How can their financial woes not be caused by the way they run their business.
Because it has affected almost every other company in the country. There are a TON of radio companies on the verge of bankruptcy. Also, the fact that they are Urban Radio specialists has hurt them with the PPM. I guess they should have seen that coming and gone all showtunes?
They can't run a profitable station = bad management
Not necessarily Shall we go down the list of companies that are all in the same boat? Almost every radio company stock is in the dumper right now. Virtually every stations billing is down. Stations that cater to black audiences have been hit the hardest.
Here, they could have not had WILD and Hot 97 cannibalize each other. For some reason, they thought they needed to change WILD to create/market/promote 97.7.
Not really, WILD could have gone uper-demo talk...which they didn...and 97.7 could have stayed younger demo hip-hop....which they didn.
But you are not counting the fact that neither station had numbers....ever. 97.7 could never garner enough audience to pay it's bills...no matter WHO owned them. They still can't survice on their own...that's why their are being used as a repeater station.
Instead they should have kept the original format, and still could have easily, yet subtlety promoted Hot 97.
Oh, and THAt would have been a good business decision, right? Hang onto music on AM (a daytimer no less!) and underplay the FM 24 hour signal. I'm glad you're not running my station! LOL
Yes, WILD was AM, but I personally think it was great before R1 touched it and would be doing better now had they never gotten involved.
You think it would be in "good shape" had they never gotten involved? The clock was ticking for WILD-AM 1090. AM listening has gone down every year...to the point where young people (under 50?) don't even turn it on anymore.
In addition to not screwing with WILD, which I think was a big part of their doom, I would have kept 97.7 more of a true urban station,
The problem you ignore...that R1 had to deal with was that they were not making it on 97.7. Not in billing, not in audience.
Look at all the urban pirates now, selling ads, doing well, probably having more listeners / impact than 97.7 ever had.
Do we have any proof of such? No we don't.
Are any of the pirates billing a million dollars a year? I doubt it. There goes the argument that they are "doing well". DO they have more listeners? Probably not.
Then, take Phily, instead of them admitting they couldn't run their way out of a paper bag, they just ran y100 into the ground...
Or take DC...and admit that they had one of the best Urban stations in the country....until PPM caught them in the shorts.
instead of either learning the format, or handing it off to someone who knew it.
Who knows the format better than Radio One? Again, WKYS is/was one of the best run urban stations in the country.
But you can't blame PPM or the economy when other radio companies are still doing ok.
What planet are you on? Who is doing "well"?
It's poor (maybe more than poor) management that has plagued Radio 1 in my opinion.
Well, to bad the facts aren't on your side.
Given that.....I will give you a couple of things that R1 did not do well.
1.) They abandoned localism like so many other companies. WILD-AM was a real community station, that was involved with the community, with news, public affairs and public service. Turning their Boston properties into jukeboxes didn't help endear them into anyone. This is the same with plenty of other companies.
2.) Like many other companies, borrowed too much money. If this was a mistake, it was a mistake that many other big companies made.
3.) They depended upon one format too too much. Putting all your eggs in one basket didn't help them when the PPM showed it's true colors as to who would be affected by the new methodology. Urban and minority stations were hit the hardest. Radio One had all it's eggs in one basket.
Add to this the pressures of their stock being in the dumper (like Entercom, like Citadel, like Cumulus, like Regent and so many other companies), and you have the perfect storm.
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