Very wealthy people have a way of shielding themselves from blame. The default is usually to blame it on the employees. I've seen it happen in industry other than just radio.
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Audacy Filed For Bankruptcy
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I'm sure the new management team, most of which will be the old management team, may again look at economies that can be attained. But the Pandemic and the pseudo-recession of the last 4 years has pretty much exhausted those possibilities.
A rather thoughtful analysis of the Soros investment in Audacy:
www.semafor.com
Soros fund is building an audio empire
Soros Fund Management, the firm founded by the billionaire investor and now controlled by the Open Society Foundations, has gotten into radio.
www.semafor.com
How will Soros views affect a radio station that plays music? And as we all know progressive talk has never worked?A rather thoughtful analysis of the Soros investment in Audacy:
Soros fund is building an audio empire
Soros Fund Management, the firm founded by the billionaire investor and now controlled by the Open Society Foundations, has gotten into radio.
The answer is not at all. The man is 93 years old.
BigA: You know what I mean.I'm talking about his organization.His sons and his nephews that are going to carry on his progressive projects
That's a separate thing. If you read the article I linked, this is about the money.
There are a lot of wealthy older people who love radio. Cats is another one. Yes he has his political views, but mainly he bought WABC because he loves radio. I think that's the same thing here. More of them need to invest in these aging platforms or they'll go away.
If influencing public opinion was his agenda a better buy would have been iHeartRadio.They have a ton of conservative talk Radio stations Audacy not so much
That's why I say this isn't about spreading his agenda. He funds things that already do that, rather than do what Musk did to Twitter.
Dude, take off your blinders. If you've been listening to WABC for most of the last five years then you know it's been about spreading his business and political agendas.
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Yes I know, I was talking about Soros. He's not like Cats or Musk. He won't buy Fox News or some other right wing platform.
Soros is more like Jeff Bezos, who bought the Washington Post.
A 93 year old is not the investor anybody should be worried about. I'm scared of Manoj Bhargava and what he wants to do with Audacy and Cumulus.
I've added additional details based off the post linked above that I've learned over the past few months...
radioinsight.com
I've added additional details based off the post linked above that I've learned over the past few months...
Latest On Audacy’s New Owners And A Potential Cumulus Media Combination
Last night Semafor publicly reported on something that has been whispered for much of the past year; a potential combination
radioinsight.com
Interesting article. Ties together a lot of things.
Bhargava has a reputation for being a slash and burn manager. Think Lew and John Dickey on Adderall.
Some of us have talked about this possibility for the last several months. That Cumulus's poison pill doesn't seem to have many takers would seem to make this scenario a lot more likely.
This is concerning. This could upend a lot of things in markets like Dallas and Chicago, and not necessarily for the better. A lot of people complain about Audacy and Cumulus, but I think pretty much everyone would be unhappy with the end result compared to how things are now. There isn't anyone in buying mode for these prime signals in major markets that could still probably fetch a lot of $$, and they're all valuable brands. Before anyone says godcasters, EMF doesn't buy everything placed for sale like many on this board claim, especially not now. VCY only buys bargain basement deals. Most of the Spanish operators aren't expanding. Who does that leave for a buyer that is willing to spend the cash? It would likely be too heavy of a financial lift for the smaller radio companies that may want to expand. In some of these cases, we're talking big brands and signals, and still big billing.A 93 year old is not the investor anybody should be worried about. I'm scared of Manoj Bhargava and what he wants to do with Audacy and Cumulus.
I've added additional details based off the post linked above that I've learned over the past few months...
Latest On Audacy’s New Owners And A Potential Cumulus Media Combination
Last night Semafor publicly reported on something that has been whispered for much of the past year; a potential combination
If Radio One has the cash, I could see them picking up some stations where they could build a decent cluster that diversifies their holdings.
It's hard to say how things would change without knowing who would be in charge. We're pretty sure Field will be gone, and Mary Berner is near the end of her contract at Cumulus. The fact is that with radio usage so low, the companies need more stations to reach the same numbers they had 20 years ago. If the FCC isn't going to loosen ownership, then the companies need to find ways to work within the law. Advertisers require big numbers, and the only way to do that (without adding more spots per station) is adding more stations.
100%. Apparently, the FCC "knows best" by forcing Audacy to fire sale a station in my market (GSP) that got a 3.3 share, only station in its format (AC) because Audacy "owned too many stations" in the market to a low budget Spanish operator that sounds like an audio stream from 2000. What happened? It's now the 3rd Spanish station in a market that has less than 90k Hispanics. Nothing against Spanish language radio, but that move was not serving the public interest. The rules are antiquated.
But it DID serve the FCC's other agenda, which is to allow minorities to own more radio stations. In that way, it statistically serves the public interest. Because remember: The FCC doesn't regulate formats. They are totally up to the owners.
Good point, I didn't think about that.
The FCC has delayed for many years any revision of ownership rules because in the current administration they do not want to allow any company to have an even greater control of local radio or TV in each market.
If Audacy did not want to sell immediately, they could have put the station into a trust. But, being in bankruptcy, they wanted the cash and wanted to speed up the bankruptcy reorganization.
What they sold was a rimshot station with an incomplete market coverage. They were lucky to find a buyer with cash who wanted it.
Not counting LPFMs and translators, GSP has about 43 stations in total. The one they sold was a low biller as well as having a bad signal coverage.
Given the population of 1.1 million, it has 3 stations for every 40,000 people. So having 3 in Spanish is not a bad since the others are AM or AM with a limited translator. None of the others is billing anything of significance.
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