With Friday’s $2.3 billion closing on Citadel Broadcasting Lew Dickey has transformed Cumulus Media into a $4 billion company. Now he just has to make it all work.
In RBR-TVBR’s recent exclusive interview with Dickey we asked what he planned to do once the deal closes.
| Lew Dickey: |
Cumulus now has 570 radio stations in 120 markets and a nationwide radio netork (currently called Citadel Media, the former ABC Radio Networks) serving over 4,000 stations.
RBR-TVBR observation: The puzzle has a lot of pieces for Lew and his team at Cumulus to put together. Not a lot of market overlap, but some of the markets coming from Citadel are in better shape than others. The company, after all, was pretty recently in Chapter 11.
And the network radio business has been challenging. However difficult it was to put together the financial pieces, the real challenges are still ahead to get all of the people, stations and programs moving in the right direction.
Also worth a listen is Lew’s answer to our question about his digital strategy.
Lew and company have a lot of moving parts and to get into the digital world these parts have to move together and complement one another. The key in the digital space is building the Comscore.
