When Cumulus Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, it sent a familiar kind of chill through the radio industry — not quite shock, but the cold recognition that the ground had shifted again.
For program directors inside the company’s more than 400 stations, the weeks ahead will demand more than just good radio instincts. They’ll require political savvy, financial literacy, and the ability to lead teams through genuine uncertainty.
Barrett Media spoke with three Program Directors from the news/talk space — outside the Cumulus orbit — to ask what advice they’d give to their contemporaries about going through the bankruptcy process, waht matters, what doesn’t, and how they should lead their stations going forward.
Program directors interviewed for this story were granted anonymity to speak more freely on the topic.
“The first thing I’d tell any PD over there is to resist the urge to go quiet,” said one news/talk program director with more than two decades of experience. “I’ve seen it happen every time: companies go bankrupt, and the people who survive are the ones who stayed visible and kept making noise about what their station was doing right. Don’t retreat. That’s when you need to be the loudest voice in the room about your value.”
That PD said the temptation for a Cumulus programmer to hunker down and wait for direction from above can be career-ending.
“Leadership in a bankruptcy situation is often looking around, trying to figure out who’s worth saving. They’re making lists, whether they tell you that or not. You want to be on that list as someone who’s already solving problems — not someone waiting to be told what the problems are.”
A second program director, who’s worked at both large group-owned and independently operated stations, framed the priority in starker terms.
“My first thing would be concentrating on my station’s billing,” they said. “Making sure that whichever local shows are there and I want to keep, that they’re making whatever new numbers the new board of directors is going to demand. I would do whatever I could to know that number and be an advocate for making sure those sales numbers are there.
“If you’re not making your numbers, they’re going to begin to look at ‘Ok, what’s costing us too much, and why aren’t we getting return on this?’ And that’s when they’ll begin to really look at cutting,” they continued. “Read the room when the directives come down. Join calls with the market manager. Sit with them to understand what they’re looking at, the pressures they’re under, so you can be a first-class advocate for them.”
The third program director pointed to content strategy as equally urgent.
“The noise can’t become an excuse to go on autopilot,” they said. “That’s the trap. Your listeners either don’t know or don’t care about the bankruptcy. They care whether your station is still giving them something they can’t get anywhere else.”
They said local content is often the first topic in restructuring conversations — and the first thing PDs need to do is defend that programming.
“Local is your leverage. It’s what syndication can’t replicate and what the ownership is eventually going to realize drives community loyalty and local advertising. If you’re not making the case for your local shows right now, somebody else is quietly making the case against them.”
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