Cumulus Out To Provide Listeners With Best Experience Possible

Collin Jones, senior vice president of corporate development and strategy for Cumulus, recently was interviewed by Rodney Ho at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the company's future.

Jones says the company was strapped by debt from the 2011 acquisition of Citaedel stations. According to Jones, "The amount of debt for that acquisition was too much. It under-performed our expectations."

Collin Jones

Other highlights:

On reducing debt:

• "The company was in financial free fall no matter how you look at it. Over the course of that time period, we’ve had to figure out how to turn things around, turn ratings around, address the culture of the company and grow revenue and cash flow. But the company was not going to have an opportunity to get out of that debt. We tried a creative transition in 2016 which would have kicked the can down the line a bit and give more time for the current management’s turnaround efforts to take effect. But it was ultimately unsuccessful. So we went for this more comprehensive restructuring path in 2017. "

How Cumulus turned the ship around:

• Jones credits CEO Mary Berner with accomplishing four things. "First was operations. Blocking and tackling, putting the right people in the right seats and having the right organization structure. The non-sexy stuff day to day. Then we addressed ratings which were in a considerable free fall. We white-boarded the entire company’s approach to ratings. Many changes were made accordingly. Then there was culture. We had to create a corporate culture. The importance of employees and those who get everything done and invest in those employees. We had to figure out ways to get employees on board and turn the ship around. Last and not least was sales. We are developing new digital products and giving our sales staff better tools and training to arm them when they go out. There are many many game plans under each of those four."

On bankruptcy restructuring:

• Jones: "We worked on a comprehensive restructuring for many months and reached a deal with our senior secured lenders, our largest creditor groups. That resulted in a little over $1 billion in debt reduction. Those senior secured lenders became majority equity holders at about 80 percent. We got a signed agreement and just had to go through the bankruptcy process. It went extremely smoothly given the fact we were able to finish it in 187 days. We won every single battle in the process."

The Future:

• Jones: "Our goal is to continue to reinforce that message with what we do. We are developing a number of adjunct digital solutions and products that marry well with our core business. That’s both on the local and national side. We launched last summer what we call the C-Suite of digital solutions. It’s a suite of digital marketing services and products and advertiser extension products we can sell through our local sales force. We’ve launched all our stations on Alexa."

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