Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Lee Westerfield - BMO Capital Markets.
Lee Westerfield - BMO Capital Markets
Gentlemen, good morning.
Bill Stakelin
Hi, Lee.
Lee Westerfield - BMO Capital Markets
Three question if I may. The first really focuses on the level of leverage now that you have reshuffled and refitted your portfolio. As you look into 2007, is the focus to bring down debt leverage at this point or what's the primary focus with regard to the debt structure?
The second question, Bill, as your auto performance is stronger apparently than others, I was wondering if you could help shed light on why that might be in contrast to others?
The third question is really related to, Bill, what you emphasized is that extension into digital, streaming and so forth into the 2007 year about how much initial costs and investments you might be outlaying in the early part of that effort as you expand that effort in 2007.
Tony Vasconcellos
Okay, Lee, I'll take your question on the debt and then the digital investment. And then Bill, of course, can take the auto. The debt question, as I mentioned, we have a 7.75 times covenant. We expect to be leveraged at seven times. It's always been our consistent philosophy that we want to keep a three-quarter of a turn cushion of comfort in case something unusual may happen. So, clearly, we're focused on taking debt down, which is historically been right around four times, now we're at seven. We have got a decent cushion, but we are higher than where we would like be.
We're continuing to look for synergistic opportunities. We don't intend to go into any new markets because that would obviously raise debt significantly. Again without a deleveraging event such as monetizing mature assets, something like that. However, we do continue to look to strengthen the current portfolio, you know, things like we have done in Albany where, again, you can go out and buy a very good station, tuck it into your existing cluster and have pretty significant synergies at a pretty low cost. So, that's kind of how we're thinking of things near-term. But again, a deleveraging event, you know, will change that and we are continuing to look at a lot of different things.
From a digital investment perspective, there is really kind of two steps there, really three. We have talked on earlier calls, which we didn't touch on today. The first phase, streaming all of our FMs, which was done now a year ago this month. That initial upfront investment was very low and has an expense maintenance run rate of about $150,000. As we have talked on previous calls, we immediately went out and sold gateway advertising, which is rich video right on the player. The most valuable real estate that we have got, and we more than covered the cost of that investment by triple.
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