At this rate, maybe sooner. http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=cmls&ql=1 While CBS and ENT rallied and closed up from Monday's low... Cumulus... kinda sorta rallied. Blackstone can't be happy with this rancid stew. Lew last week made a nice gesture (and that's all it was, a gesture) and bought 30 thousand shares at 1.60 per. A few days later, the price went to 1.35. Now it's down to 1.28. Two very dispassionate analysts commented about the lack of faith in this company on the street. Very sad, given that so many people in Buffalo and other medium markets are working so hard. Other than the Chicago FMs which CMLS is LMA'ing from Merlin, the major markets, the Nash brand and the AMs seem to be dragging this company to the gallows.
-
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
Limbaugh losing ground in key demos on WBEN
- Thread starter Rob Piotrowski
- Start date
...or not. Share price @ 68 cents. Clock strikes 12. http://www.allaccess.com/net-news/a...us-media-names-mary-g-berner-new-ceo-lew-dick
So, a former magazine exec takes over the second largest radio group. As Van used to say, "Fasten Your Seatbelts".
The guy who gave her the job used to run Chancellor back when it was one of the best companies in radio. He knows radio. He could see the Dickeys had lost touch and didn't have answers. So he'll see if she can fix things. They need someone else as a COO or a similar position. There are a few good ones available right now. I bet he's already got one in mind.
It wouldn't totally shock me to see the headquarters move from Atlanta to NYC.
It wouldn't totally shock me to see the headquarters move from Atlanta to NYC.
Last edited:
I thought Bette Davis said that.
I thought Bette Davis said that.
Not a Bills fan, huh?
The Dickey family own 14% of the company. Jeff Marcus and Crestview, which controls 27% of Cumulus have the muscle and made the call. What was once lemonade has turned into lemon juice.
Mary Berner has a reputation in print publishing. She has a track record at Readers Digest. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/business/media/20digest.html?_r=1
She's not at Cumulus to make friends. She's there to get the share price up. We'll soon find out if she can run the company any better than the MBA adorned Dickey clan, who clearly tried to swallow too big a pig when they seized the Citadel carcass at north of $2 billion. Cumulus has paid down hundreds of millions of dollars of that debt, but about a billion dollars of debt remains. Can Berner get that under control? A lot of her job will be massaging the investors and dancing for Wall Street.
Let the street show begin.
The Radio Illuminati say Cumulus' major market stations, particularly the AMs in LA and NY, are the millstone around the company's neck. If that's the case, markets like Buffalo shouldn't be concerned. Radio reality says that anybody who's not concerned is whistling past the graveyard. Berner very soon will do a "getting to know you / getting to know all about you" webcast. That should be revealing.
Typically, a new CEO looks at numbers related to personnel and revenue, suggesting cuts in personnel and ratcheting up revenue expectations. Berner could try to split up the company, parceling off some under-performing markets, but it's a buyer's market and financing is a major hurdle.
Perhaps she can sell more AM antenna sites? Right. Selling clusters or stations isn't likely, but there have been fire sales in years past when it becomes the only option for investors to recoup some of their money. Additionally, some of the losses could be written down, just like Disney is doing with the AMs it's disposing at bargain prices.
The Cumulus cluster in Buffalo is said to run lean, but a new CEO may demand that it be made to run leaner. This would seem to be impossible if not unwise. Reports in this market have two Cumulus personalities, along with their local shows, voice tracking Westwood One's Classic Rock format.
How much 'leaner' can it get?
Mary Berner has a reputation in print publishing. She has a track record at Readers Digest. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/business/media/20digest.html?_r=1
She's not at Cumulus to make friends. She's there to get the share price up. We'll soon find out if she can run the company any better than the MBA adorned Dickey clan, who clearly tried to swallow too big a pig when they seized the Citadel carcass at north of $2 billion. Cumulus has paid down hundreds of millions of dollars of that debt, but about a billion dollars of debt remains. Can Berner get that under control? A lot of her job will be massaging the investors and dancing for Wall Street.
Let the street show begin.
The Radio Illuminati say Cumulus' major market stations, particularly the AMs in LA and NY, are the millstone around the company's neck. If that's the case, markets like Buffalo shouldn't be concerned. Radio reality says that anybody who's not concerned is whistling past the graveyard. Berner very soon will do a "getting to know you / getting to know all about you" webcast. That should be revealing.
Typically, a new CEO looks at numbers related to personnel and revenue, suggesting cuts in personnel and ratcheting up revenue expectations. Berner could try to split up the company, parceling off some under-performing markets, but it's a buyer's market and financing is a major hurdle.
Perhaps she can sell more AM antenna sites? Right. Selling clusters or stations isn't likely, but there have been fire sales in years past when it becomes the only option for investors to recoup some of their money. Additionally, some of the losses could be written down, just like Disney is doing with the AMs it's disposing at bargain prices.
The Cumulus cluster in Buffalo is said to run lean, but a new CEO may demand that it be made to run leaner. This would seem to be impossible if not unwise. Reports in this market have two Cumulus personalities, along with their local shows, voice tracking Westwood One's Classic Rock format.
How much 'leaner' can it get?
Last edited:
Which is why Lew wasn't fired.
I'd expand that to say the entire ABC package that killed Citadel is killing Cumulus. Same exact thing. Citadel was fine until they bought ABC. There's a reason why Disney wanted to sell, and why they shut down Radio Disney. I get the impression the Dickeys were enamored of the ABC cachet, and you can't be emotional in business. So now they can make operational decisions based on cost.
Lew was moving too slow. And he wouldn't hire a COO of Radio, as the Board told him to do. So that's partly why he's gone. I expect Mary will hire a COO of Radio very soon. Then they'll begin making deals. Wall Street likes deal makers.
This is a good idea, and something else Lew wouldn't do. He believed in centralization. That wasn't good for local morale. She can do this without selling anything if she wants by creating operating divisions and naming division Presidents, making them responsible for their division. This is something Mel did at CBS, inspiring internal competition, and motivating employees. That's something that apparently is missing at Cumulus.
They have a lot of work to do, and they have to change the company's image. Maybe even change the name.
My guess is that the new CEO will take a hard look at managers that were hired by Lew Dickey, particularly in markets where revenue has been stagnant, or dropped. The "centralization" that the Dickeys were so fond of did not impact many stations positively. Many talented people from the top to the bottom of the organization either were let go, or fled rather than deal with clumsy, simplistic "systems" dictated by corporate. Returning more of the responsibility for operations to local management could improve results. Of course, with responsibility comes accountability. Some of the people in place are not ready for that responsibility, and likely won't survive such a restructuring.
However long that might last. Cumuless looks like it's following in the footsteps of Citadel, which canceled all contracts. http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/stockdetails/fi-126.1.CMLS.NAS?symbol=CMLS&form=PRFIMQ
Technically speaking, Citadel didn't cancel any contracts. The bankruptcy process canceled the contracts, and the lenders quickly re-signed them all. The same process that Regent went through. The rest of the story with Cumulus is that the lenders have hired a new CEO, who is working in their best interest, and is saying she will not pursue bankruptcy.
Technically speaking, the bankruptcy court allowed Citadel's contracts with vendors, contractors and talent to be canceled. It's one of the reasons the Citadel cluster could extract itself from obligations to the Buffalo Bills. True, published reports indicate Ms. Berner has no plans to follow in the footsteps of Farid Suleman, yet market conditions force the hand of even the most skilled CEOs. Naturally, we wish them all well. Time will tell.
That's not what I recall, but I'll leave that for others. Citadel had contracts with other teams in other towns, and they immediately re-signed those contracts to ensure they retained those rights, and to the best of my knowledge, no talent lost their deal during that bankruptcy process. Perhaps they did before or after, but not specifically because of that process. Also, because it was a court process, I recall that those contracts became part of the public record.
- Status