Monthly Archives: June 2022

Thursday, June 30, 2022

Westwood to Shutter Another Division

  • One of the most insulting firings in radio history replayed step-by-step
  • Why money losing Cumulus is shuttering a moneymaking division
  • What this means for the future of Westwood One
  • What’s about to come next in detail -- soon

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Previously: The Danger of Electric Cars to Radio … Audacy & iHeart Playing Dirty with Ad Rates … Townsquare’s Major Expansion … Cumulus Just Screwed Itself … Average Song Length Nose Dives … Recession Plans at the Big 3 Radio Groups

Friday, June 24, 2022

Cumulus Just Screwed Itself

Jeff Warshaw and his purported yet unidentified consortium of lenders recently offered $15-17 a share to takeover Cumulus.

Mary Berner and the board rejected the offer and got away with it as no shareholders even challenged their refusal to be bought.

Since then, Cumulus stock dropped to $8 and had Warshaw’s group actually been able to finance a takeover between $15-17, Cumulus shareholders would have been the winner while Warshaw presumably would try to wiggle out of it Elon Musk style.

But it gets worse.

Not only did Cumulus shareholders get screwed out of what is likely to be their best and only offer to cash out, Mary Berner then made what is turning out to be a costly mistake that is likely to hurt Cumulus where it matters most – at the station level. 

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Previous articles here

iHeart’s Moving to ‘Touchless Radio’

Average Song Length Nose Dives

Recession Plans at the Big 3 Radio Groups

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Recession Plans at the Big 3 Radio Groups

INSIDE >>> 

  • The recession will be like a radio promotion for Bob Pittman who in the past never missed an opportunity to reduce iHeart’s workforce during a very public crisis – his summer wish list to shrink the company footprint.
  • What employees at Cumulus/Westwood fear the most – and why they’re right about the corporate focus on hurting the employees they retain.
  • With revenue lagging Audacy will use the recession to do the unthinkable where no other radio group has gone before.
  • For the smaller groups, indies and mom-and-pops, first look at what you’ll be competing against.

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Friday, June 17, 2022

Podcast Listening Slowing & Cratering

Podcasting is a direct result of radio refusing to do talk programming other than right-wing politics – now after a boost from the pandemic, research shows podcasting is beginning to hit the wall even as it remains largely unprofitable. 

If Bob Pittman likes it, count me out.  Nothing personal.  If David Field likes it, I ask which one of his “one” advisor got to him and if Mary Berner likes it, I ask how does this translate into making money off podcasting personally.

Here’s the secret study.

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Wednesday, June 15, 2022

Wall Street Bails on iHeart

I guess it took a financial downturn for banks and private equity to see the danger of propping up iHeartMedia because now all bets are off.  And stations relying on digital revenue have a brewing scandal to deal with.

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Tuesday, June 14, 2022

The Future of Remote Working in Radio

  • Clue: the big groups love remote working as much as their employees – but changes are coming. 
  • How it will specifically affect pay and pay raises (for companies that are long overdue).
  • They will even expand virtual even as other industries are trying to force their workers to come back to the office – but here’s the part radio employees may not like.

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Thursday, June 2, 2022

Online & Podcasting Are Slipping

Inside this article …

Online and podcasting’s ‘moment’ may be over – new evidence suggests that the hope or fear of their success may have peaked.

  • Online advertising will peak, not grow and advertising will return once media companies make the advertiser’s success their focus again – for a clue, look to independent and small market local radio stations who are doing just fine as their big competitors suffer. 
  • Podcasting was never to be a vibrant business, but it is a competitor in time spent listening to radio – stop promoting it unless it directly boosts your stations audience. 
  • If the private equity firms propping up Cumulus, Audacy and iHeart didn’t exist and the NAB didn’t sneak radio consolidation into the 1996 Telecom Act, radio would have invested in the future and adapted to changes such as digital as it always has (remember how radio adapted to the coming of television?). 
  • The recession is coming and radio will do as it always does – help advertisers efficiently and cost-effectively sell their way out of it and to those groups that invest in better programming and fewer irritating commercial units, they will get the highest rates while the content destroyers will get the leftovers.

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