What Sent Cumulus Back To Bankruptcy?

Just 33 months after Cumulus Media wrapped its previous bankruptcy reorganization, the company finds itself back in court. In court filings submitted alongside its latest bankruptcy petition, Cumulus says years of pressure on the broadcast radio business, rising interest costs, and even its ongoing dispute with Nielsen over ratings pricing ultimately forced the company to seek Chapter 11 for the second time in a decade.

“These Chapter 11 cases are the product of sustained challenges in the broadcast radio industry and broader macroeconomic pressures,” CFO Francisco Lopez-Balboa says in a declaration filed with the court.

Cumulus previously filed for voluntary reorganization under Chapter 11 in November 2017. That plan was not completed until May 2022. The documents filed Thursday describe a combination of industry shifts and macroeconomic pressures that have constrained liquidity despite several years of restructuring efforts.

Cumulus says broadcast revenue has been squeezed by digital competition, while shifts toward programmatic and performance-based ad buying have further complicated its financial state. Those industry changes were compounded by broader economic factors according to Lopez-Balboa, who says “persistent inflation” has increased operating costs while higher benchmark interest rates significantly increased the company’s debt service obligations. The result was additional pressure on cash flows.

Cumulus attempted several steps to stabilize its balance sheet before turning to bankruptcy. In 2024, the company completed a refinancing that extended most of its debt maturities from 2026 to 2029. At the same time, it also implemented a multiyear sequence of operational and strategic initiatives aimed at preserving liquidity. They included cost reductions, renegotiating contracts, streamlining legacy operations, reducing capital spending and tightening working-capital management.

But the company says the benefits of those initiatives were offset by continued revenue pressure and higher borrowing costs through 2024 and 2025.

“Despite these measures, ongoing industry revenue declines and macroeconomic headwinds continued to constrain liquidity and free cash flow,” Lopez-Balboa says. “Demand in both national and local markets remained weak relative to historic levels.”

Another complication emerged in late 2024 when Nielsen introduced a policy change that required companies owning both national networks and local stations to purchase local market ratings products in every market where they operate in order to access the full national ratings.

Lopez-Balboa says the policy placed the company in “an untenable position” where it had to either assume “substantially higher” measurement costs, or lose access to the vital national ratings data altogether. Cumulus filed a federal lawsuit challenging the policy last October.

Yet the Chapter 11 filing had also been in the works for months. Court documents show by late-2025, the company quietly hired an investment banker to help explore strategic alternatives, including selling assets to raise money and a broader restructuring of its balance sheet. After evaluating those options, Cumulus concluded that a comprehensive recapitalization represented the most viable path forward. And while it originally aimed to complete a transaction out of court, earlier this year the company says it pivoted to a prepackaged Chapter 11 because of ongoing industry pressures.

“The debtors determined that a prepackaged filing anchored by an agreement with their key stakeholders on the terms of a comprehensive restructuring would avoid a value destructive freefall, minimize execution risk, reduce cost and disruption, and was in the best interests of all stakeholders,” Lopez-Balboa says in the filing.

The company ultimately negotiated a restructuring agreement with key lenders that will eliminate roughly $592 million of debt and reduce annual cash interest costs by about $49 million. Lenders have also agreed to provide up to $100 million to support operations during and after the restructuring process.