While McDonald’s remains one of radio’s biggest advertisers week after week, Urban One has really taken a revenue hit from the restaurant chain. Back in March, CEO Alfred Liggins reported that McDonald’s pulled a lot of its local advertising and Urban One was getting a fraction of the business it used to get. While the company has been meeting with the burger chain, Liggins did not have good news to report.
Urban One was down $700,000 in revenue from McDonald’s in the first quarter of 2018. That’s a huge amount of money to try to make up in local revenue. Liggins says the company had a good meeting with reps for McDonald’s and they are just spending more nationally and less locally. “They are constantly re-evaluating their advertising. We did get more (ad spend) in digital and TV. But we took in 20% of what they spent with us in Q1 of 2017.”
I know exactly how Radio One feels.
McDonald’s was doing between $35 – 40,000 with us every year since I got here 4 years ago. This year because of the new way that McDonald’s has begun doing their local buys, nothing! As a small market station that see about $200-300,000 in gross revenue each year, it’s almost a quarter of our overall revenue gone!
Comments are closed.