For the Business Snobs

Black Snob regular Andrea, The Unapologetic Snob, passed along this item about recent troubles at Radio One. I remember being mildly interested several years back when I read about Radio One’s founder Cathy Hughes in the now defunct Emerge Magazine. But what started out full of hope and promise turned into a radio version of BET. And not even in a good way. BET could use some competition. Maybe they would “diversify” their offerings, but that never came to pass. Now Radio One is in economic trouble.

Washington Post has the story on their Washbiz Blog:

Radio One said it lost $18.3 million in the first quarter, compared with a profit of $744,000 in the first three months of 2007, hurt by a slump in national advertising.

Chief executive Alfred C. Liggins III, left, sought to explain stock sales by him and his mother, Radio One founder Cathy Hughes and explain that a planned stock buyback will happen. The chief financial officer, Peter D. Thompson, defended the compensation packages for Liggins and Hughes.

Columnist Steven Pearlstein isn’t buying it. He writes that Radio One’s is “the story of a management team and a tightknit board of directors who have overreached in their strategy, underperformed in executing it and sometimes put their own interests ahead of those of their public shareholders.”