It’s fine for fun, but don’t try to confuse it for a business.
So, Spotify forked over its largest podcasting investment ever to buy Megaphone for $235 million and the stock market voted on it with a $24 decrease in their stock price yesterday.
iHeart declared “sequential revenue growth” in its happy talk radio trade publication Inside iHeart Radio – blasphemy the exact same week Bob Pittman and Rich Bressler are firing hundreds of employees and blaming it on the virus.
But all that growth is coming from political (which is temporary) and podcasting (which is non-existent) because Pittman’s claims are made without evidence. He’s like a politician proclaiming happy days and a recession at the same time.
Claims of economic recovery for iHeart which is down 22% year over year for the third quarter seems in line with what the groups that do better like Saga, Townsquare and Salem are reporting or will report. What Pittman is hiding is the trade, barter and questionable national that phonies things up.
Why it’s important: If you fall for podcasting as the answer to linear media’s decline, you’re being suckered. Entercom claims big podcasting growth, again, without evidence – never revealing revenue figures. And neither Entercom nor iHeart ever talk about profit.
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