CC's CFO Sez 'Do The Math' On Pandora's Claims

Richard Bressler

On Thursday's conferenca call, Clear Channel CFO Richard Bressler reminded financials analysts that AM/FM radio still makes up 92% of all listening, and acccording to Bessler that means digital accounts for just 8% of all listening. And then you break that 8% up between iHeart, iTunes, Pandora and other services, and what you really get down to is digital is not substituting for terrestrial radio, but it's providing additional listening opportunities for Clear Channel.

Bressler stated, "if you look at us (iHeart Radio) on a comparison basis, it's really not apples to apples. You've heard us talk about this before. Pandora's a playlist. What we have is called custom radio. We think it's a feature. We don't think it's a freestanding service."

Concerning Pandora's claims that its the #1 radio station in most markets, Bressler reminded those on the conference call that "it's really important just to do the math for a second. And less than 40% of all customers -- consumers today can even stream. And if Pandora remarkably got 100%, remarkably, would get 100% of all the people, of all the customers that stream, they still couldn't make it to the #1 in any market because the #1 station, like in New York where we have -- WLTW (106.7 FM) is close to 60%, like our -- and we have 90% of the cluster, it's mathematically impossible for them to be #1 in these markets."

"And quite frankly, if you add up all the Pandora streams in New York, they wouldn't even be in the top 10. I think they're like at 17% or 18%, and again, that's mostly self-reported data."