TV One is growing well as a cable network, but Radio One CEO Alfred Liggins and CFO Scott Royster have hopes for more. In the company’s quarterly conference call, they noted that getting carriage on Echostar and Cablevision would be the best possible event to spur growth of the channel aimed at African-Americans. Radio One is also looking to expand Reach Media and upgrade its Internet presence.
As for the original radio business, the execs are seeing more of the same coming up in Q4, meaning continued sluggishness in the radio business. Radio One stations face a particular challenge in overcoming the lack of political revenue which rolled in last year in Baltimore, Washington DC and all of its Ohio markets. Liggins said he was pleased that his stations were doing as well as they were given this obstacle. The company sees upside in several markets, including Atlanta, Dallas, Cincinnati, maybe Washington DC. And given that Philadelphia has been a "disaster," it has almost nowhere to go but up. There’s room to grow in Houston as well, although they are still on the Arbitron PPM shakedown cruise there making accurate prognostication difficult.
