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Thursday, August 7, 2014

Dickey: NASH To Generate $50M In 2016

Lew Dickey
During Wednesday's earnings conference call with analysts, Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey highlighted the development of the company's Country brand NASH.

Dickey said, "The NASH brand is being architected to connect artists, fans and advertisers across multiple platforms, including radio, television, magazine, digital, events, recorded music, touring and licensing."
  • In radio, Dickey says Cumulus has rebranded 35 of our 68 owned and operated country format stations as NASH. The rest of our stations are currently using their legacy brands, with the NASH brand woven in throughout the day. 
  • Cumulus expects to begin offering NASH affiliations through Westwood One early in 2015, with a strategy similar to the network television model. 
  • Cumulus expects to launch the NASH app and website in early 2015 and offering the NASH -- which will offer the NASH community of fans unparalleled access to their favorite artists, including breaking news, new releases for music and behind-the-scenes looks and the important trends in the country music lifestyle, which include food and travel. 
  • Dickey says he's confident in his forecast of $25 million in incremental NASH revenue in 2015 and another incremental $25 million of NASH revenue in 2016.
Dickey re-iterated the company's support of Rdio, calling it "a key pillar of our mobile strategy."

"We are leveraging our platform to contribute content, promotion and ad sales to Rdio over the next 5 years in exchange for an ownership stake of 15%. And then -- and it can be increased up to 20% through the exercise of performance-based warrants. That makes us the second-largest shareholder, behind its founder. Cumulus is focused on being a leader -- a leading provider of audio content in a widening audio space as consumers utilize digital music services to complement their broadcast radio listening.

Over time, we expect Rdio to become the digital platform for all of our local brands and nationally syndicated content distributed through WestwoodOne."

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