CBS Radio heading into positive territory

CBS Corporation CEO Les Moonves was effusive in his praise of CBS Radio CEO Dan Mason for the turnaround taking place in the radio division. “I am, for the first time in a while, guardedly optimistic about the potential for growth in ’08 for the radio business,” Moonves told the UBS Media Conference in New York as he spelled out the changes that Mason has made. “On top of just executing, of blocking and tackling better, we have seen Dan change the format in New York on our radio stations. We’ve seen ratings growth which has been pretty sensational and sales growth coming with it,” Moonves said. Thus, he expects to see CBS Radio post a revenue gain in 2008.
The CBS CEO also complained of what a bad job radio has done in the past of going after political ad spending – something else he said is changing for the coming year. Asked in Q&A whether he was finished selling off stations from the CBS portfolio, Moonves said their might still be some pruning of the radio group, but no major effort to sell stations. Mason made his own appearance later at the UBS conference, calling on CBS Radio Sr. VP of Research Lucy Hughes to deliver the message that radio is becoming more of a reach medium for advertisers, as demonstrated by Arbitron’s PPM measurement. And she spelled out some of the efforts underway to persuade political campaigns to allot more of their budgets to reach voters via radio.