The iHeart cluster in Rochester has laid off three personalities, Julie Dunn, Mark Maira and Jeremy Newman (Newman had already planned to leave for Texas at the end of his contract this fall). There are now no regular locally originated shows on any of the cluster's five FMs. Dunn was program director for two of them, and also voice tracked for Y94 in Syracuse.
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Rochester Rochester layoffs
- Thread starter RetiredGuy
- Start date
WHAM AM is the only iHeart station in the top 5. None of their other stations cracks a 2.5 share. They're simply not competitive anymore in the most popular formats in the market.
They're probably counting on the other clusters to eventually make deep cuts and to also start sucking, which will make iHeart competitive again in the race for that lower bar.
They don’t care about ratings. It’s all about expense cutting to improve shareholder profits
They've tried cutting their way to prosperity before. Cutting people who create the reason to listen means lower ratings. Lower ratings mean less revenue. The revenue decreases more than the operating costs do, which mean less profit. Yeah, they'll get a temporary boost to their stock price from people who don't know the business or who haven't noticed their past performance. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of iHeartMedia's shares 5 years ago would now be looking at only $149.85 today.
It will take a while for shareholders to catch on. They've made several moves during the latest cost-cutting wave. They're switching to Audiograph with promises that you can target an audience more precisely, most likely based on online listening. They're pushing people toward their app and away from towers and transmitters. Maybe they're ahead of the curve on that. Maybe they're not as people are becoming more resistant to giving up their data. If you're going to listen on an app, why listen to iHeart? There are plenty of other sources with a lot fewer commercials.
They're cutting salespeople out of the loop by offering advertising through Amazon's ad buying platform. It's allased on numbers like all other digital advertising. It's very hard to measure how effective those numbers really are, and there's very little human interaction to establish relationships and guide ad buys.
Short term, Pittman and a handful at the top get to keep their cushy jobs. Long term, their properties get even more robotic, and they get an excuse to lean even more heavily on AI, perfecting their goal of saying nothing meaningful to local audiences. With luck, they can reduce their content to a dozen streaming formats and employ bots to create locally-targeted advertising to those who find AI slop appealing.
It will take a while for shareholders to catch on. They've made several moves during the latest cost-cutting wave. They're switching to Audiograph with promises that you can target an audience more precisely, most likely based on online listening. They're pushing people toward their app and away from towers and transmitters. Maybe they're ahead of the curve on that. Maybe they're not as people are becoming more resistant to giving up their data. If you're going to listen on an app, why listen to iHeart? There are plenty of other sources with a lot fewer commercials.
They're cutting salespeople out of the loop by offering advertising through Amazon's ad buying platform. It's allased on numbers like all other digital advertising. It's very hard to measure how effective those numbers really are, and there's very little human interaction to establish relationships and guide ad buys.
Short term, Pittman and a handful at the top get to keep their cushy jobs. Long term, their properties get even more robotic, and they get an excuse to lean even more heavily on AI, perfecting their goal of saying nothing meaningful to local audiences. With luck, they can reduce their content to a dozen streaming formats and employ bots to create locally-targeted advertising to those who find AI slop appealing.
You assume the reason people listen to music stations is for the local talent. The track record says that's not true.
The fact of the matter is the broadcast division of the company lost $100 million last year WITH all of those people still employed.
Strategically, the company is shifting from a broadcast company to a digital content company. According to their latest earnings report, digital content is responsible for over 45% of the company's revenue. In the announcement for the cuts, the company said:
So they're shifting resources from the money-losing broadcast markets to areas where the company has growth potential. They're not eliminating talent from their stations. They're replacing local talent in markets that were losing money with talent from stronger markets. As you say, they've made cuts before. They know what to expect from these cuts. It's already been factored into the decision.
Keep in mind that most of the stock is held by the equity partners in the company. Those are all the creditors who previously held iHeart's debt. In the bankruptcy, they agreed to transfer their debt to equity. So they know the business. The business owes them money. They're the ones who made this decision. Bob Pittman works for them.
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Here's Radio Insight's "comprehensive" list of all the cuts.
radioinsight.com
These are the names of the people who have gone public. There are likely other people who haven't said anything publicly. But the main thing you'll note is nobody at NY, LA, or Chicago. They bring in about $350 million a year in revenue. They're also union markets, where staffing is covered by union agreements.
The biggest market is Houston with one person cut. Other big markets are Miami, Denver, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis. But it's mostly small markets.
Comprehensive List Of Those Affected By iHeartMedia’s Cuts This Week
iHeartMedia initiated a programming realignment today as it intends to scale its "new tech capabilities over the last several years".
radioinsight.com
These are the names of the people who have gone public. There are likely other people who haven't said anything publicly. But the main thing you'll note is nobody at NY, LA, or Chicago. They bring in about $350 million a year in revenue. They're also union markets, where staffing is covered by union agreements.
The biggest market is Houston with one person cut. Other big markets are Miami, Denver, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis. But it's mostly small markets.