David Field Looks Back… & Ahead
• Last Friday, Entercom marked the 18-month anniversary of its mega-merger with CBS Radio, a combination that now boasts over 235 radio stations. In a lengthy staff memo, Chairman, President & CEO David Field discussed how far the company has come over the past year and a half, while laying out the path for future success. Reviewing the company’s recent revenue picture, Field said, “Fourth quarter revenues grew by 4%. First quarter revenues were up 3%. On our recent earnings call, we announced that our second quarter revenues are pacing up 4% and while it is early, the rest of the year is looking very good.”
Field added, “Radio remains far and away the single biggest bargain and most undervalued medium in the United States. Most advertisers continue to overspend in other media that are being highly disrupted and face challenges such as ad fraud, brand safety, ad skipping and declining usage while they underspend significantly in Radio. As America’s No. 1 reach medium with outstanding ROI and the best local audience activation, Radio should be getting a far larger share of advertiser spending. No company is better equipped to capitalize on that opportunity than Entercom.”
Field then laid out some of the company’s priorities over the next 18 months, which include: 1) Continue to build and improve RADIO.COM aggressively toward our goal of making it one of the country’s leading digital audio apps. 2) Work to enhance and grow our news brands and deepen their audience engagement. 3) Elevate our community service work, focusing on our five areas of key focus — the environment; the military community; suicide prevention and related medical health issues and bullying; pediatric cancer care and civics education. 4) Roll out new and enhanced data, analytics and attribution capabilities to better demonstrate our outstanding value to our customers. 5) Continue to step up our share shift efforts with medium and large local and national advertisers by enhancing our toolkit with products like Nielsen’s Local and National NMI. 6) Build on our powerful sports platform and further develop our podcasting business. 7) Continue to add more outstanding and talented leaders and specialists to our team. And more…”
In closing, Field said, “I am proud of the transformational work we are doing across the team and excited by our accelerating momentum and by what is in front of us as we continue to improve and elevate our game to capitalize on our many opportunities. We are just getting started!”
