"You're simply taking content that someone has already produced and pushing it out someplace else on another channel -- there's a lot more money in that," says, CEO of broadcast-analyst firm Borrell Associates. "Say what you want about iHeart, but they're making some pretty smart and strategic decisions to stay afloat and morph in what's becoming a difficult media environment."cut deeply into iHeart radio stations around the U.S.
The label source suggests iHeart is trying to move into the "Spotify and Pandora side," by structuring its business more like a digital or streaming service than a traditional radio station. In turn, it is drastically cutting smaller stations while feeding content from the bigger markets into iHeartRadio, which has 128 million users, and other digital apps. "It just doesn't take a lot of money to do that" the source says.
This centralized, digital-focused approach is in contrast with iHeart's broadcast competitors, including Townsquare Media, whose 320-plus stations emphasize regional personalities and shows about, for example, the best local pizza in Rockford, Illinois.newsletter, says it's unlikely that other large broadcast companies, including Entercom and Cumulus, will follow iHeart's lead in shifting this aggressively towards the digital business.
To illustrate iHeart's new approach, Borrell says he was earlier streaming a Philadelphia rock station on an Amazon device while working in Virginia. "I'm listening to my favorite station and they didn't need to put a DJ down here in Williamsburg," he says. "They're getting a lot of mileage out of their existing content. Why would they need to produce more?"
Wow....everybody is laying people off work.
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