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Clearly Conflicted

SirRoxalot said:
As far as "leaving money on the table" is concerned, how much of the money going into radio station on-line is either bonus, or coming out of the money budgeted for radio? Provide that answer, and your point might have some validity.

If a salesman is using online as a bonus, he needs to go back to salesman school. Most companies won't allow online to be given away as bonus. The reason CC and other companies are investing online is to create new inventory to sell, not give away. I read that Townsquare's online news sites get 52 million views a month. That's a sellable number. If someone can't sell that space for good money, they should be fired.
 
You wanna see an example of Cumulus sales sucking? (Or perhaps to be fair to the sales guys, I should say, Cumulus management effing over their own sales people).

In order to get "free" office furniture they gave away a buttload of spots (how can office furniture even in a small town be worth 13,000 spots?)

And then Cumulus says to the office furniture guys - you can RESELL the spots with your own sales guys.

So how does the Cumulus sales guy feel when he walks into a local business and finds that someone has already been here from the furniture store selling the same thing he is selling for far less of the price he has on his rate card?

This goes back to what I said, the main problem at most radio stations is poor management, short term thinking, cheap programming and poorly thought out sales management decisions and poorly trainded sales people.

I mean - case in point!! -

http://www.allaccess.com/net-news/a...ver-barter-deal-moved-to-federa?ref=mail_news
 
Some play-by-play sports deals allow the team to sell spots within their game. That means team salesmen are competing with station sales people. Don't know about Buffalo, but it happens in other places.
 
Not spots, mentions. "And now the Major League scoreboard by Budweiser, Bud, Proud to be your Bud"...in the American League it was the....

Not spots.
 
radioray said:
Not spots, mentions. "And now the Major League scoreboard by Budweiser, Bud, Proud to be your Bud"...in the American League it was the....

That sounds like part of the league deal, not a team deal.
 
JustPastBuffalo said:
And then there's this from Bob Lefsetz: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/ If the article doesn't load, click "radio" on his home page.

And that's the most complimentary thing I've ever seen him write about radio.

Lefsetz is a must-read at our house. He's also the subject of Taylor Swift's "Mean"...and his mailbag reads like a who's who.
 
Pittman says this about refinancing:

"The transactions are in the direction of a big win and success for us when we refinanced this debt. This allows us to have a pressure on us to continue to grow and innovate, which I think is a positive pressure."

Big win? Success? Did you see the RATES? Doesn't sound like a win at all to me. More like a postponement of doom. Pittman's banking on the idea that he can bring the antenna audience to on-line, and he's going to be able to monetize that portion of the business more effectively than he can the OTA delivery system. NOBODY'S done it so far. Is anybody on-line MAKING money?

Lenders are making CC pay dearly for putting off the inevitable. They either have to sell a lot of stations (unlikely), or pump up revenue. They can't cut their way to prosperity. There's simply not enough left to cut, and still remain competitive in markets where there are other operators. He'll be gone long before the shizzle hits the fan. He ain't stupid.
 
He also says this:

I personally invested in the common equity behind the debt, so I am a great believer

You have to credit him for putting his own personal money where his mouth is. Not many other consolidators, including Farid or Randy Michaels, were willing to do that.
 
I'll bet it ain't his retirement savings. And I'll bet that money's out of there before the shizzle hits the fan.
 
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