Inside A Dallas Radio Deal 30 Years In The Making.

Urban One’s pending acquisition would bring together two longtime competitors in the Dallas radio market. CEO Alfred Liggins said Thursday he’s been trying to convince Service Broadcasting owner Hymen Childs to sell his two FMs to Urban One for decades.

“I’ve been trying to make a deal with the owner-operator there, Mr. Hyman Childs, who’s a wonderful broadcaster and has been in this business for a long time. And we always stayed in touch, and we finally were able to do something,” Liggins told analysts and investors during the company’s quarterly results call Thursday.

The stations — urban “K-104” KKDA and “Smooth R&B 105.7” KRNB — have been top performers in their formats for years. They will be paired with Urban One rhythmic CHR “97.9 The Beat” KBFB in radio’s fourth largest market. But the company has said it will spin off adult R&B “Majic 94.5” KZMJ to Fuzion Dallas.

Offloading KZMJ won’t hurt cash flow, Liggins said. While the station “does maybe a couple million dollars of revenue,” it produces “no cash flow contribution.”

Urban One is also divesting two stations in Charlotte, NC: Hot AC “Mix 100.9” WLNK to Bible Broadcasting Network for $4.2 million and WMXG to Augusta Radio Fellowship for $700,000. Liggins said the Charlotte sales free up the company to sell the land associated with the tower sites for WBT-AM (which moved to the 100,000-watt 107.9 FM signal) and another Charlotte AM that moved to the FM dial. “We’ve got significant value in those land assets in Charlotte,” Liggins said, perking up on an otherwise disappointing earnings call. “There is a process going on as we speak to monetize those parcels.”

It’s all part of what he called accretive and de-levering M&A. “You’ve got to get it at the right price. It’s got to be an operational fit such that one plus one equals three in terms of profitability,” he explained. “We think what we did in Dallas and what we’re doing in Charlotte are going to be significant plays in our effort to continue to delever” the company’s balance sheet.

The land is currently listed for sale with realtor JLL. “There’s a process going on to bring in offers and to evaluate and eventually just sell it,” he added.

Since 2025, Urban One has focused on balance sheet management, debt reduction and deleveraging opportunities. “We spent approximately $25 million to reduce our debt balance by another $60 million or so, to over $300 million of gross debt,” Liggins explained. More specifically, discounted debt repurchases Urban One made in the first quarter reduced its outstanding long-term debt balance to $326.7 million as of March 31. By cutting $60.2 million of long-term debt, the company is spending $4.6 million less in annual interest payments, CFO Peter Thompson said.

As for its rocky first-quarter results, Liggins reminded investors that he warned them Q1 would be a rough slog. “First quarter was a tough quarter, and we were budgeted to be down,” he said. “But the marketplace was softer than anticipated due to continued declines in the traditional ad marketplace.”

Urban One reported that first-quarter 2026 revenue fell 15.8% year-over-year to $77.7 million as declines in television, digital, radio and syndicated operations pushed the company to an operating loss for the quarter.

The company posted an operating loss of $2.2 million for the quarter ending March 31, compared to operating income of $2.1 million a year earlier. Broadcast and digital operating income declined 35.4% to $14.9 million, while Adjusted EBITDA fell to $4.7 million from $12.9 million in the first quarter of 2025. Net loss attributed to common stockholders improved to $3.1 million, or 69 cents per share, compared to a loss of $11.7 million, or $2.64 per share, a year ago.

Top ad categories were services (+14.5% year-over-year), mostly due to robust legal services ad sales, and government/public (+23.6%), due to political spending. However, all other major categories were down.

The company updated its 2026 guidance to $60 million in EBITDA and $40 million of free cash flow and said it expects to reduce its leverage below five-times by year end.

Revenue was soft across all divisions, with TV down 18.5%, Digital down 33.5%, Radio down 6.4% and Reach Media dropped by 17%, Liggins said in the earnings release.

When an analyst asked why digital was so weak, even as Urban One’s peers reported solid growth, Liggins explained that revenue at Interactive One rocketed up from the low $30 million range to almost $75 million in the wake of DEI initiatives by major advertisers in the wake of the George Floyd killing. “It was wildly profitable,” churning out profits in the $20 million range,” he recounted. “Now there’s pressure on digital publishers,” pointing to challenges faced by BuzzFeed and others. “But even with all of that, advertisers are moving more towards digital,” and he expects Interactive One to be a profitable division — just not as profitable as it was during its heyday. In addition, digital media has lower profit margins than radio and TV because many campaigns “require specialized, individual, custom content and oftentimes you need impressions that are not owned and operated to build scale, and those impressions are very expensive to buy.” Despite that, Liggins said he is fond of telling local radio stations that “a low margin is better than no margin.”