A hundred days into the merger of CBS, Entercom CEO David Field continues to criticize the way CBS’ radio stations were being run. And that could be because those stations are now dragging down the revenue numbers at Entercom, although Field is confident they can be turned around. He says it’ll just take some time. Here’s what he had to say about the CBS leadership on his quarterly earnings call Thursday.
After pointing out how poorly CBS’ legacy stations performed in the quarter, Field told analysts and investors Entercom fully understood CBS Radio was performing weakly and that job one was turning that around. “We made it very clear that we believe CBS Radio was very fixable with a powerful lineup of the country’s most important local stations and personalities, and many highly talented people across the organization. I won’t dwell on the leadership issues at CBS Radio, but suffice it to say it was undermanaged by divisional leadership and lacked strategic focus and energy, playing not to lose rather than to win.”
Field stated that Entercom has made important strides in energizing the organization, elevating expectations, eliminating silos, and a creating a can-do, engaged, performance-based organization.
Field said the previously announced synergies, from the integration of CBS Radio, of $100 million or more, are right on schedule.
David Field was Radio Ink’s 2018 Radio Executive of The Year. You can read that cover story HERE.
Start leading instead of pushing. Push a string and it just gets all crumpled up, pull it straight ahead and it will follow anywhere you lead it. Goes for all your employees too.