Regent Communications is filing Chapter 11, according to the Wall Street Journal and Radio-info.com. This is not unexpected – they missed a required payment on purpose back in January even though they had the cash to pay it. Regent has been generating enough cash flow to cover their debt payment, but not enough to satisfy their loan agreement. So the same management stays in place, just now the company is owned by the Private Equity firm that loaned them the money.
Regent’s stations are located mostly in parts of the country that are more hard hit than most. You can read a bit about them in the Owner Profile
That new owner, by the way, is Oaktree Capital Management, who also owns the Dial Global network. The Regent purchase would give Oaktree an infrastructure backbone for its syndication efforts…
Oaktree also controls GAP, the company that acquired many of the small market Clear Channel stations. There is very minimal overlap (if any) for station ownership limits, since they are small market stations mostly in different parts of the country. I think Oaktree is part owner/lender in someone else – I’m thinking possibly Cumulus…
All this private equity debt of unknown origin sloshing around makes me uncomfortable. Debt has become defacto ownership – either the foreign ownership rules need real teeth or we should end the charade.
WELI (my local Clear Channel station) runs both ads against the “music tax” and promoting its All Americsn lineup. When you realize they owe much of their $20 billion in debt to European banks (and send them interest), operate huge networks of transit ads in Europe and are probably the largest operator of Mexican music radio stations in the US, that looks like the pile of manure it is.