CBS Corp. is planning to spin off its radio business, 117 stations in 26 markets. In a preliminary prospectus, CBS said it will file documents this month that would make CBS Radio a public company.
CBS plans to use the same playbook for spinning off its radio division as it did for unloading its billboard business two years ago. “The primary course of action CBS Corporation is pursuing is to split CBS Radio off via an IPO,” the division’s president, Andre Fernandez, wrote Wednesday in a memo to employees.
CBS plans to sell or spinoff its radio assets in the coming year, acknowledging that the business has become slow-growth and a drain on resources that can be better directed to content production and digital endeavors.
Senators Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) want to know specific reasons for CBS radio stations’ rejection of an ad by the American Television Alliance.
CBS radio stations around the country have refused to air a new ad from the American Television Alliance that supports the retrans reform proposal called “local choice” that was recently proposed by Sens. Jay Rockefeller and John Thune.
Exclusives
The Oneida Indian Nation learned Friday that the radio ad it had scheduled to run in Washington this past weekend as part of its national “Change the Mascot” campaign, will not air. A representative of CBS Radio Washington cited increased discussion around the name as the reason for pulling the ad from two of its stations, WJFK and WPGC.
