Townsquare’s survival plan

Many people probably have no idea who the third largest (by number of stations) commercial radio station is – Townsquare is the one not in bankruptcy.

After the radio bubble burst, a Private Equity firm created Townsquare, headquartered in the upper floor of a small bank building in Greenwich Connecticut. They ran around buying up nearly-dead smalll town radio stations, many in the rust belt of Western New York and most of the Clear Channel castoffs.

Their plan was admirable – pour resources into small town radio stations, stay local, and broaden revenue sources by using the radio to promote paid events that they ran, like concerts. Build out a high quality web site and stream the programming.

Now they (and others) have a problem – ad blockers. I think I read that 60% of people are now using ad blockers. If your whole business model depends on people being forced to endure downloading megabytes of unwanted click bait, you have a problem.

Townsquare has a solution – if you visit their web site and it detects an ad blocker, you will be offered the option of casting aside Chrome (or Firefox, etc) and download a new web browser you have never heard of from a company you have never heard of – through the alternate browser called Brave, which will generate revenue through donations or voluntary ads that use a block chain crypto currency.

While most people will not know the brains behind Brave, long term readers here might. Brendan Eich is the man who invented Javascript in a week while working for Netscape. His career as Mozilla CEO came to an abrupt halt when he admitted he gave $1,000 to support the “anti gay” Prop 8 – the California law passed by direct democracy that defined marriage as between one man and one woman.

http://www.crossroadstoday.com/story/38105261/brave-and-townsquare-partner-to-monetize-ad-blocking-traffic-and-test-blockchain-based-digital-advertising

There are 14,000 other radio fish in the ocean (just in the United States). The only person who will ever download an extra browser to look at a radio station web site is the person at Townsquare who made the decision.