As Saga Communications navigates its transition to a “blended” model of broadcast and digital revenue, the company posted a net loss for 2025. But CEO Chris Forgy traces the transformation to wisdom after a different kind of loss: the death of founder Ed Christian.
Forgy, as usual, took the time to tell a story during the company’s Q4 2025 call.
During the wake for Christian, his friend and confidant, Al Lucarelli, sat down next to Forgy and delivered a charge the CEO has been carrying ever since. “Chris, whatever you decide to do next, do it fast, do it with force, and do it with purpose.”
“That is what we’ve anticipated doing and have been doing for the last three and a half years,” Forgy said, “and will continue to do until the job’s finished.”
The numbers, for now, still reflect the teething troubles of a company mid-transformation. Saga reported a net loss of $6.9 million for Q4 2025, swinging from net income of $1.3 million in the same period last year. For the full year, the company posted a net loss of $7.9 million compared to net income of $3.5 million in 2024.
CFO Sam Bush was quick to draw a line between the headline loss and the underlying business. The quarter absorbed a $20.4 million non-cash impairment charge. “Without the impairment charge, we would have reported net income of $8.2 million,” Bush said. A retroactive music licensing settlement also added $2.2 million to station operating expenses for the year.
Q4 net revenue came in at $26.5 million, down 9.3% from $29.2 million a year ago. The math is straightforward: gross political revenue in Q4 2025 was $254,000 versus $2 million in Q4 2024. “Almost half of the decrease was due to reduced political revenue,” Bush said of the full-year decline to $107.1 million from $112.9 million.
The digital story runs the other direction. Total interactive revenue was up 25.8% for the quarter and 19.1% for the year. Search revenue grew 59% year-over-year to $2.2 million. Targeted display was up 44.8%, generating nearly $3.5 million. The company’s e-commerce platform grew 16% and produced $2.5 million in local direct revenue. Its 17 hyper-local news sites grew 18% and contributed another $2.5 million at a 31% margin excluding commissions.
“We still have a ways to go before the increases in interactive revenue outpace the decline in traditional broadcast revenue,” Bush acknowledged. Q1 is currently pacing down mid-single digits overall, with interactive up 26.4%. Q2 is also expected to land down mid-single digits. The company expects a return to revenue growth in the second half of 2026, with revenue increasing in the range of mid-single digits.
Saga is planning to spend $1.5 million in 2026 hiring digital infrastructure staff, sales managers, and campaign managers across markets — an expense both Forgy and Bush acknowledged will cost more than it returns initially, but call “a necessary expenditure to be competitive with other digital companies.”
Forgy framed it in the language Lucarelli left him. The juice, he said, is worth the squeeze.
