Robert Pittman
Analyst · Barrington Research.
I'm not sure a lot of our personalities want to keep going that extra hour. It's a long day. We did it in response to listener demand. They shifted their days. And one of the things we're doing every day is we get actually report on sentiment, consumer sentiment, what they're feeling, what they're looking for, how moods are changing. And I mean it's fascinating to watch it. We use it for our programming. And that's, of course, where we picked up that they really were shifting back a day, and we need an hour more of the morning shows. I wish we have been able to monetize it. But I think we characterize April as probably the worst monetization month I've ever seen. And hopefully, as we say, we're seeing signs it gets better after this. But I think probably more than anything else, though, if you look at radio, and there's always – in the audio section, there's radio and there's the music collection. There's companionship and escape the world. And there was always a question about what people thought was more important. Well, I think, it's pretty clear what they think. I mean if you pretty well-publicized that the streaming music services, the music collection, dropped during this period of time and that people were looking to the radio more than ever because they really needed that human companionship. I need to trust the voice. There was so much stuff being said they didn't know what to believe. In the beginning, they wanted all our radio stations to talk about COVID. Now some of our radios stations, they don't want to talk about much at all. They need time away from COVID. We're finding like 75% of people say, "I need time away from COVID information." So we're adjusting what we do. But they're looking for that human connection. So I think, again, in the advertising community, it's probably pretty stark proof of the power of radio and that strength of that unique relationship we have with the consumer. I think as things come back, again, that accrues to our benefit. And having all these multi-platforms, we've put iHeart on the smart TVs, on all these devices, but a lot of people didn't use it. They used Alexa. That had pretty good usage. Used some of the other smart speakers, but now they're using the smart TV. They're using the Roku, the Sonos, and they're going to these other home devices. And we think that usage will stay there even after people come back to a more normalized life.