If you are or have been employed in the entertainment business, it might be you.\u00a0 Tens of thousands of industry employees, particularly those who work for media companies who have exposure radio properties with stock as part of the compensation plan have watched these accounts implode in recent years.<\/p>\n
Six years ago, Audacy Inc. Chief Executive Officer David Field proclaimed the radio business was “massively undervalued”<\/a>.\u00a0 This wildly incorrect presumption literally cost the Field family their fortune.\u00a0 Sadly, they are not alone.\u00a0 Shares of iHeart Media, the nations largest radio chain, have fallen from a peak of $27 and change to below $5, now sitting at about $2.79.\u00a0 The drop for the nation’s second largest radio operator Cumulus Media have not been as dramatic, but share prices here are also below the $5 threshold.<\/p>\n It’s not necessarily, doom and gloom for everyone in radioland.\u00a0 Satellite radio operator \u00a0SiriusXM received a much needed endorsement from Warren Buffett as Berkshire-Hathaway reveled they’ve taken a small ownership position<\/a>.\u00a0 Cox Media began shedding it’s terrestrial broadcast properties in 2012 lifting their fortunes to become one of the top three wealthiest families.<\/p>\n So what went wrong?\u00a0 Market analysts<\/a> will tell us that\u00a0 despite projected audience growth<\/a>, revenues are down since the pandemic.\u00a0 Technology has disrupted the business, fragmented the audience and the revenue streams and like the proverbial ‘buggy whip makers’, old school radio broadcasts and the traditional ways of consuming audio are simply less relevant in people’s lives.<\/p>\n