More Departures At Audacy

This time it's upper management.  Two veterans are leaving. They are:

• Mike Dee: President/Sports
• Tim Murphy: EVP/Strategy and Corporate Business Development

The departures were announced in a staff memo from Chairman/CEO David Field:

Team,

I am writing today to share a couple of updates on our senior executive leadership team.

First, Mike Dee is leaving his full-time role at Audacy and will immediately transition to a new role as a senior advisor to the company. After many years in leadership roles for some of the most premier organizations in professional sports, Mike joined us in 2017 to help us elevate our unrivaled sports business and develop new value-creating initiatives for our consumers and clients. Over the past six years, Mike has made invaluable contributions to the company, deepening and enhancing our league and team relationships, forging landmark customer partnerships, and launching new content and monetization opportunities.

During his tenure, Mike spearheaded our company’s foray into the rapidly growing sports betting space, including his work establishing record-breaking, multi-year partnerships with FanDuel and BetMGM, acquiring BetQL, and the launch of the BetQL Network. Mike approached me in February about redefining his role within Audacy, where he could continue contributing but free up some bandwidth to pursue other professional interests. In his new role as a senior advisor, Mike will continue to engage on behalf of Audacy on a number of important partnerships and lend his expertise and counsel on certain key projects and initiatives.   

Second, Tim Murphy will leave our leadership team after an outstanding, highly effective run with the company. Tim has been with Audacy for 15 years, playing a critical leadership role. Early in his tenure, he was the visionary behind WEEI.com, a landmark radio digital platform that blazed a new trail of innovation for its time. Tim then took over as Entercom Corporate’s VP of Digital Strategy & Enterprise Platforms before he relocated to Philadelphia from Boston at the time of our merger. Since the merger, Tim has led Corporate Business Development and provided outstanding leadership with key strategic, entrepreneurial, and industry partners and customers. Tim helped lead a number of important company business initiatives and technological, digital, and enterprise enhancements, including spearheading Audacy’s expansion into the Podcasting space– developing strategy, and driving the acquisitions of Cadence13, Pineapple Street, and Podcorn.  

He has also played an important leadership role in working in collaboration with NAB and others on industry issues.  Tim has also worked to help recruit and develop an outstanding team of business development leaders within the organization and distributed much of his responsibilities to these leaders in their respective areas of focus, such as tech, podcasting, digital, revenue operations, sales, and content. Tim approached me earlier this year, suggesting that the smartest path forward for the company would be to pivot away from a centralized business development role and distribute those responsibilities to our business development leadership across the various focus areas. Tim will remain with Audacy through the end of April to help with the transition.   

Please join me in thanking Tim and Mike for their outstanding contributions to the company over the years and wishing them all the best. We look forward to working with Mike in his new role, and I’m also certain we will continue working with Tim in the future.  

David

No word on replacements.