Future Look (Part III)

Here's another (educated?) guess on the future of media and our business: Keep an eye on Oaktree Capital and Howard Marks’ investments through Triton Media. He’s putting together an impressive team, aggregating multiple platforms all across North America (and possibly ultimately beyond) to integrate customized technology and an aggressive multi-platform selling strategy.

Google, Apple, Microsoft, CBS, Tribune and Clear Channel, among other enlightened corporations (click on the image to see more of them) – many of which we don’t even know about as yet - have also tried to put together equally-strong assets to aggregate the only part of media today where revenues are growing with their existing resources.

Prediction: it won’t be too long before we find out if one or more of today’s highly-leveraged, debt-ridden radio companies is too big to fail or not, in spite of their continuing ability to bring 40-50% of revenues to the bottom line.

Unless the banking liquidity crisis ends soon, cost-cutting will continue not just in radio and media, but throughout the American economy. The winners will be the ones who best judge how to keep a strong local image, driven by unique non-duplicable content.