Radio One needs new management?
A financial show on Fox News Channel caught my attention this morning when one of the panel members on a stock market show mentioned Radio One Inc. Radio One is the company that last year sold WILD-FM in Boston to Entercom, which immediately changed the reprogrammed it as a simulcasting rock station. Boston’s African-American community was understandably upset at the switch over, but surprisingly little of the ire seemed to be directed at Radio One which, after all, was founded by a black woman and has a black CEO.
The FNC panel member pushed Radio One as likely to benefit from next year’s presidential election as campaign spending on black media will increase. The panel’s black contributor (I didn’t chance the names of any of the panelists) shot back that while Radio One is a great American success story, the company has grown too large for its current management and its stock will remain in the doldrums until the company is sold off or reinvigorated with new blood.
Radio One’s stock performance has been a source of discontent for analysts and investors for some time. The Washington Post reported in March of 2006:
Radio One put hip-hop and other genres of urban music on the nation’s airwaves. Buying underperforming radio stations and turning them into urban-music machines, the Lanham-based company became the largest black-owned, black-oriented radio station group in the country
Today, hip-hop is everywhere…
As urban music has gone mainstream, Radio One stock has lost close to two-thirds of its value in the past two years. The shares hit a five-year low of $8.13 on Thursday and closed 9 cents higher on Friday.
Yesterday, Radio One Inc.’s stock closed at $7.28.
