Radio One CEO Bearish On Radio

Radio One Tuesday reported 2Q revenue dropped by 9.4 percent and during earnings conference call, CEO Alfred Liggins was blunt with analysts.  He admitted to being "a bear" on radio for the past 10-years.

Liggins stated, "I think it’s a great business. I think it is wonderful particularly for region ethnic audiences African-American, Hispanics. But it is a mature medium, period, end of story. So we run our business looking at radio as the flat business is never going to grow and who knows maybe overtime it secularly declines. Although, it an audio medium and distributing audio is not all that complicated whether you’re a radio station or whether you’re a Pandora."

Liggins told analysts, "we used to have the car to ourselves then came satellite, okay, we have got the connected car, you have got Pandora, you have got Spotify. There are just more mindshare that you’ve got deal with, so I think that you’re going to continue to see radio would be a business that’s matured under pressure."

Radio One's KBXX

He added, "So we have got to reinvent ourselves."

Liggins also acknowledged the Houston market was 'disruptive' during 2Q and he cited competition from Clear Channel's launching of a hip hop station KQBT 93.7 FM The Beat.

Liggins stated, "I mean we had no urban competitor and Clear Channel puts a hip-hop station on and all of sudden they have got close to a four share and that (resulted in) share points off of our hip-hop station (KBXX 97.9 FM The Box) there, but that station is now bouncing back that happened in January, so it’s midway through the year now."

Liggins said the hip hop battles isn't over though. He stated, "There are still other levers we have to pull in that battle, but we’ve been in format battles 20 times before maybe 50 times, in fact we use to pick most of the fights and so we’ve got to make adjustment for this our biggest revenue in cash flow market."

According to Liggins others markets, like Detroit is showing significant growth.  He added Charlotte is doing well, but "we’re going to go through a bit of rough patch (in Houston) and we’ll come out on the other side in a good place."