Salem Media Group Releases 2023 Annual Report
Salem Media Group’s total net revenue for the full year of 2023 was $258.6 million, a decrease of 3.1% from the full year of 2022, according to its just-released annual report. The company saw operating expenses rise from 2022 to 2023 and took a considerable impairment charge on its long-term assets that factored heavily into it reporting a net loss of $43.3 million in 2023, compared to the net loss of $3.2 million it posted in 2022. Salem operated three business segments: broadcast, digital, and publishing.
The company states, “Net broadcast revenue decreased 3.7%, or $7.6 million, principally due to a $7.3 million decline in national and local spot advertising revenue. Spot advertising revenue has been declining in the industry due to reduced time spent listening, particularly on AM radio stations. Also, the political revenue decreased $3.6 million, or 61.5% to $2.3 million from $5.9 million. This decrease was partially offset by an increase in our broadcast digital revenue which increased $1.5 million or 4.1% due to increases from Salem Podcast Network, Salem News Channel and digital marketing services through Salem Surround. On a Same Station basis, net broadcast revenue decreased 4.0%, or $8.2 million, which reflects these items net of the impact of stations acquisitions and dispositions.” On the digital side, the company reports, “Net digital media revenue increased 0.7%, or $0.3 million. Net digital advertising revenue decreased due to Facebook algorithms that limit political content, the growing use of browsers that block third-party cookies limiting advertising, and the overall state of the economy that has weakened demand for advertising resulting in a lower number of advertisements and a reduction in rates.” Salem’s 2023 annual report can be found here.
weakness in the national and network marketplace, and first-time hurdles in our Subscription Digital Marketing Solutions segment. In total, Digital now represents 51% of Townsquare’s 2023 net revenue and 55% of our 2023 Adjusted Operating Income, and maintained a 30% Adjusted Operating Income margin, consistent with 2022’s margin. The strong cash generation characteristics of our assets allowed us to produce $68 million of cash flow from operations in 2023, an increase of $18 million, or +35%, as compared to the prior year. We could not be more pleased to share that given our strong cash position, we were able to repurchase and retire approximately $27 million of our Unsecured Senior Notes at a discount during the year. In addition, we repurchased $17 million of our common stock, and paid a high-yielding dividend while also investing in our business. We also ended the year with a strong cash balance of $61 million and net leverage of 4.43x, retaining financial flexibility moving forward. Despite the lack of tailwinds at our back in 2023, I am very pleased with how the Townsquare team navigated the progressively challenging economic landscape. We outperformed competitors and gained market share due to our local focus and our digital platform. I believe that our performance over the past several years has demonstrated the efficacy of our Digital First Local Media strategy and validated our focus on local markets outside of the Top 50 U.S. cities, reinvigorating my confidence in our business model and our path moving forward.”
2022. iHeartMedia breaks down its operations into segments and here’s what it reports for the full year of 2023: Broadcast Radio revenue was $1.75 billion (down 7% from 2022), Networks revenue was $466 million (down 7.3%), Podcast revenue was $407.8 million (up 13.8%), and Digital (excluding Podcast) revenue was $661 million (basically flat). iHeartMedia chairman and CEO Bob Pittman states, “We’re pleased to report that our fourth quarter results were in line with our previously provided Adjusted EBITDA and Revenue guidance ranges. This quarter the Digital Audio Group achieved the highest Adjusted EBITDA and margin in its history, illustrating the success of this high growth business. We view 2024 as a recovery year in which the company returns to growth mode – we expect to see our Multiplatform Group performance improve quarter by quarter throughout the year, and we expect our Digital Audio Group, including our industry leading podcast business, to continue to grow and reinforce its leadership position in the segment.”
from the full year of 2022. Cumulus reported net income of $16.2 million for 2022, while posting a net loss of $117.9 million for the full year of 2023. Cumulus president and CEO Mary G. Berner says, “While 2023 was a tough year across the media landscape, we were able to offset some of the effects of the weak national advertising climate through strong execution in our key focus areas. Specifically, we grew our digital businesses, meaningfully reduced fixed costs, and improved our balance sheet. Looking ahead, though national advertisers are expressing interest in increasing their radio buys, as of yet, ad demand remains choppy, reducing our visibility into the rest of 2024. That said, our industry-leading performance during similarly weak macro environments gives us significant confidence in our ability to navigate through this one and rebound strongly when the advertising market improves.” Looking at Cumulus’ business segments, the digital segment to which Berner refers was up 5% in Q4 of 2023 to $39.6 million, but total broadcast revenue during the quarter was down 18.2%. Spot revenue declined 18.3% and network revenue was off 17.9% in Q4 2023 compared to the same period in 2022.
2022. Beasley CEO Caroline Beasley says, “Beasley’s fourth quarter and full year financial results reflect the impacts of cyclical political revenue and ongoing advertising market softness, partially offset by the continued success of our revenue diversification strategy and cost management initiatives. Net revenues for the 2023 fourth quarter and full year decreased by $6.3 million and $9.3 million, respectively. Excluding the impacts from a decrease in political advertising and the company’s dispositions of WWWE-AM, WJBR-FM and the Houston Outlaws in 2023 and WWNN-AM 
and KDWN-AM in 2022, partially offset by the company’s acquisitions of KXTE-FM and Guarantee Digital in 2022, revenues would have decreased by $0.2 million and $1.3 million in the 2023 fourth quarter and full year, respectively… For the better part of the year, we continued to execute on our successful growth agenda for our digital business that capitalizes on the value of our strong local brands, unique local business relationships and proven marketing capabilities. While macroeconomic pressures held fourth quarter digital revenue flat compared to the prior year, Beasley delivered meaningful full-year digital revenue growth, up 11.4% year-over-year. Our digital business represented 18.4% of full year 2023 revenue. We remain laser focused on prioritizing the growth of our digital platform as a means to diversify our revenue in a cash flow positive manner, and we expect digital revenue to account for between 20% and 25% of total revenue in 2024. Our dedicated sales teams also continue to leverage the tremendous audience reach and engagement of our local multi-platform content to attract new advertisers, resulting in fourth quarter and full year new local business revenue growth of 52% and 20%, respectively. Additionally, the actions we have taken to reduce costs drove a year-over-year decline in operating expenses of 3.3% in the fourth quarter and 2.3% for the full year.”
largest share of listening, accounting for more than one-third of daily time with audio among those age 13+. The vast majority of that listening (31%) is to AM/FM over-the-air signals.” (The other 5% comes from radio streams.) Behind AM/FM in listening is streaming music (20%), YouTube (14%), podcasts (11%), SiriusXM (8%), owned music (4%), TV music channels (3%), audiobooks (3%) and other (1%). 
Last week, we recapped how all-news stations have recently performed in Nielsen Audio‘s (volatile) “Holiday” PPM survey periods.
income of $1.21 billion reported for the full year of 2022. The company says, “SiriusXM added approximately 131,000 new self-pay subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2023. For the full-year 2023, self-pay subscribers decreased by 445,000 and we ended 2023 with approximately 34 million total subscribers.” SiriusXM CEO Jennifer Witz comments, “In 2023, SiriusXM laid the groundwork for future growth through the successful launch of our next-generation platform and the new SiriusXM app. Our commitment to growth was also demonstrated by strategic content investments that expanded our reach to new listeners and by staying true to our identity as a hub for curated, live and on-demand audio experiences. As we look to 2024, our guidance reflects substantial efforts and investments to enhance the value proposition of our subscription and advertising businesses, which we believe will strengthen our long-term growth profile.”
Securities and Exchange Commission for the periods ended March 31, 2023 and June 30, 2023. Briefly, the company’s net revenue for Q1 2023 was $110 million, down 2% from the same period in 2022. The company posted a net loss of $2.7 million for the first quarter. For Q2 of 2023, net revenue was $129.7 million, an increase of 9.2% over the same period in 2022. The company posted a net income of $71 million for that period.
compensation expense, debt modification costs, gains and losses on the sale or disposition of assets, impairments, depreciation expense and amortization expense increased 0.2% to $61.0 million. The company reports a net loss of $31.3 million for the quarter, an increase of 163% over the same period in 2022. Salem presents operating results by segment and reveals that its Broadcast segment’s revenue was $49 million, down 4.2% year-over-year; its Digital Media segment’s revenue was $10 million, down 2.2%; and the Publishing segment’s revenue was $4.6 million, a decline of 17.5%. 
podcast), and Audio & Media Services Group. In the Multiplatform Group, broadcast radio revenue was $455 million, down 6.1% year-over-year, and networks revenue was $116 million, a decline of 8.6%. In the Digital Audio Group, digital excluding podcast revenue was $165 million, an increase of 1.1%, while podcast revenue was $103 million, an increase of 12.5%, year-over-year. iHeartMedia chairman and CEO Bob Pittman says, “We’re pleased to report that our third quarter results were at the high end of our Adjusted EBITDA and Revenue guidance ranges. Our Digital Audio Group’s performance reflects the strong flow-through characteristics of the business and Podcasting continues to be a strong growth engine for the Company; additionally, while the Multiplatform Group does continue to be impacted by advertising industry uncertainty, we’ve seen sequential gradual quarter to quarter improvement throughout the year and we remain confident that the Multiplatform Group will be an additional growth engine for the company as the advertising marketplace recovers.”
$145.7 million, down 7.1% year-over-year. Audacy president and CEO David J. Field states, “Audacy’s third quarter net revenues declined 5.6%, in-line with our quarterly guidance as ad market conditions have remained challenging, particularly on national business. Cash operating expenses were down 2%. We gained revenue share in the quarter, most significantly in radio in which we have achieved accelerating share growth since the start of the year. We also delivered solid gains in radio ratings share and digital audience metrics while making important progress on our tech roadmap and meaningful expense savings to improve our current and future business model. Fourth quarter is currently pacing down 9% on an as reported basis and down 4% on a same-station, ex-political basis. We expect Q4 total revenues to decline by high single digits and costs to decline by high single digits. As noted in our recent public filings, we remain in constructive conversations with our lenders to recapitalize the company’s balance sheet to establish a strong financial footing and position the company to capitalize effectively on our growth opportunities. Notwithstanding current challenges, Audacy has established a strong position as a scaled, leading multi-platform audio content and entertainment company distinguished by our exclusive premium content and top positions across the country’s largest markets. We salute our team for their strong work delivering solid growth against our key performance metrics and serving our listeners and customers with excellence.”
revenue of $54 million, a decline of 8.6% year-over-year. It’s Subscription Digital Marketing Solutions segment revenue was $20 million, down 12.6% from Q3 of 2022, and its Digital Advertising segment revenue was $39 million, up 5.5% year-over-year. Townsquare Media CEO Bill Wilson states, “The strong cash generation characteristics of our assets allowed us to produce $39 million of cash flow from operations in the first nine months of 2023, an increase of $7 million as compared to the prior year. We could not be more pleased to share that given our strong cash position, we were able to repurchase and retire approximately $14 million of our Unsecured Senior Notes at a discount during the third quarter, bringing our year-to-date total bond repurchases to $27 million. In addition, we repurchased approximately 94,000 Class A shares in the third quarter (in total, we’ve repurchased 1.7 million shares in 2023), and continue to pay a high-yielding dividend while also investing in our business. We also ended the quarter with a strong cash balance of $38 million and net leverage of 4.49x, retaining financial flexibility moving forward.”
weekly podcast listeners age 13+. The top four shows in Q3 remain unchanged in rank from Q2: “The Joe Rogan Experience,” “Crime Junkie,” “The Daily,” and “This American Life.” Other radio related podcasts ranked on this chart include iHeartPodcasts’ “Something You Should Know” at #9, The Daily Wire’s “The Ben Shapiro Show” at #17, Ramsey Networks’ “The Ramsey Show” at #21, and Cumulus Podcast Networks’ “The Dan Bongino Show” at #29.