Wednesday, September 30, 2015

It Doesn't Pay to Be a Dickey

From this morning's Radio Ink...

In a major management shakeup following weeks of speculation, Cumulus Media has replaced longtime CEO Lew Dickey with board member and veteran magazine publishing executive Mary Berner, effective October 13. Dickey, the company’s founder, will become vice-chairman and continue as a director. Dickey’s brother John, executive VP of content and programming, has exited his position at the company. Senior VP of content & programming Mike McVay will be taking over his responsibilities while the company looks for a replacement.

Imagine how bad Cumulus' current condition is for the founder of the company to be replaced like this. Dickey basically made the exact same mistakes that were made about twenty years ago when deregulation initially happened. He got too big, took on too much debt, cut places that shouldn't (or couldn't) be cut, while lining his own pockets in the process. At least that first bunch of guys didn't realize how badly they were damaging the business, and a few of them even regret it. Dickey did these things KNOWING what would happen. In my mind, that's even worse.