I Heart goes bust.....and not one comment?

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I Heart goes bust.....and not one comment?

Postby Tom Jeffries » Sat Mar 17, 2018 3:30 pm

I think you are seeing a stark future for radio. Not a word here, about a HUGE story.

What's your take?
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Re: I Heart goes bust.....and not one comment?

Postby tuned » Sat Mar 17, 2018 6:19 pm

It's a financial story. The radio stations aren't going anywhere.
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Re: I Heart goes bust.....and not one comment?

Postby kal » Sat Mar 17, 2018 6:45 pm

A key guy involved in the iHeart matter, through his company Liberty Media, is Greg Maffei, who once had offices in Gastown for the now bankrupt 360 Networks, at one time the biggest owner of optical fibre networks in the world. At one time he was Microsoft's CFO. He's also involved in plays for Pandora and SiriusXM. He's a major force.
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Re: I Heart goes bust.....and not one comment?

Postby paterson » Sat Mar 17, 2018 7:11 pm

Can't say I really understand iheartradio. Do they actually own many stations in the US? I know there are 850 iheart stations but my understanding is that they don't own that many. I know that they are a radio internet platform and something called a music recommender service. (whatever that is). I don't like iheartradio's cookie cutter websites. All the Bell Media Radio sites are more or less the same now and I find them awkward to maneuver and cheap looking. CTV is showing the iheartradio music awards right now. Never understood when Bell would brand all of their stations with something like "Newstalk 1010, an iheartradio station." This went on for about a year before anything happened, and most people had no idea what they were talking about. iheartradio didn't mean anything to anyone, until the iheartradio app came out.
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Re: I Heart goes bust.....and not one comment?

Postby Aaron » Sun Mar 18, 2018 9:00 am

paterson wrote:Can't say I really understand iheartradio. Do they actually own many stations in the US? I know there are 850 iheart stations but my understanding is that they don't own that many.


Yes, all stations branded as i-Heart in the US are owned directly by iHeart Media.
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Re: I Heart goes bust.....and not one comment?

Postby jon » Sun Mar 18, 2018 9:40 am

This Boston Globe headline says it all: Radio pros see iHeart bankruptcy as good move
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Re: I Heart goes bust.....and not one comment?

Postby Richard Skelly » Sun Mar 18, 2018 10:00 am

I would hope iHeart Media owns the actual US stations.

But that fact isn’t the only reason the company owes many billions of dollars to creditors. It would be interesting to know how many of those stations remain at least marginally profitable. And how many in the red are only marginally so. I suspect the real elephant crushing iHeart Media is the crushing debt quite likely taken on to pay huge dividends to the vulture funds and insiders who took the company public.

It’s a frequent occurrence in the so-called ‘mergers and acquisitions’ racket. What almost inevitably results is the new entity—now listed on one or more stock exchanges—cuts staff and services to the bone in hopes of paying interest to funds and/or the debt racked up in order to toss special dividends the funds’ and insiders’ way when shares are listed.

Here in Canada, that explains PostMedia’s dilemna. Thanks to vulture fund debt, the newspaper operator rose to take on the assets of bankrupt CanWest. (Of course CanWest imploded largely due to loading up on debt to “buy high” the National Post, old Southam dailies and assorted community papers from Conrad Black.)

I’ll bet most of the ever shrinking—in physical size and content—PostMedia newspapers still eke out profits. But those profits would have to be astronomical to significantly reduce the debt load. In an Internet age, which decimated print classified and regular ads, astronomical newspaper profits are generally modest at best.

Watch for PostMedia to seek creditor protecting, wiping out shareholders. Meanwhile, PostMedia executives have done just fine with salaries and bonuses for cutting the newspapers so deeply that even Conrad Black has bemoaned their diminished state.
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