That from Caroline Beasley on the Beasley first-quarter earnings call Tuesday. She wasn’t specific but you could speculate that one of those surprises took place in Philadelphia where eight Account Executives jumped ship right as the deal to purchase Greater Media was closing. No reason was given for the mass exodus. That’s a lot to overcome in a major market and as a result it had an impact on revenue with Philadelphia down 13%.
Beasley said six of the eight AEs have already been replaced but, as we all know, getting Account Executives selling successfully takes time. The Philadelphia market makes up 20% of Beasley’s overall revenue. She also said the company has “identified other areas that require extra attention going forward.” Joe Bell took over running that market for Philadelphia in December 2016, replacing John Fullam.
Tampa was also a downer for Beasley due to the Bubba The Love Sponge/Nielsen ratings tampering case that the company would up getting tangled up in. Beasley decided to cut ties with the host and flip formats. That caused a dip in the ratings and revenue with Beasley off 18% in that market.
On a positive note, Detroit did very well, increasing revenue 23% compared to Q1 2016.
The million dollar question is…why did all these salespeople leave en masse? They must have feared that Beasley was either going to fire them or cut their commissions.Radio Ink does a great job usually, but reaching out to these AE’ s and asking why they left would make for an interesting story.
If you needed to sell subscriptions to Beasley, you might not worry about doing much investigative journalism on this one, either.