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Tire pressure is leaking out of
Air America, again
RBR has been reporting for months on the consistent problems with Air America which lead up to the resignation of CEO March Walsh and EVP/Programming and Operations Dave Logan, RBR first reported, 04/28/ 04 RBR #28 at which time Chairman Evan Cohen and EVP/Chief Counsel Evan Goodman will be filling Walsh's position. Host and SVP/Entertainment Programming Lizz Winstead replaced Logan. TA-DUM - less than seven (7) working days Chairman Cohen himself is pinked slipped as well as Vice-Chairman and investor Rex Sorensen, according to Chicago Tribune this morning. Sources last week told RBR look for more to happen and for many of the same reason(s), paychecks bouncing like a rubber ball. RBR observation: Tire pressure is so low inside Air America it has and most likely will continue to hit these speed bumps and hard. Hate to be sitting on the passenger side or the back of this bus when they hit Pittsburgh pothole. Coupled with its star stand up comic Al Franken maybe wanting to run for political office 05/04/04 RBR #87 RBR questioned these two issues: Al, which job do you really want? Radio or politics? Let your affiliates know something besides a stand up routine. Air America do you have an answer or are you asking the same question? Well add to the list of Who's On First at Air America or is it all hot air? Being in radio in Guam doesn't cut here even in the smallest of markets no less a wannabe radio network. In politics you expect this conduct and maybe this is what Air America was and is possibly all about - Just Politics.

Election spending going gangbusters
Ad buying for this year's presidential election year began early and is well on its way to setting a record. In quarterly conference calls, TV groups have been reporting one after another that Q1 political spending was ahead of expectations and showing no sign of a let-up. In his call yesterday, Gray Television President Bob Prather said that the Kerry Campaign just bought new ad flights in several of his markets - - prompting the Bush Campaign to come right back with another round of ad buying. RBR observation: Keep it up guys! Radio may not get a lot of ad buys from the biggest political campaigns (although we think they could use some schooling in how to get more bang for their bucks with a mix of TV and radio), but all those political ads are going to really tighten TV inventories as the election draws closer. That, of course, means that many advertisers with a preference for TV will have to move some of their spending to radio to keep customers coming through their doors.

"Why Wall Street snubs Viacom"
That was the headline of a big story in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, detailing how Mel Karmazin is no longer the darling of big investors. As you might have guessed, the focus was on concerns about when growth will improve at Infinity Radio and future threats to earnings from such things as digital video recorders. RBR observation: The proof is in the pudding - - or, in this case, the performance. The shorts can depress a stock price for a while, but they can't fight against the tide if the company posts quarter after quarter of strong growth. So, all Sumner Redstone, Mel Karmazin and Joel Hollander have to do is deliver that growth. If the advertising recession is truly over, which all indications say it is, they should be able to do that - - it will just take time. And if they succeed, the shorts will pay dearly...
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Clock ticking on indecency legislation
The Senate version of the Decency Enforcement Act of 2004 is becalmed, according to a Reuters report. In particular, an amendment tacked on by the Commerce Committee at the behest of Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Trent Lott (R-MS) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) has attracted the ire of others who supported the FCC's 6/2/03 ruling on broadcast ownership. | Full Story |

Copps still on the warpath
There has been no particular reason to think that FCC Commissioner Michael Copps' disenchantment with media consolidation has weakened over the past year, and his chat at the recent Future of Music Coalition get-together in Washington confirmed that fact. Copps noted that the congressional decision to raise the ownership caps was grounded, to an extent, in the economic reality that tough times were resulting in stations being forced to pull the plug. But nobody expected the result of the 1996 Telecom Act would be a 1,200+station group. "Rather than learn the lessons of media consolidation, the FCC chose to allow this Clear Channelization," he told the crowd at FMC. Copps stressed that in the fight to prevent a Clear Channel on the TV side must go on. He noted efforts in Congress and review at the circuit court level. He also urged a more stringent license review regimen, increased public interest requirements (particularly in the area of digital television multicasting) and increased licensing of LPFM stations.

Is Disney fueling a hit for Moore?
Being attacked by a high profile media company isn't always such a bad thing. Just ask Al Franken, whose latest book was released early and skyrocketed up the bestseller charts after Bill O'Reilly and Fox/NewsCorp. went after him. It appears likely that filmmaker Michael Moore may enjoy the same sort of benefit from the swirl of attention around Disney's effort to block distribution of his upcoming "Fahrenheit 911."
RBR observation: We told you this was going to happen. If you want to be allowed to own a newspaper and a TV station in the same town, Disney is not helping you.
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Measuring the Media Moguls

Cox Radio:
Bob Neil, President and CEO

2003 stock performance: +10.61
2003 CEO pay: -14.97%

Bonuses were down in 2003 at Cox Radio, so President and CEO Bob Neil saw his total compensation decline by nearly 15%, while the company's stock price moved up over 10%. | Full Story |

Conference Calls, Q1 2004

Strong gains at Univision in TV and radio
Spanish media giant Univision posted strong gains for Q1. TV revenues rose 12% to $259.3 million. Radio revenues were also up 12% to $63.3 million. That brought the quarter in at the high end of the company's guidance. Net income rose 147% to $31.6 million and earnings per share were $0.09, compared to $0.05 a year earlier. Univision is telling Wall Street to expect the growth to continue. Its Q2 guidance is that revenues will be up in the low to mid teens. The company says Q2 earnings per share should be $0.18-0.20, up from $0.15 last year.

Radio up, outdoor down for NextMedia Group
Net revenues were up 3.4% to $24.4 million in Q1 at NextMedia Group. That was all due to growth in the radio division, where revenues were up 3.8% to $16.6 million. However, revenues were down 3.6% for outdoor. Chairman Carl Hirsh told analysts that was all due to soft demand for the company's alternative displays (such things as ads inside restaurants and on gasoline pumps). Broadcast cash flow was flat for radio at $5.7 million. As you would expect it was down for outdoor - - off 25.8% to $2.3 million. Overall, cash flow was off 9.1% to $8 million. Looking at Q2 pacings, President and CEO Steve Dinetz said he was perplexed as to why May is pacing flat. He said April was up 6% and June is pacing up 6%.

XM adds 320K subscribers;
revenues now exceed fixed expenses
XM Satellite Radio held an upbeat Q1 conference call yesterday, touting that for the first time, revenues exceed fixed expenses. XM reported record quarterly revenue of $43M, increasing nearly 230% from $13.1M in Q1 '03. Revenue for Q1 '04 also grew approximately 30% from Q4 '03 revenue of $33.5M. Fixed expenses were $37.1M for the quarter. | Full Story |

Adbiz ©

Rich Hamilton on the upfront - - Part I
As the official start of the television upfront is set to begin in just 10 days, we thought we'd provide a bit of observation with a few lines from our upcoming interview with Zenith Media CEO Rich Hamilton that runs in our July print edition: "The upfront this year has been the hottest discussion topic that I think we've ever had in the history of the upfront. And there's been all this publicity about the advertisers and agencies getting together to change the process, and everything else. Which, I frankly view as more talk than substance. There is a reason for the upfront and the reason is the demand for television time against the supply of it. And the reason the process works the way it works is because of that supply and demand dynamic. I mean three years ago when we had the recession, the upfront lasted six months. There wasn't enough demand - - the buyers were more so in the driver's seat than we have been in recent years. And so we were doing upfront deals in October as well as May. And then the market strengthened, slowly but surely. So the speed of the market and the timing of the market is, as much as we dislike the reality of it (we don't like to have to get everything done in two days anymore than anybody else likes it), is a natural outgrowth of the dynamic of supply and demand. And if there needs to be cold pizza, there will be cold pizza." More from Rich (predictions, observations, prognostications) in Monday's RBR/TVBR.

Ricoh launches "I Get Ideas" television campaign
Ricoh announced the launch of its most comprehensive national TV campaign in its history. The new campaign is based on the strategy that the Information Technology professionals who now dominate purchasing in the office imaging sector are looking for providers to deliver real insight into how to deliver business value and ROI for customers. Ricoh's advanced line of digital imaging products and services provide real business value by helping customers "Move Ideas Forward." The new campaign features Louis Armstrong's Jazz standard, "I Get Ideas" as background for scenes that depict workers carrying out typical office tasks using Ricoh products to move their ideas forward. The spots acknowledge the role of Ricoh office solutions in the very human tasks of everyday people as they turn ideas into reality. With a budget of $10M, "I Get Ideas" launched 5/5 and will continue all summer and fall. The effort includes pre- post- and in-game television commercials of every baseball game broadcast by Fox Sports Net and the Yes Network throughout the 2004 Major League Baseball season, and will reach more than 84% of the U.S. population.

Washington Beat

Transactions

$21,000,000 WSNO-AM/WORK-FM, WWFY-FM Barre VT (Barre, Berlin VT); WNHV-AM/WSSH-FM White River Junction VT; WTSV-AM/WHDQ-FM Claremont NH; WZSH-FM, WCFR-FM Bellows Falls VT (Bellows Falls VT, Walpole NH) from Vox Vermont LLC/Great Northern Radio LLC to Nassau Broadcasting Holdings Inc.

$5,000,000 WSJZ-FM Melbourne-Titusville-Cocoa (Sebastian FL) from Sebastian Broadcasting Company to Cumulus Media.

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