• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Audacy selling Boston assets

some nutcase bought 60 MILLION of AUD debt?



This so-called “nutcase” is, in truth, incredibly calculated. He’s buying up debt and will force a takeover of the company, leaving the Field family on the outside looking in. Plus he has the money to just absorb the existing debt.

Investing in Cumulus at the same time smacks of a forthcoming forced “shotgun marriage” between them and Audacy. Which should surprise no one when it finally happens.
 
This so-called “nutcase” is, in truth, incredibly calculated. He’s buying up debt and will force a takeover of the company, leaving the Field family on the outside looking in. Plus he has the money to just absorb the existing debt.

Investing in Cumulus at the same time smacks of a forthcoming forced “shotgun marriage” between them and Audacy. Which should surprise no one when it finally happens.
A merger between Audacy and Cumulus? That sure gets our attention here in Houston, where Audacy has four FMs while Cumulus has a stand-alone FM. Would fit together perfectly, without the need for any format changes.

Would be messy in DFW, however, requiring the spin-off of four FMs and one AM.
 
Since I'm still curious about what compelled adults who ostensibly attended business school to pay such an eye-popping sum for an entity which, again, manufactures nothing more than digital audio files, I clicked through. First item while scrolling was this:

At the time Entercom made that deal, I remember thinking it was an eye-popping amount. I get what it was trying to do. In podcasting, you either need to have one of the few shows that generates tons of revenue or be everywhere to everyone. The Pineapple Street and Cadence 13 deals would appear to have been efforts to do the latter. The problem was, Entercom still overpaid by magnitudes. Margins from digital ad sales are tiny, and you need lots of ears. As one of my friends put it, Audacy has done very little intelligent over the last five years or so.

This so-called “nutcase” is, in truth, incredibly calculated. He’s buying up debt and will force a takeover of the company, leaving the Field family on the outside looking in. Plus he has the money to just absorb the existing debt.

Investing in Cumulus at the same time smacks of a forthcoming forced “shotgun marriage” between them and Audacy. Which should surprise no one when it finally happens.

I had similar thoughts when I read that headline.

A merger between Audacy and Cumulus? That sure gets our attention here in Houston, where Audacy has four FMs while Cumulus has a stand-alone FM. Would fit together perfectly, without the need for any format changes.

Would be messy in DFW, however, requiring the spin-off of four FMs and one AM.

The two don't fit like a glove, but it would be a lot less messy than some of the past mergers we've seen. DFW would require several spinoffs as would Chicago, Atlanta, and San Francisco. A few small deals might be required in LA, DC, and Minneapolis, but there aren't many overlapping clusters in the next tier of markets. KC, Memphis, New Orleans, and Buffalo would require fairly sizable divestitures, but I can't think of any outside of those (not that there might not be a few, though). Outside of the top-60 markets, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre would be about the only big divestiture.
 
Last edited:
At the time Entercom made that deal, I remember thinking it was an eye-popping amount. I get what it was trying to do. In podcasting, you either need to have one of the few shows that generates tons of revenue or be everywhere to everyone. The Pineapple Street and Cadence 13 deals would appear to have been efforts to do the latter. The problem was, Entercom still overpaid by magnitudes. Margins from digital ad sales are tiny, and you need lots of ears. As one of my friends put it, Audacy has done very little intelligent over the last five years or so.



I had similar thoughts when I read that headline.



The two don't fit like a glove, but it would be a lot less messy than some of the past mergers we've seen. DFW would require several spinoffs as would Chicago, Atlanta, and San Francisco. A few small deals might be required in LA, DC, and Minneapolis, but there aren't many overlapping clusters in the next tier of markets. KC, Memphis, New Orleans, and Buffalo would require fairly sizable divestitures, but I can't think of any outside of those (not that there might not be a few, though). Outside of the top-60 markets, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre would be about the only big divestiture.
Between Audacy and Cumulus, they each possess pretty much all the FORMER O&O local stations of NBC, CBS, and ABC Radio.
 
Just goes to show that the bigger you get the harder it gets to sustain.

Goes for Audacy and IHeart.

Corporate radio ruined local market. No real rock station. The two from NH sound awful and are way too corporate for my ears.

Local is better but not much of them left to support!!
 
Just goes to show that the bigger you get the harder it gets to sustain.
Only if you have unmanageable debt. It has nothing to do with size.
Corporate radio ruined local market.
No, we have had "corporate radio" since the networks in the late 1920's and early 1930's. Music radio, begun in its present form in the early, early 1950's, was corporate: McLendon, Storz, Rounsaville, McLendon OK, United, RKO General, Metromedia, Doubleday, Metroplex, Westinghouse, EZ, Lotus and many, many others in smaller sets of markets.
No real rock station.
In your opinion. Whatever you consider to be "real" rock would exist if there were audiences and advertisers to sustain it.

As BigA stated, radio reflects listener tastes and whatever the music industry produces; we now have only three major record labels in the world and they have a vastly greater influence over music than individual radio stations or radio groups do.

And you are failing to realize that tastes change. Hip-Hop and rhythmic music have vastly overtaken your "real rock" (whatever that is) in appeal and radio reflects that, amply.
The two from NH sound awful and are way too corporate for my ears.
"Corporate" is a form of ownership, not programming. About 99% of stations in the US are owned by a corporation, and have been for 80 to 90 years at least.
Local is better but not much of them left to support!!
Yet some of the best stations in the world are the national networks in Europe and much of Latin America.
 
with all due respect, it's very common to use "corporate" to describe a cookie-cutter, bland, paint-by-numbers rock bands. valley wasn't referring to the structure of the company.
It's still a misnomer.
 
Yet some of the best stations in the world are the national networks in Europe and much of Latin America.
This cannot be emphasized enough. The old way of doing things has become totally unsustainable and it’s a matter of time before consolidating stations into a singular national network like Heart in the UK is inevitable.

The only question is who does it first.
 
It's not a misnomer. Books, academic essays, and dissertations have been written about "corporate rock."

You didn't say "corporate rock." You said "corporate radio."

Keep in mind that the music business is far more consolidated than the radio business.

You want to hear non-corporate radio? Try WERS or WUMB.
 
You didn't say "corporate rock." You said "corporate radio."

Keep in mind that the music business is far more consolidated than the radio business.

You want to hear non-corporate radio? Try WERS or WUMB.
In the context of the original comment where radio sounds too corporate, it was regarding there being no "real rock station"

I know plenty of non-comms, thank you very much. They're the only thing keeping me tied to this miserable, boring, and decrepid industry
 
Only if you have unmanageable debt. It has nothing to do with size.

No, we have had "corporate radio" since the networks in the late 1920's and early 1930's. Music radio, begun in its present form in the early, early 1950's, was corporate: McLendon, Storz, Rounsaville, McLendon OK, United, RKO General, Metromedia, Doubleday, Metroplex, Westinghouse, EZ, Lotus and many, many others in smaller sets of markets.

In your opinion. Whatever you consider to be "real" rock would exist if there were audiences and advertisers to sustain it.

As BigA stated, radio reflects listener tastes and whatever the music industry produces; we now have only three major record labels in the world and they have a vastly greater influence over music than individual radio stations or radio groups do.

And you are failing to realize that tastes change. Hip-Hop and rhythmic music have vastly overtaken your "real rock" (whatever that is) in appeal and radio reflects that, amply.

"Corporate" is a form of ownership, not programming. About 99% of stations in the US are owned by a corporation, and have been for 80 to 90 years at least.

Yet some of the best stations in the world are the national networks in Europe and much of Latin America.
Says the corporate guy. Get a grip! You may have valid opinions. However, if you ask any schmuck and jahmoke there isn't anything playing new rock since the death of WBCN, WFNX and WAAF.

WHEB and WGIR are nothing playing the same corporate radio lists.

Network radio was a thing of the past to which you live in. It's all corporate now very few independent stations. Either they are LPs or not strong enough to reach me via the terrestrial means.

I only listen to stations out of state or Spotify.

Sincerely a Jamoke that.misses WAAF, WBCN,WFNX, WCGY.
 
You didn't say "corporate rock." You said "corporate radio."

Keep in mind that the music business is far more consolidated than the radio business.

You want to hear non-corporate radio? Try WERS or WUMB.
And even WUMB gets the "corporate" slur slung at it from time to time, but not for its music mix. What the anti-establishment/don't trust anyone over 30/tune in, turn on, drop out contingent feels is "corporate" about the UMass-Boston station is that no student has a single on-air role there, and that it has extended its reach nearly state wide through amassing a network of stations, interfering with the consumer of the medium's God-given, inalienable right to DX.
 
Last edited:
Says the corporate guy. Get a grip! You may have valid opinions. However, if you ask any schmuck and jahmoke there isn't anything playing new rock since the death of WBCN, WFNX and WAAF.

WHEB and WGIR are nothing playing the same corporate radio lists.

Network radio was a thing of the past to which you live in. It's all corporate now very few independent stations. Either they are LPs or not strong enough to reach me via the terrestrial means.

I only listen to stations out of state or Spotify.

Sincerely a Jamoke that.misses WAAF, WBCN,WFNX, WCGY.
WAAF was owned by corporations American Radio Systems and then Entercom from 1996 until its sale to EMF.

WBCN was owned by various corporations going back to the 1970s.

Curt Gowdy Broadcasting was technically a corporation.

Spotify is a massive corporation.

You don't decry "corporate radio". You decry stations that don't play what you want them to play. And rightfully so, however in this era of an infinite dial, you can listen from out of market. Just as the marketplace has determined that Boston (and MANY other markets) cannot support the music you want it to anymore.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom