It's worth noting, since it has been widely misreported, that iHeartMedia's radio business itself is perfectly profitable. I'm not in any way defending the quality of the services or the high repetition. The reason for the bankruptcy is the highly leverage consolidation of the business, in particular their takeover of Clear Channel Outdoor, just ahead of the financial crash. They can't service their ludicrously high debt, taken on by management at the worst possible time.
There's lots of misreporting about this, claiming it's Spotify or Pandora eating into their business. Of course neither of those companies are profitable. While they are long term threats, commercial radio itself continues to make money - not least because so many costs have been stripped out during a period of ruthless consolidation. As I say, repetition, lack of originality, creativity and many other things are problems. And there are even bigger problems coming down the tracks with the young definitely replacing listening to FM with streaming. But as with much of the rest of the broadcast media business, it remains profitable even with declining audiences. Adam On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 10:07 PM, Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 10:56 AM Tom Wolper <[email protected]> wrote: > >> It's Chapter 11 which means they restructure debt and keep operating. >> > > “But... but... the focus groups say they want to hear the same 30 songs > over and over on every radio station... how can we possibly be losing > money?” > > >> http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/15/media/iheartmedia-bankruptcy/index.html >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "TVorNotTV" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > -- > Kevin M. (RPCV) > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
