It's the comeback tour... For nearly a decade, America's biggest radio broadcaster was drowning in corporate debt. Then bankruptcy. Now iHeartMedia re-debuted on the Nasdaq stock exchange yesterday (the stock slipped 3.5% on day 1). The return was kindly made possible by a bankruptcy judge who expunged (great word) $10B of those debts. Prior to that, it was paying almost $2B per year (1/3 of revenue) in interest payments alone.
iHeartMedia is Jackson Maine (from A Star Is Born) — and podcasts are Ally... iHeart's radio reaches 275M users monthly in the US — that's almost all Americans over the age of 6, which iHeart boldly claims is a vaster reach than Google. But a driver of its comeback is podcasts:
- Users who pod spend more time listening overall than just-music listeners do.
- And iHeartMedia is the #2 pod publisher behind only NPR, with shows like "Stuff You Should Know" and "The Ron Burgundy Show".
"Companionship" is now the real star... Talk radio shows and podcasts (which the CEO calls "radio on demand") foster relationships with listeners. IHeartMedia even dropped the term "companionship" 21 times in its S-1, the critical filing document for companies that want to trade on stock exchanges like Nasdaq or the NYSE. Engaged listeners are more valuable for the company that's already reaching nearly the entire country.