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Entercom To Rebrand as Audacy

Keep in mind this company was founded by Field's father. And his father is still on the board of directors. Almost like changing the family name. But clearly this is being done for Wall Street.
Yep. They have to fool those investors. This name change is like a new coat of paint on a 1976 Ford Pinto. That was the car that used to burst into flames when the gas tank ruptured...
 
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If you want to use that logic, placing a company nameplate on a car destroys the appearance of that car for the ego of the company. Lots of examples. Look at the computer you're using. Why do I care who made it?

Branding has been integral in broadcasting since Westinghouse broadcast the election night results in 1920 on KDKA. They wanted to sell radios. Did the people in Pittsburgh care? No.
I still remember WIP Philly using “Metromedia radio in Philadelphia” leading into top of your newscasts
 
I still remember WIP Philly using “Metromedia radio in Philadelphia” leading into top of your newscasts

It was a company directive from John Kluge himself. WMMR was Metromedia Radio when they owned it.

Seems to me RKO General did the same thing with their radio stations.
 
This must not be an early April Fool. David Field said "We have outgrown the name Entercom". Maybe he meant --"I have made the name Entercom worthless on Wall Street"...
 
Maybe he meant --"I have made the name Entercom worthless on Wall Street"...

Worthless? The stock is up 3% since the announcement.

The fact is that ALL radio company stocks are pretty weak. It doesn't matter who owns them.

Every radio company will tell you that on-air is not the growth part of their business. Investors want growth.

Sumner Redstone understood this. That's why he split off CBS from Viacom in 2006.

 
Worthless? The stock is up 3% since the announcement.
It opened at $5.12 and is now at $5.08. It had a peak during the day, hitting $5.27 with intense trading, but settled back.

The peak in 2017 was $15.85, so it's all relative. They are off by 2/3 from way back when radio was their priority.
 
Do you do a podcast? If you did, you'd understand the difference. All those other platforms are merely that: Platforms. They don't in any way route potential listeners to your specific podcast. The podcaster is responsible for driving traffic to their own podcast. The radio companies help podcasters direct their existing audience to related podcasts on their platform. iHeart is pretty good at this. NPR is probably the best. Still, if you're a podcast creator, placement is not a one-or-the-other thing. You want your podcast on ALL platforms. I see the research an the initial location is usually not the defining factor.
iHeart has some nationally famous talent, and has a syndication arm for talent. We know that NPR produces a lot of talent-based programming as well as some astoundingly good news and information shows. Much of that content is good for podcasts.

Name a "world famous" talent from any Entravision station.

And, since podcasts are pretty much precluded from containing music, that leaves Audity with just about nothing really powerful to put in podcasts.
 
One mention an hour isn't going to chase away an audience. Especially the sneaky way it gets done. If they beat you over the head, that's very different.
Anything that dilutes a brand is wrong.

Proctor & Gamble does put its P&G on products, but very small on the back or bottom or wherever it's not prominent. But they don't name P&G in ads, don't feature it on labels. They are not just the regents of research, they pretty much invented consumer research 90 years ago.

If one studies branding... particularly in case studies of failed branding... confusion is as strong a reason for failure as a bad product itself.

First comes "the best way to get a bad product off the market is to advertise it".

Then there is "the best way to avoid selling a product is to send a confusing message".
 
It was a company directive from John Kluge himself. WMMR was Metromedia Radio when they owned it.

Seems to me RKO General did the same thing with their radio stations.
And all those were done before perceptual research was done for radio. Having dealt with Kluge on a big radio project much later on, I can tell you that he changed much of his thinking as years went by and either consumer attitudes changed or he realized that some business practices had morphed.

In this particular case, Kluge spent about $250,000 to be told why he should not buy a group of radio networks in a stable, wealthy South American nation. He followed the research; the eventual buyer of the properties (along with others) went bankrupt.

Kluge passed away. Were he around, we would have gloated over spending $250 k and saving nearly $100 million.
 
Radio has pretty much become the modern college degree. You work a ton of hours and make little to no money. I'm sure in 10 years I'll make more money then David Fields running my heavy truck dealership. So much for my Bachelor's Degree.
 
And, since podcasts are pretty much precluded from containing music, that leaves Audity with just about nothing really powerful to put in podcasts.

Which is why they bought some podcast companies with award winning talent:


If you study what these radio companies are doing is they're signing podcast talent that are not part of their on-air team. And then they take the successful podcasts and offer it for on-air talk stations. That's how Ben Shapiro and Don Bongino got signed.
 
As in before the pandemic. That probably had no effect on their stock price.
Entercom was at $4.77 the last trading session of 2019. It is actually higher now. Between February and May of 2017, it lost a third of its value, and then hit a low of $3.12 in 2019, recovering a bit by year-end.

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Which is why they bought some podcast companies with award winning talent:


If you study what these radio companies are doing is they're signing podcast talent that are not part of their on-air team. And then they take the successful podcasts and offer it for on-air talk stations. That's how Ben Shapiro and Don Bongino got signed.
Everybody is trying to consilidate podcast talent, and buying "names" that, in most cases, have numbers that are lower than the AQH of a mid-rated station in Detroit.

Entercom bought some leftovers which, in my opinion, don't mesh with the core audiences of their radio stations.
 
This affects the GSP Market cluster of 7 stations: 93.3 The Planet, B93.7, The Block (96.3, 104.5, and 107.7), ESPN Upstate, Magic 98.9, Classic Rock 101.1, and 106.3 WORD.
 
Between February and May of 2017, it lost a third of its value, and then hit a low of $3.12 in 2019, recovering a bit by year-end.

Let me think...what happened that might have affected that in February of 2017? Hmmmm

On February 2, 2017, Entercom announced that it had agreed to acquire CBS Radio.

You don't think $2 billion of new debt will affect stock price?
 
And all those were done before perceptual research was done for radio. Having dealt with Kluge on a big radio project much later on, I can tell you that he changed much of his thinking as years went by and either consumer attitudes changed or he realized that some business practices had morphed.

He may have changed his thinking, but he never changed the branding on his radio stations. And when he invested in the cellular business, he used his radio stations to sell phone contracts. It made him rich and he got rid of his broadcasting.
 
Not if the proposed acquisition is actually a good idea.
 
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