Remember when Cumulus thought Mike Huckabee could compete against Rush Limbaugh? Well, that didn’t work out for them and not much else has as their ratings are taking a nose dive. But it’s not just a run of bad luck. Apparently the CEO is pretty terrible at his job. According to a radio insider, Lew Dickey has “singlehandedly killed talk radio.”:
BREITBART – A prestigious radio industry analyst and author of Inside Music Media revealed on Thursday a stunning ratings nosedive across a broad array of formats for Cumulus Media’s Citadel acquisition.
In addition to its virtual implosion of its bedrock conservative AM talk stations, Cumulus’ dramatic decline in numbers is meaningful because the Citadel acquisition made the company highly leveraged with $2.23 billion of debt.
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Jerry Del Colliano of Inside Music Media says Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey “has lost talent, fired what remained,” and “singlehandedly killed talk radio.”
Last year, conservative luminary Sean Hannity sent shockwaves through the radio world when he decided to dump the Dickeys and Cumulus for Clear Channel. The results for Cumulus have not been pretty. Hannity replacement Michael Savage has seen a 49% loss in the all-important 25 to 54 age demographic on WABC-NY and WBAP-AM Dallas.
Still, the Dickeys have made a small fortune. In 2011 and 2012, Lew Dickey reportedly bagged $22,080,673 in combined total compensation; Cumulus VP John Dickey scored $6,626,687. This comes at a time when the Dickeys’ business strategy has been to radically slash costs and staff.
“You try doing this damage on just one station and you’re fired,” said Jerry Del Colliano. “The Dickeys do it and they are compensated.”
Conservatives say the Dickeys exacerbated Cumulus’ woes when they decided to add Mike Huckabee to the Cumulus lineup in an effort to soften the conservative message by bringing, as Huckabee put it, “more conversation, less confrontation.” (Huckabee’s official online store now offers t-shirts bearing the phrase). Huckabee struggled to gain traction and was canceled in December 2013.
That same year, the Dickeys also launched a radio show hosted by Geraldo Rivera in an effort to “occupy the militant middle and be a referee between ideologies,” according to Rivera. Last year Geraldo’s show lost national syndication.
Cumulus also lost Rush Limbaugh in New York to WOR-AM after Lew Dickey blamed Limbaugh for the loss of “millions” of dollars in advertising following the Sandra Fluke controversy, a claim Rush refuted and that sources close to Limbaugh say were merely an attempt to blame him for the Dickeys’ revenue problems.