now in our Witness Protection Program.

This story has been rumored but is so bizarre that it best illustrates that the battle for the future of radio is not being lost to digital, but to greedy bastards pulling stunts like this.

  1. How CBS screwed itself out of $100 million in advertising desperate to dress up Miller Kaplan’s for just one quarter.
  2. The huge mistake CBS made that caused paying advertisers to stop paying for CBS ads.
  3. And we’re not kidding, the losses were around $100 million on a $2 million quick revenue deal. 
  4. Why CBS Market Managers and Directors of Sales were pulling their hair out.
  5. Who was responsible for this failed revenue scheme.
  6. The tale of 200 10-second ads that cost a whopping $10,000 a piece!

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7 Bold Radio Predictions

When you have virtually no Millennials hooked on radio.

And advertisers would rather buy digital – whatever that means.

And the major groups are finding new ways every day to cut their rates lower than competitors.

You’ve got a situation.

  1. The Thing Nobody Can See That Will Threaten Radio Revenue
  2. How Real Ad Money Will Be Kept Off the Radio – It’s Already Starting
  3. Something Worse Than Programmatic Buying Will Loom Large
  4. The Impact of Apple CarPlay, the Autonomous Car, the Connected Dashboard
  5. Morning Shows 4 Years Down the Road
  6. The New Owners from Hell Who Will Enter Radio
  7. How Radio Will Sound Targeting Millennials

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The Uncertain Future of Emmis

INSIDE ….

More surprise moves coming …

This time it’s different …

Employees worry …

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Workplace Changes At Cumulus

  • Details on new eye-popping attrition rates you will not believe but they are true.
  • The skinny on sales turnover.
  • The latest on whether local clusters will get more control.
  • The fate of the sales software that replaced the hated Engage.
  • Status update on Cumulus non-competes.
  • Unresolved Dickey-prompted employee lawsuits – what’s going to happen to them.

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CBS Radio IPO Surprise

Did you see the BIA/Kelsey report entitled “CBS Radio As It Approaches IPO”?

Where they attribute the CBS Radio cluster in New York City as being worth a half billion dollars and that CBS with 35% of the market share and iHeartMedia with about 32% in just that one city.

New York means 15.1% to the company’s total revenue.

The fact is that the reason CBS is doing an IPO in the first place is because they cannot find a buyer for the radio division.

I’m getting a creepy feeling that CBS has something startling under its sleeve.

Something so out of the ordinary that the radio industry will be left in shock and upended.

  • A consortium of buyers, but how does this work?
  • And they can cherry pick what they want
  • Buyers can play to their strengths and in effect buy cash flow
  • Don’t even count iHeart out
  • Or owners of TV stations to trade
  • Makes the IPO a fail-safe

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The Beasley/Greater Media Conspiracy

Some strange things are going on at Beasley Broadcasting ahead of its take over of Greater Media.

Phantom firings

How BEASLEY is running GREATER MEDIA before they actually take over

Scary scenarios waiting to happen after closing

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Lew Dickey Plots a Return

INSIDE …

  • Details on Lew’s several options to return to radio big time.
  • Is brother Fredo part of any deal?
  • How about his regionals that Cumulus no longer wants.
  • What Lew has reportedly been saying privately about a comeback.
  • Is there a Dickey-Cumulus deal that could be done?
  • What does this man who owns so much of Cumulus want – what, you thought he was going to keep writing books?

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iHeart-type Cutbacks Invade Salem

Even religious broadcaster Salem, a stable operator, is now adopting cost-cutting tactics used by iHeart and Cumulus.

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  1. How big money was saved in layoff/reassignment that you’d expect from the Evil Empire.
  2. Details about the uneasy feeling that this week’s initial layoffs will breakout elsewhere in the group.
  3. Worse yet, why the iHeart cost-cutting model is being adopted by competitors -- as risky as it is.
  4. Is this the start of a corporate jihad direct from Salem headquarters?
  5. After the first layoffs which top exec said, “Salem is one of the more fair companies I have ever worked for, and if they lay me off tomorrow, I would still say that”.
  6. Two groups likely to be next to adopt iHeart’s “Remove & Replace” layoffs.

The answers begin here.

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The Growing Popularity of Remixed Music

Younger radio audiences have long wanted more control over the music.

Radio people translated that to mean, these listeners want to choose which songs are being played on the air.  But that couldn’t be further from reality.

Millennials who, after all, are the core audience radio stations must appeal to if they want to remain a vibrant business, have seized control of about everything they have gotten their hands on.

But the growing popularity of remixes and playlists is making what radio has to offer even less attractive than the 16 plus minutes of commercials they squeeze into their hourly formats.

There are now a number of new solutions for radio stations:

  1. Curated playlists by a new kind of dj that is on the air for only one hour a day – how this works.
  2. Eclectic tracks from the past – just how far back is safe to go?
  3. How to shift genres, something Millennials love and now you’ll know how to do it within your present format.
  4. Where does sampling parts of hit songs belong on the radio station of the future.

Read the full article now.

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Political Pussy Riot

Millennials are laughing at the 2016 presidential race.

Really.

Trump’s potty mouth and locker room talk.

Hillary Clinton’s refusal to be the one thing they absolutely look up to as the Holy Grail – authentic.

Which candidate respects women more?

Which candidate represents American values of secrecy, lying and deceit?

Hell, all politicians.

Luckily this is the last election for president – ever.

At least the last that excludes Millennials who, by the way, know the word “pussy” and other potentially disparaging words but somehow seem so much nicer and more respectful than, say, their parent’s generation.

Cable news is so in the tank for Hillary, they are slobbering all over themselves when it comes to covering Trump.

Not because they like her better because, count on it, these cable channels will turn on her once elected to keep the ratings going for their above 65 audience.

The Clinton News Network is biased.

The New York Times lost any credibility it might have had covering news objectively by letting their sanctimonious feelings drive objective news coverage of the Trump election.

And hey, you know I’m writing in Bernie.

Remember Bernie?

The guy who said Hillary was pandering to Wall Street – release the speeches and all that only to find out through emails (leaked Friday) that his suspicion was right.

But The Washington Post doesn’t want to cover that boring story nor do the other soon to be irrelevant news sources.

WikiLeaks is more honest than the newspapers -- without them who would be calling out bullshit?

But luckily, this political pussy riot is leaving Millennials cold.

First, they don’t talk about women this way.

Most Millennial boys have more respect for women than previous generations have.

My USC students used to be amazed that when I was on the baseball team in high school I showered in the locker room.  They shower at home.  No locker room.  No locker room talk.

Millennials are accepting of all nationalities and it’s not phony.

They accept all genders or hybrids of gender respecting the individual above all else. 

Millennials are socialists in waiting who want health care and college tuition relief and they’re still not warming up to Hillary because they just can’t connect with her.  She says she has been in the public for a long time and that everyone knows her but they don’t seem to like her.

Millennials want to see a woman president but they often say they don’t want Hillary to be that first woman president.

They’ve got balls.

Trump?

What can you say?

He could have been president.  His ego got to him.  And they criticize Millennials for being self-absorbed. 

Please!

The real meaning of the election is that it is the last one where old folks are leading a discussion that the majority of voters have rejected.

The last one for Fox News, MSNBC, CNN and for that matter cable.

And New York Times & Washington Post?

Lots of luck going digital with biased reporting that Millennials are too smart to fall for.  And you want to charge them a subscription fee?  Seriously?

For writing news like a blogger instead of a journalist – and, yes, they know the difference.

In four years WikiLeaks will be the only believable news source and everyone else will be trying to find a way to pander to young people who have cut the cord and cut the bullshit at the same time.

Millennials don’t know who Rush Limbaugh is and wouldn’t like him if they knew.

Radio let them down and they have moved on.

So what’s at stake in this election is all the usual stuff plus something that may prove even more important.

Whether it’s President Clinton or President Trump, they will find themselves at war with an increasingly power bloc of Millennial voters who will boot them out.

After all, they know that this glass ceiling Hillary talks about doesn’t apply if you’re not gainfully employed.  And women Millennials know they are going to have to do a better job giving a helping hand to other women when they get into power.  Not the way it has been in the past.

That although older voters want to keep foreigners out of the country both here and in Europe but Millennials want open borders and a path to citizenship for their friends who arrived here illegally.

That health care is a right and they will do more to get it or else politicians will be losing a lot of elections.

No walls.

No race baiting.

No secrecy or lying about where you stand.

No news media because, folks, it’s over.

So it’s a pussy riot where Millennials are laughing at people who cannot show respect to all people – all genders, all races.

And in the end, Millennials will get the last laugh.

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Millennial Attitudes Are Changing

Millennials are 18-34 and they have been the biggest disrupters of media than any other force ever.

Now they’re starting to disrupt their own unpredictable habits.

Is this good for us?

You be the judge.

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  1. Major changes in how they are using social media.
  2. Which social media platforms are hot and which are not.
  3. How they now look at driving and the connected dashboard.
  4. Changes in how they now use their phones.
  5. Millennials and NextRadio – do they listen on this phone app?
  6. Why you should take YouTube usage more seriously.
  7. The gender issues among younger Millennials that will redefine the way radio will relate to audiences.
  8. Uber instead of cars?

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What’s Ailing WTOP

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  1. Why the consistent erosion of America’s number one billing station.
  2. REVEALED:  even more alarming news that is being ignored.
  3. Explanations of what may be causing radio’s last great format to fizzle – none of them good.
  4. The challenges to fix audience erosion – all of them right on the money but being ignored.
  5. What happens to WTOP owner Hubbard who badly needs every penny of profit to keep up with corporate debt.
  6. Details of the finger-pointing and denial at the station.

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Christmas Layoff Warning

INSIDE …

  • How holiday layoffs in the next few months will be very different.
  • What’s a “tuck in” – beware of a new tool by radio owners to thin the field of employees without actually calling them layoffs.
  • The radio groups where employees have the most to worry about when it comes to holiday layoffs.
  • And one big surprising piece of good news if you work for this radio group that had been thinning the ranks every year at Christmas – but not this year.
  • Then there is this layoff threat which masks a forced wage reduction – details.

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Foreign Radio Ownership Fears

INSIDE …

  • How foreign ownership could impact local stations within a year after it is approved – and it’s on its way.
  • The types of things that outside owners with new-found power will be first to change.
  • Big changes coming to the way market clusters will be run with investors from Asia, Europe, the Arab states and elsewhere.
  • Foreign ownership impact on local programming and the future of personalities.
  • Why is the U.S. suddenly so anxious to change outside ownership rules after a long history of protecting the radio industry from outside influences.
  • And the big question:  what will it be like to work for foreign investors who have operating influence.

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Trump vs. NYTimes

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  1. All the ways this election is really about the media not the candidates.
  2. Why cable news, big newspapers and traditional media are making the same mistakes our radio industry makes every day about the audience.
  3. The lessons radio could learn by watching traditional media botch coverage of this election because they’re doing the same thing to radio audiences.
  4. What in-demo voters (and audiences) want.
  5. If you want to know whether your radio station will survive answer this one question:  is it sane to tweet at 3 in the morning?  I’ve got your answer.

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