I have to laugh every time I see the NAB beg for a government bailout of radio by overemphasizing the critical importance of local radio.
Radio is the least local it has ever been and the NAB is ironically the chief enabler of consolidators and their private equity backers who have ruined the industry.
Late last week, the FCC gave the greenlight to a Cumulus petition to allow virtual monopoly control of “local radio” by foreign interests.
This changes everything – obviously the failing consolidators would not go begging for money overseas unless it was their absolute last option.
We’ve discussed the deleterious effects of private equity owners on local radio, Main Street advertisers and declining radio jobs but the greenlighting of foreign financial interest in radio is an entire other aspect to reckon with.
Recent Posts
- The Company Cleaning iHeart’s Clock
- The End of Consolidation
- The Return of Payola
- iHeart Scraping Competitors’ Business
- The Hurry-Up Cumulus Bankruptcy Plan
- Urban One’s Managed Decline
- An Urgent Behind-the-Scenes Cumulus Pivot
- GM Secretly Taking Back In-car Entertainment
- The Podcast Reckoning
- Beasley’s Nepo Problem