With the sale of WestwoodOne now complete, CEO Paul Caine will be transitioning out this month as WestwoodOne becomes a fully integrated division of Cumulus Media. Cumulus completed the previously announced acquisition of WestwoodOne on 12/12 (formerly known as Dial Global), for $260 million in cash.
“Paul is an extremely talented media executive and did an excellent job of guiding WestwoodOne during a period of change. He positioned the company for future growth and played an instrumental role in driving a constructive transaction which delivered value for his shareholders. We look forward to working with Paul in the next chapter of his impressive career,” said Lew Dickey, CEO of Cumulus.
“I am so proud of the team we’ve built and what we’ve accomplished at WestwoodOne. In such a short time, we’ve proven the power of sound and its impact on the future of the audio industry. I am confident that this great momentum will continue under Cumulus and the strong talent and leadership of Lew Dickey,” Caine said.
RBR-TVBR observation: There will be no replacement for Caine. Here’s why: The structure will be aligned the same way as Premiere and the same way Cumulus ran Cumulus Media Networks (CMN). For instance, at Premiere, you have the individual running sales there reporting up to Jeff Howard, President of Clear Channel Radio Sales and Premiere Network Sales; The individual running programming and ops reports to CCME President of National Programming Platforms Tom Poleman. There is no head of Premiere. The way CMN was run, the head of sales Mike Pallad (now at iTunes Radio) reported to Cumulus Co-COO/EVP Jon Pinch. Ops and Programming head Dennis Green reported to Cumulus EVP/Co-COO John Dickey. Now it’s Westwood One COO Charles Steinhauer reporting to John Dickey; Ron Furman who now runs sales at WW1 (he was Chief Revenue Officer at DG) now reports to Jon Pinch.
Remember, DG/WWO was a standalone public company that had a CEO, CFO, General Counsel, etc…Now that WWO has been brought in-house as a division, you don’t need a CEO. Without the CEO, synergies and cost-savings are generated. You don’t need an incremental layer of management to run that business.
