After a more subdued Q4 2025 earnings call following his return from medical leave, Saga CEO Chris Forgy was fired up and firing back at his “broadcast brethren,” using the company’s Q1 report to position Saga’s strategy against the grain of industry trends.
“To be clear, Saga is a customer-first company, not a digital-first company,” he said, in a nameless call-out of radio companies that have assumed the latter identity, as Forgy described a digital landscape he characterized as overcrowded with competing products and vendors leaving advertisers confused. He argued Saga’s edge is simplicity, not product count, and that the industry’s rush toward digital has obscured what radio has always done well.
Forgy said, “Our blended process honors and respects and grows local radio and allows Saga’s core business to do the magic it has always been known for.”
He was less charitable about the broader industry posture. “At a time when traditional advertising is extremely challenging, and some broadcasters are looking to divest partially or completely and cut expenses or perhaps hang on just long enough for deregulation to become a thing,” Forgy said, and Saga, “continues to invest in the ongoing training and resources and people power necessary to acquire, retain, and grow our revenue.”
The company’s digital revenue offered some evidence that the approach is gaining traction.
Digital-only blended revenue doubled year over year, up 103% in Q1. Local direct revenue attached to a blended product rose 29%. All in, interactive digital revenue climbed 25.2% to $4.4 million. Revenue from blended, digital, and radio combined reached $3.6 million for the quarter, up 59% year over year.
However, the benefits could not overcome a 5.6% revenue decline in the first quarter of 2026, as Saga reported a net loss of $2.4 million, compared to a $1.6 million loss in Q1 2025. Net revenue finished $22.9 million for the quarter, down from $24.2 million for the same period a year earlier.
Forgy framed the gap between digital growth and overall revenue performance as a timing problem, not a strategy problem. He said the company added $649,000 in digital expenses during the quarter to build out infrastructure and add market-level sales and campaign management staff, and projected that investment would become a revenue tailwind by the third and early fourth quarters of 2026. “The expense of this initiative will initially be more costly than the revenue it will bring,” Forgy acknowledged, “but it is a necessary expenditure to be competitive with other digital companies.”
Political revenue, negligible in Q1 with $275,000 booked against $271,000 in the same quarter last year, is expected to build as the election cycle heats up. Saga currently has $1.4 million in gross political revenue on the books for 2026, compared to $650,000 for all of 2025 and $3.3 million in the presidential cycle year of 2024.
On consolidation, Forgy said Saga is watching FCC ownership proceedings closely but is not chasing scale for its own sake. “Our first priority will be to become stronger in the markets we already serve,” he said. “We’re not focused on expanding just to get bigger.”
CFO Sam Bush said Q2 is currently pacing down in the high single digits, with digital up 10.2%.
