Radio One loses $11.7M

[JABOOM]

Someone has gone down this path before
August 5, 2008 by Duane
Someone has gone down this path before The Black Informant

Radio One loses $11.7M
Washington Business Journal - by Tierney Plumb

Radio One Inc.’s bottom line took another hit in the second quarter because of declining sales.

The Lanham-based broadcasting company, which focuses on African-American and urban listeners, reported a net loss of $11.7 million, or 12 cents per share, for the quarter, compared to a net loss of $5.1 million, or 5 cents per share, in the same period last year.

Revenue was $83.4 million, a 1 percent increase from the same period in 2007. (more…)

Many moons ago when BET was just starting out, Bob Johnson made the controversial move to include more hip hop videos on that channel. Why? Because according to him getting advertising dollars for anything else was extremely difficult. Radio One (35% owner of TV One) has also cited advertising revenue as one of the reasons why it has been under-performing on the stock market.

It’s going to be real interesting to see just how far Radio One is willing to go to stabilize its bottom line and whether or not they will be given the BET treatment by their targeted audience.

[Ascension2012]

They're going to lean on Interactive One to make up some slack. I'm interested to see how they handle an "urban online" audience.

They have the cash to impact the online business model, but I have a feeling we'll see that same middle of the road, lazy approach to content and programming that we saw with there radio stations. Radio has been terrible for years.

As with most media tagged "urban", the real audience is suburban kids with the discretionary cash to buy the music, clothes, etc... and play like they're urban.