Traffic Changes

In Chicago this affects stations like WGN and WBEZ. From Tom Taylor's NOW column...

Losing Entercom and now Cumulus, USTN winds down radio (but not TV). It’s got 46 TV station clients, and television becomes the sole focus of United States Traffic Network. It suffered public blows from Entercom on two successive quarterly calls, and then yesterday Cumulus revealed it had signed a group deal with another provider – soon identified as iHeart-owned Total Traffic and Weather Network. Cumulus reported $4.8 million in lost second-quarter revenue and bad-debt expense from its USTN deal. (Though Cumulus didn’t employ the harsh words Entercom did.) It’s worth noting that USTN was sold to traffic service veteran Ivan Shulman’s Fair & Equal LLC in mid-March, and the business model was to offer equity stakes to radio groups. Where do things stand? We wait to hear the status of USTN’s breach-of-contract suit against Entercom. It’s delivering the last voiced-and-sponsored reports this Friday. Data delivery to clients will continue until September 6. The Cumulus swing to TTWN is a big deal in this space, making iHeart an even bigger player – and seller of other companies’ precious 10-second and 15-second spot inventory. More from the Cumulus call coming up, but first -