CUMULUS DECLARES CHAPTER 11:  You could have set your watch by this one.  Just 48 hours ahead of their 12/1 default deadline, Cumulus has voluntarily gone into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with the support of about half of its creditors.  So what does this mean?  First, Cumulus will keep operating as normal.  They claim to have enough cash on hand to run their business even though they can’t pay the interest on their loans.  Then the courts will decide what (if any) parts of Cumulus must be sold off to pay creditors.  It’s worth noting that all equity will get wiped out during the process, so any current stockholders are out of luck.  Assuming this process goes as planned, a smaller debt free Cumulus could emerge to begin a new chapter of existence.  If things don’t go smoothly the courts to chop up Cumulus and sell its pieces to the highest bidder, thus bringing the curtain down on Cumulus Broadcasting.  Radio Ink has a good summary of the situation in the attached link.  Give it a read.

THE CRB’S STREAMING RATE HIKE FOR 2018:  On Tuesday the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) announced its annual performance royalty rate hike per song streamed.  In 2017 streamers paid a base rate of $.0017 per play (if you need help interpreting that number it’s about one sixth of a penny).  Now in 2018 a “cost of living increase” will raise the royalty to $.0018, as reported in the attached RAIN link.  I know this doesn’t seem like a big deal, but for streamers like Pandora who play billions of songs per week under this royalty arrangement every millicent counts.  Keep in mind the CRB’s rate only applies to songs streamed in an online radio environment.  On-demand or playlisted streaming isn’t covered this way.  That tier of services requires a label-direct licensing deal.  The label-direct royalty costs vary from deal to deal, but are typically quite a bit higher than the CRB rate – the ballpark range is $.003-.004.  Now you can put your calculators down and get back to your morning.

BRANDS NEEDS A VOICE SKILL . . . LIKE YESTERDAY!:  Imagine coming into work one morning at your ad agency only to find all of your clients lining up at the front door demanding an Amazon-specific Voice Skill perfected immediately.  That’s exactly what’s occurring in today’s agencies, as the new reality of the Age of Voice sinks in.  Almost all big brands need a Voice Skill to get on the 1-2 deep “voice search shelf” on platforms like Amazon and Google.  So agencies are scrambling to become experts in this field, as reported in the attached AdWeek link.  On the surface this seems like an incredibly hard new challenge for agencies to figure out all at once.  But it’s also an opportunity.  Because once a shop cracks the Voice Skill code and demonstrates success with existing clients, they can turn that success into the tip of the spear to conquest new clients.  Just the idea that brands would select AORs based on their ability to integrate Voice Skills should tell you just how important Voice is becoming to marketers.

Have a great Thursday guys!

VOICE ACTIVATED SEARCH WILL CUT BOTH WAYS:  Over the last several months I’ve written extensively about how voice-enabled connected devices will transform Search as we know it.  Instead of typing a word or phrase on a screen and getting seven top page results back from Google, we’ll speak a sentence into a device and our AI-enabled digital assistant will respond with one answer.  Along with this change comes one very big problem and one huge opportunity for brands, as explained in the attached Business Insider link.  The problem is something called Autonomous Shelf Risk.  Think about ordering a commodity item like toilet paper through your Echo.  You’re unlikely to say “Alexa, order more Charmin”,  and instead will say “Alexa, order more toilet paper”.  The industry still needs to figure out which brand gets the green light for the non-specific toilet paper order.  On the flip side there’s a huge reward for brands who can master the selection process through a phenomenon called Incidental Loyalty.  Once a brand is selected in our toilet paper search example, they become the automatic refill option every time toilet paper is reordered until another brand is requested by name.  You can imagine how valuable this will be to brands.  Important stuff to think about as we enter the Age of Voice.

CONSULTANCIES CREATING AN “EAOR” SWIM LANE:  Yesterday Maserati announced it had selected the business consultancy Accenture as its new Engagement Agency of Record (EAOR), as reported in the attached Campaign Live link.  This is the continuation of a trend in which consultancies are replacing traditional agencies for brand marketing work.  The twist with this example is that Accenture will be tasked with running Maserati’s entire “engagement funnel” for potential and existing customers. Publicis is still being retained by Maserati for traditional media work, but you can be sure that every dollar Accenture gets to manage the engagement process will come directly out of their traditional media budget.  Get ready for more EOARing in the months ahead.

WORK HARD, NO MATTER HOW SMART YOU ARE:  You may have heard of a guy named Daniel Schwartz, who rose to become the CEO of Restaurant Brands International (parent co of Burger King, Tim Horton’s, Popeye’s, etc.) when he was just 32 years old.  Now, at the sage age of 36, Mr. Schwartz is providing a glimpse into his business philosophies.  In a fascinating Business Insider interview Schwartz explains a question he asks in every interview.  “One question I ask is, ‘Are you smart or do you work hard?'”  Some higher level candidates, who are confident in their abilities, usually answer with smart, and even go so far as to say they don’t need to work hard because they’re so smart.  Daniel Schwartz disagrees.  You need hard workers at every level of a company in order for it to be successful.  By hiring employees who put hard work first, and then hopefully have some born-with smarts, you end up with a team of overachievers.  Great advance from a young but wise business leader!

Have a great Wednesday guys!

ECOMMERCE BONANZA:  So did you buy anything online during the Cyber Monday shopping spree?  If you did it turns out you’re not alone.  While industry tallies won’t be out for a few days, there are already some impressive online stats from the Black Friday/Small Business Saturday/Cyber Monday window, as noted in the attached AdWeek link.  Based on mid-day pacing Cyber Monday sales are expected to grow by 15-20% over 2016’s total.  Mobile is driving online purchases with an astounding 54% of transactions coming from a mobile device, compared to 40% last year.  Even Small Businesses (defined as having $10M or less in annual sales) have nailed mobile, by logging 56% of their Small Business Saturday online sales from a mobile device.  Part of the shift to mobile could be thanks to the deluge of online marketing.  During the four-day span retailers sent over 3B emails and 82M SMS push notifications to their customer bases, which equals about 10 ads for every man, woman, and child in the country.  Obviously those marketing attempts are working, so expect more of the same throughout the rest of the holiday season.

YOUTUBE CONTENT CONTROVERSY 2.0:  You’ll remember last spring’s controversy when images of graphic violence and even terrorist content where discovered alongside paid ads on social sites like YouTube and Facebook.  For obvious reasons brands pulled their campaigns from these publishers until content filter safeguards could be put in place.  Over the ensuing months brands gradually returned to the sites once they felt safe to go back in the water.  Well now the controversial content nightmare in coming back to life.  According to the attached Reuters report, sexually suggestive images of children are being found on YouTube alongside paid ads.  This is as bad, if not worse, than violence-themed ads, so brands are starting to pull off the platform again.  As of yesterday 250 brands have scaled back or altogether cancelled their YouTube campaigns.  I would expect more to flee the sight until Google (YouTube’s parent co) can figure out how to effectively filter all forms from controversial content from its platform.

WHAT’S NOT BEING SAID ABOUT MEREDITH’S AQUISITION OF TIME:  Late Sunday night news broke that Meredith Corp was acquiring Time, Inc. for $2.8B, as reported in the attached LA Times link.  On paper this seems like a pretty big bite for Meredith – since both companies are about the same size Meredith is taking on almost $2B in debt to make the deal happen.  On the surface the PR talking points are what you’d expect.  Both companies are talking about synergies of housing many iconic publishing brands under one roof.  But there’s also an interesting political twist to the purchase.  In order to get the deal over the finish line Meredith secured $650M in funding from Koch Equities, which is the investment arm of the Republican mega-donor Koch Brothers.  Based on the Kochs’ involvement there’s speculation that they could use financial influence to control the editorial content of the Time Magazine brand.  Meredith is denying this intention (of course), but you have to consider the potential for influence.  Interesting stuff, to be sure.

Have a great Tuesday guys!

THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR NET NEUTRALITY:  By far the biggest tech news from the short holiday week was the FCC’s release of a draft regulation which would officially eliminate Net Neutrality.  As a reminder NN creates an even playing field for all websites and apps by requiring the ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to transmit data at a level speed.  But with NN gone the larger ISPs like Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, etc., can create a multi-tiered system whereby publishers can pay a premium to have their content delivered via a “high speed data lane” while the smaller guys will be stuck in the slow speed lane.  As noted in the attached Washington Post article, the ISPs are promising to be on their best behavior and not degrade the user experience just to squeeze publishers for extra fees.  And we all know the big Cable and Telcos would NEVER put profits ahead of customer service, right?  Anyways, the FCC’s draft is in a formal review period now with an expected final vote coming before EOY.

APPLE’S SMART SPEAKER STUMBLE:  In a jaw-dropping move last week Apple announced that it would not have its Homepod voice-enabled smart speakers in market for the holiday season.  This was supposed to be Apple’s important counterpunch to Amazon Echo and Google Home in the exploding connected device sector.  RAIN has a really thorough assessment of how Apple missed the deadline and what the ramifications are in the attached link.  Apple was trailing out of the gate, but an aggressive Homepod launch this year could have helped them catch up.  To miss the Holiday’17 smart speaker sales cycle, which is expected to triple from last year, is a major blow to the company who used to define tech innovation.  I guess they can keep milking the iPhone gravy train for another year or two (are we ready for the “11” yet?!?), while the rest of the techno-sphere takes over the new IoT world.  (And forgive me on the image below – I couldn’t resist having some fun at Apple’s expense.)

DELISTING DEATH SPIRAL FOR CUMULUS:  As if things couldn’t get worse for Cumulus, last week they were officially delisted from the NASDAQ stock exchange for having their stock price below $1 for 30 consecutive trading days.  Their stock is now available on the OTC market which is basically a catch all collection of penny stocks.  The delisting hurts because institutional investors often buy from an index of NASDAQ and/or NYSE stocks – so if you’re off those exchanges you’re not included in the big money buys.  Actually delisting is really just icing on the cake for Cumulus who has a much bigger financial mess in their near future.  Unless they can renegotiate credit terms with their lenders by this Friday (12/1) they’ll formally default on a missed interest payment which was due on 11/1.  If When they default bankruptcy liquidation will be next.

Have a great “back to work” Monday guys!

*** Editor’s Note:  The Daily Gabe staff of one will be taking some time off next week to celebrate Turkey Day.  We’ll resume the blogging on November 27th. ***

ENTERCOM/CBS RADIO DEAL TO CLOSE TODAY:  After a year in the making the day is finally here.  Later this morning Entercom will complete its acquisition of CBS Radio, creating the third largest radio broadcaster in the US.  The combined entity, still to be called Entercom, will generate $1.7B in revenue across 241 stations.  The deal is structured in a way that CBS will still keep an equity position in Entercom equal to the current value of its stations.  This is important because it means Entercom didn’t need to borrow money for the acquisition. This sets Entercom on a much healthier path than the debt-ladened iHeart and Cumulus.  Radio Ink has a solid summary of the transaction in the attached link, along with a look back at Entercom’s history.  As much of a radio skeptic as I am, this merger is probably good for the overall radio industry.

MASHABLE’S FIRE SALE:  Yesterday news broke that tech, gaming and healthcare publisher Ziff Davis has reached a deal to purchase Mashable for $50M, as reported in the attached WSJ article.  The sting in this news is that Mashable’s valuation was pegged at $250M just one year ago during its most recent round of funding.  But since then Mashable’s ad revenue has declined and its cash was beginning to dry up.  It sort of feels like a take-whatever-you-can-get-now move. This could also be a canary in the coal mine moment for all of the second tier publishers in digital media.  As user traffic and revenue gets concentrated at the top of the industry mid-to-small niche players are starting to get squeezed out.  My prediction is that Mashable may be the first of several smaller players to either sell out or die off.

TIME TO “ELIMINATE THE GOOD”:  Finally this week I’d like to leave you with some weekend inspiration.  This insight comes from a gentlemen named Mike Flint, who is Warren Buffett’s personal pilot.  As detailed in the attached Inc.com article, one of the most important moments in Mr. Flint’s career was the time Warren Buffett helped him with a goal setting exercise.  It started like something you may have tried in your career – write down your top 25 career goals and then circle your top five priorities.  After looking at this list Mr. Flint assumed the same thing we all would . . . focus on the top five and then work on 6-25 intermittently when you have the time.  But he assumed wrong.  Instead of passively working the secondary goals Warren Buffett said those needed to be his “Avoid-At-All-Costs” list.  The wisdom goes something like this.  You can only achieve greatness on your most important goals if you completely ignore things that are just good.  So by avoiding spending time/energy on the secondary goals which can make you good, you have no choice but to devote all of your focus on the few things which will make you great.  It’s the personal version of the “pick one thing and do it better than anyone else” business adage.  I think this is fantastic advice from the “Oracle of Omaha” that already has me doing some soul searching.  Could this advice work for you too?

Have a great Friday and Thanksgiving holiday.  See you on November 27^th!

DID THE LABEL GAME JUST CHANGE YESTERDAY?:  Fasten your seat belts for this one.  Yesterday Alphabet (Google’s parent co) and Steve Stoute (former president of Interscope Records) came out of nowhere with a startup music tech company called UnitedMasters.  The concept is effectively a next gen record label which will represent artists in the streaming/social media space.  The vision is to help artists monetize their music in this new digital landscape to the point that they won’t need traditional record labels any longer.  UnitedMasters is playing the ultimate disruptor in a famously dysfunctional industry which has been dominated by a handful Label gatekeepers for most of the past century.  The first sentence of the attached Tech Crunch link tells you everything you need to know . . . according to UnitedMasters, “Record labels are obsolete”.  If these guys succeed November 15^th, 2017 will go down as the official beginning of the end for the Label dynasties.

MORE EVIDENCE OF STREAMING’S POWER:  Yesterday Nielsen released its latest Music 360 research, as reported in the attached Billboard link.  Thanks to streaming and the proliferation of connected devices overall music consumption is way up – increasing to an average of 32.1 hours per week compared to 26.6 hours in 2016.  Streaming music (in both audio and video forms) continues to surge – you can really see it in the graphic below comparing listening consumption from 2015 vs. 2017.  While streaming is pulling some share from AM/FM and satellite, the most noticeable shift is coming from downloads, which decreased from 23% of music consumption in 2015 to 14% today.  Digging deeper into that streaming slice, 45% say they prefer free streaming (like Pandora and YouTube), while 29% pay for subscriptions. Not sure what that missing 26% does – maybe they like both?  This data provides the clearest picture yet that streaming is becoming the dominant way people are consuming music today and into the foreseeable future.

GROUP M STARTS SCRUBBING THE SSPs:  Unless you’re purchasing programmatic inventory directly from a publisher in a PMP arrangement, clients and agencies must use an SSP (supply side platform), which is an aggregator of the available inventory a purchasing DSP (demand side platform) pulls impressions from.  But these SSPs are often the source of the ad fraud and hidden fees the digital media industry continues to struggle with.  Now Group M is beginning to take the SSPs to task, as reported in the attached AdExchanger link.  Besides just cutting the list of certified SSPs it uses to only the ones with disclosed fee structures, Group M is experimenting with individual providers by turning them off one at a time to see how each impacts their overall programmatic buys.  By doing this they can isolate the impact each SSP has on things like overall scale, pricing, and viewability percentages.  This process gives the SSPs nowhere to hide – their platforms either need to deliver clean inventory at a fair price and with scale, or be dropped from Group M’s selection set.  I’m guessing we’ll see more SSP house cleaning from other agencies in the near future.

Have a great Thursday guys!

YOUTUBE MAKING NICE WITH ARTISTS:  The entire global recording industry has its sights set on YouTube for the perceived underpayment of royalties Google (YouTube’s owner) gives to performers, song writers and record labels.  At the heart of the disagreement is a loophole called the Safe Harbor Provision, which allows Google to pay a revenue share on all ads run within specific artists’ channels, instead of paying a flat fee per song the way the streamers do.  The RIAA estimates that Google saves over $1B in royalty payments annually thanks to Safe Harbor, and they’re not happy about it.  With that as the backdrop now comes the attempt by YouTube to cozy up with artists by inserting concert ticket promos while their videos play.  As reported in the attached Musically link, YouTube is partnering with Ticketmaster to service the back end ticket purchases when listeners click to buy.  Knowing Google there’s undoubtedly a profit angle to this – guessing they’ve cut a rev share deal with Ticketmaster on any purchases they refer.  In the meantime YouTube gets to look like the good guys for once with the artists by promoting concerts for free.  Smart move.

MICROSOFT TAKES OFF THE GLOVES:  From 2000-2015 Microsoft was viewed as the evil empire of tech because of its hardware and software dominance on the enterprise side of computing.  Then the competition caught up and even started to pass them in some sectors of tech.  By 2015 there was a bit of a reset with the retirement of co-founder Steve Ballmer and the ascension of Satya Nadella as Microsoft’s new CEO.  This transition timed well with the rise of cloud computing, and the fascinating story of how Microsoft handled the pivot ensued.  First it was all about collaboration.  Mr. Nadella pursued an “it takes a village” strategy by publicly pushing the tech players to work together to develop the data cloud.  But then some of the other guys like Salesforce, Oracle, and Amazon started to out cloud Microsoft.  So now elbows are being thrown again.  Microsoft is going after existing Salesforce SaaS customers, Google is promoting it’s G-Suite as the next gen Microsoft Office, and Apple is still na-na’ing everyone else because it has cooler toys.  This leads us full circle to where the Silicon Valley started back in the early 80s, with a rugby scrum of competitors who are all certain they know better than the next guy are happy to tell us all about it.

MORE PROGRESS, MORE PROBLEMS FOR PROGRAMMATIC:  As programmatic ad buying begins to mainstream in digital media the industry continues to struggle with the dual challenges of making the transactions both transparent and efficient.  Today’s last article in the attached Digiday link tackles these issues.  Publishers continue to struggle with the best way to transact programmatically.  Ad networks and open exchanges are so yesterday.  Between the rock bottom CPMs, double digital impression fraud, and a lack of billing transparency anyone who still relies on networks for buying is stuck in 2012.  As an alternative PMPs are solid, but they’re hard to scale.  Unless you’re a top 20 publisher with enough inventory to set up a private deal with a large client there’s no way to make this efficient.  And header bidding, which was supposed to be the great savior to get the most out of real-time bidding for publishers’ inventory, is as fuzzy on the back end reporting as the networks.  All of this is creating frustration for an industry that needs to change, must change, through the process of automation.  Here’s to hoping it won’t be as painful going forward.

Have a great Wednesday guys!

PURCHASE DATA 101:  Things are heating up in the Purchased-Based Data game.  So it’s important to know the current landscape and understand where things are headed.  What makes this so challenging is all the unique ways purchase data can be used, and all the different players in the space.  For instance linking a consumer who was exposed to an ad and then purchased the advertised product is a key attribution metric, and the cornerstone of measurement services from NCS (Nielsen) and ODC (Oracle).  Then there are eCommerce giants like Amazon and Walmart who have their owned wall-gardens of on-platform purchase data, which they use to model out behaviors and serve retargeted ads.  And don’t forget the major CCs like Visa, Mastercard, and Amex who are aggregating their cardholders purchase data, which they sell to the DMPs who create purchase-based audience segs.  To help sort through this space AdExchanger has published an extensive Purchase Data Playbook which is available in the attached link.  It’s an important read if you need to get smart (or stay smart) on the purchase sector.

ASCENTIAL BLINKS IN CANNES LIONS STANDOFF:  After last year’s “biggest and best ever” Cannes Lions Awards Festival several agency holding companies began saying they would trim down their presence in 2018, and Publicis went so far as to the say they would skip Cannes altogether in 2018.  Why this reaction?  Because Cannes has been getting too big and too expensive for its own good.  Over the years Ascential, the owner of Cannes Lions, started adding more and more award categories.  More categories meant more client nominees, which forced agencies to pay for more clients to attend.  But 2017 appears to have been the tipping point, as described in the attached AdWeek link.  In a reactive move Ascential has agreed to trim down the overall number of nominations and put restrictions on how many times a piece of creative can be nominated.  These moves, combined with a reduction in attendee admission costs and discounting for hotel, meals, etc., are designed to make Cannes Lions more reasonable to participate in.  The changes are apparently enough for Publicis, who’s saying they will recommit to Cannes 2019 (yes, they’re still taking 2018 off).  Overall it’s a step towards cost savings sanity for the entire industry.  Now can somebody work on lowering those rose’ corkage fees for me?!?

COULD LBOs BE KILLING RETAIL FASTER THAN AMAZON?:  Yes, we all know the Retail Apocalypse is upon us.  With more purchases migrating online the term Brick & Mortar is fast becoming a dirty word.  But what if the financial problems in the Retail sector are really being caused by structural debt and not just competition?  In the attached link Bloomberg puts forth the theory that decades of LBOs (Leveraged Buyouts) of retailers have created debt-laden parent companies who can’t pay their bills.  These buyouts occurred over the past 10-20 years when sales projections for traditional retailers looked like a steady up-to-the-right line which would go on forever.  But then as Ecommerce started to take a bite out of their businesses, heavily leveraged retailers had no margin for error to survive the transition.  This explains why seemingly healthy retailers like Toys “R” Us is in Chapter 11, and Sports Authority went out of business altogether.  And the worst part of this story is Bloomberg’s prediction that the bad times for Retail are just getting started.  As you can see in the image below Retail loan delinquencies are on the rise, which is a foreshadowing of more store closures to come.  Fair warning that this article is really deep – there are graphs in here you’ve never seen before.  But if you want a MBA-level dissection of Retail’s debt problem, this one’s for you.

Have a great Tuesday guys!

TOP DIGITAL STATS:  To start things off here’s a roundup of AdWeek’s Top Digital Stats from the past week.  Coming in at #1 was Snapchat’s horrendous Q3 Earnings Call, in which they missed the Street’s rev forecast by $237M . . . that’ll leave a mark on your stock price!  Other points of note include AppNexus’s use of AI to send programmatic buying into hyperdrive (#3), brands making preparations for the EU’s GDPR conversion next May (#5), and Pandora’s introduction of audience seg targeting on its 10M strong connected home listener base (#6). It’s a solid list to get neurons firing this morning.

TRITON WEBCAST METRICS:  Last Wednesday Triton finally released its Webcast Digital Metrics Ratings for August.  I had to patiently wait for RAIN to run its usual analysis until this morning, which is featured in the attached link.  The streaming market saw a solid rebound from the summer doldrums with a +4% increase of AAS (average active sessions) compared to July.  And YoY the streamers saw an impressive +15% increase.  The growth was constituent across all major players, as noted in the graphic below.  One thing to keep in mind as you digest these numbers – Triton’s AAS #s still don’t differentiate between addressable ad-supported streaming and non-addressable ad-free subscription streaming.  Hopefully Triton will eventually segregate these two rankers so marketers can get a true sense of the audience scale they can actually market to.

THE DOJ VS. AT&T:  Last week a pretty shocking development occurred in the media landscape with the DOJ’s announcement that they intended to block AT&T from acquiring Time Warner unless it divested Turner Networks (think CNN) or Direct TV.  To understand what’s going on here we need to take a step back.  One of AT&T’s primary competitors, Verizon, has spent the last two years acquiring AOL and Yahoo to create a single digital entity called Oath.  Verizon’s strategy is to vertically integrate by combining data from their existing cellular customer base with its new digital ad business.  As a counterpunch AT&T is trying to buy Time Warner to run an Addressable TV version of this play, by combining its cellular data with satellite and cable TV viewers.  The DOJ has already green-lighted the Verizon acquisitions, so AT&T expected easy regulatory approval.  That’s why last week’s announcement of the block was so surprising.  Many in the industry are speculating that the DOJ’s move is a way for the Trump Administration to isolate CNN, which it’s dubbed “Fake News”, by forcing AT&T to drop it from the roll up.  The DOJ denies this allegation, but it’s pretty hard to justify the stance on its own merits.  AT&T has responded by saying it would fight to keep both Tuner and Direct TV in the deal, and expects to take this decision to the courts.  Variety has a solid summary article in the attached link.  Keep an eye on this one.

Have a great Monday guys!

TWICE THE TWITTER?:  So they’re officially doing it.  According to the Verge Twitter is pulling the trigger on the long-rumored switch to 280 characters, which is double the current 140.  This move is consistent with a strategy to increase user engagement on the site.  The rationale is that longer tweets will be more conversational in nature, and lead to increased time on the platform.  But there could be a downside.  Part of the beauty of Twitter is the bite-sized posts which read like quick hits.  Will 280 characters still retain the essence of brevity which we’ve all become used to?  It’s interesting that most test users of the new 280 character standard didn’t max out the new space.  Is that because they’re used to the current 140 and will eventually normalize to 280?  And when more users start bumping up against the new 280 ceiling will Twitter raise the limit again?  And most importantly, will this lead to even longer tweets by President Trump?  Eeek!

CUMULUS SAYS THE “B” WORD:  As they 30-day countdown clock winds down on Cumulus’s default of interest payments it missed, the B word (as in bankruptcy) is starting to be used.  The possibility was articulated by Cumulus CFO John Abbot during Thursday’s Q3 earnings call.  Since a negotiated bankruptcy would wipe out over 90% of the debt value for creditors, Cumulus is trying to use the bankruptcy threat as a way to get its lenders to the bargaining table to restructure its loans at more favorable terms.  But according to the attached RadioInk article, there doesn’t appear to be any movement towards a negotiation.  In the meantime Cumulus’s December 1^st default deadline is getting closer.

THANKING OUR VETERANS:  If you’re a long-time reader of the Daily Gabe you know I take a special appreciation in Veterans Day and the commitment made by those who have served and are currently serving.  Our veterans put themselves in harm’s way and sacrifice time with their families so that we can enjoy lives with ours.  In return we must give them our respect and appreciation.  So tomorrow (on the actual Veterans Day Holiday), please call every vet you know and say thank you.  Even if it’s a parent or grandparent who served decades ago, your acknowledgment of their sacrifice will be appreciated.  And if you want to know what sacrifice looks watch this Veterans Homecoming compilation video.  The reaction from the spouses, children and even the dogs will tell you just how much these families have sacrificed for us and our country.  Thank you, veterans!

Have a great Friday (and weekend) guys!