Analysts ‘Reserved’ About Radio

Marci Ryvicker

Wells Fargo analysts Marci Ryvicker, Stephan Bisson and Eric Katz spent "several days" in Las Vegas with senior broadcast executives to get a feel for the state of the radio and TV industries, according to a story at tvtechnology.com.

“While the tone of business on the television side remains stronger than what we heard from radio, the one common element we felt was a significant sense of collaboration among the respective industries,” the team said. The bottom line, they said: “We see several near term positive catalysts ahead for television, but remain on the sidelines for radio-until some of this industry’s hoped-for initiatives start bearing some fruit, i.e. by way of revenue growth.

“Television core advertising is trending better than radio. While pacing data was not the focus of our meetings, our sense is that television core advertising ended up low single digits in Q1, while radio was down. When it came to Q2, April sounds better than March virtually across the board.

“Other highlights: 1) There is a lot more interest in Spanish-language television formats. 2) The radio industry is collaborating around digital streaming, the FM chip in smartphones, sports, and record labels. 3) There seems to be a pretty significant culture change when it comes to local news. 4) A potential source of upside could be zone selling/addressable advertising. And 5) There seems to be some desire for certain groups to participate in the spectrum incentive auction.”

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