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Thursday, December 22, 2011

Clear Channel's Katz 360 digital rep drops Pandora

Pandora Tim Westergren, founder of the Oakland-based Internet audio service, tells the Wall Street Journal that "the broadcast industry does not want the world to know about us, basically." Referring to this week's 10-bullet-point cautionary statement from Arbitron about mixing and matching various listening estimates, Westergren says the Arbitron release is part of "a concerted effort" to keep Pandora's profile low. The Katz 360 digital rep has sold ad time for Pandora for the past two years. Now Katz 360 president Brian Benedik tells Pandora, via email, that "Our Katz Media Group broadcaster clients have demanded that we focus our Katz 360 online efforts towards their digital assets, going forward." At Katz Radio Group, executive Mary Beth Garber tells the Journal "We don't want to keep Pandora out of the industry and we are not afraid of them at all." She says Katz originally thought that "Pandora was complementary to radio, but as we tried to fit Pandora's ad time into pitches, it became too cumbersome." Katz has repped other pure-play Internet audio companies. Pandora now needs to find an alternative sales rep. Ad sales are important to it, since its music costs are much higher than for over-the-air broadcasters.

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