Radio-division revenues at Radio One grew 3.4%.

Story by Tom Taylor's Newsletter NOW

Radio-division revenues at Radio One grew 3.4%, that’s including third-quarter results from the Reach Media syndication that has Tom Joyner. CEO Alfred Liggins says there’s been “a big turnaround” at Reach, which “lost a little money in 2012, but will make more than a little money in 2013.”

He says “the radio division is having another good year, in a flat advertising environment.” Some of that’s from selling cross-platform with a collection of assets that reaches 82% of the country’s African-Americans.

Radio One has a long-term media partnership with WalMart, which has signed similar deals only with Univision (for Spanish consumers) and Facebook.

Radio One CFO Peter Thompson says “our radio growth was driven by solid performances in our largest clusters – Houston, Atlanta, Washington and Baltimore.” Also in positive territory for Q3 – Columbus and Dallas. While Cleveland, Richmond, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Detroit, Raleigh and Cincinnati clusters “posted net revenue declines” – again, a year that had strong political spending.

Local revenue was off 2.4%, but national grew double digits, up 12.9%.

Top-five ad categories were Retail (up 8%), Telecom (up 20%), Financial (up 9%), Food & Beverage (down 24%) and Entertainment (down 11%). Automotive was the sixth-largest category (10% of radio revenue) and it was up slightly.

Radio One’s on-target to ride its leverage down below 7-times cash flow by year-end.