Financial analyst view on Audacy 7/23

Wouldn't a simple cut (if they weren't so woke) to not have a 3rd person being a co-host once a week for your mid-day show? Shouldn't the two heavyweights of Chicago sports be able to hold down the time slot? If a female is needed to reach out to that 2% of the listening audience (being generous), why not just give her the full time job again?

Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.

Read these type posts often, an odd hill to die on, you can go back to your 20 hours of Northwestern scandal football talk, everyone else has moved on.

The board's die hard Score apologists has dwindled down to a small group.

The board's group of regular posters has dwindled to almost nothing.

The CFMB now has a more precarious existence than that of the Score.

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I'd say it is a reflection of The Score. This board's main focus was 670 so as 670 has died, so has the board.

We've gone from daily show threads that stretch pages to maybe getting 1 tiny thread a week on the main shows. It's a reflection of how dead sports radio is in Chicago.

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

Just read the earnings release. I will check out the transcript. It was a horrible quarter. The line about talking to their lenders to enhance liquidity is the first sign of a bankruptcy filing. I suspect a prepackaged b/k is coming. They are running out of cash.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Yes, certainly. I suppose if this board were on Reddit, it would garner more traffic, though.

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This company is cooked. They're going to hand in the AM licenses and sell off the real estate the sticks are on. That has to be worth more than owning 670 itself at this point.

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Find it interesting that certain posters push back when anyone points out how far the station has got from its roots.

Caught a segment on Sox post last night that exposed the inept nature of the stations current lineup. One of the stations part time hosts went strong with the flaccid sabermetric BS, the type of stuff that is spewed unchecked all day long on the station, but there was an actual baseball guy there and he instantly shot down the odd baseball take.

When you operate all day in an echo chamber where you interact only with people that think exactly like you it severely limits your world view, and it makes for incredibly boring sports talk radio.

It has been made painfully obvious that some of the posters here are terrified of anyone with an original though and find listening to people disagreeing with each other on AM radio, but for the adults who know you need to listen to alternative viewpoints to gain perspective it seems silly.

I've been through this with Claw earlier in the summer, and there's no point in doing it again. I don't know, maybe I'm completely out of step with the board, but does anyone else agree with his take that "it has been made painfully obvious that some of the posters here are terrified of anyone with an original thought*"?

*I did him a favor and corrected his typo.

Read this past week a major drag on Audacy's profits company wide has been pro sports team broadcasting rights. The Cubs future with the Score will be interesting to watch as they sell assets to try to save the sinking ship.

That's the crux of it. Radio rights to pro sports is a huge money loser and there isn't a chance in hell other programming can piggyback it. Not these days.

Bankruptcy will allow them to jettison rights deals

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

But is the decline in listeners and attention due to disdain that people have for the Score or have people just moved on to other listening options? With the number and variety of podcasts available, everyone can listen to the specific topic or show they prefer whenever they want. This isn't 2005 when the options on the radio when you got in the car were AM news, FM music, or The Score/ESPN. I don't listen to the Score at all anymore but it's not because of wokeness or some other issue I have with the hosts, I'd just prefer to listen to specific podcasts about hockey or Nascar or politics or science rather than how the Bears look in training camp or what the Cubs chances are for a wildcard spot. Another question- has regional sports lost any of its appeal due to being able to easily watch and follow any team in the world?

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

Their listener base seems fine. It is the ad market.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Always interesting to hear the ads when you stream a show, found it odd that for a time they were playing Sally Beauty Supply ads on the WSCR streams, not exactly the target audience you would expect, but mostly the ads are for other podcasts, does not seem Audacy could be charging much for these ads.

Streaming WMVP is odd because the TuneIn app will randomly insert ads during the middle of segments.

Moving to a direct to consumer model for talk radio seems iffy at best, you are not having a ton of ratings success right now and you are giving away the product for free.

Starting to find some of the Bears specific Pods are becoming rather cumbersome to listen to as the hosts feel the need to drone on and on about anything and everything before giving you any relevant content, find myself hitting the fast forward button often, but still far more user friendly than wasting time listening to the dolts on WSCR stumble around trying to give you any relevant content.

Maybe a lot of people listened when Bernsie said if you don’t like it change the station.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

The few sponsors they have aren't even bothering to update their ads. Last week I heard "Chicago's big race is just around the corner" several times.

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It's almost impossible to get new posters here. Younger people don't really use traditional message boards. Sports radio isn't relevant. They listen to Joe Rogan and Barstool and Pat McAfee and post on those sites.

The Score could have monetized fan content too but they were not progressive enough to do it. Boards like this filled that niche.

The only way to get more users here would be to prioritize Chicago sports teams and advertise but even then you come chicitysports.com that mostly seems to be people talking to each other on Twitter anyways.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

A lot of the ads I get on the stream are Pittsburgh specific so it’s strange to me how that gets accounted.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

Audacy lost a number of large clients that it acquired... Podcasting revenue dipped a staggering 23 percent for this quarter, according to the Radio+Television Business Report.
8/11/23

There is still a massive number of dudes my age that listen periodically, but most of them are busy and do not have time for the political and filler stuff you hear on air and are moving to pods for content specific stuff. They mostly interact on the Pod sites, it certainly cuts down on the stuff here.

Still think this is a good place for content specific aggregation, can usually see if anything is popping just by skimming the team sections.

There are some OG's here that give you a bit of perspective you may not get elsewhere, and many here have the shared experience of listening to Chicago sports talk radio for decades, different ideas on what makes good and bad radio, but still a commonality and commonality is what humans tend to seek.

Well, will they? Mitch hires the best!

What?

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The Score has lost a lot to podcasts, but the one thing they have going for them that they do not utilize is that the shows are live. Most every show has decided that taking callers is beneath them and that no one likes callers. A lot of callers are awful radio but you need the volume of callers to sift thru to get to the good ones and the good ones can live forever.

Another thing they have going for them because of the live nature of the shows is disagreement and debate. Not just one host saying in the tone of Haugh "I disagree", but actual, heated disagreement. Unfortunately, they either have decided workplace harmony is more important or that people actually don't want to hear that but there are multiple instances of complete nonsense being spewed every day that just goes unchecked. Hell, almost the entire station was an Aaron Rodgers love fest the day after the I own you game, yet I don't know a single Bears fan in real life that doesn't hate Rodgers. Bottom line, they're in a heavily insulated echo chamber. Even the twitch chat is heavily, heavily moderated. The text line should be ripe for opposing view points but Bernstein/LoHo just pick the lowest hanging fruit possible from there.

Boers and Bernstein used to have a really loyal fanbase, I don't think any show on the station is even close to that and will ever get there with the way the shows are run now.

At some point, we're all blankety-blanks and we all get defensive, but I've seen give-and-take on this board. I know that I come to this board looking for alternative takes. It amazes me how narrow my focus and understanding of everything are.

I would also argue that, politically speaking, we usually know what some of the Score hosts will say before they say it, so it is not always worth listening to. Of course, their cliche responses to the world provoke cliche responses in us, if we are not careful.

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It's that corporate drive for staying "on point with our messaging," for attempting to flatten, brand, and sell ideas and language. It's really annoying, and frankly a progenitor of AI.

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The score got famous because of angry meatballs on air and they got rid of the angry meatballs

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

They need a Senor Editor

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An unjust law is no law at all--St. Augustine of Hippo

Cause tried and true
I see the light in you
Oh, can you dig in my soul?
Could you smell my whole...
life?--Gener and Deaner