Is ruining our business
Did you see the item on All Access last week?
CLEAR CHANNEL BURNING CASH TO DELAY RECKONING WRITES BLOOMBERG.
Clear Channel “is offering to double interest to push out maturities on some of the $4.3 billions it owes…”
Clear Channel “ran a deficit from operations in the year ended June, meaning the company had to eat into cash that’s declined more than 60% since the end of 2010…”
“Clear Channel’s interest expenses have surpassed its operating income in every quarter since the end of 2008...”
Enough.
We’ve tried it their way, cutting thousands of their best empoyees, voice-tracking entire stations, putting one person in charge of 6 or 7 stations, forcing PDs to do airshifts and multiple markets to keep their jobs, slashing budgets while they award themselves huge bonuses.
Their way doesn’t work. We don’t need more evidence.
This small group of people at the very top of Clear Channel, and Cumulus, for that matter, is ruining one of the best businesses the modern world has known.
It wouldn’t matter at all if they didn’t own so many radio stations, but because they do, they’ve set the operating tone for the whole industry.
Just as the worst-run airlines made it almost impossible for the best-run airlines to operate at a profit 15-20 years ago — because they set the lowest air fares and all the other airlines had to match their ruinous rates — so now the largest consolidated radio companies are hurting all the rest of the industry.
It’s time for a change, at the very top.
It’s time to cut these over-promisers, these over-leveraged, over-paid geniuses loose. Send them on their way with their ridiculous golden parachute deals, and start selling what’s left of their stations to people who actually want to run them for the public good, as radio used to be run.
Serving local communities 24 hours a day. Building local equity by their very presence in these towns because that’s where their kids are raised and their money is earned.
This small group has done enough damage to last a lifetime.
I don’t think they planned to ruin Radio. I don’t impugn their character or their motives, but, clearly, they have failed on a massive scale. We need to stop pretending otherwise.
It’s time to throw ’em out and begin rebuilding with new ownership and leadership that knows how to grow our business for the future.
This small group is done.