Photo Credit: iHeartMedia
Radio giant iHeartMedia gears up to cut hundreds of jobs as music streaming continues to crush music radio.
The biggest broadcast company in the world, iHeartMedia, has started laying off hundreds of employees this week as the music radio giant faces debt amid the continued superiority of music streaming in the industry.
Headed by CEO Bob Pittman, the company has been quick to point out it has cut “less than 5%” of its workforce of over 10,000 employees — amounting to hundreds of job losses as the company eliminates redundancies and “streamlines” its business.
Wendy Goldberg, a spokesperson at iHeartMedia, confirmed the layoffs to the New York Post. She said the company is focusing on expanding its Gen Z audience, and that its broadcast radio audience “has more listeners than it did 10 years ago.”
“Although in a company of 10,000 people, very few jobs have been affected, there have been some and we never take this step lightly, no matter how few jobs it entails,” said Goldberg. “Every team member is important to us and has our respect and appreciation.”
But despite trying to downplay the severity of the layoffs, many iHeart employees are calling the most “sneaky” and dishonest. They point out the company’s decision to start layoffs during the week of the election.
“They want to bury the bad news during the presidential election,” said one employee. “They have to show their lenders that they are improving profits,” a top radio executive who does not work at iHeart told the NY Post. “I heard there is a lot of pressure on Pittman to stem the decline.”
Revenue in the radio industry as a whole is down 10% this year, while the most junior debt in iHeart is now trading below 60 cents on the dollar, according to a source familiar with the situation.
But the company continues to boast about its place as “the No. 1 podcast publisher, bigger than the next two combined, and we’re five times the size of the next largest digital-radio service.”
“We’ve been able to achieve this by modernizing the company and increasing our use of technology,” said Goldberg. “These changes are another step in that journey.”