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JEREMY B. DANN MICHAEL GLASSMAN

Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry

Jeff Smulyan loved seeing his hometown of Indianapolis crowded with visitors—even if the extra traffic almost made him late for his first meeting of the day. “March Madness”—the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s renowned, tradition-rich basketball tournament—had returned once again to Indianapolis in 2015. Smulyan was taking advantage of the opportunity to meet with several media executives in town to watch the “Final Four” teams vie for the title.

It was a warm spring day in early April. Smulyan walked from his office on Indianapolis’ famous Monument Circle to a nearby lunch with fellow members of the National Association of Broadcasters. As he walked, he listened to “The Dan Dakich Show” on “The Fan” 107.5 FM, a station Smulyan’s company, Emmis Communications, owned. “We’re putting it out there to the listeners: who’s going to win Saturday’s Semifinal? Will it be overall number one seed Kentucky, or will it be the Wisconsin Badgers? Vote now,” declared Dakich, a nationally- known sports radio host. Smulyan pulled out his Sprint HTC One to cast his vote for the underdog Wisconsin.

While listener polls were typical in sports talk radio, this one was different. In the early days of sports talk radio (a format Smulyan had helped pioneer two decades before), listeners would call in to vote. With the rise of mobile phones, radio personalities would have listeners use text messaging or Twitter to respond. This poll, however, popped up automatically on Smulyan’s smartphone, its appearance synchronized with 107.5 FM’s broadcast. Smulyan’s vote, along with the votes of other listeners in the Indianapolis area, was cast with one simple click using the mobile app NextRadio.

Smulyan had spent the better part of the last decade as the main champion for enabling mobile phones in the U.S. to receive FM radio transmissions. When smartphones were first introduced, he aggressively lobbied both legislators and mobile telecom executives in the hope of equipping the devices with a chip capable of receiving FM radio. Later, he committed millions of dollars of Emmis’ capital to developing the NextRadio app and the business ecosystem around it. Today’s lunch meeting was with several of the industry colleagues who had committed early on to the NextRadio effort. The lunch was in his hometown at a restaurant he chose, so he knew he’d be picking up the tab. He just hoped the free lunch and the news about NextRadio’s progress would be enough to keep them on board as enthusiastic supporters of the initiative.

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October 12, 2016

SCG-517 Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry

The Early Days of Emmis Communications

Growing up in Indianapolis, Smulyan always wanted to pursue a career in broadcasting. He moved to Los Angeles to explore those dreams and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Southern California (USC) in 1969. He decided to stay at USC, receiving a law degree–with a focus on communications–from the Gould School of Law. After eight years in LA, Smulyan returned to his hometown in 1973 for his first opportunity in broadcasting. Through a family connection, he was able to secure a job managing a small AM radio station, WNTS. There he worked with a few people who would become long-time collaborators, including midday host David Letterman, who soon rose to prominence as a comedian and late night TV host. Years later, Letterman would become an investor and board member of Emmis Communications.

Smulyan founded Emmis–the name a reference to the Hebrew word for “truth”–with Indianapolis-based entrepreneurs Mickey Maurer and Bob Schloss in 1979. The trio purchased WSVL, a radio station in Shelbyville, Indiana, 26 miles southeast of Indianapolis. The new partners worked for two years to relocate the “stick”–industry jargon for a broadcasting tower–into the larger Indianapolis market, launching the renamed station as WENS in 1981. Smulyan and his team dropped the station’s country music format, transforming WENS into one of the country’s first “adult contemporary” FM stations. The quick success of this move led the Emmis team to acquire stations in Minneapolis, Minnesota (1982), Los Angeles, California (1984), and St. Louis, Missouri (1984).

Smulyan hoped to aggressively expand into additional markets, but he felt Maurer and Schloss were looking for a more immediate return on their investment; Smulyan decided to buy out his partners. With several hit stations, he raised equity from friends and family, and worked with Morgan Stanley to issue corporate bonds. In 1986, Maurer and Schloss sold their ownership stake in Emmis back to the company for $21.3 million–from an initial investment of $85,000 each.1

The “Turnaround Guy”

With full control of the business, Smulyan set out to augment Emmis’ portfolio of radio stations. He sought out populated areas with relatively few “sticks” that would compete for the finite pool of advertising dollars. He was not afraid to change a station’s format when he identified a gap in the market. Despite strong ratings, Los Angeles-based Magic 106 was rebranded as Power 106 in 1986 as the nation’s first “rhythmic contemporary” station (Power 106 remained one of Emmis’ most successful stations from 1986-2015).2,3 In 1987, Smulyan moved into the New York market via acquisition and transformed WHN into the nation’s first all-sports talk station, WFAN. “Most companies with multiple radio stations were format specific. They had one format, and that’s all they did,” Smulyan said. “We said we don’t have a formula. We’re going to find the biggest hole in the market, the best niche in the market” (see Exhibit 1 for a timeline of Emmis’ media acquisitions).

By 1989, Emmis owned stations in almost every top 10 market. Due to laws restricting radio broadcasters from owning more than one FM and one AM station in any market, Smulyan believed he needed to look to other media segments for growth opportunities.

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Prof. Jeremy B. Dann, Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Director of the Case Study Program, and Case Fellow Michael Glassman prepared this case. This case was developed from field research and published sources. Cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion and are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data or illustrations of effective or ineffective management.

Copyright © 2016 Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. For information about Greif Center cases, please contact us at greifcases@marshall.usc.edu. This publication may not be digitized, photocopied, or otherwise reproduced, posted or transmitted without the permission of The Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

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After being interviewed by Indianapolis Monthly in 1988, Smulyan believed he saw an opportunity. He capitalized on the similarities in demographics and psychographics between the magazine and his adult contemporary stations by acquiring the magazine. The following year, Smulyan was approached by Major League Baseball–which had learned about his reputation for saving troubled businesses–to help turn around the perennially-struggling Seattle Mariners. In 1989, Smulyan led a group of investors, including Morgan Stanley and fellow Indianapolis entrepreneur Michael Browning, in acquiring the team for $76 million.4

By the early 1990s, Emmis’ decade-long winning streak appeared to be coming to an end. Smulyan was disappointed with the synergies between his media interests and struggled to convince the Seattle business community to support the team through advertising and ticket purchases. Emmis had become mired in debt, and in 1991 showed a net loss of $9.5 million.5 In 1992, Smulyan sold WFAN to Infinity Broadcasting (now CBS Radio), and the unprofitable baseball team–just after Ken Griffey Jr. led Seattle to the first winning season in team history–to Nintendo for $106 million.6 Smulyan said of the time, “We sort of regrouped: licking our wounds, paying down debt, fixing the balance sheet, making sure we survived.” Back to financial health, Emmis went public in 1994, again with the assistance of Morgan Stanley (see Exhibit 2 for Emmis’ historical income statements).

Competition, Consolidation and Diversification: The Complex Broadcast Landscape

The Telecommunications Act of 1996–a far-reaching package of measures deregulating the broadcasting industry–was the first sweeping legislation concerning the industry since the inception of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1934. The law allowed companies to own businesses in different media segments and relaxed limitations on radio ownership in a single market.7 Rather than encourage competition as intended, the legislation caused the acceleration of industry consolidation as more than one-third of all American radio stations were acquired by the major players.8 In 1996, the two largest U.S. radio companies owned less than 130 stations combined. By 2002, the two largest companies together owned 1,450 stations, and the ten largest companies reached 65% of all radio listeners. 9 , 10 Soon, the major players experienced enormous stock appreciation, due to what Smulyan later facetiously dubbed “magic synergies” (see Exhibit 3 for 2001 and 2015 radio industry market share statistics).

Clear Channel, one of the most active participants in the acquisition of radio stations during this period, was founded by Lowry Mays and Red McCombs in San Antonio, Texas in 1972. Between 1994 and 1997, the company grew from 35 radio stations to 175. Clear Channel became the largest operator of radio stations in the U.S. during the 2000-2014 time period, owning as many as 1,240 stations.11

Rather than investing in what he believed to be overpriced radio acquisitions, Smulyan felt Emmis would be better off translating its skills from radio into network affiliate television. Ryan Hornaday, who joined Emmis’ finance team in 1999 after working in public accounting at Arthur Anderson (Emmis’ auditors at the time), reinforced Smulyan’s instinct that the high valuations in radio were unsustainable: “Jeff had a long history of being a contrarian, and didn’t do deals for the sake of doing them. Emmis started buying TV stations because the P/E multiples were much lower.” Smulyan saw a potential new revenue stream from cable TV since new regulations had permitted affiliates to demand payment from cable operators that wished to carry network programming over cable systems.

Smulyan grew his company conservatively during the late 1990s, owning as many as 16 local TV stations, 25 U.S. radio stations, four international radio stations, and seven magazines. Unlike some of its competitors, Emmis never saw a significant increase in stock price during this time. Additionally, Smulyan became frustrated in his attempts to galvanize the local TV operators to demand fees from the powerful cable providers, and would sell off his television portfolio from 2005-

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SCG-517 Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry

2008. While the stations were sold for a profit, the new revenue stream Smulyan predicted would years later become the lifeblood of local TV stations; rebroadcast rights fees were projected to top $6 billion in 2015.12

As the year 2000 approached, radio industry revenues were flat (see Exhibit 4 for radio industry revenue trends, 1975–2005). Smulyan believed Wall Street’s frenzy over radio broadcasters reached a peak in 2000: “Finally people realized it was all a house of cards. That was the time when investors looked at the absurd valuations and said, ‘Something is wrong here.’” Emmis’ market capitalization declined from a high of $2.4 billion in early 2000 to $1 billion in early 2005. Industry leader Clear Channel, whose stock reached a high of $90 per share in 2000, saw its market capitalization reduced by more than two-thirds over the next five years; the company announced plans to go private in 2006.13

The Digital Age

Throughout the 1990s, Smulyan was pitched both partnership and investment opportunities by technology entrepreneurs who wanted to gain the favor of the media industry veteran. In 1996, Smulyan met with Todd Wagner, who had partnered with young entrepreneur and fellow Indiana University alumnus Mark Cuban to found Broadcast.com (at the time called AudioNet). Wagner wanted to include content from Emmis’ radio stations on their new audio streaming service. Smulyan passed on the opportunity, but streaming firms were starting to attract attention from others. Cuban and Wagner sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo in 1999 for $5 billion, though many of its services were split or discontinued over the next few years. Smulyan reflected, “The carnage of the consolidation era taught us not to be tempted by ‘shiny objects’… We looked at a lot of Internet startups and thought it was nonsensical. There were probably a few opportunities that were brilliant that we didn’t see.”

As broadband connectivity expanded and Internet speed improved, consumers increasingly turned to their PCs for entertainment. While Smulyan did launch an interactive division to give his stations web presences and equipped Emmis’ stations with basic streaming capabilities before most competitors, he refrained from major investments in Internet startups during this time. He said, “The Internet changed everything we did in every way. I felt the Internet was the world’s best information transfer mechanism, but very inefficient at distributing entertainment. When I looked at these early investment opportunities, there were costs associated with them that I didn’t think consumers would be willing to pay. That inspired our thinking about different technologies to solve these problems.”

When they first looked at the streaming business model, Smulyan and Hornaday had serious concerns about its cost structure when compared to terrestrial radio. Hornaday said, “When one of our station’s customers listened to the radio while driving to work, she was a 35% margin customer. The second she got out of the car and streamed, she was a minus 10% margin customer. Same audio, same customer…terrible business model.” Hornaday believed the “one-to-many” model of traditional radio held numerous advantages over the “one-to-one” model of streaming. Audio streaming faced no regulatory hurdles and required less start-up capital than broadcasting. Hornaday believed these lower barriers to entry would result in a very crowded market. Also, once built, a radio tower cost a broadcaster the same amount, regardless of the size of the audience; streaming required incremental costs for hardware as the listener base increased. For music-oriented formats, the royalty payments of terrestrial radio also had significant advantages, Hornaday maintained. Terrestrial radio paid publishing royalties to music licensing organizations as a modest percentage of revenues, regardless of the number of listeners, and due to a congressional exemption, was not required to pay the artists performance royalties. Due to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, music streaming services were required to pay both publishing and performance royalties, linking incremental costs to each additional listener (see Exhibit 5 for a comparison of the radio and streaming business models).

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Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry SCG-517

To the surprise of the Emmis executives, streaming revenue boomed, increasing from $49 million to $500 million between 2003 and 2006. With this growth came an increase in attention from Wall Street. Hornaday commented, “Everyone highlighted user growth without regard to the fact that each user caused them to lose money.” The largest players in streaming included existing radio broadcasters as well as new entrants. Broadcasters that allocated major resources in streaming looked to bring content from their radio stations to the online audience, while the low infrastructure costs of streaming allowed the formation of many startups, including Spotify and Pandora.

The Launch of Satellite Radio

As the nascent streaming industry was expanding, another audio broadcasting technology was being prepared for takeoff. By 2001, both XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio had raised over $3 billion, largely for the construction and launching of a system of broadcast satellites.14 The companies’ receivers were primarily intended for automobile drivers, capitalizing on the fact that traditional radio signals were degraded as listeners traveled farther away from broadcast towers. XM introduced its service in late 2001, with Sirius following close behind, launching in early 2002.15 While both services were subscription-based with minimal advertising, some channels on both services aired broadcasts by popular music and talk radio stations which included advertising.

Sirius and XM grew their subscriber bases quickly, and by the end of 2004 had reached 3 million and 1 million, respectively. By the time the companies merged in 2008, their total combined subscriber base was 18.5 million.16 Due in part to large infrastructure costs, satellite radio companies struggled to earn a profit in their first decade of operations, but the combined entity finally showed a profit in 2010. Smulyan believed that the merger–which wiped out a significant amount of debt– allowed the troubled companies to stave off bankruptcy. He noted, “We didn’t consider satellite radio a true competitor. It was used by less than 10% of the U.S. population, and only had ads on a few channels, such as Howard Stern.”

Despite these new broadcasting technologies, traditional radio still had significant reach, with over 90% of Americans 12 and up listening every week.17 However, revenue growth was flat, and in 2007 Emmis once again showed a net loss (see Exhibit 6 for a summary of U.S. media consumption).

NextRadio–The Industry Solution?

In 2008, Smulyan and the CEOs of other major broadcasters–including CBS Radio, Clear Channel, and Cox Media–traveled to New York City to meet with the President of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), David Rehr. The NAB was a trade association and lobbying group that had worked on behalf of radio and television broadcasters since 1922 (while radio broadcasters that had invested in streaming were members, streaming-only companies were not). At this meeting, Rehr noted to the assembled executives that in many countries around the world an FM radio chip was being installed in mobile phones and that a large number of customers were utilizing this technology. With the FM chip, customers could use their mobile devices to listen to traditional radio from local broadcasters, rather than using data to stream audio through cellular towers. Most of the executives at the meeting, including Smulyan, were previously unaware of the technology.

Since Smulyan had an existing relationship with Nokia from his efforts to acquire a radio license in Finland, one of the CEOs suggested he explore this opportunity. “I didn’t have any idea what it might lead to at the time, but I figured it was worth a look if it might help the industry,” Smulyan recalled. He reached out to his Finnish partners and confirmed that in Europe consumers could choose to have an FM chip installed and activated in their mobile phones at a nominal cost. Seeing the chip’s high level of adoption and low cost to both customers and manufacturers, Smulyan immediately explored

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SCG-517 Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry

the possibility of implementing similar programs in the U.S. However, he failed to identify a champion for the initiative during his initial meetings with domestic mobile carriers. U.S. carriers had been offering mobile “feature phones”–a type of mobile phone with some limited Internet and multimedia capabilities–boasting the earliest audio streaming services for a few years. Since the mobile carriers hoped to sell monthly music subscriptions to customers and boost data purchases, Smulyan observed that presenting a free option via radio waves could meet resistance.

The arrival of the smartphone brought with it an opportunity for the radio industry. In particular, the debut of Apple’s iPhone in June 2007 helped bring smartphones to the mainstream and opened up opportunities for more robust media experiences. Most smartphones, manufactured uniformly for a worldwide customer base, came pre-installed with a built-in multifunction chipset that included Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and an FM chip. Smulyan said, “The customer no longer had to request the chip to be added–it was already there. Why was it there? Because in the rest of world the take rate was so high, manufacturers felt they might as well put it in. Now the U.S. carriers simply needed to request that the chips be activated” (see Exhibit 7 for U.S. mobile carrier and manufacturer market share).

Smulyan was intrigued by the potential opportunity of broadcasting to smartphones, and thought it could be a game changer for the declining radio industry:

Radio used to be a portable medium, with millions of “Walkmen” [Sony’s once ubiquitous portable audio cassette and radio players] selling every year. Broadcast TV was portable until 2009. I used to always go to a ballgame with my portable TV so I could watch the replays. Switching to the HD standard lost the portability of TV. Today, the only portable device is the smartphone. Kids believe radio is only in the car, or on their mother’s nightstand. They are surprised to hear you can carry a radio in your hand—even though that’s what previous generations grew up with!

Smulyan believed that once mobile customers found out about the dormant FM chip already in their phones, they would assist the broadcast industry in spurring carriers to take advantage of the technology. However, he also knew that taking on the carriers would be a challenge without cross- industry support from broadcasters and their listeners.

Mobilizing a Coalition

It was soon clear to the NAB and Smulyan that simply turning on the FM chip in mobile phones and providing a barebones tuning capability would not be enough to reinvigorate the radio industry. Rather, someone would have to build an ecosystem–starting with a smartphone app–for customers to interact with local stations. This ecosystem could potentially bring additional revenue to broadcasters through visual advertisements on the phone in addition to traditional radio spots. Smulyan believed it was essential for the radio industry’s presence on the smartphone to be unified in one app. He said, “We needed one common interface for the American radio industry, or else you would never sell advertisers or be able to provide a consistent service for the industry and our listeners.” With this common goal, he believed there would be plenty of support for this multi-company coalition.

Former Oregon Senator Gordon Smith, who took over as President of the NAB in 2009, had become aware of Smulyan’s initial efforts while on the Senate’s Commerce Committee, which oversaw the FCC. Senator Smith believed Smulyan was the natural choice to lead the effort, saying, “The project evolved with Jeff and it evolved quickly. He was the major investor in the efforts and he became the lightning rod for it.”

In 2009, with $500,000 in seed money from the NAB on top of Emmis’ own funds, Smulyan turned to Emmis’ Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Paul Brenner, to help develop the interface for what would be called NextRadio. An Information Technology executive, Brenner had joined Emmis

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Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry SCG-517

over a decade earlier and had just recently become CTO. In 2006-2007, he oversaw a project between Emmis, Clear Channel, and Apple that worked to bring radio to the iPod Nano. The software designed in the project, TagStation, connected data–such as information about the artist–with iTunes’ radio streams. Noted Brenner, “As a tech guy, I was excited by the power of the Internet. But this was the first time that I realized that broadcasting as a national service had a lot of power, and you could elevate that power by connecting it with new technology.” Brenner was able to repurpose TagStation, giving him a significant head start with NextRadio. The software provided Brenner with cloud data capabilities that could make radio streams more vibrant and visual on the smartphone by syncing data from stations to the broadcasts (see Exhibit 8 for images of NextRadio’s interface).

While Brenner and his skunkworks operation developed the app, Smulyan became more and more committed to NextRadio. Smulyan made it his mission to inform critical stakeholders: liaising with other broadcasters to maintain their excitement and lobbying politicians to help with the powerful domestic carriers when the app was ready.

In 2011, three years after the NAB meeting where Smulyan first heard about the FM chip, Smulyan and Brenner demonstrated NextRadio for the first time to other industry players. With Senator Smith, the NAB’s leadership team, and top radio executives assembled in a conference room, Smulyan and Brenner–now the President of Emmis’ NextRadio division–wheeled in a cart. The cart displayed the first three smartphones loaded with this new app, which cost several million dollars to develop. Seeing the app in action helped many of the executives finally understand what inclusion into the ever-growing base of smartphones could mean for the radio industry. Senator Smith noted:

My radio members were concerned about how crowded the car dashboard had become with other technologies since most Americans listened to the radio while driving. NextRadio gave them a way to ‘spread their wings.’ On a college campus, everybody had buds in their ears listening to something. If they could get their entertainment for free from radio stations—the old fashioned way—then that would provide a whole new dimension to listenership.

After the demonstration, many of the other broadcasters expressed enthusiasm about the project and pledged support. NextRadio had emerged as the de facto ecosystem for the smartphone. Smulyan believed his responsibility was not just to Emmis’ bottom line, but also to the industry as a whole:

It was very important to be agnostic and transparent—an honest broker. We were the managers of the system. We owned it, and I believed it could save my company, but it was built to be as transparent as possible: If the industry decided we weren’t doing a good job as stewards, they would have the right to buy it back from us.

To ensure the effort was working on behalf of all broadcasters, it was agreed that Smulyan would consult with other major players who would monitor the progress of the new ecosystem. An agreement brokered with the largest companies outlined a goal to form a committee that would routinely monitor NextRadio; if it was determined that Emmis was improperly managing the system, a coalition of broadcasters could elect to purchase NextRadio in 2017 and again in 2019, with no single broadcaster owning more than 30%.

The Great and Powerful Carriers

In 2011, with the NextRadio app ready to debut and most of the major radio station operators behind him, Smulyan set out to finally get the FM chip activated on U.S. smartphones. To formulate a plan of attack, Smulyan consulted with the team of entrepreneurs and engineers that had worked in the late 1990s to establish Wi-Fi as the standard for local area wireless networking. They advised him

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SCG-517 Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry

that to get the chip switched on, he had three options. First, Smulyan could file an antitrust suit against the major carriers who were denying the public access to free radio transmissions. Second, he could lobby Congress to legislate that the chips be activated. Third, he could make a deal with a small carrier and prove the attractiveness of the concept. Heeding the advice of the Wi-Fi team, he opted to pursue a deal with a carrier. Smulyan added, “I thought, ‘our listeners will win this for us.’”

Mobile carriers sold most of the smartphones in the U.S. and held significant power over the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that operated around the globe. The exception was Apple, the Cupertino-based company, which sold millions of iPhones a year through its company-owned retail stores. To date, the mobile carriers had resisted activating the FM chip. Brenner remarked, “The carriers just didn’t believe that local radio had value. They didn’t believe that radio on phones could represent new money to them.” Due to the sizeable amount of data that customers of streaming services like Spotify and Pandora were using on a daily basis, the carriers were concerned about a possible loss of revenue resulting from a reduction in data usage. Brenner contended that the carriers’ share of potential new revenue from mobile advertising could more than compensate for this loss.

After initial carrier meetings, Smulyan zeroed in on Sprint, the third largest carrier after Verizon and AT&T, with 12% U.S. market share in 2011.18 Sprint executives liked the app’s interactivity component, but ultimately required more than a share of potential advertising revenue. Smulyan– along with the CEOs of Clear Channel, CBS Radio, and Entercom Communications–negotiated an activation fee of $1.50 per phone for 10 million new phones per year for 3 years, totaling $45 million.

Erica Farber, who in 2012 took over leadership of the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB) and had worked with Smulyan in various capacities for many years, joined the effort of building the coalition of broadcasters. The RAB acted as an advocate on behalf of the radio industry and in particular helped broadcasters work with local advertisers. Smartphone interactivity held the promise of dramatically raising the effectiveness of radio ads, Farber believed. She felt it was important to take advantage of the smartphone trend, as U.S. penetration had grown from 7% to 50% between 2008 and 2012.19 She said, “One of the focuses for the broadcasters was to make sure that they were available on as many platforms as possible. If the listener wanted them, it was really important to make sure that we understood where the listener was, how they were listening, and how they wanted to hear us.”

Farber was enlisted to help convince broadcasters that Sprint’s “first mover” payments were necessary. Several CEOs objected, believing it set a dangerous precedent for future negotiations with the other carriers. Smulyan believed that while the payments were required for the first major carrier, NextRadio would have greater leverage with other mobile operators once the concept was launched and validated. He also believed that proving the concept would help eliminate the complaints from carriers claiming that activating the FM chip would be costly and difficult. Farber agreed with Smulyan’s plan, adding, “Adoption is what’s important. Consumers have to know about it and demand it.” Though the experience of “passing the cup” proved grueling, all major broadcasters agreed to contribute to the activation fee for the Sprint deal.

In January 2013, four years after Smulyan, Brenner, and the team at Emmis began development of the NextRadio app, Sprint announced its new partnership with the radio industry. Due to debut later that year, the NextRadio app would be preloaded on all new Sprint HTC One Android phones, one of their top selling models. Smulyan said in a public statement, “Today is a remarkable day for our industry. I am gratified by the unity I have seen in our industry.”20

NextRadio vs. Streaming

Consumer interest in audio streaming continued to skyrocket. By 2014, the total domestic digital streaming audience had reached 160 million, over half of the U.S. population. From 2010-2014, the percentage of mobile customers who listened to online radio in their cars increased from 6% to 26%.21

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Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry SCG-517

With this consumer interest came increased revenues–from both advertising and subscriptions–with Spotify and Pandora each topping $500 million in revenues in 2013. However, as revenue climbed with each new user, so too did licensing costs. In 2013, both companies were far from profitable, with Spotify and Pandora showing net losses of $80 million and $41 million, respectively.22 Spotify executives estimated that for every 1 million song listens, the company paid over $6,000 in total royalty payments, while traditional radio paid approximately $41.23 “It’s now 2015. To this day, no company in the streaming industry has ever made a profit!” Smulyan remarked.

While he agreed with the necessity of following the consumer onto the smartphone, Smulyan wanted to do so while keeping the broadcast industry profitable. Smulyan and Hornaday, now Emmis’ CFO, believed NextRadio could provide broadcasters the efficiency and scalability of terrestrial radio while still taking advantage of the benefits of the smartphone, with its massive market penetration and interactive consumer experience. Hornaday outlined the potential benefits to the various stakeholders in the NextRadio ecosystem (see Exhibit 9 for NextRadio’s revenue sources):

Consumers: NextRadio would offer consumers radio access on their smartphones using 5% of the data and 20-30% of the battery of streaming apps. Hornaday said, “There is no other way to listen to your local radio station on your phone for free.” The access to the FM signal would continue even if Internet connectivity was lost. NextRadio executives believed that listeners would enjoy features such as album artwork, user-generated ratings, social media sharing, and local contests.

Broadcasters: The vast majority of revenues from NextRadio would be paid to the broadcasters. Since the users would listen to music via the FM chip on their smartphones, stations would retain the favorable cost structure of over-the-air broadcasting, including lower royalty payments. Additionally, the improved interactivity with customers through the NextRadio interface would allow broadcasters to sell more robust and customizable offerings to advertisers. This would provide broadcasters their first chance to interact with consumers on a one-to-one basis, with the same listener attribution data that had previously only been available to digital advertisers, Hornaday added. Lastly, initial data suggested that customers were listening to the radio twice as long when inside the app—hence, listening to more advertising, as well.

Advertisers: The synchronization of the radio broadcast with commercial content on the smartphone would give advertisers the opportunity to augment existing radio campaigns and provide a visual element to audiences. The advertisements’ so-called “content cards” displayed within the app during commercials would help provide additional information and offer highly relevant interactivity tools, including links to websites, “buy now” buttons, access to coupons, and links to other apps.

Mobile Carriers: Hornaday reflected, “For the longest time the carriers’ position was, ‘Why do I need this? Consumers are streaming, they like it, and we can charge for the data.’” However, he noted that in addition to any negotiated annual payment–as with the Sprint deal–the mobile carriers would receive between 20% and 30% of new advertising revenue. The FM chip would come preinstalled by OEMs on all smartphones and any costs incurred by carriers would be negligible.

Emmis Communications: As the designer, builder, and manager of the ecosystem, Emmis would collect 10% of new advertising revenue within NextRadio.

Smulyan also took great pride in the public safety benefits of bringing terrestrial radio to the smartphone. In any emergency when the power grid went down, over-the-air radio broadcasting could continue–as most stations owned backup generators–while mobile Internet access could be seriously compromised and making calls might prove impossible. Smartphones would be able to access emergency announcements as long as their batteries lasted, while almost all televisions would be put out of commission during widespread power outages. Craig Fugate, the Administrator of the

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SCG-517 Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), praised the safety benefits of NextRadio: “We tend to think devices will work the same in a disaster. In the case of a quake, all of a sudden your smartphone becomes a brick… I don’t think people realize how vulnerable they become… All disasters are local. A lot of the time, radio may be the only way to be plugged into what’s happening.”24

Despite the potential benefits of NextRadio, commitment to the ecosystem had begun to vary among broadcasters, especially those that had shifted their focus to streaming. Hornaday said, “Some large radio companies had made sizable bets on streaming platforms and were becoming lukewarm toward embracing NextRadio.” Proponents of the streaming model highlighted that its audience skewed younger than traditional radio, and was therefore more attractive to advertisers.25 Additionally, they noted that while NextRadio only provided access to local stations, streaming gave listeners access to countless stations regardless of location. Lastly, they contended that the cost structure would soon improve as a result of two ongoing negotiations. First, streaming executives were confident that mobile carriers would agree to limit data charges attributable to music streaming. Second, the major players in streaming were working with the record labels and music licensing organizations to reduce royalty payments. However, Hornaday maintained streaming services were a long way from significantly improving their royalty rates: “Record labels have been decimated. They are hungry for dollars anywhere they can get them, and I don’t see those rates significantly changing.” The streaming industry’s most recent effort, the Internet Radio Fairness Act, failed to pass Congress in 2012 (see Exhibit 10 for financial performance and reach of select streaming companies).

Industry executives struggled to predict how an industry divide would impact the app’s success. Senator Smith commented, “Overwhelmingly our members support NextRadio, but there is a division as to where the future is going to be: whether it will remain in terrestrial radio because of its adoption by cell phone companies, or whether it is through digital streaming. But it is a division that can be blown out of proportion. I think both of them are right. We do need a better business model in streaming, but we also need to be looking for new platforms.”

Building Momentum

Following the Sprint announcement, Smulyan worked to expand NextRadio’s presence by making deals with U.S. radio operators, smaller carriers and OEMs. By the end of 2013, approximately 1,500 radio stations–from parent companies including Beasley, CBS Radio, Entercom, Greater Media, Hubbard, and Clear Channel–had committed to NextRadio. In early 2014, carriers Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile introduced plans to offer the app on multiple smartphone models. Additionally, NextRadio announced that multiple models of HTC and Motorola smartphones would soon be sold with an activated FM chip. The app would be available for free at the Google Play app store for all Android phones in which it did not come preinstalled. In April 2014, the Android operating system ran on 53% of smartphones in the U.S., with many analysts expecting further penetration.26

During this time, the streaming marketplace had become even more competitive and rife with dealmaking. Although many analysts believed it was persistently losing money from its iHeartRadio streaming service, Clear Channel–now under the leadership of MTV co-founder Bob Pittman–had produced enormous subscriber growth.27 iHeartRadio, which live streamed audio content from Clear Channel’s radio stations, had solidified its spot as the number three streaming service–after Pandora and Spotify–with 30 million registered listeners in 2013. The smartphone app’s importance to the company would later be reinforced when Clear Channel rebranded itself as iHeartMedia in 2014. Pittman maintained that streaming would lead to incremental growth, not cannibalization, for radio: “There are 1 billion radios, 160 million smartphones and 160 million PCs in the U.S., so it’s still a subset of the FM marketplace. Music collections always replace each other and radio always tends to be yet another choice. Streaming music is one more place where you can listen to radio.”28 In August 2014, Apple announced the acquisition of Beats by Dre for $3 billion, its largest-ever acquisition.

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Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry SCG-517

While Beats was primarily a manufacturer of headphones, the acquisition was believed by many industry executives to be driven by its music streaming service. Smulyan believed that Apple was willing to lose money on its streaming services to sell more iPhones. In early 2015, Cumulus Media– the owner of 470 U.S. radio stations–announced a major partnership with streaming service Rdio.29

In early 2015, Brenner hired NextRadio’s first dedicated marketing executive, Maura Kautsky. Kautsky launched a number of initiatives to bolster the brand and increase consumer awareness of the FM chip. She also sought to prove the effectiveness of NextRadio’s interactive capabilities to advertisers and broadcasters. First, Kautsky launched the FreeRadioOnMyPhone.org website–in partnership with NPR, American Public Media, and the Educational Media Foundation–encouraging consumers to petition mobile carriers to activate the FM chip. The website highlighted information about the safety benefits of integrating terrestrial radio into the smartphone. Next, she worked with Brenner and the RAB’s Farber to initiate two interactive marketing trials over a four-week period. Universal Music Group tested interactive campaigns for three of the label’s country music singers, and Allstate Insurance added interactivity to two of its most popular campaigns. Both trials of NextRadio’s interactive ads showed vast improvement in listener engagement when compared to traditional and digital radio advertising. Kautsky said, “The rates at which listeners engaged with the interactive ads were wonderful; they were well above industry norms.” Brenner added that the tests compiled advanced listener data–such as the location, stations, time of day, and demographics–in real time for the advertisers (see Exhibit 11 for a summary of the marketing trials).

Smulyan saw enormous value in the data that the NextRadio app was collecting on its users. The rates radio broadcasters could charge advertisers traditionally depended on ratings estimated by Nielsen, an American data and measurement company. Smulyan and Brenner believed that NextRadio’s data collection was superior, amassing more data per customer directly through the app interface than Nielsen’s sampling method gathered. Brenner said, “Nielsen has 100,000 meters in the U.S. that measure radio. For our station Hot 97 in New York, we have 100 Nielsen meters, and that dictates our ratings in the entire New York market. With NextRadio, I can tell you a lot of information about everyone listening to Hot 97 right now, and what they are doing in the app. Nielsen is costly to broadcasters, and NextRadio is already providing better measurement.”

Next Steps for NextRadio

By April 2015, NextRadio had been downloaded onto over 2 million phones. The initial tests on the effectiveness of interactive ads within the interface were promising, and multiple broadcasters were working together to run ads promoting the app. Smulyan was optimistic that the install rate would continue to climb, adding: “If we’re right we win on two fronts: we setup a nice business in NextRadio, and we rejuvenate the static radio business” (see Exhibit 12 for a comparison of select radio broadcasters’ stock performance, 1999-2014). However, Smulyan–knowing that the real monetization of the app wouldn’t occur until 2016–faced a number of challenges in the coming months.

Keeping the Coalition Together

With the popularity of streaming services still growing, Smulyan knew he would have to decide how to manage his relationships with the radio broadcasters that were focusing on streaming. He said, “Any consortium is challenging. How do we keep everyone working together, staying engaged? We have to convince them of the value.” Senator Smith opined about the coalition: “Radio is an enormous industry with many competitors. Trying to get them on the same page regarding their investments and plans for the future is easier said than done.” As of April 2015, Smulyan was pondering assembling the committee of executives created to advise NextRadio for the first time. Smulyan said, “It would be helpful to finally meet as we look to lock in another major carrier.”

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SCG-517 Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry

Smulyan knew he had to build a package of incentives that kept radio station operators engaged with the NextRadio ecosystem for the long term. He and his team needed to assess the revenue sharing arrangements and other factors that could keep the coalition effective and maintain the interest of large and small broadcasting companies alike.

Signing the Next Major Carrier

Smulyan now hoped to leverage the successful Sprint launch and the data from the two marketing trials to convince another major mobile carrier to activate the FM chip; conversations with AT&T and T-Mobile, two of the three largest U.S. carriers, were ongoing. He wondered if NextRadio could find a carrier willing to enter into an agreement based solely on revenue sharing. He envisioned new arrangements that did not include direct payments since the NextRadio concept had advanced into an actual business. Alternatively, would he be able to go back to the industry consortium for help with a guarantee if that was what it would take to gain inclusion on the handsets of the biggest mobile telecom companies?

Data Business

Smulyan knew the data being collected by the NextRadio app would be extremely valuable, in particular to advertisers looking to better tailor their messaging to specific listeners. However, he had two primary concerns with exploring this angle. First, Smulyan felt it was too early to know what the value of the data would be. Second, he and his team had gone to great lengths to ensure that NextRadio would be an “agnostic” common platform for all participants. As the venture compiled more and more valuable data, however, could NextRadio spin off a separate data service business while continuing to support the industry as a whole?

International Expansion

The international marketplace for FM radio-equipped smartphones was becoming increasingly important. While most Americans listened to the radio solely in the car, few countries had a comparable level of car ownership as the U.S. However, portable and handheld radios were more ubiquitous abroad. In India, the world’s 3rd largest mobile telecom market, millions of people already listened to FM radio on low-cost feature phones.30 Smulyan and Brenner felt that they needed to determine a timeline for expansion outside the U.S. soon. The app had already launched on smartphones in parts of Latin America, and its release in Canada was planned for early 2016. Kautsky believed that working directly with OEMs might help influence the domestic carriers: “Phone manufacturers have more power in the global marketplace. Our existing relationships with these OEMs might prove beneficial as we expand our international footprint, ultimately helping us gain leverage over the carriers in the U.S.” Smulyan knew he had to make sure that any expansion wouldn’t dilute his efforts and investments in NextRadio on the still nascent domestic market. Was it too early to make a major push internationally, or did NextRadio need to take advantage of its early lead in the market and leverage the platform across several additional markets?

The End Game?

It was the second half of the national championship game and perennial powerhouse Duke was leading Wisconsin (who scored the upset over supposedly unstoppable Kentucky two days before). During a prolonged TV timeout, Smulyan conducted what he thought must have been his hundredth demonstration of the NextRadio app that weekend. The potential client was impressed with the advertising functionality that Smulyan’s team had built in. Confident that he’d won over a new client—not only for his station, but potentially for dozens of stations owned by other companies across the country—he put his phone away for the remainder of the game. After a hundred demos, he knew he had to conserve a little battery power for the drive home.

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Exhibit 1: Timeline of Select Emmis Acquisitions & Divestitures

1979 – WSVL in Indianapolis (launched in 1981 as WENS, currently WLHK)
1982 – WLOL in Minneapolis
1984 – KPWR in Los Angeles; KSHE in St. Louis
1986—Purchase of Doubleday Broadcasting; WHN in New York; WAPP in New York; WAVA in Washington, DC

1988 – First publication Indianapolis Monthly; WQHT in New York and WKQX in Chicago; Purchase of NBC Radio Stations WNBC in New York, WJIB in Boston, KYUU in San Francisco, WKQX in Chicago, and WYNY in New York

1993 – Atlanta magazine

1994 – WIBC and WFNI-AM in Indianapolis; WRKS in New York

1997 – First international license to operate a new national radio network in Hungary, Sláger Rádió; WXYB in Indianapolis; Cincinnati Magazine

1998 – 6 TV affiliate stations: WTHI TV in Terre Haute, WLUK TV in Green Bay, WALA TV in Mobile, WVUE TV in New Orleans, KHON TV in Honolulu, and WFTX TV in Fort Meyers; Radio stations WRXP in New York and WTHTI and WWVR in Terre Haute; Texas Monthly

1999 – Country Sampler magazine; Purchase of WKCF TV in Orlando.
2000 – KIHT, KPNT and KFTK in St. Louis; Los Angeles magazine; Purchase of Lee TV Stations: KOIN TV in

Portland

2002 – WBPG-TV, the WB affiliate in Mobile/Pensacola

2003 – KLBJ-AM, KLBJ-FM, KGSR, KROX, KLZT, and KBPA in Austin

2005 – Emmis begins selling TV assets; WLUP in Chicago; Majority control of Radio FM Plus in Bulgaria

2006 – Radio Expres in Slovakia; Majority control of Radio Fresh! in Bulgaria

2007 – Orange Coast magazine; STAR FM in Bulgaria

2008 – Emmis’ sale of WVUE-TV in New Orleans completes the divesture of its television division; Emmis’ Hungarian National Radio station taken off the air

2011 – WKQX-FM (101.1 MHz, Chicago, IL), WLUP-FM (97.9 MHz, Chicago, IL) and WRXP-FM (101.9 MHz, New York, NY) sold to Merlin Media

2012 – Terre Haute’s WSDM-FM/WSDX-AM; Country Sampler magazine sold 2013 – Bulgaria and Slovakia radio interests sold
2014 – WBLS-FM and WLIB-AM in New York
Source: Emmis company website

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SCG-517 Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry

Exhibit 2: Emmis’ Historical Income Statements, Selected Years

Figures in USD Millions

Fiscal Year Ending Revenues

Cost of Goods Sold

Gross Profit

02/28/1995 02/29/2000 67.4 325.3

38.8 199.8

28.6 125.4

02/28/2005 02/28/2010 344.0 242.1

222.3 206.1

121.7 36.0

02/28/2015 237.9

184.8

53.1

Selling General & Admin
R&DExp. 00000

Depreciation & Amort. 3.8 44.2 Other Operating Exp. 0.6 7.4

Operating Income 20.2 58.5

Interest Expense 7.8 52.0 Income Tax Expense 4.5 6.9 Gain (Loss) Extraordinary (0.1) 0.3 Item

Gain (Loss) Minority 0 0 Interest

Net Income 7.6 0

Source: CapitalIQ

14

4.0 15.4

14.6

15.6 10.3 5.9 0 0 0

70.7 12.1 32.6

38.7 24.7 17.0 (0.3) (40.0) 36.9 (334.2) (145.8) (74.6)

(2.5) (4.2) (3.3)

(304.4) (122.7) (99.3)

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35.3 13.6

Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry

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Exhibit 3: Top 10 US Radio Broadcasters, 2001 and 2015

2001 Revenue and Market Share

2015 Revenue and Market Share

NOTE: Includes broadcasting revenue only, not off-air or other sources of corporate revenue. Source: BIA Kelsey, Emmis financial statements

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SCG-517 Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry

Exhibit 4: Radio Industry Revenue Trends

Annual Percentage Change, 1975-2005

20 15 10

5

0 -5 -10

Source: Radio Advertising Bureau

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1975

1976

1977

1978

1979

1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry SCG-517

Exhibit 5: Comparison of Terrestrial Radio and Streaming Business Models

Note: Some of the above figures have been disguised. Source: NextRadio interviews, casewriter analysis

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SCG-517 Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry

Exhibit 6: Consumption of Media
Weekly reach of media platforms in the U.S. in Q1 2015 (% of adult population)

100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

93%
87%

70%

54%

35%

Radio TV

Smartphone

PC Tablet

Source: Nielsen Total Audience Report

Average time spent per day with major media by U.S. adults, 2011-2015 (hours)

Source: eMarketer 18

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5.00 4.50 4.00 3.50 3.00 2.50 2.00 1.50 1.00 0.50 0.00

2011

2012 Desktop/Laptop Mobile

2014 2015

Other digital Print

TV

2013 Radio

Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry SCG-517

Exhibit 7: US Market Share by Carrier and Handset Manufacturer, 2014

MetroPCS, 2.8%

US Cellular, Leap Wireless 2.2% (Cricket), 1.8%

TracFone, 6.0%

T Mobile, 12.2% Sprint, 16.1%

Other, 1.0%

Verizon, 31.3%

AT&T, 26.6%

Source: eMarketer

Source: Counterpoint Technology Market Research

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SCG-517 Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry

Exhibit 8: Images from NextRadio interface

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Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry SCG-517

Exhibit 9: NextRadio Revenue Sources

Source: NextRadio

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SCG-517 Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry

Exhibit 10: Select Streaming Company Financial Performance and Market Share

% of Americans aged 12+ who listened to the following services in the past month, 2014

TuneIn Radio 2% Slacker 2% Rhapsody 2%

Google Play All Access 3% Spotify 6%

iTunes Radio 8% iHeartRadio 9%

Pandora 0%

5% 10% 15%

20% 25%

31%

30% 35%

Source: Statista 22

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Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry

SCG-517

Exhibit 11: NextRadio Advertising Market Trials
Universal Music Group Interactive Marketing Trial – New Album Release

Allstate Interactive Marketing Trial

Source: NextRadio, 2015

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SCG-517 Jeff Smulyan and NextRadio: Mobilizing a Company and an Industry

Exhibit 12: Select Radio Broadcasters’ Stock Performance

Stock price, May 1999 – April 2015

180

160

140

120

100

80 60 40 20

0

Source: Yahoo Finance and Google Finance

Emmis
Entercom

Cumulus
Radio One

Emmis Radio One Entercom Cumulus

May-99 Jan-00 Sep-00 May-01 Jan-02 Sep-02 May-03 Jan-04 Sep-04 May-05 Jan-06 Sep-06 May-07 Jan-08 Sep-08 May-09 Jan-10 Sep-10 May-11 Jan-12 Sep-12 May-13 Jan-14 Sep-14

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Endnotes

1 Emmis Communications Corporation History. Funding Universe. 2016. Retrieved from fundinguniverse.com. 2 Power 106 Turns 25 Today in Los Angeles. All Access Music Group. 2011. Retrieved from allaccess.com.
3 KPWR. World Public Library. 2016. Retrieved from worldlibrary.org.
4 Mariners: Ownership, Organizational Timeline. Sports Press NW. 2013. Retrieved from sportspressnw.com. 5 Emmis Communications. CapitalIQ. McGraw Hill Financial Inc. 2016.

6 Egan, Timothy. Japanese Bid for Seattle Team Gets Baseball’s Cold Shoulder. The New York Times. 1992. Retrieved from nytimes.com.
7 Economides, Nicholas. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 and its Impact. Stern School of Business. 1998. Retrieved from stern.nyu.edu.
8 Chignell, Hugh. Key Concepts in Radio Studies. Sage Publishing. 2009.
9 Dube, Ric. Thomson, Gillian. Radio Deregulation: Has it Served Citizens and Musicians? Future of Music Coalition. 2002.
10 Ibid.
11 iHeart Media. Institute of Media and Communications Policy. 2016. Retrieved from mediadb.eu.
12 Frankel, Daniel. SNL Kagan raises retrans fee forecast to $9.8B by 2020. FierceCable. 2015. Retrieved from fiercecable.com.
13 Sterling, Christopher. The Concise Encyclopedia of American Radio. Routledge Publishing. 2010.
14 McLean, Bethany. Satellite Killed the Radio Star. Fortune Magazine. 2001. Retrieved from fortune.com.
15 Romero, Simon. XM Satellite Radio Completes Its Financing. The New York Times. 2000. Retrieved from nytimes.com.
16 XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. 2008. Retrieved from investor.siriusxm.com.
17 Radio Today: How Americans Listen to Radio. Arbitron. 2006.
18 eMarketer. Data from comscore.com. 2016.
19 Nielsen. Data from comscore.com. 2016.
20 Sprint customers to enjoy local FM radio on smartphones via FM radio chip. Sprint Corporation. 2013. Retrieved from newsroom.sprint.com.
21 Vogt, Nancy. Audio: Fact Sheet. Pew Research Center. 2015. Retrieved from journalism.org.
22 Will Pandora and Spotify Ever Make Money? The Motley Fool. 2016. Retrieved from fool.com.
23 How is Spotify contributing to the music business? Spotify LTD. 2016. Retrieved from spotifyartists.com.
24 FEMA Leader Supports FM Chips in Smartphones. Radio World. 2014. Retrieved from radioworld.com.
25 Edwards, Jeremy. Internet Radio Broadcasting in the US. IBISWorld. 2014.
26 comScore Reports July 2014 U.S. Smartphone Subscriber Market Share. comScore. 2014. Retrieved from comScore.com.
27 Ibid.
28 Griffith, Erin. Bob Pittman doesn’t believe streaming will kill radio. But he’s built a massive streaming service, just in case. Fortune Magazine. Time Inc. 2014. Retrieved from fortune.com.
29 Roettgers, Janko. Music Service Rdio to get live radio feeds from Cumulus this month. Variety Media. 2014. Retrieved from variety.com.
30 Banerjee, Tushar. Five Unusual Ways in Which Indians Use Mobile Phones. BBC. 2014. Retrieved from BBC.com.

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