Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) The first question comes from Victor Miller - Bear Stearns.
Victor Miller - Bear Stearns
Good afternoon and thank you. First of all, maybe you can help with the amount of acquisition and dispositions you’ve mentioned on page 3 of your press release, just go through what you think the pro forma leverage is going to be in the company once you put in the remaining acquisitions and dispositions?
Secondly, a little bit more detail on the national business, what you are seeing in terms of the categories and maybe whether you’re seeing it more focused in your maybe top three or four sized markets; where you are seeing disproportionate amount of downturn in those markets?
And lastly, just on the infomercial side, is that a conscious choice to run that type of programming in lieu of some block programming or is it just another opportunity just given the softness of the market to try to build in a revenue base while you just wait for a better economy to emerge? Thanks.
Edward Atsinger
Let me address your third question first, then I’ll let Evan or Eric talk about the national business and the dispositions and acquisitions.
With regard to the infomercials, yes. Every year when we have rate adjustments at the end of the year, we will have some cancellations; we normally get about a 90% renewal and last year was fairly typical; that is, this year as a result of the changes we made in December of last year is pretty typical.
We’ve had probably a few more that we haven’t replaced yet and part of the reason is there are a couple of new programs coming online that we’re very interested in and excited about, but they won’t be ready until maybe third quarter before they are ready to launch and in some cases we prefer to wait for those.
Rather than just simply leave the time fallow we basically put some in infomercials in that so that was probably what you’re seeing.
Eric Halvorson
Victor, with respect to your question on the national business, I think the biggest factor that we would point to as you look at 2008 versus 2007 in the quarter is the movie business.
We generated a very large amount of national revenue from movies in Q1 of 2007. We certainly had budgeted a healthy amount for Q1 of 2008, but it is very difficult to know at the time that you budget whether that will hit. It depends on when releases come out; it depends on the nature of the release and whether it’s one that would fit within the type of formats that we have.
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