According to CEO Jeff Smulyan, its New York Summer Jam was a record-breaker and set the tone for what is shaping up to be a good fiscal second quarter. He added that the company’s turnaround began in May.
At any rate, he said the contrast with Q1 will be significant.
Despite the success of the Jam, New York is continuing to pose challenges. Perhaps surprisingly, Los Angeles has not, in the wake of the loss of a key air talent. Smulyan said the company absorbed the expected hit there and is already bouncing back.
Discussing the impact of Emmis’ recent court victory over dissident shareholders, Smulyan said, “Well obviously it releases a major overhang on the company.” He was pleased that the Court’s ruling was unanimous.
Smulyan believes that terrestrial radio is still very much alive and well. “The Nielsen study which astounded me which shows that more people consume radio every week at the United States and watch television.” He noted that his company has been streaming for 20 year and still hasn’t found a way to make money doing it.
“We love the terrestrial business,” he concluded. “We’re going to stream to supplement that, but we think our bread and butter is a business that distributes directly at no cost to our listeners. So – and of course that’s why we’re so focus on NextRadio.”
Smulyan believes NextRadio has momentum and noted that productive negotiations to add cell phone carriers are in proress.
Addressing problems keeping stock prices up, Smulyan said, “Nobody is more frustrated than I am and our management team. Sometimes we’re not quite sure, but clearly radio is an unloved sector there. They aren’t very many investors, very few institutions. We’ve always said radio has to have a change of perception and that’s why we’re so big on NextRadio. We think that people understand that the medium that reaches more Americans than any other medium will now be in the one device, the 300 million people have and they look at 137 times today, that will help change of perception, because clearly we have a perception problem. We don’t really have – we don’t have a consumption problem, we have a perception problem.”
