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ETM
Entercom Communications Corporation

5/18/2013, 6:53 PM ET
Quote & Headlines Market Currents StockTalk Description
Sector: Services
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Country: United States

We are one of the largest radio broadcasting companies in the United States, based on revenues. We were organized in 1968 as a Pennsylvania corporation. We operate a nationwide portfolio in excess of 100 radio stations in 23 markets, including San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Denver, Sacramento, Portland, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Austin, Norfolk, Buffalo, New Orleans, Memphis, Providence, Greensboro, Greenville/Spartanburg, Rochester, Madison, Wichita, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Springfield and Gainesville/Ocala.

Our Strategy

Our strategy focuses on providing compelling content in the communities we serve to enable us to offer our advertisers an effective marketing platform to reach a large targeted local audience. The principal components of our strategy are to: (i) build strongly-branded radio stations; (ii) develop market leading station clusters; (iii) recruit, develop, motivate and retain superior employees; (iv) leverage station clusters to capture greater share of advertising revenue; (v) acquire and develop under-performing stations; and (vi) develop new sources of business, including integrating station assets on-air, on-line and on-site.

Sources Of Revenue

The primary source of revenues for our radio stations is the sale of advertising time to local, regional and national spot advertisers and national network advertisers. A growing source of revenues is from station websites and streaming audio which allows for enhanced audience interaction and participation as well as integrated advertising. A station’s local sales staff generates the majority of its local and regional advertising sales through direct solicitations of local advertising agencies and businesses. We retain national representative firms to sell national spot commercial airtime on our stations to advertisers outside of our local markets. National spot radio advertising typically accounts for approximately 20% of a radio station’s revenues.

We believe that radio is an efficient and effective means of reaching specifically identified demographic groups. Our stations are typically classified by their format, such as news, talk, classic rock, adult contemporary, alternative, oldies and jazz, among others. A station’s format enables it to target specific segments of listeners sharing certain demographics. Advertisers and stations use data published by audience measuring services to estimate how many people within particular geographical markets and demographics listen to specific stations. Our geographically and demographically diverse portfolio of radio stations allows us to deliver targeted messages to specific audiences for advertisers on a local, regional and national basis.

Our Radio Stations

We operate in excess of 100 stations throughout the United States.

HD Radio®

The FCC selected In-Band On-Channel™ (“IBOC”) as the exclusive technology for introduction of terrestrial digital operations by AM and FM radio stations. The technology, developed by iBiquity Digital Corporation, is also known as “HD Radio®.” We have a minority equity interest in iBiquity. We currently utilize HD Radio® digital technology on most of our FM stations. We are also a founding member of the HD Digital Radio Alliance Association, which was formed to promote and develop HD Radio® and its digital multicast operations. The advantages of digital audio broadcasting over traditional analog broadcasting technology include improved sound quality, additional channels and the ability to offer a greater variety of auxiliary services. HD Radio® technology permits a station to transmit radio programming in both analog and digital formats.

Employees

As of February 15, 2009, we had a staff of approximately 1600 full-time employees and 700 part-time employees. With respect to certain of our stations in our Kansas City and San Francisco markets, we are a party to collective bargaining agreements with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Approximately 16 employees are represented by these collective bargaining agreements. We believe that our relations with our employees are good.