Radio One is the biggest radio station owner that completely targets its programming at African Americans.
The company has an interesting history – it engaged in some of the more aggressive practices of the late 1990s similar to Enron and Worldcom (“lending” money to its founders to buy stock to bid up the price – with clauses forgiving the loan if the stock price fell), but I believe it got more lenient treatment because people did not want a racial confrontation with Al Sharpton picketing the SEC or the lenders, etc…
About two years ago, the stock had become close to worthless, the stock was threatened with delisting from NASDAQ and the banks were indicating they were about to take over the company. The bank panic of 2008 put that on hold, but Radio One is currently in default again. It’s getting a few weeks to put together a plan, but now they are being told they WILL hire a restructuring specialist today and present a plan to restructure their debt
The company has again failed to submit its 10Q report on time, and is preparing to restate its financial reports for the past 3 years (again). The stock has lost about 10% of its remaining value today.
The just released quarterly reports show Radio One had a Net Profit of $2 million for the quarter. They owe around $600 million to their lenders, which is a serious debt overhang
Census Department ads and Obama Money may have put it off for a bit, but Radio One’s Time is Up. Keep an eye on things for the next week. Tom Joyner and Al Sharpton both work for Radio One and probably will have some things to say.
Six hundred million over two million … so how’s this any different from the Obama indenture of servitude for all of us?