Radio
Audacy has announced a slate of executive changes, with Kelli Turner appointed as president and CEO, while Chris Oliviero has been named chief business officer, and Bob Philips named as chief revenue officer.
Turner had been serving as interim president and CEO since January, after former Audacy chief David Field stepped down, and has served on the Audacy board since September 2024. Turner most recently served as managing director and CFO for Sun Capital Partners, and previously served as president and COO for Blackstone-owned music licensing and rights management SESAC Holdings. She has also served in various executive and leadership roles in the investment and media industries, including RSL Group, Martha Stewart Living, Time Warner, Allen & Company and Citigroup.
Oliviero was most recently market president for Audacy New York, and Philips was president of Audacy Networks and multi-market sales.
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“On behalf of the Audacy board, we are delighted that Kelli Turner has agreed to take on the permanent President and CEO role and lead Audacy through its next phase of reinvention and growth,” Michael Del Nin, chairman of Audacy, said in a statement. “She is an exceptional media executive who, along with Chris Oliviero and the rest of the Audacy team, will ensure we continue to invest in high-quality content to engage our audiences and provide best-in-class solutions to our partners.”
“It’s a privilege to lead Audacy at this exciting moment in its impressive history and the evolution of audio,” Turner added. “This is one of the most dynamic businesses in media and entertainment, and I am looking forward to partnering with Chris Oliviero and all of our teams to build on our momentum with audiences, creators and advertisers. I’m especially excited by the appointments of Chris and Bob, who know Audacy’s businesses inside out and whose track records in management, programming and sales are second to none.”
Oliviero has served as market president in New York since 2020 and previously spent over 23 years at CBS Radio (which became part of Audacy in 2017). Philips joined CBS Radio in 1996 and later took on the role of CRO for CBS Radio and Entercom. After Entercom’s rebranded as Audacy in 2021, Philips transitioned into his most recent role.
Audacy has also announced several departures, including COO Susan Larkin, chief digital officer J.D. Crowley, chief marketing officer Paul Suchman and executive vp and general counsel Andrew Sutor.
Mike Dash, who has been with Audacy’s companies for nearly 20 years, has been named executive vp and general counsel, and will succeed Sutor, who will stay on for a transition period.
When Island/Republic/MCA Nashville released Chappell Roan’s “The Giver” on March 12, the move extended a pop/country crossover trend that has seen the likes of Shaboozey, Beyoncè and Post Malone successfully hop genre fences.
As current as the development may be, it’s also a case of history repeating. The release comes 50 years after Freddy Fender’s “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” reigned on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart dated March 15. “Teardrop” went on to top the Billboard Hot 100 on May 31, 1975, in the midst of a crossover wave.
“That song just caught fire,” says Country Music Hall of Fame member Joe Galante, who handled marketing for RCA Nashville at the time. “It sold, and that was one thing that made it difficult for people to walk away from, was the sales numbers. Even as a competitor, I was sitting there going, ‘How the hell is this happening?’ And you start looking at the numbers and you went, ‘Well, that’s how it’s happening.’ ”
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Fender’s success was not an isolated example in 1975. From March 8 through June 7 that year, four different singles reached the Hot 100 summit while simultaneously becoming country hits: Fender’s “Teardrop,” Olivia Newton-John’s “Have You Never Been Mellow,” B.J. Thomas’ “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” and John Denver’s“Thank God I’m a Country Boy.”
When Fender was at No. 1, at least seven more titles on that same country chart made significant inroads on the Hot 100 and/or the Easy Listening chart (a predecessor of adult contemporary), including Jessi Colter’s “I’m Not Lisa,” Elvis Presley’s “My Boy” and Charlie Rich’s “My Elusive Dreams.” Additionally, Linda Ronstadt peaked at No. 2 on country with the Hank Williams song “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love With You),” weeks ahead of the crossover follow-up “When Will I Be Loved.”
Throughout the rest of 1975, the country crossover trend continued with Newton-John’s “Please Mister Please,” Fender’s “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights,” Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy,” The Eagles’ “Lyin’ Eyes,” Tanya Tucker’s “Lizzie and the Rainman” and C.W. McCall’s “Convoy.”
Then, as now, plenty of fans and critics debated if some of those titles belonged on the country station.
“For me, the answer to ‘What is country?’ is: the records that the country audience, at that time, thinks belong on a country radio station,” says Ed Salamon, a Country Radio Hall of Fame member who became PD in 1975 of WHN New York.
Salamon programmed plenty of crossover music, sometimes incorporating songs that weren’t being promoted to the station, in an effort to appeal to a metro audience that didn’t have much history with the genre.
WHN became a major success story — just five years later, the Big Apple got a second country radio station — but its crossover mix yielded as much hostility from Nashville as praise. Part of that was directly related to the corporate source of some of the records on the playlist: Denver, Newton-John and The Eagles were all signed out of New York or Los Angeles.
“There was such a pushback about what I did that I didn’t fully comprehend it at that time,” Salamon reflects. “I was taking the space that the Nashville label thought should go to one of their records on a country radio station, and I was giving it to the pop division.”
Exactly one year after Fender topped the country chart, crossover material in 1976 had subsided. The number of crossover singles was the same, but none of them had the same level of impact.
“It’s the luck of the draw,” says Country Radio Hall of Fame member Joel Raab, a consultant and former programmer for WHK Cleveland.
Two of those 1976 crossovers, Cledus Maggard’s “The White Knight” and Larry Groce’s “Junk Food Junkie,” were novelty records, distinguishing them from the 1975 batch.
“We’d seen success in the crossover the year before,” recalls Country Radio Hall of Fame member Barry Mardit, whose programming history included WEEP Pittsburgh and WWWW Detroit. “If those songs weren’t consistently coming, we were therefore looking for something else that would grab the ear, that would grab the attention of the listener, like a novelty song does.”
Crossover records would continue through the rest of the ’70s, with Crystal Gayle, Dolly Parton, Ronnie Milsap, Kenny Rogers, Eddie Rabbitt and a couple of Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson duets benefiting. In most cases, those happened when one or more label executives were enthusiastic enough to take a risk. Record companies had to be judicious since radio stations relied heavily on local sales reports for research.
“You had to have product in stores in order for people to do sales checks,” Galante notes. “So it wasn’t as simple as just saying, ‘Oh, I think I’ll go do this.’ You’ve got to get the goods in stores, and if it didn’t move and they [were returned], you got a double whammy. And you’d spent the money. So you were careful about your shots, and you didn’t go willy-nilly trying to cross over a record.”
Similarly, artists often err when they purposely attempt to cross over. It’s an issue that country learned the hard way in the aftermath of the 1980 Urban Cowboy soundtrack.
“The Urban Cowboy sound was a moment,” Raab says. “It wasn’t a trend. It was just a bunch of really good hit songs that went with a movie — and those songs, by the way, were all pretty country: [Johnny Lee’s] ‘Looking for Love’ and [Mickey Gilley’s]‘Stand by Me.’ These were just really good country records. And because the movie was so popular, [some artists] said, ‘Oh, you know, I’ll be more pop.’ And they made these really bad pop-sounding records in the early to mid-’80s.”
The 2025 version of crossover is a little different — streaming data has helped identify the songs that work across formats, influencing the trajectory for music by Morgan Wallen, Ella Langley & Riley Green, Marshmello & Kane Brown, HARDY, Jelly Roll and Dasha.
Artists are interacting more freely across genre, with pairings of Kelsea Ballerini & Noah Kahan, Thomas Rhett & Teddy Swims and Post Malone & Wallen all on the current Hot Country Songs chart. And, Galante points out, country acts are playing stadiums and arenas in major markets, unlike in the ’70s, when they were mostly in small theaters in midsize metros.
As a result, there’s less incentive for country artists to refashion their music in a play for pop success.
“Country is just so big in its own right,” Mardit says, “that they don’t need to do that.”
Three months after SiriusXM pivoted away from its streaming app in favor of its core in-car satellite listeners, the company further thinned its ranks on Monday (March 10) with a new round of layoffs. The cuts came primarily in the company’s product and technology group and were part of the strategic shift announced in December, according to a company spokesperson. The company did not specify the number of employees affected.
Monday’s layoffs mark the third time in as many years that SiriusXM has cut its workforce. The company also laid off 3% of its employees in February 2024 and 8% of its employees in March 2023. The company described the previous two rounds of layoffs as necessary to build its platform and invest in technology to generate growth. Satellite subscription growth has stalled in recent years, though, and the company’s effort to attract new subscribers with a lower-priced streaming app brought disappointing results.
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In December, the company returned its emphasis to satellite listening, planning to “tak[e] steps to drive profitability and cash flow as we face marketplace headwinds impacting the company’s growth trajectory,” CEO Jennifer Witz said in December. At the same time, SiriusXM named former Google and Viacom executive Wayne Thorsen as COO in charge of the company’s product and technology, corporate strategy and parts of the commercial business. Thorsen’s arrival coincided with the departure of chief product and technology officer Joseph Inzerillo.
One of the products SiriusXM is using to bring in new subscribers is a lower-cost, ad-supported satellite service that had a limited launch in 2024. “In having an ad-supported tier, it gives us a place where we can market to these individuals,” CFO Tom Barry said Tuesday (March 11) during the Deutsche Bank Media, Internet & Telecom Conference. “We can bring them up to a higher price point as they appreciate and they increase their engagement in the product.” The full roll-out is expected to happen at some point in 2025, “but it could slip,” he added.
Advertising continues to be a problem, however. As concerns build over the Trump administration’s tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada, SiriusXM started “to see a drop-off” in advertising in the last “couple of weeks,” particularly in consumer-packaged goods brands, said Barry, adding, “I would say we’re cautious about where the ad industry is going right now.”
More subscriber losses are expected in 2025. SiriusXM is reducing its marketing spending on the streaming app and will “tighten” the terms of promotional plans, Barry said, which should result in the loss of approximately 200,000 subscribers this year. That drop would follow a 4% decline in subscribers in 2024, when SiriusXM revenue fell 3% to $8.7 billion.
Audacy, the second-biggest broadcast company after iHeartMedia, laid off 200 employees this week, according to a radio business source. “Audacy has made workforce reductions to ensure a strong and resilient future for the business,” added a company spokesperson, who wouldn’t confirm or elaborate on the layoffs. “We are streamlining resources to stay competitive in a rapidly […]
King Charles is taking on a new role in addition to monarch of the United Kingdom: DJ.
As announced Thursday (March 6), the British ruler is set to premiere a new radio show on Apple Music titled The King’s Music Room. Recorded in his personal office at Buckingham Palace, the show will showcase Charles’ favorite artists, from “1930s crooners to Afrobeats stars as well as disco divas and reggae icons,” according to a description.
In a trailer released Thursday, Charles personally introduces the show while seated behind his desk. “Throughout my life, music has meant a great deal to me,” he says. “It has that remarkable ability to bring happy memories, comfort us in times of sadness and take us to distant places. But perhaps, above all, it can lift our spirits to such a degree, and all the more so when it brings us together in celebration.
“In other words, it brings us joy,” the king continues. “This is what I particularly wanted to share with you: songs which have brought me joy. This seemed such an interesting and innovative way to celebrate this year’s Commonwealth Day.”
A press release adds that Charles’ show will be “shaped by his extraordinary experiences from around the world” and find the monarch sharing personal stories about the artists he features. Bob Marley, Kylie Minogue, Grace Jones, Davido and RAYE make up just a few of the musicians he’ll highlight.
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“Human curation has always been a key pillar of our unique editorial approach,” said Rachel Newman, Apple Music’s global head of content and editorial, in a statement. “Apple Music Radio is where culture is happening worldwide, and we are honored that King Charles III chose to share his personal playlist with us, and with music fans around the world.”
The King’s Music Room will premiere on Apple Music 1 and Apple Music Hits at 6 a.m. GMT on Monday (March 10), with additional broadcasts throughout the day and Tuesday (March 11).
Watch the trailer below.
iHeartMedia CEO Bob Pittman apparently believes his company’s stock is undervalued.
The executive sent a message to Wall Street on Tuesday (March 4) when he spent $320,000 to purchase 200,000 iHeartMedia shares, according to an SEC filing released Thursday (March 6). Investors took note, sending the company’s stock price up 23.2% to $1.86.
iHeartMedia shares had plummeted 27.7% in the four trading days following the company’s fourth quarter earnings release on Feb. 27. The stock fell 15.3% to $1.77 following the announcement and slipped an additional 14.8%, to $1.51, by Wednesday (March 5). But Thursday’s SEC filing reduced iHeartMedia’s year-to-date decline to 6.1% from 23.7%.
CEOs will occasionally buy shares of their companies when they believe the market is undervaluing the company. In March 2020, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino bought approximately $1 million worth of shares as the price faltered at the pandemic’s onset; Live Nation’s share price has since risen 262% to $131.11. In May 2022, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek bought $50 million of Spotify shares a week after the stock hit an all-time low of $95.74. “I believe our best days are ahead,” Ek wrote on Twitter at the time. Spotify’s share price has since risen nearly six-fold to $543.51.
iHeartMedia, the country’s largest radio broadcaster, is trying to navigate the decline in broadcast radio while building a digital business. Although it ranks No. 1 in podcast market share, the company’s legacy business is still twice the size of its digital business. To shore up its financials, the company has laid off employees, sold tower sites and restructured its debt.
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Last week, iHeartMedia executives told investors that first-quarter revenue would decline in the low single-digits and full-year revenue would be flat. CFO Rich Bressler said that January revenue was up 5.5% but February revenue was on track for a 7% decline as consumer sentiment suffered its biggest one-month decline since August 2021.
“Although the year began with optimism, many companies are now focusing on how potential tariffs, inflation and higher interest rates may impact their businesses, introducing an element of uncertainty,” said Bressler.
Pittman remained optimistic and believed those uncertainties will “steady up a lot” as the year progresses. “If there’s a change, people take a beat and adjust to the change,” he said. “There’s a big change between this [presidential] administration and the last one, and I think people are digesting. I don’t think the uncertainty is totally unexpected, and it’s certainly understandable.”
“It was an uncomfortable song to play my mom,” Leon Thomas admits of “Mutt,” a flirtatious track that mentions the urge to “pop a shroom to re-create the feeling.” “Mutt” marked the Grammy-winning songwriter’s first Billboard Hot 100 entry as a recording artist, following years of behind-the-scenes work that includes hits for Ariana Grande, SZA and more. And his mother loved it, too. “She told me this is going to be one of my biggest records. She spoke into existence.”
For Thomas, 31 — the Brooklyn-bred son of Black Rock Coalition parents, and the grandson of the late opera singer John Anthony — music and family have always been intertwined. His parents, who frequented CBGB, laid the musical foundation for the rock-infused soul he explores on Mutt, his sophomore album released last September.
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Since then, he supported Blxst on tour and embarked on his own headlining trek — but February in particular solidified Thomas’ turn from songwriting savant to front-facing R&B star. “Mutt” entered the Hot 100 on the Feb. 8 chart (and reaches a new No. 67 peak on the March 8-dated list); he made his live-TV debut with the song on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert the same week; and then performed on NPR’s Tiny Desk later that month, where he dedicated 2022 single “Breaking Point” to his recently deceased grandfather (Thomas attended his funeral directly after the taping). “He was the anchor to my journey,” says Thomas. “I can tell he was with me musically.”
Leon Thomas
Raymond Alva
While his past month looks like a whirlwind of success, Thomas’ breakthrough has been nearly two decades in the making. At 13, with Broadway runs in The Lion King, The Color Purple and Caroline, Or Change under his belt, Thomas signed his first deal with Columbia Records. “I was walking into the boardroom playing Stevie Wonder covers and in-depth love songs,” he reflects with a laugh. “They were like, ‘What we gon’ do with this? Did you even hit puberty?’” Around that time, he made his theatrical debut in the 2007 film August Rush, which led to a Nickelodeon development deal that landed him roles on shows from The Backyardigans to Victorious.
As the deal was nearing its end and Victorious approached its 2013 series finale, Thomas explored his options, and received advice from Republic Records’ Wendy Goldstein, who was the label’s senior vp of A&R at the time. “Journeying through your twenties is you becoming everything that you need from everybody else,” she told him. “Those words stuck with me on some Spider-Man s–t,” he says today.
He spent the better part of the next decade learning the independent scene, studying under Babyface and Boi-1da (and by extension, Drake’s camp), and was briefly signed to Alex da Kid’s KIDinaKORNER. He met manager Jonathan Azu in 2019 and became the first act on his Culture Collective roster. Two years later, he landed a record deal with Ty Dolla $ign and Motown Records’ joint venture, EZMNY, after running into A&R Shawn Barron on a grocery run.
“I was kind of scared because signing under an artist can be either heaven or hell,” says Thomas. “Luckily, I’m stomping around in heaven right now.”
During his time at Motown, Thomas has experienced several different leadership regimes following restructurings by parent company Universal Music Group. Now under Capitol Music Group chairman/CEO Tom March — who Thomas says “gets my vision and is down to support real music” — he was able to execute his ideal album rollout for Mutt.
The campaign kicked off last August — a year after his debut full-length, Electric Dusk — with the release of the album’s title track. A funky R&B midtempo tune that nods to Enchantment’s “Silly Love Song” by way of a Bootsy Collins-esque bassline, “Mutt” was the product of Thomas’ desire to “have a record that shows what I’m about: live music, funk and vulnerability.” Written in 2022, Thomas crafted “Mutt” on his living room floor while microdosing psychedelics and watching his dog and cat fight. “I saw the similarities between us and how we have good intentions but don’t always do the right thing,” he told Billboard last year.
The single’s steady chart climb is largely due to Thomas and Azu’s “all ships rise” business approach. Instead of exhausting resources on one song, they banked on word-of-mouth from his live performances to help people discover “Mutt” along with the rest of the album.
“We [noticed] the crowd’s reaction when ‘Mutt’ would play: the phones were always up, but they would really come out for ‘Mutt,’” says Azu. The song continued naturally gaining traction in R&B circles with those familiar with Thomas’ songwriting and production work. “Everybody knows how dangerous he is in the studio with other people’s work,” Azu adds.
Jonathan Azu (left) and Leon Thomas at the 2024 Grammy Awards.
Courtesy of Culture Collective
Thomas launched a 13-date headlining tour in October at intimate venues across the U.S., and the trek doubled as a way to promote himself at radio. “A lot of program directors are just outside the Victorious demographic, but the people in the studios and offices are within that demographic, and so are [their] children,” says Azu. “Doing [that] work is so important for the foundation to go for adds.”
As “Mutt” climbs at three different Billboard airplay rankings (R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay and Adult R&B Airplay, where it hits a No. 7 best on the March 8 chart), Thomas is playing the long game. “I loved seeing how Lizzo kept promoting her hits and didn’t stop believing in them,” he says. A deluxe edition of Mutt is also in the works, and Thomas mentions potential collaborations with Kehlani, Big Sean and Halle Bailey in the hopper, in addition to a previously teased team-up with Stormzy. Plus, there’s a song on which Thomas plays every instrument.
“There [are] sides to me that I haven’t shown the world yet, so I’m spoon-feeding them,” Thomas says. “You need to hide the medicine in the candy. This deluxe is me stepping deeper into my purpose.”
A version of this story appears in the March 8, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Starting Tuesday (March 4), SiriusXM will deliver the sounds of Tomorrowland and the global dance scene with a new channel curated by the team at the Belgian mega-festival festival.
One World Radio will be featured within the SiriusXM app and feature music programmed by the team that curates Tomorrowland’s One World Radio internet radio station, with the SiriusXM channel to offer new music and live DJ sets from Tomorrowland festivals including the flagship event in Boom, Belgium, along with Tomorrowland Winter, Tomorrowland Brasil and more.
SiriusXM’s One World Radio channel will be an extension of Tomorrowland’s pre-existing One World Radio feed, but will be curated a bit differently and customized to the SiriusXM audience.
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“We are really excited about hearing the nearly unlimited Tomorrowland archives, giving SiriusXM listeners a peak into past vibes of the legendary two-weekend festival in Belgium,” Geronimo, SiriusXM’s Vice President of Music Programing, tells Billboard.
Aside from regularly scheduled and rotated music, the channel will also feature exclusive song cuts from previous festivals. “You’ll be able to hear the crowd reaction which really put you in the moment,” Geronimo continues. “It’s truly a place where the global dance community comes together and enjoys each other. Dance music is really about fun, love, positivity and enjoying life and each other and One World Radio captures this essence perfectly.”
The channel will feature music spanning the two decades of Tomorrowland history and span the spectrum of electronic music sounds. The “main thing is to give people a good time and spread positive vibes, without necessarily being bound to a genre,” says Bram Franssen, station lead at the pre-existing One World Radio and curator for the new SiriusXM channel.
With the launch, One World Radio joins SiriusXM’s suite of dance channels that include BPM, Diplo’s Revolution, SiriusXM Chill, Studio 54 Radio, Utopia and more.
“We’re excited to not only hear classic archived Tomorrowland sets but also what One World Radio has for the future,” says Geronimo. “The world outside of North America has historically been a step ahead when it comes to dance music and emerging genres, and One World Radio on SiriusXM will help bridge that gap.”
Drake has reached a settlement with Texas-based iHeartMedia in his ongoing legal dispute over Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us,” according to court records.
In November, Drake filed a legal petition in Bexar County, Texas, where San Antonio is located, alleging that iHeartMedia had received illegal payments from Universal Music Group to boost radio airplay for “Not Like Us.” UMG is the parent record label for both Drake and Lamar.
The petition, a precursor to a potential lawsuit, had sought depositions from corporate representatives of both companies.
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In a court document filed Thursday, attorneys for Drake said the rapper and iHeartMedia had “reached an amicable resolution of the dispute” but did not offer any other information.
“We are pleased that the parties were able to reach a settlement satisfactory to both sides, and have no further comment on this matter,” Drake’s legal team said in a statement.
In an email Friday, iHeartMedia declined to comment on the settlement.
The claims against UMG remain active, and a hearing on a motion by UMG’s lawyers to dismiss the petition was scheduled to be held Wednesday in a San Antonio courtroom.
Drake has alleged UMG engaged in “irregular and inappropriate business practices” to get radio airplay for “Not Like Us.” The petition also alleges that UMG knew “the song itself, as well as its accompanying album art and music video, attacked the character of another one of UMG’s most prominent artists, Drake, by falsely accusing him of being a sex offender, engaging in pedophilic acts, harboring sex offenders, and committing other criminal sexual acts.”
An email to a UMG representative seeking comment was not immediately answered.
In January, Drake filed a defamation lawsuit in federal court in New York City against UMG over what he alleges are false allegations of pedophilia made in “Not Like Us.” Lamar is not named in the lawsuit.
The feud between Drake, a 38-year-old Canadian rapper and singer and five-time Grammy winner, and Lamar, a 37-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner who headlined the Super Bowl halftime show on Feb. 9, is among the biggest in hip-hop in recent years.
The Federal Communications Commission sent a letter Monday to iHeartMedia’s CEO and chairman, Robert Pittman, saying the commission is looking into whether the audio company is forcing musicians to perform at its May country music festival in Austin for reduced pay in exchange for favorable airplay of their songs on iHeart radio stations.
“We look forward to demonstrating to the Commission how performing at the iHeartCountry Festival – or declining to do so – has no bearing on our stations’ airplay,” iHeart Media said in a statement. “We do not make any overt or covert agreements about airplay with artists performing at our events.”
This article was originally published by The Associated Press.
iHeartMedia expects first-quarter revenue to decline in the low single digits and full-year revenue to be flat, suggesting the radio giant hasn’t yet turned the proverbial corner financially, according to the company’s latest earnings release. After revenue was up 5.5% in January, February is on track for a 7% decline as consumer sentiment dropped to a level not seen since 2021, CFO Rich Bressler said during Thursday’s earnings call.
The company ended 2024 with fourth-quarter revenue up 4.8% to $1.11 billion, while adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) spiked 18.2% to $246.2 million. Revenue growth was below the company’s previous guidance due to lower-than-expected political advertising and a slowdown in non-political advertising before the election, said Bressler.
The fires in Los Angeles created a disruption to iHeartMedia’s business in the first quarter, although CEO Bob Pittman called it “a little bit of a blip” and said a larger impact comes from people returning to work. “Traffic is getting long again, and I hate to sound cynical here, but traffic jams are our friend,” he said. “We’re a company that benefits from people with longer commutes and more time in the car.”
Mired in a weak advertising market for broadcast radio, iHeartMedia is busy finding ways to create value from its broadcast assets. To that end, in March the company will make its broadcast advertising inventory available to programmatic buyers through Yahoo DSP and Google’s DV360 ad-buying platforms. “This is a critical early step in aligning our broadcast assets with digital buying behavior,” said Pittman, “which will allow iHeart’s broadcast radio assets to participate in the growing digital and programmatic [total addressable markets].”
Last year, iHeartMedia took steps to cut costs and improve its balance sheet. The company expects to have net savings of $150 million in 2025 and beyond — $200 million from cost reductions undertaken in 2024 and an additional $50 million of expenses. In December, iHeart reduced its debt load and extended maturity dates through a debt exchange that attracted a 92.2% participation rate.
For the full year, iHeartMedia’s revenue totaled $3.86 billion, up 3% year-over-year (and flat if political advertising is excluded). Adjusted EBITDA increased 1% to $705.6 million while EBITDA margin improved to 22.0% in 2024 from 19.5% in 2023. The multiplatform group, which includes the company’s core broadcast stations, saw its revenue decline 2.6% to $2.37 billion, while the digital audio group’s revenue increased 8.9% to $1.16 billion due to increased advertising demand for podcasting. The audio and media services group had revenue of $327 million, up 27.4%.
Cumulus Media, the country’s third-largest radio company by revenue, fared a bit worse in 2024. For the full year, Cumulus’ revenue fell 2.1% to $827.1 million and adjusted EBITDA dropped 8.8% to $82.7 million. While digital revenue grew 5.3% to $154.2 million, broadcast revenue slipped 5.1% to $564.1 million. In the fourth quarter, revenue dipped 1.2% to $218.6 million and adjusted EBITDA grew 9.8% to $25 million.
Cutting costs and restructuring debt are common tactics in the radio business. Just as iHeartMedia shaved its expenses, Cumulus will realize $43 million in annualized cost savings, with $15 million of savings coming in 2024. In addition, in May, Cumulus completed a debt exchange, which lowered its outstanding debt by $33 million and extended maturity dates while securing “attractive” interest rates.
iHeartMedia shares fell 7.9% to $2.09 before earnings were released, and dropped another 9.9%, to $1.90, in after-hours trading. Through Thursday, iHeartMedia shares are down 1.9% year-to-date but have more than doubled since May 2024.
Cumulus, which reported earnings earlier in the day, saw its share price decline only 0.3% to $0.90. Year-to-date, Cumulus shares have gained 16.9%.