Beginning of the end for iHeartMedia.inc

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Beginning of the end for iHeartMedia.inc

Postby kal » Sat Apr 22, 2017 1:06 pm

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/iheart ... -121035436

The next 12 months will be telling ones for iHeartMedia Inc., the parent of iHeartRadilo, the biggest operator of America radio stations. The company has indicated it will be providing formal guidance in its next quarterly report that it may not be able to survive another 12 months.

iHeartMedia.inc has a massive debt of some $20 billion, and some big load repayments due this year. Much of the debt load comes from the buyout of ClearChannel Communications.

Providing such forward guidance is a major development. Sears Holdings in the US has recently done the same, with losses of some $10 billion on the books for recent years.
kal
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Re: Beginning of the end for iHeartMedia.inc

Postby pave » Sat Apr 22, 2017 3:40 pm

"Wanna buy some spots? How 'bout a radio station? How about a cluster? How 'bout a whole mess o' radio stations?"
My only concern is for all those folks who have been buying corporate bullshit for all these years. Not that anybody should be surprised.

Meanwhile, is Cumulus next? They're trading as a penny stock. Last price off the ticker tape is $0.23.

Rhetorical question: Does anybody know what they're doing?
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Re: Beginning of the end for iHeartMedia.inc

Postby Doug » Sun Apr 30, 2017 3:58 pm

I thought it was just ClearChannel Communications taking the name iHeartMedia, an Internet radio streaming company I thought they'd bought? You're saying it was the other way around?

I'll feel terribly for existing shareholders, and even bondholders, likely to get pennies on the dollar (if anything) for their investment but, ultimately, freeing this company of all or substantially all of its debt burden whilst maintaining substantially all of its stations because of the significant cost savings of a combined station network is what is needed.

I still believe terrestrial radio and Internet music streaming, both paid and ad-supported, are the most viable business models today given the lower price-per-month than satellite radio (who wants to pay $14-20 per month and then have to pay a separate fee for Internet streaming? Come on.)

Separately, I was also incredibly disappointed in a recent CRTC ruling that will prohibit cell phone companies from excluding music & video streaming from data caps - basically, allowing people to stream those for free as they provided a viable and healthy competition to satellite radio! :(

Another self-interested, pro-CanCon ruling by the Jean-Pierre Blais, who thinks he's on the consumer's side. Bullshit. He's neither on the consumer's, nor the distributor's, side. He's firmly on the side of the Canadian media talent and unions.

I say: dismantle the CRTC and transfer its regulatory oversight to a division of Industry Canada and limit its decisions to the number of TV & radio stations per market, one that's more focused on healthy competition instead of all that other crap.

Cheers,
Doug
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