Question-and-Answer Session
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Victor Miller with Bear Sterns
Victor Miller - Bear Stearns
Good morning. You had mentioned that you felt like you had underperformed in your major markets by almost a 2 to 1 level, so could you talk about what these major markets did in general and what you though the delta was or why you underperformed so severely? Secondly, in the major markets we've projected you might have 7% share of the revenue in a market like New York, 5% in LA, 5% in Chicago, 10% or so in San Francisco, do you find that in this kind of marketplace, where you have other very dominant players in the marketplace, that you're unable to be maybe as flexible as you want to be on pricing or that your margin lies somewhat in those market places?
And lastly on the balance sheet, could you talk about what you did and why you did the convert deal you did and what you're doing with your asset sales? Thanks.
Farid Suleman
Thank you Victor. I think, I've wrote down all the questions, but you can come back if I haven’t answered any. We will not get into obviously market-by-market, but on an overall basis the national markets were down in our major markets by about 15%. And our performance was down 21%. Each of those markets are different, in Atlanta the markets were down 12% we were down 23. In Atlanta it’s a ratings problem, in part, because we had a format attack with, a big company came and changed a format [became country], we had a country position there.
And so, I don’t think it was so much a function of not having the bulk. I think it is more a function of programming for offensive rather than on a defensive basis. And I think, same is true in New York, we were totally repositioned because there was a void in our music programming, and both Fresh came in and provided real good format, alternatives for people to go all day CBS FM was able to do that and we allowed that to happen. We're not going to do that going forward, which are part of the changes we are going to do it.
So, I don't think it had anything, if anything I think having less stations makes you more or should make you more nimble and be able to attack, because you don't have to bring a whole cluster together. And remember, a lot of the companies have clusters, so when you're being pricing for share, you've already done that before.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
