Radio One Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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May 13, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Consolidated net revenue declined 11.7% year-over-year to $92.2M, and consolidated adjusted EBITDA fell 42.2% to $12.9M in Q1, while management reaffirmed full-year EBITDA guidance of $75M.
  • Radio broadcasting revenue decreased 10.3% year-over-year to $32.6M in Q1, with local ad sales down 12.8% and national ads off 14.6%, and Q2 pacing running approximately 9% lower.
  • Cable TV segment revenue slipped 7.9% to $44.2M in Q1 as affiliate fees dropped 10% from subscriber churn, partially offset by a 29% viewership gain on Clio TV and $1.1M in AVOD/FAST revenue; TV One ratings stabilized.
  • The company repurchased $88.6M of debt at an average price of 53.9% of par since year-end, reducing gross debt to $495.9M while preserving ~$80M in cash and an undrawn revolver.
  • Operating expenses (excl. D&A, stock comp and impairments) fell 8.6% to $80.7M in Q1, driven by lower content costs, third-party fees and headcount, with plans for additional cost cuts by mid-year.
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Earnings Conference Call
Radio One Q1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

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Operator

Please. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Urban One 2025 first quarter earnings call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. We will begin this call with the following safe harbor statement. During this conference call, Urban One will be sharing with you certain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or its future performance. Urban One cautions you that certain factors, including risks and uncertainties referred to in the 10-Ks, 10-Qs, and other reports it periodically files with the Securities and Exchange Commission, could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those indicated by its projections or forward-looking statements. This call will present information as of May 13, 2025. Please note that Urban One disclaims any duty to update any forward-looking statements made in the presentation.

Operator

In this call, Urban One may also discuss some non-GAAP financial measures in talking about its performance. These measures will be reconciled to GAAP either during the course of this call or in the company's press release, which can be found on its website at www.urbanone.com. A replay of the conference call will be available from 2:00 P.M. EDT, May 13, 2025, until 11:59 P.M. EDT, May 20, 2025. Callers may access the replay by calling 1-800-770-2030. International callers may dial direct 1-609-800-9909. The replay access code is 7968738. Access to live audio and a replay of the conference will also be available on Urban One's corporate website at www.urbanone.com. The replay will be made available on the website for seven days after the call. No other recordings or copies of this call are authorized or may be relied upon. I will now turn the call over to Alfred C.

Operator

Liggins, Chief Executive Officer of Urban One, who is joined by Peter Thompson, Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Liggins, please go ahead.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

Thank you very much, Operator, and welcome everybody to our first quarter 2025 results conference call. As usual, joined with Peter and I are Jody Drewer, who's our TV One Chief Financial Officer for any TV questions, Karen Wishart, our Chief Administrative Officer, and also Christopher Simpson, who is our General Counsel. You've seen the earnings release. Q1 results largely in line with the guidance that we gave. Q2 radio pacings have weakened since our last conference call. They're roughly down about 9% now. However, as I had said on the conference call last quarter, our TV ratings seem to have stabilized in Q1 and Q2 in our line with what we budgeted. With that, we're continuing to reaffirm the guidance that we gave of $75 million of EBITDA.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

Something, again, to note on our 2024 EBITDA, which was about $103 million, almost $10 million of that was a non-cash adjustment for the TV One award associated with my contract. If you're looking at apples to apples, it's roughly about $92 million of cash EBITDA down to $75 million. Still not a stellar year-over-year performance going backwards, but what we have expected. With that, we have said that we're going to continue to focus on our cost controls, managing our leverage, and maintaining a strong liquidity position. One of the things that came up in the last conference call is what were we going to do with our $137 million of year-end cash. Since that conference call, we've actually bought back in the open market $88.6 million of our debt at an average price of about $53.9 million. We've reduced our gross debt down to $495.9 million.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

We're still sitting on about $80 million of cash on hand at present with an undrawn revolver. We continue to be focused on deleveraging and maintaining the liquidity position. In a difficult environment, you have to make sure that you're prudent and you make moves that keep you in the best possible position of flexibility in terms of leverage and expense control. That's what we're really focused on. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Peter to get into the specific details and numbers, and then we'll come back and pick up for tonight.

Peter Thompson
CFO at Urban One

Thank you, Alfred. Consolidated net revenue is approximately $92.2 million, down 11.7% year-over-year. Net revenue for the radio broadcasting segment was $32.6 million, a decrease of 10.3% year-over-year. Excluding political, net revenue was down 7.7% year-over-year. According to Miller Kaplan, our local ad sales were down 12.8% against our markets that were down 13.2%. Our national ad sales were down 14.6% against our markets, being down 11.6%. Our largest radio ad category was services, which was up 11%, driven by legal services. Travel and transportation was up 17%, but that is our smallest category. Telecom financial categories were up low single digits. All the other major categories were down, including healthcare, entertainment, retail, government, auto, food, and beverage. Net revenue for each media segment was $5.9 million in the first quarter, which was down 30.9% from the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA outreach was a loss of $600,000 for the quarter.

Peter Thompson
CFO at Urban One

A combination of client attrition and lower average unit rates drove that decline. Net revenues for the digital segment were down 16.2% in Q1 at $10.2 million. Audio streaming revenue was down by $2.1 million in the quarter due to the renegotiation of an exclusive third-party deal. That impacted adjusted EBITDA, which was $58,000 compared to $2.3 million in the prior year. We recognized approximately $44.2 million of revenue from our cable television segment during the quarter, a decrease of 7.9%. Cable TV advertising revenue was down 6.3%. TV One delivery declined 18% in total day persons 25-54, which was partially offset by an increase in CLEO TV, which was up 29% in total day persons 25-54 delivery. Also, favorable AVOD and FAST revenue of $1.1 million resulted in a net ad revenue decline of $1.7 million.

Peter Thompson
CFO at Urban One

Cable TV affiliate revenue was down by 10%, driven by subscriber churn, which was about $3.3 million, partially offset by $1.03 million, which was a combination of subscriber rate increases on the launch of Now TV. Cable subscribers for TV One, as measured by Nielsen, finished Q1 at 35.6 million compared to 37.2 million at the end of Q4. CLEO TV had 35 million Nielsen subs. Operating expenses, excluding depreciation and amortization, stock price compensation, and impairment of goodwill and tangible assets and long-lived assets, decreased to approximately $80.7 million for the quarter, a decrease of 8.6% from the prior year. The overall decrease in operating expenses was primarily due to lower third-party professional fees in the corporate segment, lower content expenses for cable television, and lower employee compensation as a result of recent cost savings measures.

Peter Thompson
CFO at Urban One

Radio operating expenses were down 2.9% or approximately $0.9 million, driven by lower employee compensation costs. Reach operating expenses were down 1.7%, again driven by lower employee compensation costs. Operating expenses in the digital segment were up 3.2%, and that was driven by higher traffic acquisition costs, partially offset by lower employee compensation. Operating expenses in the cable TV segment were down 10.8% year-over-year, driven by lower programming content expense, on-air promotions, and employee compensation costs. Operating expenses in the corporate and elimination segment were down by approximately $3.8 million, driven by lower third-party professional fees. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA was approximately $12.9 million, down 42.2%. Consolidated broadcast and digital operating income was approximately $23 million, a decrease of 28.1%. Interest and investment income was approximately $1 million in the first quarter compared to $2 million last year. The decrease was due to lower cash balances and interest-bearing investment accounts.

Peter Thompson
CFO at Urban One

Interest expense decreased to approximately $10.9 million for Q1, down from $13 million last year due to the lower overall debt balances as a result of the company's debt reduction strategy. Company made cash interest payments of approximately $21.6 million in the quarter. During the quarter, the company repurchased $28.2 million of its 2028 notes at an average price of 58% of par, bringing the balance at quarter-end to $556,348,000. In April, the company repurchased an additional $60.4 million in notes at an average price of 51.9%. As Alfred said, that brings the current balance on the debt to $495,930,000. We recorded $6.4 million in non-cash impairments in Q1 against the carrying value of the FCC licenses in five of our radio markets, which are Dallas, Indianapolis, Raleigh, Philadelphia, and Cleveland.

Peter Thompson
CFO at Urban One

The provision for income taxes was approximately $15.7 million for the first quarter, as we booked an additional $14.6 million valuation allowance against our NOL balances. Company paid cash income taxes in the amount of $33,000. Capital expenditures were approximately $2.5 million. Net loss was approximately $11.7 million or $0.26 per share compared to net income of $7.5 million or $0.15 per share for the first quarter of 2024. During the three months ended March 31, 2025, the company repurchased 449,250 shares of Class A common stock in the amount of approximately $700,000, an average price of $1.48 per share. We also repurchased 303,622 shares of Class D common stock, the amount of approximately $300,000, an average price of $0.87 per share. As of March 31, total gross debt was approximately $556.3 million.

Peter Thompson
CFO at Urban One

Ending unrestricted cash was $115.1 million, resulting in net debt of approximately $441.3 million compared to $94.1 million of LTM reported adjusted EBITDA for a total net leverage ratio of 4.69 times. Finally, we recast the comparable periods for 2024 to reflect the move of $7.9 million of CTV revenue from digital to TV and also the reapportionment across platform sales and marketing expenses. We talked about that on the last earnings call. A number of questions came up, so we thought we'd just give you the comps from prior quarters with those recast numbers. With that, I'll hand back to Alfred.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

Thank you very much, Operator. You can go to the lines for a Q&A.

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Our first question will come from the line of Ben Briggs with StoneX Financial. Please go ahead.

Ben Briggs
Ben Briggs
Director and Leveraged Finance Strategist at StoneX Group

Hey, good morning, guys. Thank you for taking the call.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

Absolutely.

Ben Briggs
Ben Briggs
Director and Leveraged Finance Strategist at StoneX Group

Yeah. So a couple here. First of all, I do notice that you guys did some cost cutting during the quarter. Both the programming and technical expense line and the SG&A and corporate line, I think, were down a little bit. What other levers do you have that you can pull to kind of control costs as the year goes on and in the future?

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

Yeah. I mean, I said last conference call that we did a bunch of year-end last year cost-cutting measures, and I think I saved us about $5 million bucks. We are focused on taking another look at that for this year. We haven't got there yet. Probably we'll focus on that so that it's done by the middle of the year. Really focused on kind of like an end-of-June execution date on that. I don't want to go into specifics. Quite frankly, I don't have all of the opportunities off the top of my head. Even if I did, I certainly wouldn't want to announce them on a conference call.

Ben Briggs
Ben Briggs
Director and Leveraged Finance Strategist at StoneX Group

Yeah.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

Yeah. Let's say we do believe that there are other opportunities and plan to take advantage of them. We're really managing to our guidance and then looking to see if we're doing better. Our guidance of $75 million does not include any back-half cost cuts that we might find.

Ben Briggs
Ben Briggs
Director and Leveraged Finance Strategist at StoneX Group

Got it. Got it. That's helpful. Thank you. That's a great segue into my next question, which is I feel like you had indicated that we should expect the majority of EBITDA to come in the second half of 2025. Am I right?

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

Yeah. Hang on. Yeah. We're getting past that.

Ben Briggs
Ben Briggs
Director and Leveraged Finance Strategist at StoneX Group

Repeat that. Sorry. I apologize. I said I feel like you had indicated that you're expecting the majority of EBITDA this year to come in the second half of the year. Do I remember correctly? Is that accurate?

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

Yeah. More than half, for sure.

Ben Briggs
Ben Briggs
Director and Leveraged Finance Strategist at StoneX Group

Right. Right. Can you give any guidance for what you think the second quarter has in store as far as EBITDA expectations?

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

I don't think we're going to give specific guidance. I think from the pacing, Alfred said that radio is weakened, right, relative to where we were last time. So we should expect that to be down. Digital, almost all of that profit is forecast to be in the back half of the year. So not going to be strongly profitable in the second quarter. And then TV. TV One rating's down a little bit, down a bit, being compensated for by CLEO. We're hitting our budgeted numbers in terms of delivery. And so there might be some upside in the back half of the year. But looking at where radio is at, that might need to wash against that might need to wash against radio. So I think Q2 will be a little bit better than Q1, but similarly weak.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

We got to deliver in the back half of the year then.

Ben Briggs
Ben Briggs
Director and Leveraged Finance Strategist at StoneX Group

Got it. Got it. Finally, obviously, there have been additional debt repurchases. I know that the market likes to see those. Should we expect further debt repurchases as the year goes on, or is it more?

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

As I've been told many times before, the best predictor of the future are actions of the past.

Ben Briggs
Ben Briggs
Director and Leveraged Finance Strategist at StoneX Group

You've heard that too?

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

I have. Yeah. I mean, look, we try not try. We deliberately are opportunistic, right? We do not like it when we announce, "Hey, we are going to go in the market," and then everybody looks at that as an opportunity for our debt to trade up and expects us to pay more, right? We are in, we are out. We got a price that we want to try to get it at. It is nothing personal to debt holders. At the end of the day, buying back debt at a discount for those funds that want to sell ultimately helps the company. Yeah, we will continue to do that. Almost always, though, anytime we go into the market, the price goes up, right, just because we are the most motivated buyer, right? You know what I mean?

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

I think at the end of the last conference call, the debt had been trading at like 49.5. When we got into the market, literally that same day or shortly thereafter, I think our cumulative purchases during that period of time were kind of like almost at 52, right? Yeah. We're okay with that. You know what I mean? We had some big trades of people who wanted to exit and wanted to see some sort of uplift. It's good for everybody. As you can see, the vast, vast, vast majority of our capital is going to that. I mean, we took out tens of millions of dollars of debt since the last call. Unfortunately, I think we're continuing to still be in a position to be impactful with that.

Ben Briggs
Ben Briggs
Director and Leveraged Finance Strategist at StoneX Group

Okay. If you were to draw the revolver, I don't think that would restrict you at all in debt buybacks, would it?

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

No. No. Yeah. I mean, look, it's not most of the people on this call are investors and smart investors. It shouldn't be lost on anybody that we do have an undrawn revolver, right? That capital is available for all things, including if we used all of our cash to buy back debt and we needed operating funds, right, to do that. Our liquidity position remains very, very solid and gives us some options.

Ben Briggs
Ben Briggs
Director and Leveraged Finance Strategist at StoneX Group

Okay. All right. I think that's going to be all from me right now. I'll give some other people the chance to ask questions. Thanks again.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

Thank you very much. Next question, Operator?

Operator

Our next question will come from the line of Aaron Watts with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

Hey, Aaron.

Aaron Watts
Aaron Watts
Senior Fixed Income Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Hey, guys. Thank you for having me on. A couple of questions around the ad environment on the radio side. I think you noted additional weakness crept in between your last call and today. To the extent we continue to get positive headlines out of DC, like what happened this week, do you think advertising can flip back positive as quickly as it's softened? What do you think your ad partners need to see or hear to start ramping spend back up?

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

I mean, I think they need to know what their expense profile is going to look like going forward, right? With the tariff picture moving weekly, right, changing weekly, difficult to forecast that. Unfortunately, Procter & Gamble and General Motors do not share their ad strategies with us. I mean, they will tell it. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, it is really interesting. I have had a couple of high-level conversations with some monstrous advertisers. Most of these big guys do not want to disclose what their ad budgets are, right? That is proprietary information, right, how much you are spending to compete in the marketplace. Strategy, really core strategy that would result in how much money is going into the ad market, into which verticals, is not readily available. I get it. It is really kind of a trade secret for them, right?

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

We just do not have visibility into that. I can tell you we do know when their ad budgets are getting cut or put on hold. They will tell you it is because of uncertainty. I mean, it is no secret that you have seen reports that the consumer is cooling down, cooling off, or whatever. Spend is slowing down, uncertainty. At the end of the day, regardless of where the tariffs land, they are going to land at some higher level than they were before, right? I saw something this morning on CNBC where they were talking about the forecast of some of these companies out there, which assume that they are going to take all of the additional tariff expense and roll it into pass-ons to price increases, which ultimately is inflationary, which one would think there is a knock-on effect on the recession.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

I'm not an economist. I don't know. This economy has been chopping down trees and plowing through all kinds of headwinds. So far, bit for me to predict what's truly going to cause a recession and what its ultimate impact on the ad market is. It's not positive at this point in time. I guess in a roundabout way, this is just Alfred Liggins' opinion, period, end of story. I do not think you're going to see a positive ad rebound this year, because I think a lot of these guys have already, once you take expense off the table in a corporate environment, it generally stays off the table for the remainder of that budget cycle.

Aaron Watts
Aaron Watts
Senior Fixed Income Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Yeah. No, that all makes sense. So more a hope of stabilization than any real positive, significant bounce this year.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Watts
Aaron Watts
Senior Fixed Income Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Okay. I did hear you talk about national being a driver of the weakness right now. How have your more local SMBs you work with been behaving comparatively? If you have not, what is your split between national and local these days?

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

What is it, Peter? Is it 75/25 or 85?

Peter Thompson
CFO at Urban One

It's more 75/25.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

75/25.

Ben Briggs
Ben Briggs
Director and Leveraged Finance Strategist at StoneX Group

That's sort of excluding the digital piece. Sorry.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

I went through with the radio guys, and I have a weekly call with them now. Look, they were crowing. Local's actually not doing that bad, right? I think they were telling me that our local was only down less than 2%, like 1.5%. We were looking at pacings about a week ago or two weeks ago. The driver for us is national. Also, we're having digital issues for a couple of reasons. I'd articulate them about changes in our podcast and streaming deals that are out there. Also the fact that we're underpenetrated in our local digital efforts. The answer to your question is local and the radio business is down, but it's not down double digits. It's not down as dramatically. It's down low single digits. I would say that that's a positive sign.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

We're going to lap our digital issues, and we're looking to improve our digital efforts. One would think that, I mean, you got two things that drive national ads, right? You got the market sentiment, okay? When I say market, consumer sentiment, what advertisers think about consumer activity and their prospects for business. You also have the continued digital transition away from analog into digital platforms. National definitely is the negative spot right now. I hope that abates at some point in time after stability comes into play.

Ben Briggs
Ben Briggs
Director and Leveraged Finance Strategist at StoneX Group

Just to clarify, just in terms of national dollars and radio dollars for radio, it is 2 to 1. For every dollar on national, we do roughly $2 of local. The difference in the 75/25 is all the other is digital and other, right? As a percentage of the total, it is a different number. Relative to each other, it is 2 to 1.

Aaron Watts
Aaron Watts
Senior Fixed Income Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Okay. Got it. Alfred, just one last one on what you were saying there at the end around digital. Once you iron out your kind of issues that you highlighted, do you still see growth opportunity across podcasts? I know digital means different things to different radio groups, but podcast, local digital, whatever it means for you, market services.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

Yeah. Look, our growth area for us is we have not played in the local digital area. We've had all of our efforts focused on our national digital. I don't want to say all of our efforts because we do have a local digital business, but we're probably doing high single digits of revenue when our competitors are having it be 20% of their revenue. Yeah, I do think that there are areas of growth for us in that area doing a better job there. We don't cross-pollinate our national products into the hands of our local sellers intentionally at this point in time. iHeart does. Audacy has started to do it as well. We've got a lot of national products that would give local sellers some great tools to go out and help local advertisers.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

That is something that we are focused on and will create a growth opportunity as well.

Aaron Watts
Aaron Watts
Senior Fixed Income Analyst at Deutsche Bank

All right. Great. Appreciate all the time. Thanks again.

Operator

Again, for any questions, press star one. Our next question comes from the line of Ken Silver with Stifel. Please go ahead. Ken, your line might be on mute.

Ken Silver
Ken Silver
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Stifel Financial Corp

Yep. Hey. No, I'm here. Thanks. Sorry about that. Hey, Alfred and Peter. Thanks for the time. I guess a few questions. One is, if we look at the cable TV revenue, can you break it out between carriage fees and advertising?

Peter Thompson
CFO at Urban One

Sure. So obviously, for the quarter, we do that on page—I think it's page five of the press release. So you can.

Ken Silver
Ken Silver
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Stifel Financial Corp

Oh, did I miss that? Okay.

Peter Thompson
CFO at Urban One

Yeah. You can see that if we go to page seven. I do not know if you have it in front of you, but you will see it.

Ken Silver
Ken Silver
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Stifel Financial Corp

I do. Okay. I apologize. If you broke it out, I will go look at it.

Peter Thompson
CFO at Urban One

No, no. That's okay. It is there. If you need to know roughly what we think it is going to be for the year, you can just reach out and I'll explain.

Ken Silver
Ken Silver
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Stifel Financial Corp

Sure. Sure. On the carriage side, do you have what is your renewal schedule with all the large cable and other MVPDs?

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

Charter is up in the fourth quarter. October is it?

Ken Silver
Ken Silver
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Stifel Financial Corp

It's in the year.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

It's in the year. Charter is up at the end of the year. Verizon is up, but they've got an option. NCTC, which is in September. We have NCTC, Verizon, and Charter up this year.

Ken Silver
Ken Silver
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Stifel Financial Corp

What about next year? Is it heavy or light next year?

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

Comcast comes a year later, right?

Ken Silver
Ken Silver
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Stifel Financial Corp

DirecTV and AT&T and Comcast.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

AT&T and Comcast a year later.

Ken Silver
Ken Silver
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Stifel Financial Corp

Okay. Got it. You mentioned in your prepared remarks that ratings were down at TV One. Can you just help us understand that a little better?

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

No, I said they stabilized, right?

Ken Silver
Ken Silver
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Stifel Financial Corp

Oh, okay. Sorry.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

Yeah. They were down a lot last year, what, 20%? They bounced up off of their lows of fourth quarter. I think we budgeted what our ratings were in fourth quarter for all of 2025. Fourth quarter was kind of our low. We're actually exceeding that year to date, exceeding that budgeted number. We're averaging higher than our fourth quarter low, which is good.

Ken Silver
Ken Silver
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Stifel Financial Corp

Cleo, especially.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

On our second network, CLEO TV, especially.

Ken Silver
Ken Silver
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Stifel Financial Corp

Okay. Obviously, you're using a lot of cash flow for bond buybacks, which I think we all think is a good use of capital. In terms of programming spend, is it sort of steady as she goes, or do you have potential to grow it a lot?

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

No, it's actually down a bit. I wouldn't say majorly. We'd say maybe down 10%. Programming spend?

Ken Silver
Ken Silver
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Stifel Financial Corp

Oh, yeah. Yeah. The biggest drop quarter over quarter was for Vermont Honors.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

Yeah. Yeah. We have an annual awards show that we did not do.

Ken Silver
Ken Silver
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Stifel Financial Corp

For the year, yeah, 10%.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

About 10% for the year.

Ken Silver
Ken Silver
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Stifel Financial Corp

I mean, obviously, there's a lot of content out there. No plans to sort of try to reinvigorate the business and spend a lot of money on programming?

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

There is not a plan. Look, we are thinking through now what our options are to grow our TV business because we have to get more delivery, right? You need the idea that you go spend more money just to put it on your linear networks when the universe is shrinking on its own means that you are just going to lose, you are going to lose on those content investments because you are going to lose audience regardless of any way you look at it. However, there are multiple new ways of delivering content. We continue to expand our FAST channel distribution. We are looking at other ad-supported distribution opportunities and potential business models. I think that is critical that we invest and move in that area.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

You will not see us just investing in content just to put it on this existing platform. You will potentially see us investing in content in combination with an expansion of new distribution opportunities in the FAST and AVOD environment because we need other places to be able to monetize that content. We are formulating those strategies right now. You have to approach that at the same time you are continuing to manage your balance sheet, etc., right?

Ken Silver
Ken Silver
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Stifel Financial Corp

Just going back to your original question, I'm just looking at the relative breakout for the year. A little over 50% of TV One's revenue will be ad dollars and a little under 50% will be affiliate. That's flipped from a few years ago where we used to be like 55% affiliate, 45% ad. Obviously, as attrition has reduced the affiliate line. Okay. Great. Okay. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Operator

That will conclude our question and answer session. I'll turn the call back over to Alfred Liggins for any final comments.

Alfred Liggins
CEO at Urban One

Thank you, everybody, for your support and continued interest in the story. We will talk to you next quarter.

Operator

That concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.

Analysts
    • Alfred Liggins
      CEO at Urban One
    • Ben Briggs
      Director and Leveraged Finance Strategist at StoneX Group
    • Aaron Watts
      Senior Fixed Income Analyst at Deutsche Bank
    • Ken Silver
      Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Stifel Financial Corp
    • Peter Thompson
      CFO at Urban One
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