Largest U.S. radio company iHeartMedia files for bankruptcy
IHeartMedia Inc filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Thursday as the largest U.S. radio station owner reached an in-principle agreement with creditors to restructure its overwhelming debt load.
The company, which filed for bankruptcy along with some of its units, said it ā€¨reached the agreement with holders of more than $10 billion of its outstanding debt for a balance sheet restructuring, which would reduce its debt by more than $10 billion.
IHeartMedia, which has struggled with $20 billion of debt and falling revenue at its 858 radio stations, said cash on hand and cash generated from ongoing operations will be sufficient to fund the business during the bankruptcy process.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @04:05AM (3 children)
There's one of their stations here that starts playing Christmas music even before Thanksgiving.
I went to their site for their "playlist" page and it wasn't a what's-playing-now thing.
If it was meant to be something like that, the latency was ridiculous.
The company appears to be stuck in 1985.
No surprise that they're going broke.
.
Oh, and the 4 CBS stations hereabouts have put all of their sites on radio.com.
The content is now behind scripts, of course.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by captain normal on Friday March 16 2018, @04:34AM (1 child)
It's the old Clear Channel gang. They were driving many local stations under by undercutting cost of ads then buying them out. Their programming pretty much consists of conservative talk shows and lousy pop music.
One can only hope that them going under will lead to many local stations up for grab.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Friday March 16 2018, @08:59AM
The only problem is that if the iHeartMoney stations go under, there's very little chance that anyone local will pick up the slack.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday March 16 2018, @04:53AM
I know what you mean. It's Thanksgiving, you go to the website, you touch the Play button. It says, "Buffering, please wait." So you wait. And 2, 3 weeks later, out comes the Christmas music just in time. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!! 🎅