Question-and-Answer Session
Kate Snedeker
Great. Thanks, Pat. I think we're ready for questions now, if you could give everyone the instructions.
Operator
The first question comes from Victor Miller - Bear Stearns.
Victor Miller - Bear Stearns
Thank you, good morning. I have two questions. One for you, Jeff, just philosophically and then if I could ask Rick a question.
Obviously, there's a lot of speculation on you potentially looking at QCD and some asset sales to delever, potentially looking at a privatization; all speculation. Maybe you can give us an update on where you are at philosophically in regard to that topic?
Secondly Rick, as LA comes along with PPM next year and you've got New York at the end of this year and the numbers in Philly -- although they have improved month to month especially in the urban side being 25% better in the last month versus a month ago -- but still the numbers down 50% or so in terms of ratings. How are you preparing for that eventuality knowing what might come? How are you talking to advertisers to prepare them for that kind of change so that you can minimize the impact to you on a revenue side? Thanks.
Jeff Smulyan
Vic, I think my thinking has always been the same. I believe in these industries long term, I know they're challenged, whether our structure is public or private, we would like to continue to seek answers in these businesses for the long term. We think we've got a culture that over time, over now 26 years as of last week, has always performed very well in every environment. As we've said we'll continue to look at the going private but we haven't made any decisions yet and there's a lot of speculation -- some of it accurate, some of it absolutely inaccurate -- but what we want to do is figure out the best way to position this organization for the future, in not only conventional media but in some things we see in non-traditional media.
Rick Cummings
Regarding PPM, the encouraging things as you noted is the trends in Philadelphia the last three, four weeks have shown a better story for WDAS and for the urban stations than it showed initially. I think we're still trying to learn exactly how African American dominated stations are going to perform in this new measurement system, but that's the critical part and it's one of the things we're doing.
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