FanPost

Investors sniffing around Chavez Ravine?

Westwood One’s principal investor Alec Gores wants to play baseball – with the Dodgers.

 

To define some of the points here:

 

Westwood One is radio rights-holders to NBA, NFL, NCAA action and syndicated sports-talk programming. They own "Metro Networks" a traffic/news vendor to TV and Radio. The Gores Group owns Westwood One.

Clear Channel Communications operates way too many radio stations and "Clear Channel Total Traffic." This arm is a competitor to Metro Networks.

"Dial-Global"  is a company in Valencia, CA that serves radio stations with satellite-delivered music formats.

I can't link. This is an item buried in an daily E-Mail.  The author is Tom Taylor, from "Radio-Info,com"

 

Linky to Bloomberg

 

The problem is Los Angeles is loaded with billionaires who wouldn’t mind owning the Dodgers, if the battling McCourt family ends its War of the Roses by selling the franchise.

But Bloomberg.com says one of the aspirants is definitely Alec Gores. There was an earlier report that Gores Group principal Alec Gores might be working with his brother Tom, also a billionaire. But the Detroit News says that's not so. Tom's focused on leading the effort to buy a different sports franchise - the NBA Detroit Pistons. Alec's California-based Gores Group holds a controlling interest in radio syndicator and Metro Networks parent Westwood One. There have been sporadic rumors of selloffs of part of Westwood – like maybe Metro Networks to Clear Channel’s Total Traffic, or to Oaktree-backed Dial Global. So far, nothing has materialized. Clear Channel has discovered what a high-margin business traffic can be (60-70%?). While owning a traffic service would be a departure for Dial Global, though traffic is both radio and (increasingly) digital. There are definitely folks who believe one or both scenarios – some of them inside Metro.

 

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