News

(By Ryan Wrecker) If traditional radio held the office of president, streaming would be the vice president, and podcasting would be the speaker of the house. Over the past decade we’ve started to move from a digital democracy to a more direct democracy.

Cox Media Group Orlando has named Evelyn Pacheco as its new Director of Sales. In this role, Pacheco will lead the sales organization of CMG Orlando’s top-performing radio and digital brands (WCFB, WCFB-HD2, WDBO, WMMO, WPYO, WWKA, and ESPN).

iHeartMedia Louisville announced Friday it has promoted Kevin Hughes (pictured) to Senior Vice President of Sales and Michael Jordan to Senior Vice President of Programming, effective immediately. Both positions will oversee iHeartMedia’s Kentucky-Indiana region and will be based out of Louisville.

In a company as big as Cumulus, you rarely hear the CEO single out one on-air employee, but that's exactly what Berner did when she detailed just how much the firing of Jack Diamond cost the company. That firing was undone as Berner explained.

Cumulus CEO Mary Berner has now been on the job for five months and she put her cards on the table yesterday, laying out her entire plan to turn around the company. Berner's had a chance to look under the hood in more detail and, as they say, the baby is ugly. However, Berner says given time, Cumulus has the assets to be one of the winners in the radio industry. Thursday afternoon, she detailed operational and cultural changes she hopes will steady the Cumulus ship. The big question is does she have enough time to execute her plan.

Berner said it was normal operating procedure for the prior Cumulus administration to take weeks to answer a request from a local market, if they got back to them at all. Now, Berner says the company has instituted a new process and the feedback is positive.

The numbers are bad all around for radio's number two company. Not only did revenue decrease about $20 million in Q4, typically radio's best quarter of the year, Cumulus took in a total of $94.7 million less in 2015 than it did in 2014. Here's where Cumulus lost all that revenue: $58.3 million in ad revenue, $16.0 million in digital advertising, $15.9 million in political advertising, and $4.5 million in licensing fees and other revenue.

It's one of those things that irritates employees at many company's. Cuts are being made, debt is piling up, executives are making millions, raises are not trickling down...and the bosses in the home office are flying around in a corporate jet.

Cumulus reported net revenue of $308.8 million, down from $329.2 million in Q4 of 2014. Adjusted EBITDA of $63.0 million was down 30.3% from the quarter ended December 31, 2014. For the year, net revenue and adjusted EBITDA were $1,168.7 million and $259.1 million, down 7.5% and 21.4%, respectively, from 2014.

If you listened in to the Edison Research/Triton Digital Infinite Dial webinar Thursday afternoon you probably noticed what you might consider some good news for radio. One stat was what looks like a downward trend for online listening. Despite the fact that more people are listening online, they are listening for shorter periods of time.